Tim_Lookingbill

I feel your pain concerning all the ads that load on any website that requires AdBlocker to be turned off to even read the site's articles or participate in a forum discussion. But as usual your experience is different than mine and we're both on the same internet. For example I have AdBlocker turned on for PN and have no problems, but I'm a paid member and I'm assuming you are as well. My Yahoo email account got taken over by Oath and requires my AdBlocker be turned off to allow me to move my email to different folders including the trash. With it turned off they have ads that appear inline just above the emails subject line and are PERMANENTLY ATTACHED to the email in my Inbox so that when I organize them to my folders the freakin' ad goes along with them. It's ridiculous! The ads that show up on the right column and in the empty section of my inbox I have no problems with and don't slow my download of the Yahoo email page. In fact all ads with the AdBlocker turned off on other sites like DeviantArt are pretty fast loading now.

Thanks for the feedback on your much slower internet bandwidth. What are the times in seconds on average it takes to COMPLETELY download a typical web page like say Photo.net and in particular a non-cached never been to website? I'm on a Mac, but from all the variables I've mentioned here that are inexplicable to the cause of slow page downloads I'm not going to trust any software driven analysis at this point. Another variable I forgot to mention back when my download speed was abnormally slow was for some reason, when I Googled any questions regarding medical and health related topics, when I clicked on a WebMD or any other site link I've never been to (not cached/cookie'ed), the pages downloaded very quickly, almost within 6 seconds. That suggests tracking software may have been getting in the way somehow. What else could explain that variable?

Tea

How fast does a new website page that hasn't been cached take to download with those mbps speeds? Is it instantaneous?

I actually like the swagger of Patrick Sexton's page. Anyone who knows that much about page download optimization I want to keep company with. I respect what the guy's doing. Besides I've had my fill of the white pages I'ld get waiting for a site to connect where I couldn't tell a browser hang from a slow connection.

I was hoping to get feedback from you guys on whether anyone here experienced changes in page loading speed similar to my situation across several months. With my case I was troubleshooting throwing everything but the kitchen sink at my browser by clearing the cache and getting rid of cookies but that didn't help. At first I was beginning to think it might have been a loose Ethernet cable connect but then that doesn't explain why it suddenly slowed down right after New Years Eve in January. And I had disconnected all my cables and unplugged from the power outlet during a storm around March and that didn't fix the speed. I even rebooted my AT&T DSL box and that didn't work. Now I just checked reloading Google and it took 4 seconds but that's probably sourcing from the cache which of course introduces another variable concerning what might have been a bad sector on my HD corrupting the browser cache. I tossed quite a few files right about the time the speed returned to normal but can't be sure. DeviantArt was the worst at page download speeds which requires I turn off my AdBlocker and it would take over a minute to download notifications. Now it's faster than I've ever seen. But last week I noticed a new tracking and marketing script shown in the lower left corner of my browser attempting to transfer data from a company called "RubiconProject.com" as I was waiting for notifications which seemed to take forever to download where the page seemed to hang as it did before. Googled the name where it provided a link to "Opt Out" of their "Marketing Catered To My Interests" preference change. Before I clicked on the link I searched my browser cookies for RubiconProject and there wasn't anything, so I clicked the "Opt Out" and got confirmation on the same page. And sure enough, it dowloaded about 4 separate cookie folders with their name on it. I tossed them all. Haven't had any trouble downloading DeviantArt notifications any longer.

Here's the "About" on Patrick Sexton. Pretty interesting guy... Patrick Sexton and Varvy.com All that web site optimization stuff is over my head but thought some would find it interesting.

Hopefully there might be some IT experts here that can explain why I'm suddenly getting faster page loads with my AT&T 12mbps connection. Back in January 2018 it took over 20 seconds for the majority of web pages I frequent to load (including email accounts which could take a full minute) after clicking the sites icon saved to my Firefox browser's toolbar menu. Even Google I used to have as my default browser page after opening Firefox took 30 seconds to completely load the page. It's a simple white page! I even turned off my Adblocker to these sites. Didn't help. Did a search on "slow web page loading 2018" and got a Quora entry linking to a VERY knowledgeable IT specialist who encoded websites for fast page loading... I am a wickedly fast loading page ...that entire page (which is now my default browser page) links to some very interesting reading including web page optimization encoding as well as some background on the site's creator Patrick Sexton who lives in the Philippines and info on how and why he offers his help for FREE! At least I knew there were folks working to fix or speed up page loading through proper encoding standards. About a week close to the end of June after providing a link to that site above over at LuLa my page loading speeds increased dramatically. I have no idea if providing that link had anything to do with it. I've always felt I was always being tracked by Google on my searches and maybe Google contacted AT&T and told them to fix my problem. I have no idea. I'm just guessing. So before beginning in January 2018 I'ld click on the link to a page and get a white page with "waiting on: xxxx website", then "transferring: xxxx data" with a bunch of other "cloudfront dot such and such" in the lower left of the page which could take over 20 seconds to fully load the entire page. Now after six months of slow internet I'm back to within 6 seconds at the most for all websites including email accounts. Anyone have any ideas why or what was causing this?

Just curious. What are you thinking about or not forgetting when taking photos?

What are you remembering when you are out taking photographs? My experience suggests time multiplied by the square root of chimping equals dead batteries.

And now I'm reminded of the point made by stand-up comedian Dane Cook where he mentions going up to a kid eating an ice cream cone in the mall and suddenly grabbing it from him and taking a big bite out of it and saying..."You will never forget this for the rest of your life, kid!" I remember it and there were no photos involved. Power of suggestion? Do photos suggest too much that it affects our memories?

I wonder how photo line ups used to jog the memory of victims identifying their perpetrator plays into this? There's been way too many accounts of victims relying on their memory of the perp's facial features that are soon forgotten or mis-remembered that sends an innocent person to prison from relying on their mug shot. Maybe the victim should take up photography so they can soon forget the trauma they suffered under only they'll have to take a bunch of shots of the perp to induce this photo-taking impairment effect.

I think you just supported my point about all the variables involved that can't be accounted for by science (using the scientific method under a blind A/B comparison testing environment) to support that this is a real effect. Anecdotes aren't science. It's too big a target to measure accurately anyway in order to establish a consistent method for diagnosis.

If I had primarily spent my time looking at still photos or even taking photos of my dad or anyone else I cared about, I wouldn't have as much a memory of them today as well. But I relied on other senses such as smell, sound, touch, listening to speech patterns, behaviors, etc. to form lasting memories. I didn't take a lot of photos of my dad either but that doesn't prove it would affect my memory of him. I have lots of pictures I took of my ex-wife when we were married at the time and I still remember her vividly. I don't buy this "photo taking impairment effect" mentioned in the OP. Considering whats been understood in the past about father/daughter relationships Sally Mann may have other extenuating issues that have caused her to lack memories of her father that has nothing to do with photography. It could be her father was pretty boring and maybe not as engaging as much as Cy Twombly. Don't blame a lack of memory of a person on account of taking too many pictures of one over another. I mean there's just way too many possible life experience variables, cognitive and health issues that can contribute to lack of memory of someone making it impossible to prove this effect.