In case anybody has had trouble lately with the site loading slowly, I think I've figured out why that might be happening. It has to do with how I've been loading illustrations. It will take a few days for the old method to clear off the front page, but things should improve after that.
Also, yesterday we passed 30,000 comments on the new site (you might remember the original site was over on Blogger.) The author of the 30,000th comment was Arghya Mukherjee.
Featured Comment by Arghya Mukherjee: "That is serendipity for you—that was only my second comment on the site in two years.
"Thanks, though, for a superb blog—a daily dose of photographic sanity and balance that I would find it hard to do without."
Featured Comment by Adam McAnaney: "I'd like to thank Mike, but I have already thanked him enough. So here is a big THANK YOU to everyone who comments here. I just read all 107 (and counting) comments on the Pentax K-7, and I assure you that there are very few (if any) websites out there where I would be willing to read more than 20 comments at most. There certainly aren't any where I read all of the comments with any regularity. I really appreciate the intelligence, knowledge and wit that the T.O.P. commenters share here and hope that you will all continue to make T.O.P. such an inviting and informative place.
"Thanks, y'all!"
Mike adds: I'll second that. And I read all 30,000+.
So, Arghya gets a Pentax K-7 with DA Ltd. of choice and nice Domke bag?
Posted by: Andreas | Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 06:54 PM
Arghya should win one of your K7's ;-)
Posted by: ShadZee | Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 07:58 PM
You mean by how you're using the HTML height and width attributes to tell the client to downscale the images rather than actually providing a properly-scaled version? Yeah, don't do that. :)
Not only is it slow and a waste of bandwidth, the scaling algorithms used vary from browser to browser and OS to OS, so what looks good on your Mac may look terrible elsewhere.
Posted by: Matthew Miller | Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 09:17 PM
I just want to congratulate TOP for this wonderful achievement. Of all the websites I peruse, the comments here are the most informed, balanced, and thoughtful. It's nice to see such a community alive and well, with people who care so much, about an art that has undergone radical changes in the last 10 years. To every single commenter, I tip my hat to you, you really make this site shine.
And thanks Mr. Johnston for sticking to your guns, doing things the right way, and providing your (sometimes) contrarian/trotskite spin on stuff... makes sense to me, and sometimes even gives me a loud chuckle.
To the next 30,000!
Posted by: yunfat | Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 10:07 PM