We are back - sort of

[gilescooperuk]

Two questions - can you pull the creation date from the image files - that should point out when the images were posted.

Second I am sure others will agree to this - open up a paypal account for donations to help auto puzzles keep running. Even if people only donate £10 or similar it will help to build a fund to protect against things going wrong again.

[mekubb]

Many thanks to Pal and Karoly (and all others involved) for their hard work bringing back Autopuzzles, must have been quite a nightmare ! I will try to upload my pics asap.

[Wendax]

Many, many thanks to Pal and Karoly for rescuing this site.

I'm on vacation right now, so no picture recreation help from me before September, sorry.

[Bill Murray]

My Thanks also to all who are involved in trying to get the site back up and running.

I have no unsolved puzzles and I am not at all good with working my way through complicated computer instructions so I will not try to "reboot" my old solved puzzles.

However, I have perhaps a dozen new ones that I would like to post as a sort of like the "Phoenix Rising From The Ashes" comment I made on Facebook and if Pal or someone can tell us when we are able to post new puzzles I will get right on it.

Regarding contributions to the site, I had some very bad experiences with PayPal in my business a few years ago and prefer to not use that method.  I do want to make a contribution.  If any of you have a business or such that accepts MasterCard or Visa, I would be glad to make a payment to that account that you can then forward via PayPal if you use that service.

My thanks again to all who have been a part of making this an exciting and challenging site.

Bill

[oko94]

Alright, I've identified my last 4 puzzle pictures and filled the guess form. I've re-uploaded the others because it would have been too much of a hassle to find them among the orphan pictures.

[oko94]

If if possible to get thumbs for the pictures it would be much easier and maybe It could be possible help others to restore their puzzles.

From a technical point of view it wouldn't be difficult to display thumbnails in the "hex_list" page, but as there are no less than 56 000 orphan pictures some kind of paging system would be required, otherwise it would take ages to load the page and it would overload the server.

[gilescooperuk]

I have taken the first 500 pictures from the index list and coverted them to image files.


Use the links below to get a preview of the images each page contains roughly 100 images so it may take a while to load.


It looks like the list has been compiled with the newest ones first - I can do some more if people want it. The images are directly linked here so all I am hosting is the html files.

http://www.gilescooper.co.uk/autopuzzles/pictures-001.html
http://www.gilescooper.co.uk/autopuzzles/pictures-002.html
http://www.gilescooper.co.uk/autopuzzles/pictures-003.html
http://www.gilescooper.co.uk/autopuzzles/pictures-004.html
http://www.gilescooper.co.uk/autopuzzles/pictures-005.html

The next file to be done this way is 78928_b361d9aa3c8015d95ab9bd16b3060141a6852d6c.jpeg


Giles

[als15]

It looks like the list has been compiled with the newest ones first - I can do some more if people want it. The images are directly linked here so all I am hosting is the html files.

Indeed. So I really wonder if there is not any trick to make an authomatic chronological connection between the pictures and the messages. I don't know how... but IT guys perhaps could?

And, btw, I totally agree upon the fact that the huge help Pal and Karoly are providing should somehow be paid.

[Oguerrerob]

Thanks to Pal & Karoly for all the efforts. There was an account to contribute, but I can't find it anymore.

[grobmotorix]

Today I´ve uploaded ca. 400 photos again, that I have saved on my HDD.

It took me 8 hours after work - now it´s 1:30 here and I gotta go to bed.

Exhausted, but happy.

I hope this wasn´t contraproductive and others might recreate the same photos afterwards by handling with the thumbs...

But I want that AutoPuzzles will rise again!

Carry on guys.

[SACO]

Is the same effect that  to make correspond the 3 numbers and directly to download one photos (it's easier to download ! ;) ) ?

[Allemano]

Oh my... :'(
The library of Alexandria has burned down again.


Rebuilding the original puzzle pictures may not be the hardest part (still have them all listed from #1 to .. most recent), but all of those not commented footnote pictures, "help" pics, links to image upload websites or cross references will be a real nightmare to recreate. Secondly the puzzles of each member aren't listed in order, so you even have to search for particular puzzles as well.
I guess the easiest way to start is to open one's topic and upload puzzle pics again from PC's folder rather than matching chaotic filenames ... (if this currently doesn't work, please let me know! I'm an IT illiterate)

I don't have the time to start the job now, but within the next three-four days..

[Paul Jaray]

We are back!
Thanks to all of you who worked the magic...now it's our turn!
I have 99.9% of all my puzzles ready (the missing ones are the pics I had to change-resize-blurry etc) to be uploaded again...I have a good memory when it comes to solved puzzles and should be able to connect missing pics of old puzzles too...it will be a game in the game!

[Paul Jaray]

Just a question...I see that the list of pics to match still starts with 79492_4a07e07cd966509aabd6be2d8fb73d5431edf026.png
from the Maureand puzzle.
I read it takes few days for the list to update but what happens if I try again to match them?
Is there a way to avoid to work all of us on the 1st 100 pics simultaneously?
I'm starting from pic 50000 backwards to avoid that.

[als15]

Once the file is matched, it immediately disappears from the list, so no risk to work in 2 on the same one..
What takes a few days (actually, I matched some, but nothing happened so far) is to see the result, to have the image back in the puzzle.

Another point is: being the guess open to eveybody, how can we be sure that the match will be correct? So, please, do it only if you are really sure! And be careful in entrying the data in the fields. Once registred, the match cannot be corrected.

[pnegyesi]

The list currently starts from 79490. It now automatically updates once a match is done.

As for the creation date of the images. Yes, we have them. It would make the list even bigger.

However there is another list, but it is not updating automatically yet:
http://www.autopuzzles.com/forum/hexlist1.htm
This features the first 1400 pictures with thumbnails - similar to Giles Cooper's initiative (thanks for that). Maybe I will add the dates to this list

Next up: system admin:
If anyone has a friend with php expertise, who can occasionally help us with small tasks, please let us know. SMF (the forum which underpins AP) is a wonderful system if properly managed.

Money:
Thanks for your kind thoughts on PayPal and other support ideas. We'll think about that later.

SACO: Unfortunately I do not understand your questionn.

Other stuff:
My brother promised to do some additional work on making the matched pictures visible by tonight or tomorrow morning.

Oh, and before I forget: I restored access to karma. You can now add/deduct points again!

[Paul Jaray]

Another question: some of us are uploading pics from their databases and those pics won't disappear from the list.
I read Grob restored many of his puzzles and we are going to find them in that list if he took them again from his archive.
Once we verified the puzzle pic has been replaced, is there a way to send the picture from that list somewhere (a sort of fake page) to make it disappear?

[oko94]

SACO's question means : does using the guess form or uploading manually the photos has the same result ?

[pnegyesi]

PJ: I am matching those images now so those will disappear from the list

oko94: thanks for clarification.

A little explanation is due here.
We have a forum with over 28850 topics (puzzle cars, image pages etc.)
We have a picture database of over 70,000 pictures.
The forum and the pictures were archived properly.
There was an SQL database where the connection between the photos and the topics were stored. This database was not archived properly and disappeared.

If you match existing pictures you take one picture from the database and make it disappear from the list.
If you re-upload your pictures you add one or more pictures to the database (on top of the existing pool) and store the connection in the database. This picture will not appear on the list.

Therefore, though you see the same result by matching and by re-uploading, these two things are totally different.

[Paul Jaray]

Yes...but what I meant was:
if I upload again my pics, they won't disappear from the list but the puzzle will be fixed as well, got it.
If I stumble upon one of the pics I already uploaded while browsing the list, I know there's no need to match it again and I can pass to the following one but, can I send it somewhere, for example matching that pic to a page were we collect them just to make them disappear from the list?
You said you did it, but there's a way we can do it as well to help you?

[pnegyesi]

Match it with the appropriate topic/message. We'll filter for duplicates later.
It is a bit of extra work, but there is no quicker solution yet

[als15]

I think there is a solution. Let's crearte - as suggested by PJ - a fake topic "duplicate pictures" and match all the orphan ones we discover to have been already re-uploeaded.
I already did with all my puzzles, but looking at the list of course I find the original pictures, so I'll match them with a single topic, to be deleted.

[als15]

Topic 28866 made for that purpose. I'm trying to match here all my pictures no longer needed (beacuse I already re-uploaded them all). So they disappear and shorten the - already too huge - orphan list.

[Paul Jaray]

Topic 28866 made for that purpose. I'm trying to match here all my pictures no longer needed (beacuse I already re-uploaded them all). So they disappear and shorten the - already too huge - orphan list.

That was exactly what I had in mind...thank you!

[pnegyesi]

Here's a little aid:
79434 and higher: 9 August
79419-79433: 8 August
79378-79418: 7 August
79363-79377: 6 August
79342-79362: 5 August
79303-79341: 4 August
79275-79302: 3 August
79271-79274: 2 August
79254-79270: 1 August
79210-79253: 31 July
79183-79209: 30 July
79169-79182: 29 July
79158-79168: 28 July
79133-79157: 27 July
79122-79129: 26 July
79107-79121: 25 July

to be continued