Pictures from the famous Beckley23 Monarch threads must be recovered!

[MichaelP]

Due to the recent PB changes, almost all pictures posted in the unique Harry's New Toy and Wreck Update threads showing Monarch lathe restoration disappeared. Although I saved the threads before, apparently it only saved the links, and not the pictures.

Does anyone have a copy of the threads with all the pictures?

Do you think we can somehow contact PB and help us, as a community, recover the pictures?

These are absolutely invaluable threads, and since Harry, unfortunately, died, we must recover his great work somehow.

 

[yardbird]

Someone started a thread with a fix to this problem, be damn if I can find it though. I thought it was on the general board, looked back to September and didn't see it. It's here somewhere?

Brent

 

[TeachMePlease]

There are browser extensions that fix this, I believe one is called "Photo bucket restore" or something like that, for Chrome.

 

[TeachMePlease]

photobucket embed fix - Chrome Web Store

 

[Newman109]

That's a shame. I had about 200 photos up when PB decided to screw everybody. It's shame what PB did to everyone on their site. The worst part was that they gave no notice.

I read every page of Beckley's Monarch rebuild. It was fascinating. I'd like to read it again, with the pictures of course.

Beckley was a genius as far as I'm concerned.

 

[JST]

Yes, that is a series that really "must" be recovered somehow.

Don't know about Chrome, but the "fix" version for Firefox is weird. Sometimes it gives good photos, but in other cases the "meter" shows u

So, I found them in the Monarch area..... And, as expected, the "meter" shows up in every post of his that I checked. No pictures.

I had several hundred pics up on PB, which are still there. I left them because the PB fix WAS working well enough that they seemed to show up for most people. The creeps have the nerve to email me sprightly emails about their new services.... Which I will never use in any way.

 

[MichaelP]

I don't use Chrome although I can definitely install it for this occasion. But if the pictures become visible again, what would be the best way to safe the threads so that they have actual pictures (vs.links) in the copy?

I mistakenly thought that saving a page using the "Web Page, Complete" type under Firefox would save the actual pictures. Looks like I was wrong.

Maybe, if the Chrome extensions can resurrect the pictures, our administrators can find a way to automatically download and host them locally? In this case, I assume, if we copy the threads again, our copies will have the actual pictures. If needed, I would gladly chip in to support the project.


P.S. Meanwhile, being naive, I sent the following request to PhotoBucket:

I'm a member of the largest US machinists' forum, The Practical Machinist. One of a recently deceased members of our community, Harry Beckley, spent a few years assembling a thorough manual on restoring a famous US lathe. He took many pictures, wrote pages of texts and successfully completed the enormous task publishing all this in a few threads on the forum. This is an absolutely unique work that has never been done in such details, and it provides invaluable help to thousand of machinists around the world.
Now, due to the change of PB policy, none of the picture links works. They all show the dreadful odometer. Without the pictures, the whole work is worthless. The author is dead, and the great work he donated to us was killed by this sudden PB policy change.
How can your company help us restore and preserve the priceless legacy work?
Thank you.

 

[Sean Solomon]

I just downloaded the Chrome extension linked above by TeachMePlease. It works perfectly, thanks for the link. Very exciting to get some of these photos back in the threads.

 

[MichaelP]

OK guys. I installed Chrome and Photobucket Embedded Image Fix extension by Jessy Evers (Chrome Web Store ). The images became visible in Chrome. Then I saved each page one-by-one using Chrome's own Menu-More Tools- Save Page as - (Web Page, Complete type). Then I disconnected the Internet access and opened the saved pages with Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. All of them showed images just fine. It means the copies contain actual images. Hurray!

Thank you everyone for your input!

If the saved pages can in any way help Don to restore and preserve Harry's stickies in the Monarch forum, I'll be more than glad to submit them.

 

[UncleFrank]

When I've done a recent Chrome save of a webpage it saved the page AND a separate folder with the images. So I assume the page only links to the images in the new folder. I haven't figured out how to convert the page/image links into actual embedded images.

An IE save of a webpage saved the page AND the images both in the same file which worked a lot better. However, if you didn't save before the PB fiasco it won't work now.

 

[Mud]

When I've done a recent Chrome save of a webpage it saved the page AND a separate folder with the images. So I assume the page only links to the images in the new folder. I haven't figured out how to convert the page/image links into actual embedded images.

An IE save of a webpage saved the page AND the images both in the same file which worked a lot better. However, if you didn't save before the PB fiasco it won't work now.

You can print the page to a PDF file. If the photos are viewable you'll see them as you see them on the screen. If they are thumbnails, you will only see the thumbnails though.

 

[Monarchist]

P.S. Meanwhile, being naive, I sent the following request to PhotoBucket:

I'm a member of the largest US machinists' forum, The Practical Machinist. One of a recently deceased members of our community, Harry Beckley,

"Harry Bloom" actually.

That may or may not make a difference, as I doubt PB will give a toss or even bother LOOKING for a user's ID for you.

I'd expect NO response, ELSE a 'stock' answer. PB can't be getting much "love" of late...

Thanks for trying, though.

 

[MichaelP]

Thank you for the last name correction, Bill. Let's give them a benefit of doubt to see if they're willing to do anything.

Did I say I was naive?

 

[johnoder]

Maybe worthwhile trying to contact family?

Pardon Our Interruption

 

[gustafson]

I would think a moderator could take over the account, hand access to a volunteer who could right click on the images and save them here

I would no think the work arounds are going to last forever, and while PM may not last forever, at least it is here now....

 

[Monarchist]

I would think a moderator could take over the account, hand access to a volunteer who could right click on the images and save them here

Exactly that process has been proposed, tested, and works fine in a Monarch-Forum thread.

ANY MEMBER can recover the images, save them into a thread with no other purpose but temp storage, ELSE tack them onto the end of the thread they are meant to go back into as John Oder (and a few others) had already pioneered.

The Moderator - and AFAIK, PM's VB supports more than one for any given forum, so a temp specialist could do this - given the details of what is where and where it needs to GO can then edit the new PM DB internal links for the images into place in the old threads, replacing the EXTERNAL PhotoBucket (or whatever else..) links.

Once linked, those internally stored images within PM's database survive even after that original "temporary" holding-thread OR the "tacked on" tail-end-Charlie posts, are deleted.

DB's generally have flags that indicate there is still one or more active calls to a given stored image file, so it doesn't remove that file when "preened".

All tested and proven stuff.

The "challenge" is available TIME of both recovery volunteers AND a moderator-class worker-bee to make them seamless again by linking them to where they belong.

John - and others - have ALSO coughed-up images stored on their own workstations.

And there is another source that needs that sort of attention.

None of US are expected to live forever, either, even if we could collect "fees" as Photobucket has attempted to do.

Which seems suicidal, BTW, but wot the hey...

Perhaps their biz model was failing rather badly to begin with, and it was simply shit-the-messkit-or-go-dark desperation?

 

[MichaelP]

Wouldn't my page copies containing the actual image files help?

 

[WHHJR]

Just add the Extension "Photobucket Hotlink" for Firefox. It works for me.....

 

[MichaelP]

I'm pretty sure all those extension will stop working after another round of PB "innovations". First, the may try to make the file access even more difficult. Then they will probably just erase the original files.

 

[EPAIII]

Your computer will store copies of recently visited web pages so they can be brought back quickly if you click the BACK button. So just disconnecting internet access does not mean that you saved those photos with the web page.

It is fairly easy to actually see if the photos are saved with the web page. Just use the File Explorer to go to the folder where you saved the page. Look for a sub-folder in that folder called something like the name of the html file with "_files" appended to it. The photos should be in there. You can open them to see just what they are, full sized or thumbnails. Once they are there, on your hard drive, then you actually have them.

It is probably possible to find the photos in those saved, recently visited pages which are also on your hard drive, but I am not familiar with that.

OK guys. I installed Chrome and Photobucket Embedded Image Fix extension by Jessy Evers (Chrome Web Store ). The images became visible in Chrome. Then I saved each page one-by-one using Chrome's own Menu-More Tools- Save Page as - (Web Page, Complete type). Then I disconnected the Internet access and opened the saved pages with Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. All of them showed images just fine. It means the copies contain actual images. Hurray!

Thank you everyone for your input!

If the saved pages can in any way help Don to restore and preserve Harry's stickies in the Monarch forum, I'll be more than glad to submit them.