BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Technical Help and Questions

Sherlock Holmes · May 27, 2012 12:05 pm

As requested, here's the new technical thread. If you need help with anything, just post it in here...

m0r1arty · May 27, 2012 5:21 pm

A few points which may arise should be addressed.
Quoting things and seeing how they work is a great way of reverse engineering- good for you!
If you wish to post an image on these boards you should do the following:

Find, or upload the image in question, somewhere on the internet. There are various free services available such as Flickr and Picasa (To name but two!) which only require an email address and compliance with their rules (No bad or adult stuff) for uploading.

Next we need to find the 'address' of the image. Using Google Chrome for browsing the internet this is relatively easy. Right click on the image you like and select 'Open image in new tab'. In the new tab you will see a long internet address above the main viewing page of the browser (Where you type www.....) it should end with "jpg", "jpeg", "gif" or "png". Highlight this full address either by double clicking the left mouse button or by holding down the left mouse button and gliding over it all. Now 'Copy' this address either by right-click and selecting 'copy' as an option or by holding down the control button of your keyboard and pressing the 'C' key.

Now come back to here and type [img]and then 'paste' the image in by either right-clicking and selecting the 'paste' option or by holding down 'Control' and pressing 'V'. Now you will need to 'close' the tag we started earlier which is done by repeating it but with a '/' in front of it; so type[/img]

You now have your image inserted into your post.

Inserting video

Similar to the above you should go to YouTube (Vimeo also works) and find the 'address' of the video you like. Remember the address is the part where you type the 'www' part into usually.

Now we just 'paste' that into a different set of tags, in this case [video] and it's closing counterpart; [/video].

Now YouTube has all sorts of fancy features which don't always translate into what you have pasted. It's very simple to correct that though. A standard Youtube video should look similar to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjq9kSR85BU

But sometimes we will paste an address like this instead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jjq9kSR85BU&feature=relmfu

If you find the '&' symbol and delete everything after it you will have cleared up the address and it will work here.

One small contentious issue is that addresses with an underscore '_' or a hyphen '-' don't work here - it's the forum software and in its current state cannot be corrected, so just linking to these videos will have to suffice.

Linking??

Similar to images and video linking is just a plain 'paste' of any web address to here. You can either just paste it and it should automatically turn to a link or you can use the appropriate tags for it so that you can use your own words with the link being clickable. It is almost identical to the previous methods only you add an '=' sign and your own text. The tags for this are [url]. Were I to link to...say a question by Davina on Yahoo! Answers:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApuXiU0x2F.zblg0fkTKskTty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20120412140952AAduLBY

This is the full address to the question in question however you might wish to make it more sightly and have it contained within your own words. Adding [url= before the pasted address, close it with a ']' and then typing your own words before ending it with /url (Within the []bracket containers) will make it still direct correctly but have it cloaked with your own phraseology over it.

For example; That very same question but cleaner.

Oh Noes it's all too difficult!!?!

Yes. At first it is. Like everything. The first meal you ever prepared by yourself was a massive failure I'm sure, however I'm fairly certain that were you to have guests around at short notice you could throw something together for them which would be pleasing. Practise is all it requires and, of course, practise involves making mistakes (Many of them!).

There is the 'BORED!' thread here which should be used to make as many mistakes as possible until your attempts are successful

It is computers and so mistakes happen to the best of us, don't take it personally and know that we each love sharing in the various things we all find here. It's the trying that's important - between us we can all work it out

I'm happy to assist with any particular requests for Windows PC users. Anything else though, to my mind at least, should require a licence before you can buy them.

But please ask anyway, there tons of talented people here with more patience than I

-m0r

Molly Hooper · May 27, 2012 5:32 pm

That's REALLY helpful, thanks...

I'm gonna try posting a link and then a video on 'BORED'
*crosses fingers!*

sherlockskitty · May 28, 2012 12:43 am

I was wondering what the BORED thread was for. thanks!! and thx for posting this too. I use photobucket for my images. There's also tinyurl which transfers your LONG photobucket (or other image hosting site) into a tiny url addy, to post for banner title threads. just an example. Photobucket already has the [img][/img] in their pull down lists under your pic, so that's easy to just copy and paste here.

Last edited by sherlockskitty (May 28, 2012 12:49 am)

Britigander · May 28, 2012 7:32 pm

Dumb question:

How can a 100x100 pixel avatar look as detailed as the ones on this board? Is it really a limitation of size (at any one time)?

m0r1arty · May 28, 2012 8:11 pm

I'm not really sure what is being asked here Britigander.

You can take any image you want and resize it whilst preserving much of the original quality with various graphical software applications.

GIMP is a free program which allows for image manipulation, there are plenty of tutorial videos on YouTube which can help you accomplish this simple task.

Like everything technical at first it seems daunting, but once you try it out it's actually very easy!

Good luck!

-m0r

Britigander · May 29, 2012 12:35 am

I guess my response is to say that after some hours of fiddling, swearing
(eg " 'pon my life, haf't I never encounter'd such a format conversional conundrum since t'last time I dids't so encounter one" and similar archaic Blackadder-inspired utterances)
and rending of hair,
the answer was

"Ah, Britigander, if you are simply trying to save your nice .jpg etc image formatted to 100x100 pixels in Adobe Photoshop before following my other instructions, you will not realise that this is not an efficient way to do it. Because you like to keep your photos on your computer and share them with people in a different way from Flikr et al you can have had no idea that such programmes not only offer a way of putting images etc on the web for people to look at online in Flikr but also as spring board for situations like on websites until I, m0r, was a hero and told you; PLUS they also offer a range of 'sizes' of your nice detailed image that, despite being only 100x something pixels, magically do keep all the fiddly widdly bits of not only the mitt that is Michigan Lower Province but the wonky shark/goat with a bag on its nose which is the Upper Province which you feel compelled to include for no reason, but it's a free world. Kind of.
Therefore, put it on Flikr first and try testing the results of posting different size images in the message area using 'preview' on the 'bored' site until you feel confident enough to risk actually putting a url into the avatar url box and pressing 'go'.

only way waaaaaay more succinctly.

I really am a very very long way behind in knowledge about these things.
But nevertheless, behold my avatar success
(OK, yeh, channeling Buffy, old habits die hard. I need to get with the programme).

Sorry I didn't explain very well, m0r , I do appreciate your patience with the less up-to-date-social sited such as myself. As a research lab specialist, training and trouble shooting are a big part of my remit...along with devising new techniques. Sometimes I just feel a bit 'trying out'ed out is all.

Many, err, 'grateful British handshakes at appropriate arms' length'.
(Is there an emoticon for that yet?)

Last edited by Britigander (May 29, 2012 1:09 am)

m0r1arty · May 29, 2012 1:20 am

That was a very funny post Britigander, glad you managed to get your avatar up and running!

-m0r

Britigander · May 29, 2012 4:13 am

*regards animation*

There is?!!! Hee!

Now I've seen everything!

(Yes, even how Sherlock survived, twice; just the observing to go, dagnabbit.)

Glad I could make it at least two smiling Brits on one giant continent.

Nutek · May 29, 2012 12:48 pm

Hi, I would like to suggest that this entire forum, website, should looks like Sherlock's forum in the series when he's posting from his computer. The theme is realy cool. Translucent, with big fonts.

m0r1arty · May 29, 2012 12:52 pm

That's a nice idea Nutek, not sure how much customisation can be done with this particular board software but I know that colour schemes can be altered.

Need to see what the boss says on this one.

-m0r

Nutek · May 29, 2012 2:35 pm

How do I post pictures on my comments ? THKS.

m0r1arty · May 29, 2012 2:40 pm

Nutek wrote:
How do I post pictures on my comments ? THKS.

Read this post in this thread.

Hope that helps!

-m0r

Sherlock Holmes · May 29, 2012 4:21 pm

Hi guys - I like the idea of that. I will try it out for a couple of days and see what everyone thinks...*runs off to work on it*

Sherlock Holmes · May 29, 2012 5:26 pm

Away on holiday at the moment and only got access to my parents Mac. I hate working with Macs so will deal with this when I get back on my PC...I've had a look on the Science Of Deduction site and it is do-able...I think....

Tantalus · May 29, 2012 8:08 pm

Just please--no pink!

sherlockskitty · June 9, 2012 2:29 am

I have a question. If someone else were to click on my name and see all the info, such as email address birthdate, etc....would they be able to see it?

Also, for resizing photos or doing editing, I use lunapic.com it's a fantastic site, and one you don't have to download. It works similar to paint, but better. I've used GIMP, and I tried using adobe photoshop, but I couldn't get the hang of either of those. I'm just not that smart enuf for those sites. Sometimes I'll use photobucket for the same reason.

m0r1arty · June 9, 2012 2:38 am

When people click on your name, they will see what you see when you click on their name,

You are welcomed to limit what is known in that regard.

Know that, however, much more can be known from basic interactions, and everything above them.

-m0r

sherlockskitty · June 9, 2012 2:46 am

m0r1arty wrote:
When people click on your name, they will see what you see when you click on their name,

You are welcomed to limit what is known in that regard.

Know that, however, much more can be known from basic interactions, and everything above them.

-m0r

ok... when I clicked on your name I got nothing. so-- they'll not see my email address that's what i'm concerned about. Only I can see MY email addy, right? sorry, but i had to ask. what do you mean in limiting what other ppl see? for instance I tried taking my email addy off but the board wudn't let me do that.

kazza474 · June 9, 2012 2:52 am

Only Admin can see all info; Mods see limited extra info & no-one else sees any more than you see when you click on a name.

m0riarty is referring to what info you freely give out in your chat. eg age, family , job , etc