Squinches

It’s important for us to say something about site security because we’ve recently made far-reaching changes in how the site handles requests.

To begin with, Squinchpix does not gather personal information about users of the site.  That may change in future but, for now, you will not be asked to say anything about yourselves before viewing the pictures.  That fact is the strongest security of all.  Even if the site were to come under a successful attack there is no user information to give away.

Those who do not maintain their own web sites will have difficulty imagining how many and how varied are the attacks on even the most innocent web site.  (Even pictures of churches.) The first degree of seriousness is occupied by the ’scrapers’.  These are bots which are like an evil version of Google.  They troll the Internet looking for content which they then copy, organize, and sell to customers.  There is a huge number of such scrapers and when I see one in the logs I block it forever.  The  second degree of seriousness is occupied by hackers who modify the URL line in order to get you to click on their web site.  Here’s an example from my logs:

http://www.squinchpix.com/searchn.php?zoom_query=http://210.1.XXX.XXX:2082/index.html?

At first it looks like a simple call to squinchpix’s search engine: /searchn.php?zoom_query=

but then it follows with a query string that contains the ip address of the site they want your software to click on.  In this example I’ve changed the two lower octets to X’s instead of the original numbers.  The purpose of such attacks, I think, isn’t necessarily nefarious.  What they want is the clicks in order to raise their profile in search engines like Google.  Throughout the Internet there must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of such attacks every day.   Such attempts are identified in SquinchPix’s software and then automatically blocked forever.  Moral: DON’T FOOL WITH THE URL LINE!

The third degree of seriousness consists of those hackers who embed actual database commands in the URL line in an attempt to gain access to the database.  These are truly evil because, if successful, they could compromise, destroy, or copy the entire database.  SquinchPix’s software automatically detects such attempts and blocks such hackers forever.

Squinchpix’s security errs on the side of caution.  If anything, it’s over zealous and we’ve done that on purpose.  Every character from the URL line and from the search boxes is checked at input time and, of the 255 available, only a very small number of characters are accepted.  Any other characters will result in the Garden Screen of Death which warns you about acceptable characters.  This screen does not block you and you are encouraged to try again if you see this screen.  If you see this screen repeatedly or if you feel that you are mysteriously blocked or if you see an http error when you try to access Squinchpix then you should write us here: bob@squinchpix.com and explain what was going on.  I promise you that your letters will be taken seriously.

We take internet site security very seriously at SquinchPix and, to all of our users, safe browsing!

Hello all, SquinchPix is going to be mostly unreachable for a few hours because we’re experiencing some problems with our Database.  We’re actively working this issue so please try us again later.

SquinchPix

Recently people from the Open University in the UK have been asking me about Pienza cathedral.  I don’t have any personal photographs of it but here are some useful links:

The following shows a close up of the pediment.  You can identify the Papal keys in the medallion and see that the capital types appear ‘Composite’.

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo593359.htm

The next picture is very large although somewhat foreshortened:

http://www.arttrav.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pienza_duomo.jpg

A general account of Pienza is here:

http://www.arttrav.com/day-trips/pienza/

All these materials are probably covered by copyright so use with care.

Squinchpix

Lots of you link to squinchpix and we’re happy that you do.  We want to say a few words about how to do that for the best results.  The easiest link to SquinchPix is just this:

http://www.squinchpix.com

That will get you to our home page and the rest is up to you.  It’s probably even more useful to link to our dictionary page:

http://www.squinchpix.com/dictionary.html

Our dictionary page has the advantage of classifying and sorting all of the terms available on our site (We now have about 4000+ unique keywords and about 150,000 keywords total).

You can also link to a specific search.  Say that you’re searching for pictures of the Parthenon.  Do it like this:

http://www.squinchpix.com/searchn.php?dmode=gallery&zoom_query=parthenon

Here you just change the last word to be the word you’re searching for.  For example change ‘parthenon’ to ‘Athens’ and you have this:

http://www.squinchpix.com/searchn.php?dmode=gallery&zoom_query=Athens

Squinchpix can do the rest.  Now here’s a link that won’t work, at least not as a permanent destination:

http://www.squinchpix.com/PHP_1.php?setidx=541048&dispimg=8

You see this kind of URL a lot when you’re searching but these numbers have a two-hour limitation.  After that time the unique numbers for setidx (which is randomly chosen) and dispimg expire and are expunged from the database.  When you try to use that as an address your search will fail. (Although we try to catch them and redirect you to the homepage we don’t always succeed so that you may see an error message.)

Anyway, we’re glad you’re here and if you choose to link to us then we’re glad about that too.

We’ve altered the search format a little bit.  Now keywords or tags are separated by COMMAS.  If you’re looking for Bronze Cauldrons type this: bronze, cauldron

That will return all pictures with at least one tag being ‘bronze’  or ‘cauldron’.  If you click on the ‘all words’ radio button you will get all the pictures with ‘bronze’ and another tag ‘cauldron’.

If you’re looking for a two-word tag you still do this:  Santa Costanza  (no comma).

and that will return all the pictures tagged ‘Santa Costanza’.

You can also wild-card searches with the ‘*’ character.  ’arch*’ returns pictures tagged ‘arch’, ‘arches’, or ‘archaic’.  Single characters are wild-carded with ‘_’ (underscore).

One of the reasons we started SquinchPix was our annoyance at not being able to find a representative series of photographs of the mosaics of the mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome.  These are among the earliest Christian mosaics in Rome (4C) and they cover the entire ceiling of a ring vault or ambulatory at the mausoleum.  All we could ever find about these mosaics was one or two  pictures and, usually, the same ones over and over.  We promised to go to Rome and photograph every square inch of these mosaics and publish them on the Internet.  We did photograph these mosaics and then we got busy doing other things and never put them up.  Now, after two years, we finally HAVE put these mosaics on SquinchPix; every last inch.  Enjoy.

They are of interest because they are among the earliest Christian mosaics in Rome and they are very un-Christian.  They give the appearance of being commissioned to depict the importance of wine in the Christian Mass but actually executed by someone with practice in pre-Christian imagery.  The result is odd.  It’s Bacchic.  There are a multitude of images of minor deities with various attributes.  Some are geometric while others celebrate the joys of life (and with an emphasis on food).  There are cooking utensils, hunting implements, boughs of fruit, birds, peacocks, musical instruments, etc.  We’re putting up almost 90 images in all.  Have fun studying them.  There’s even an artichoke.  Look for it.

SquinchPix

Well, the Greek ocean thing was getting a little tired so we’ve updated the splash page to show a picture that we took in Heidelberg, Germany.  It’s a favorite picture of ours because it’s so lush; rather than Germany it looks a bit like Costa Rica.  Also we’re starting a page that allows you to quickly preview our newest pictures.  Click on the ‘New Image Sets’ button on the top menu and you’ll be taken to a page that keeps you updated with what’s new.  We should mention that among our new sets are pictures of Hagia Triada and Phaestos on Crete (which you can also search for).  So that should keep you Minoan and Bronze Age fans happy.  Thank you for the many feedback e-mails that you’ve sent us (bob@squinchpix.com).  We take them all seriously and try to incorporate your suggestions,

Best,

SquinchPix

Recently we’ve experienced enough of a growth in our traffic to consider placing ads on the site.  There have always been ads on travellers-journal, our sister site.  And the SquinchPix links page has always been designed to hold ads.  Now we’ve put some up there on an experimental basis.  If you search for ‘Venice’, ‘Dresden’, or ‘Alhambra’ you’ll now see some new book ads on the Links page.  We think that these ads are about as tasteful as ads get on the Internet and we hope that they’ll be informative and alert you to some other information sources on your favorite topics.  As usual you can send us your feedback by commenting on this, or other, posts.

SquinchPix gang

These photographs are all copyrighted to Robert Consoli or Susan Hynnes.

They may be used for any non-commercial purpose and please credit ‘Squinchpix.com’ when you use them.  We’d be interested in learning how you’re using them so if you’d care to send us an e-mail (bob@squinchpix.com) we’d appreciate it.

If you link to our photographs please don’t ‘hot link’.  Hot linking is when our photographs appear automatically on YOUR page when your reader downloads YOUR page.   That uses up OUR bandwidth and it’s not a nice thing to do.  But if you want to provide your reader a clickable link to one of our photographs (as we ourselves do to many other people’s work) that’s fine.  The only pages you can provide a link to are Squinchpix itself: www.squinchpix.com or to our dictionary page: www.squinchpix.com/dictionary.html.  There’s very little other html on the site since all the gallery pages, maps, chronological displays, etc., are dynamically generated and cease existing when you leave them.  Don’t provide a link to a gallery page since they disappear.  If you like you can provide your readers a link to a search, for example to ‘Venice’, by something like this:  http://www.squinchpix.com/searchn.php?zoom_query=Venice and substitute in your search term for ‘Venice’ in that string.  Make sure it works first.  We add pictures all the time so that the searches will always get better.

Photographs may not be used for any commercial purpose without our written permission.

Robert Consoli, Susan Hynnes                 SquinchPix

The way to search on SquinchPix is as follows.

1. If you enter a single term in the search-box, e.g., ‘Venice’, you’ll receive all the images on the site that concern ‘Venice’.  It doesn’t matter how you set the radio buttons; ‘any words’ or ‘all words’.

2. If you enter multiple terms, e.g., ‘Venice’ ‘church’ (don’t use single quotes) then it does matter how you set the radio buttons.  ‘any words’ returns any picture tagged either with ‘Venice’ or ‘church’ or both.  If you set the radio buttons to ‘all words’ then you’ll receive only those pictures which are tagged BOTH with ‘Venice’ and ‘church’.  (In this case about 10 times as many pictures.)

3. If you enter multiple terms joined by a ‘+’ sign then you’ll get only those pictures which have a specific single tag that has both of those terms in it (and in that order).  For example if, right now, you enter ‘Christ+child’ SquinchPix will return 20 pictures of the Christ child.  If you enter ‘Christ child’ with ‘any words’ button pressed you’ll get 787 pictures (all pictures tagged ‘Christ’ and/or ‘child’ in same or separate tags).  If you enter ‘Christ child’ with the ‘all words’ button pressed you’ll get 34 pictures (pictures with same tags or associated tags that have ‘Christ’ and ‘child’).    So, to tightly constrain your search to pictures with tags with that exact phrase use the ‘+’ joiner.

4. FUTURE: We don’t offer this yet but we plan to improve the search to support a negating option.  You should (but can’t yet) be able to say ‘Venice -church’ which would give you all Venice pictures that don’t have a ‘church’ tag on them.  That is, just the non-church pictures from Venice.  Look for it soon.

Best,

SquinchPix