Hiking

[BikingLady]

Wow thank you for sharing! I love seeing different views of where people call home and enjoying their area.

[jp1]

We didn't hike to get to this but it's so awesome I figured I would share anyway. SO's mother and sister are visiting and we spent the weekend up in Sonoma, north of the city. (mother is 89 and has heart issues so walking long distances just isn't a good plan. And sister's idea of a long walk was to leave the hotel and walk to the far end of the strip mall next door to the hotel...)

Yesterday we went to Armstrong Woods, a beautiful place with many redwood trees. The oldest/biggest is the Colonel Armstrong. It's 308 feet tall and roughly 1400 years old. It's normal that the lower part has no branches. As the trees get taller the branches higher up block the sunlight so the lower down branches die off and you end up with a forest canopy that supports the entire trees. It's kind of mind boggling to me to think that this tree started its life sometime around the year 600 AD.

And even more important, I've figured out how the forum software wants people to deal with the direction of photographs. You just have to upload the photo, figure out what undesired direction it is facing, use the photo editor on your computer to rotate it to what would be "right", save that as a new file, and then use your computer's photo editor again to re-rotate the new back the same amount. Start a new post and upload this third file and it will be facing the right direction! Simple living at it's best!

armstrong4.jpg

[rosarugosa]

Great picture, JP, but the whole photo thing doesn't sound very simple to me! I just upload pics from my desktop and they are always the correct orientation. Do you think it's something to do with me not having an iPhone?

[jp1]

Great picture, JP, but the whole photo thing doesn't sound very simple to me! I just upload pics from my desktop and they are always the correct orientation. Do you think it's something to do with me not having an iPhone?

It’s probably more to do with the forum software engineers not having an iPhone. Because if they did they surely would not consider this to be such an awesome feature.

[catherine]

We didn't hike to get to this but it's so awesome I figured I would share anyway. SO's mother and sister are visiting and we spent the weekend up in Sonoma, north of the city. (mother is 89 and has heart issues so walking long distances just isn't a good plan. And sister's idea of a long walk was to leave the hotel and walk to the far end of the strip mall next door to the hotel...)

Yesterday we went to Armstrong Woods, a beautiful place with many redwood trees. The oldest/biggest is the Colonel Armstrong. It's 308 feet tall and roughly 1400 years old. It's normal that the lower part has no branches. As the trees get taller the branches higher up block the sunlight so the lower down branches die off and you end up with a forest canopy that supports the entire trees. It's kind of mind boggling to me to think that this tree started its life sometime around the year 600 AD.

And even more important, I've figured out how the forum software wants people to deal with the direction of photographs. You just have to upload the photo, figure out what undesired direction it is facing, use the photo editor on your computer to rotate it to what would be "right", save that as a new file, and then use your computer's photo editor again to re-rotate the new back the same amount. Start a new post and upload this third file and it will be facing the right direction! Simple living at it's best!

armstrong4.jpg

Thank you for sharing this.. my latest area of interest is in old-growth forests and the need to protect them, so thank you for sharing the history of that tree! I just recently learned more about Julia Butterfly Hill, the woman who sat in the tree Luna for over two years to protect it from loggers. I had heard of her, but never knew the story. What a great story!! She is such a cool person. There are videos on YouTube where she describes her journey.

If you are interested, take a look at Part 1 of the YouTube video and then the sidebar should have Parts 2,3, and 4. Each one is only 10-15 minutes.

[Alan]

It’s probably more to do with the forum software engineers not having an iPhone. Because if they did they surely would not consider this to be such an awesome feature.

The vBulletin software engineers abandoned this version of the software some years ago in favor of a completely revamped version. I'm sure that the latest iteration does recognize the 'up' tag modern smartphones and tablets embed in photographs, unfortunately this version does not. As I've mentioned before, if you take a pic in your devices default portrait orientation, it will show up here that way as well.

It appears that modern smartphone's photos app and modern social media software does the orientation work for you, recognizing the embedded orientation tag and automatically rotates photos displayed. We could do that here too if we purchased the newest version of the software, converted our database to accomodate the newer versions requirements and then upgraded the server side software. On the other hand, we could also just take our photos right side up.

[catherine]

I usually export the photo to my desktop, where it lands in the right direction, and then I just upload that version rather than the one from photos library.

[happystuff]

Great picture and info, JP. Thanks for sharing. I would like to see redwoods someday.

[jp1]

I’m pretty sure I wasn’t holding my phone sideways when I took that picture. Tall trees require portrait mode. But now that I’ve cracked the code for how to have perfectly oriented pictures every time it’s all good.

I figured there were good reasons for not upgrading the forum software, assuming that there was a newer version of the software that simplified this. It doesn’t seem worth the cost/headache of a major upgrade just so that no one has to tilt their heads to look at the occasional picture.

[Alan]

I figured there were good reasons for not upgrading the forum software, assuming that there was a newer version of the software that simplified this. It doesn’t seem worth the cost/headache of a major upgrade just so that no one has to tilt their heads to look at the occasional picture.