Thursday, October 24, 2013

Really Random Thursday, 10/24/13: Doing a little exploring...

 Are you familiar with the "Explore" section of Flickr? Every day 500 photos are chosen to be included in this gallery. My friend, Deborah, had a photo chosen a couple of days ago. She noticed that she had an exciting amount of views (at last count, 5500+ views!) of her very beautiful quilt made with Denyse Schmidt's Shelburne Falls fabric. It is most definitely very "view" worthy, and I suspected that it had been chosen for the Explore gallery as well.

You don't get notified by anyone if your photo is chosen, and I usually forget about that gallery. Sometimes some kind person will email you that you have had a photo included. That happened to me once when Lynne let me know that a picture of my "pop beads" had been included.

So I did a bit of sleuthing today. Like how are pictures chosen in the first place? And how do you know your picture has been chosen unless you consistently scroll through the gallery each and every day?

I found some interesting information here, as well as suggestions how to increase your chances.

Here are the basic stats:

Flickr receives about 6,000 uploads every minute -- That's about 8.6 million photos a day! From this huge group of images, the Flickr Interestingness algorithm chooses only 500 images to showcase for each 24-hour period. That's only one image in every 17,000!

Isn't that crazy??

How to find out if your photo was Explored by Flickr: Big Huge Labs has a web-based app for that, called "Scout": bighugelabs.com/scout.php

So I went to Big Huge Labs and typed in the info. Look what I found!

Four of my pictures have been included in Explore over the years--and I didn't even know it other than the one on the far right. The cool thing is that they will make this little banner for you and you can save it as a jpeg.

There are also some pointers on increasing your chances, such as making sure that the last picture you upload is your very best picture of the day. Fascinating, huh?

I saw our son, the optometrist, the other day. Routine eye exam. One of my eyes has been really dry so he put temporary plugs in my tear ducts. Sounds unpleasant--didn't hurt even a little bit. My eyes DO feel a lot better so maybe the next step is permanent plugs.

Our daughter-in-law, Christa, is taking an online photography course. She came over the other day to take pictures in my sewing room. I'm anxious to see what she came up with. However, she did share one that she took of me--the best picture of me taken by anyone. Ever. It is now my new profile picture. She also took pictures of Marcelle Goes to the Circus, which will be debuting at Bloggers Quilt Festival tomorrow.
(disclosure: this is NOT one of Christa's pictures....)
At Target the other day, I made two discoveries. I'm not sure I think this is a good idea. I love fabric, but I'm not sure I want a fuzzy "fabric effect" on my fingernails.
This, however, is a GREAT idea. Orla Keily has such great designs. I think I want that orange one for a portable sewing kit.

I got a set of the cutest Star Wars finger puppets here. I bought the entire set and I'm not kidding when I say that these are extremely well made, with incredible detail.
Someone is having a really good time with them. Thanks, Julie!
Your turn.



21 comments:

05 08
Lorna McMahon said... #

Love to see your smiling face, Cindy! Great pic! Looking forward to the big reveal of your Marcelle medallion. And those little Star Wars puppets are great! Looks like someone agrees!

Kristy @ Quiet Play said... #

I love your new profile pic - it's just lovely!

Oh and so interesting on the Explore thing. Found a couple of mine had been on Explore and I had no idea! Thanks for that info!

Jess @ Elven Garden Quilts said... #

I can't wait to see your Marcelle reveal - I loved the peeks Krista gave on IG as she was quilting it.

Grandma G said... #

Thanks for the Flickr info! I'll have to check it out. And yes, that is a great pic of you!

Mrs Flying Blind... said... #

Lovely piccy xxx

Megan said... #

What class is your daughter taking? I've been looking for one so I can figure out fancy cameras. The picture she took of you is beautiful! :-)

Lindsey said... #

She did a great job on your picture, you look great! Those puppets are really amazing! Thanks for the party!

Needled Mom said... #

I guess it's a good thing the Dodgers didn't go to the Series so you could get your eyes done ;-) I hope the proceedure helps.

I like the new portrait of you too. What a great smile!

It looks like those finger puppets are a big hit as well as being cute.

CapitolaQuilter said... #

I discovered Scout a bit ago but forgot all about it until recently when one of my photos was on Explore. Love the little star wars puppet and it looks like your son does too. Fuzzy fingernails are just a little too random for me - what will they think of next?

Deborah said... #

Thanks for the heads up about Flickr explore. Turns out this quilt was my one and only. And I am not at all keen on the idea of fuzzy fingernails. You KNOW how adorable I think Gabe is!

Katy Cameron said... #

Nobody loves me on Flickr *sniff* Loving your new profile pic though :o)

Fuzzy nails are just weird...

Susan said... #

Great photo of YOU! And congrats on all those "Explore" features!

CitricSugar said... #

Hey! You're all Flickr popular! :-)

Love those finger puppets! I'm going to have to get those. But likely for me. Is that bad? lol.

Susan at TheBoredZombie.com said... #

Good to see you in your lovely new photo! Isn't is always a nice surprise when you find pieces of yourself in random places? Congrats! That's awesome.

Kelli said... #

I love that new picture of you! It's lovely. And how cool on the flickr info--I can barely upload photos half the time, so I had no idea how it all worked with the explore function. Thanks for sharing!

Rene' said... #

Such a pretty profile picture!!! Can't wait to see your quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Vicki said... #

I love your Thursdays!!!

Anonymous said... #

Hi! I love your new photo! Thank you for the flickr info even I don't use it so much after the change. See you in the festival! x Teje

Carla said... #

How fun! I didn't know about the Explore thing, but I just went and checked and 4 of my quilt photos have also shown up in Explore! Thanks for sharing :)

Maggie said... #

Great info about Flickr. Thanks for sharing.

Carla said... #

Great post, Cindy! Thanks for sharing....I just went to Big Huge Labs and found that I have 16 pix on Explore, including the FW quilt last week! (I actually was told about that last one by someone.)