Just a quick note from the geeks,

As you may be aware, our website is run on a voluntary basis, although our time is precious we are happy to give it up for the Branch. Our internet service provider is not so gracious, our site is hosted by our service provider and costs a minimal amount. However our "bandwidth" (the amount of traffic or visitors we are allowed) is limited. When we go over our allowance we are either charged or the site is shut down until we beg them to reopen it (this happens every year when we publish the Area ODE times). If we publish big pictures, it only takes a few people to view them and we are up to our bandwidth. With this in mind...

A quick tutorial on how to send us pictures...

We are quite happy to receive your pictures to publish to this website, some of you may have noticed when you send us your picture(s) it can take a long time to send them. This is because they are huge files, the size of each picture is normally displayed next to it when you attach it to an email, if the size is quoted in Mb (megabytes) it's too big!!! So here's a quick tip to make your pics a more manageable size...

Select the pictures you want to send, highlight them, RIGHT CLICK (that's the other button on your mouse), you'll now see a list of things you can do, find "Send to", hover over it and another list will appear, find "Mail recipient" and click it. You now get the option to resize your pics before you send them. Select the smallest size available. When you click "attach" your picture will magically be added to an email, all you have to do is add the recipient and any message and send it. Please note this process does not effect the original size of you pictures in any way.

While we're offering advice we may as well mention blogs, firstly keep 'em coming!!! When you write a blog, write it in an email, there's no need to use Word or any other programmes, most programmes might be "easy" to use but they make the files BIG. Composing your blog in an email is just as easy and so much easier to publish. And don't forget attach your pictures, don't embed them into the email.

Finally a quick thank you to everyone who contributes to the site, we just throw it all together, it's our members that make it what it is.
We know it's the envy of most Branches and we're very proud of it, so keep it up!

Spot the difference:

An example of resizing: one of these pictures is actually 25 times smaller than the other (file size)