Since living in Korea, I’ve been trying out some new software and web apps. The biggest software change was the Ubuntu operating system. I played around with it before, but I could never shake off Windows XP as my main operating system. (Recently, there was a major upgrade to Ubuntu called Gutsy Gibbon. Maybe you heard about it.)

The second change I made was Gallery. This is a photo gallery, which I can run on my web server. I’ve been using this in lieu of Flickr, Photobucket, or Google’s Picasa because… Well, I dont have a good reason. I was going to abandon it many times, but I kept working with it. Those other services have better functions and faster bandwidth. But, it seems redundant for me to pay a web host for servers and bandwidth, and then pay Flickr for their servers and bandwidth.

Though, Ubuntu and Gallery have been relatively easy to set up they’ve had their share of problems. My biggest problem with Gallery was the uploading tool. Using the web interface, I could only upload photos manually and 8 MB at a time. This took hours considering that I’d sometimes take over 100 photos per trip. There were, supposedly, some better uploaders for this task, but I was never able to get them running. Luckily, I was able to find a new feature.

I was messing around with F-spot, a pre-installed Ubuntu application, for viewing photos. I was looking for easy ways to rotate vertical photos. Luckily, I was in the menu bar and noticed the exporter. It listed Flickr, Picasa, and … Gallery as possible exports. ORLY? Could this really work with my Gallery installation. /cue the Kool Aid Man.

OH YEAH!

It works. Now, I don’t have to manually sit at the computer and upload photos five at a time. Ron Popeil must have created F-Spot, because I just have to set it and forget it! A time consuming job, now, easily takes care of 100s of photos at a time. Thank you to whomever added that functionality