Profile page image self destructing

October 23, 2011 10:29 AM

Second profile picture this week showing pixellation or blurring of some sort across the bottom about 8mm in height.

Earlier this week I noticed a blank grey segment across the bottom of my original profile picture which showed up for a couple days consistently. Thinking my .jpg had a problem I replaced the image about two days ago. Today the new image has blurring of some sort in a band across the bottom section approximately replicating where the greyed out section was in the earlier image.

posted by infini to Bugs at 10:29 AM (19 comments total)

Looks fine to me.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 10:32 AM on October 23, 2011

I don't see any blurring. Did you replace it again?
posted by katillathehun at 10:33 AM on October 23, 2011

Yeah, at a glance it looks fine from here. Can you send us a screenshot of the profile image display problem and the source image so we can see what you're seeing?
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:34 AM on October 23, 2011

Yeah I think you look great.
posted by villanelles at dawn at 10:47 AM on October 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

A few months back I noticed that my profile picture kept changing back to an older profile picture. I figured it was a caching thing since it didn't happen when I looked at my profile using other browsers and after a bit it stopped. Chrome on Win7.
posted by Kattullus at 10:54 AM on October 23, 2011

Sounds like a cache issue to me, Kattullus.
posted by NoraReed at 11:02 AM on October 23, 2011

Here you are - now the bottom bar looks like the old TV time out screen with larger blocks of plain colour
posted by infini at 11:04 AM on October 23, 2011

Also sending you (Cortex) the screenshot and the source image by email - pity I didn't think to do that for the grey bar
posted by infini at 11:06 AM on October 23, 2011

Link doesn't work, infini, it just goes to www.uploadup.com/thumbnail.php and from there to www.uploadup.com/index.php
posted by Kattullus at 11:08 AM on October 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

Could be a challenge since I'm currently in Kenya - here's the same uploaded to tumblr
posted by infini at 11:13 AM on October 23, 2011

Does MetaFilter use some sort of caches of its images to load the pages over time? I just disconnected on my SIM based 3g modem and cleared everything then connected again and its come through clearly. This level of deterioration occurred in two days - could the grey bar of the older pic have been due to me coming to MeFi more regularly over time from over here on this continent?
posted by infini at 11:18 AM on October 23, 2011

It's more likely that your browser cached an incompletely fetched image, based on the screen shot you pasted (JPEG corruption near the bottom of the image). Nothing to do with Metafilter exactly, since no one else has reported a problem with it, but if you're internet is spotty, it's much more likely to happen to you.
posted by skynxnex at 11:24 AM on October 23, 2011

Would the blank grey bar across the bottom of the previous image have been an advanced version of the same problem?

And, is there anything I can do? (Since I've not noticed this problem with images elsewhere)
posted by infini at 11:41 AM on October 23, 2011

Yeah, that's weird but seems to be a client side issue; the image on the mefi server is fine. Not sure what you can do short of flushing your browser cache.

Theory that its a cache of an incomplete image fetch seems good, there's some serious jpeg artifacts in your borked version.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:47 AM on October 23, 2011

Obviously, the government has started taxing 30% of our jpegs in order to fund the TSA screenings they're doing roadways.
posted by phunniemee at 11:58 AM on October 23, 2011 [2 favorites]

Thanks for all the feedback. Helps to know - was concerned because this was happening in just this one page and site.
posted by infini at 12:44 PM on October 23, 2011

Gotta get profile pic issues sorted for MeFi's Hot or Not competition. Only a few weeks left!
posted by villanelles at dawn at 3:06 PM on October 23, 2011

Are you on some kind of shitty "accelerated" dialup-grade connection? I've seen providers offer those as a "feature", and they work by using a transparent proxy server that munges e.g. jpegs on the way through to make them smaller.

If you're using Firefox you can force a reload of a page and all its requisites by holding down the Shift key while clicking on the "Reload current page" curly-arrow button. That might be enough to replace the damaged image in whichever part of the caching chain it's hiding.
posted by flabdablet at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2011

Although, if I squint at the picture, I can kinda see people "doing it".
posted by not_on_display at 1:56 PM on October 24, 2011