Orkney Image Library

The Orkneycommunities Facebook page is now being updated automatically when new pictures are approved here, and when new News articles are published on the Orkneycommunities home page. What's not to Like?

The big pictures are on the way back. The ability to add big pictures was lost during some changes to the system earlier this year, as was the ability to view big versions of pictures that had been uploaded. The latter function has been restored, and in a way that should reduce our bandwidth requirements when checking for big versions, but for the time being you'll see a 'Check for big picture' link with each picture where the status of whether a big picture exists or not has not been checked. It's a crowdsourcing thing, like associating pictures with an area.

The ability to add new big pictures should be along again soon too, I hope, with a chunk of retrospective adding. If there are any particular big pictures you fancy, drop me a line at contact@orkneycommunities.co.uk.

Also... Note the embryonic 'Previous/Next' function on pictures, by popular request. This will take a bit of debugging, due to the different ways you can arrive at a picture viz. by chronology, area, contributor, group, album, random...

It turned out the image garbling (as we say in the trade) was due to new anti-spam software installed by Calico, our hosts. They have rolled this back and the pictures have been reconstituted. Hurray!

It is with much sadness that I report that Phil Brough collapsed and died yesterday, Sunday 7th November 2011.

As you will know, Phil was a great supporter of the Orkney Image Library through his comments that enriched so many of our pictures, and of course through the 150 pictures that he contributed himself and shared with us.

I know from my own conversations with Phil that he derived great enjoyment from looking through the Image Library after he had retired.

Bruce Moar, in an email sent yesterday evening, sums it up well:

"Phil put some good stuff on the library over the years and was always good for a yarn about it if I bumped into him in the Royal.

It always amazed me that he had gone to the trouble of learning how to work a computer in the first place but he took great pride in telling me Ian's boy (Aaron I think) had shown him what to do.

I was by him just over a month ago to quiz him about his old Hotspur days and after I had been by him then Kenny Heddle I thought to myself I should get them together for an evening and record some of their stories for posterity.

Sadly it's too late now.

I, like everyone else I'm sure, will miss his contribution to the Image Library."

Our thoughts are with his wife Margaret, and sons Alan, Graham and Ian.