harry

Philip, I can help with Solaris/Linux admin, shell scripting, text

editing with vi, really basic HTML and web forms. I'm in the great

midwest, but I'm sure I could still do something useful just with

ssh access. I can also help you with some instructions on how

to set up a cheap remote console that's not an ongoing admin

task in itself. I'm currently undergoing Oracle indoctrination at

work, but I'm not up to speed on it yet. Please let me know if I

can help, I owe photo.net quite a bit in return for the education it's

given me.

I found photo.net early this year, when I was searching for

information on cheap digital cameras. A few cameras and lots

of money later, I read photo.net now about every day. Photo.net

has been my primary instructor for learning photography. I have

posted a few photos, and appreciate the little bit of feedback I've

received. I've gotten ratings I don't agree with, and some I do.

Maybe my perspective would be different if I was a pro, but to me,

if you're offended by a crappy rating, then you're into photography

for the wrong reasons. I've gotten photos back from a lab, that

made the people there honestly say "wow", and then had them

rated pretty poorly on photo.net. Guess what, both are valid

ratings. I have put a lot of time, effort, and money into my

photography, and some of it is good, and some of it really sucks,

and not everyone is going to agree on which category each piece

is going to belong to. I do think the ratings system could be

improved. The category of "originality" doesn't do much for me.

For me the challenge of good photography is maintaining both a

high level of, and a balance of, technical skill and artistic

expression. I think the ratings system should be geared more

towards those two things. Making comments mandatory with a

rating, I think would just reduce the number of ratings, and I don't

think that's productive. I do think that making a comment

mandatory for an extreme rating would be good. Rating a photo

1-3 and 8-10 should require an explanation of the rating from the

critic. This would hopefully cut down on the number of casual

1's and 10's. I don't think any system will completely eliminate

ratings noise like self-rating or revenge raters. Anyway, that's my

opinion. Many thanks to the photo.net community, and to Phil, for

making such a great resource for me.