andysworld!

The Photo Album! (sorry for the 2nd post in 2 days!)

Finally! (Yes, really… finally!) The holiday photos from our amazing trip to Malaysia in 2023 are now up in the Album. No more delays, no more excuses — just a good old-fashioned dose of reality: everything else always comes before holiday photos. But in the next month, I’m catching up before Bees work takes off!

Let me explain…

Bees, VMware, and… Bees Again

Since returning from Malaysia, life has been buzzing — literally. Between caring for the bees, running Meltonby Honey, preparing fondant blocks, doing swarm control, extracting and jarring honey (with proper batch tracking!), and delivering to customers — it’s a full-time job.

Then, there’s my Hancock’s VMware Half Hour HOW TO series (which keeps growing), all the vExpert stuff, and, oh yes — my actual day job. So when it came to uploading holiday photos? Well… that always ended up at the bottom of the list. Along with finishing my coffee while it’s still warm.

Holiday Snaps – What’s the Point?

I often end up in conversations with people about what we all actually do with our holiday photos. Most of us take thousands on our smartphones, and then what? They just sit in iCloud, Google Photos, or a hard drive somewhere — never looked at again.

And it does raise a good question:
If we never view them, why take them in the first place?

The answer, I think, is memories.

They’re little digital keepsakes. Not always for today, but for some rainy day in the future. That’s why I still try to get the best ones up on the website — so we can look back and smile, or relive that adventure, even if it takes me a year (or more!) to get around to doing it.

The Process: Not for the Faint-Hearted

Getting the holiday album onto the website is no quick task. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how the magic (eventually) happens:

1. Devices: We take two Apple iPhones and a trusty DSLR bridge camera. So far, so good.

2. Storage: Photos land in iCloud, Google Photos, and locally from the DSLR. That’s right — manually copied from the camera (how quaint).

3. Sorting: Enter Lindsey, who heroically goes through the ~3,000 photos and selects the best ones. (She’s got a great eye!)

4. Converting: Once selected, I get the fun job of converting hundreds — sometimes thousands — of HEIC images to JPG. Because of course, not everything plays nice on the web.

5. The Website Album: Now for the real time sink — manually coding the photo album. I’ve been running this HTML-based album for over 20 years now. And honestly? I don’t write much code anymore… so remembering how it all works takes a bit of head-scratching.

6. Fixes and Tweaks: This year I ran into some broken HTML, incorrect folder names, and layout issues that needed fixing. So it took even longer to get everything polished and just right.

Getting Older (and Slower at HTML)

Let’s be real — this code is vintage. My own custom creation from decades ago. Back then, I had all the tags and folder structures in my head. Now? Not so much. Every time I dive back into it, I feel like I’m solving my own little legacy puzzle.

But hey, it’s done now, and it’s up!

Go Take a Look

So if you fancy a bit of armchair travel, check out the 2023 Malaysia Holiday Photos in the Album. Temples, tropical beaches, cultural sights, food (of course), and lots of little moments that made it such a special trip. The Album Index is here – https://andysworld.org.uk/album/index.html, and includes all the photos from 2006, to present, okay I still now need to complete the last holiday to Sri Lanka in 2025 ! I’ll start on those now!

Thanks for your patience — now I’m off to label some more jars of honey… or fix some vCenter upgrades… or maybe take a nap! Off to edit and publish all the videos to YouTube !