experimenting with Flickr's site / contemplating a domain, again

i've posted some pics on Flickr.com, and i'm pretty much liking the way their site behaves. still mulling over whether it's worth it to host my pictures on a service like theirs, or to spring for a full-blown domain, and have an offsite backup and web server.

one of the things i like about Flickr is the ability to post pictures directly to my blog, but FTP is just overall a much better interface for large file transfers. however, Flickr does automatically index the captions i create for pictures. there's just so much i don't know how to do with databases! if there were good, easy to use, quick, powerful tools for creating indexes parsed from file names on my own server, that would be the way to go, because i could make dynamic pages. but i just don't know diddly about the nuts and bolts of database creation and management.

anything reasonably quick and functional beats anything time consuming. i guess i should explore the 3rd party upload tools for flickr a bit more and see if they can improve on Flickr's proprietary ones.

...and if i could only get IIS to work right, i could just run my own ASP, CGI or PHP scripts onsite, on a dedicated server. maybe the new Windows will solve my problems....

you know you're broke when you hesitate to spend $25 to squeeze the last bit of functionality from something you're contemplating.

and i suppose the fact that i'm sitting here debating about the best way to serve content on the web, to an audience as small as mine, smacks a little of tilting at windmills. who's the patron saint of lost causes? he's my guy.

everything seems to point to needing to know more than i do about databases and dynamic pages....which is wierd, since i'm actually a pretty big fan of static pages....but there's just so much manpower involved each time you add content that way.

i'd like to have a simple link on my main page, that opens a dynamic page with keyword or date/time searchable (and sortable) automatically created thumbnailed images of any visual or textual content added to the server. and i'd like another simple link on my main page that opens a dynamic page with keyword or date/time searchable audio. and another simple link on my main page that connects to a 24/7 streaming audio broadcast.

i have means of doing most of those things manually, but nothing that can be connected together into a coherent site with the functionality i'm looking for. this blog is a perfect example of a low-maintenance high-functionality tool, which is why i've managed to stick with it for the last couple years. it does what i need it to do with a minimum of hassle. but anything media-related still seems to take forever to deal with. i need better options, and i'd rather not spend (even a small amount of) money or invest time in semifunctional near-solutions. i want to solve the whole puzzle at once. the more i think, the more it sounds like i'm leaning toward a domain solution, which makes me even more hesitant to spend a lot of time on a Flickr photo posting site.

but i'd certainly like to know what anyone else thinks about the Flickr thing, so here's a link to all (for the moment) of my pictures hosted there, taken in mid-August. it's a single series of only 7 pictures, so a likely candidate for a trial run of Flickr's service. anyone who signs up for a free Flickr account should have access to the highest resolution files made available from free accounts like mine: 1024x768- much higher resolution than those available from any other site i've seen.

time to fold the last load of laundry before bed. actually a little tired tonight.