Yes, it went well (with one snag, more on the technical details later…), the result can be seen “live” at http://mrwalker.redirectme.net/~haha/piwigo/. However, the absolute easiest way to publish your pictures from your own computer must be with Opera Unite, but there is a bug currently that does not rotate the pictures according to the EXIF information. You can see that on http://home.mrwalker.operaunite.com/photo_sharing/

I am serving this now partly from an old iBook G4 (webserver and Piwigo photo album), partly from my new laptop, a MacBook Pro (running Opera Unite).

The old iBook will be left on and should be available at most times, mirroring my “real” pages:

Web:http://www.islandwalking.com
Mirror:http://mrwalker.redirectme.net/~haha/BlueHost/Islandwalking/

Photos:http://www.islandwalking.com/piwigo/
Mirror:http://mrwalker.redirectme.net/~haha/piwigo/

The MacBook running Unite will only be available when I am using it, but I have activated the same basic services there as an example:

Web:http://home.mrwalker.operaunite.com/webserver/
Photos:http://home.mrwalker.operaunite.com/photo_sharing/

Looks like the new photo album thing works pretty well. You might wonder (at least I do) if it is difficult to host this Piwigo software on your own computer? I mean instead of relying on a web hotel that offers it. The answer will be given later. For now, let us see what BlueHost (my host) is using to support such solutions. It should come as no big surprise that what is needed is the web server itself (of course), server side scripting (PHP in this case) and a database system (the popular MySQL). This is what they are running:

That’s it. All free software, as Piwigo is. Promising…

Despite rumors of hot beer and lousy food in fact Algarve did turn out very well. The Sunflower guide was of the best I have used and the fairly easy strolls you can do around Lagos turned into this year’s first “Walk & Eat” experience. A small report with some restaurant tips, bus timetables and general info about Lagos and the walks can be found at http://www.islandwalking.com/lagos.html.

The new photo album is at http://www.islandwalking.com/piwigo/. Most photo gallery software seem to have more bugs than features, so this is another fresh start. But at least there are now finally photos from The Algarve. I have had a look before, but now that Piwigo have released pLoader for MacOS X there is a chance I will actually start using it… Let us see how it goes.

Note 1: I uploaded everything “as is”. Some are failures or experiments. Some could be OK after decent cropping.

Note 2: These are the first attempts using my new Canon PowerShot SX200 IS.

This newer series by Sunflower Books concentrates on shorter walks and strolls. The tips for good eating have so far been a bit different from mine…

Walk & Eat Kefalonia:

Walk & Eat Rhodes:

German Rother is also translated into English. Small and handy, but again, for Greece it is only Crete that is covered (one for east, one for west):

More in the Book Shop.

Some like these guides. They have very few for Greece and to me they look like something for “experts”. Not for me then, I am just a happy amateur:

Crete – The White Mountains

Western Crete – Walking in the Kissamos

See more in the Book Shop.

Generally my favorite series of walking guides. These are the ones that cover Greece:

For more look in the Book Shop.

These no-nonsense booklets written by Lance Chilton are among the best I have used (I have not used them all though). Very efficiently they concentrate on just very detailed walk descriptions and nothing else. No BS. His maps are also great at showing exactly what you need to see:

More info in the Book Shop.

For the next few days I will add overviews of some of the useful walking guides available for your Islandwalking pleasure. All of these has been used by myself. Starting off with “Walking the Greek Islands” (fitting title!) by Graf Editions. These are most of Dieter Graf’s books translated into English:

These are handy books, but many walks are difficult to follow, partly because of lack of updates, but also because the books are not extremely well written in the first place. Or lost in translation? One would expect that the addition of instructive pictures would be helpful, but unfortunately they too rarely are.

See Book Shop.