by Mike K-H

In the beginning, Freebooters was almost entirely text. Increasing the pictorial content makes pages slower to load, but more fun to look at. 

No. He's not a pirate. Can you guess what he's doing?

So far, no-one has complained about the time it takes to load some of the pages. Maybe I'm the only person cursed with a 19.2Kbit/sec link that sometimes degrades to 16.8.

I have been looking for ways to increase the rate at which I add new pages to this site, while trying to keep to the goal of providing unique, useful links with each new subject. I need to go back over some pages and add links to interesting books associated with them, and I have just found a wonderful new resource - Allposters.com's huge collection of posters, art prints and calendars. When I discovered that visitors can send any picture as an e-card, I sat up and took notice. 

Here was a way to provide online the equivalent of a small art gallery which people could browse while I was asleep, or out shopping. No need to watch the customers or lock up after they'd gone. No need to keep a stock of postcards in the hope that they would purchase some small knick-knack today, and perhaps come back another day to buy a real picture. 

I've built the first Freebooter's Choice art gallery. It displays 2 calendars and 23 posters of paintings by Claude Monet, and you can reach it from the article about Giverny. I'll build more soon, not just about the impressionists. 

Later on, I'll build a few Freebooter's Private Collections, featuring photos from my own stock and from Keith Kellet's, with links allowing you to buy collections of high-resolution scans on CD. That probably won't happen until after Christmas, though. Meanwhile, if you'd like a copy of anything you've seen on Freebooters, e-mail me and I'll see what I can do. I have a CD writer already.

Oh, and if you are an editor (surely there are some in the Freebooters audience by now), don't hesitate to contact me if you want to syndicate anything you've seen on this site, or if you want me to tackle something else on your behalf. I enjoy challenges.

Have fun. And send an e-card to tell your friends about Freebooters.

Back to All Articles Index