This Post Intentionally Left Blank

Because I was on holiday last week and have too many threads dangling.

Managing Photographs: Software

So we were at the point where the trusty MacBook Pro was no longer trusty. And I had my iPhoto library on its hard drive. I managed to export all the files to a network drive - I think that's easier on the early version of iPhoto I had - and that took the time it took. Suddenly I had around 10,000 files to sort out. I know that this is almost how many a rookie professional wedding photographer takes on their first assignment, but I’m not a pro, so for me, 10,000 is a lot.

I experimented with using iPhoto on a new Mac Air with the iPhoto library on the network drive via wifi. Because, you know, I didn’t know any better.

Just.

Don't.

Or you will tear your hair out waiting for iPhoto to fetch the files over your wi-fi network and make copies and do whatever else it does. Macs just don't do well over networks, especially with a Windows drives on the other end.

This is a shame, because for a simple person like me, whose idea of editing a photo is straightening out the unaccountable but consistent 0.5-2.0 degrees rightwards tilt in every photograph I have ever taken with a digital camera, iPhoto does a nice job with a minimum of fuss. Imports, creates events, lets me edit, and exports. All in a pretty interface. But it really wants its Library on the hard drive or maybe an external drive connected by Thunderbolt for preference (I haven't tried). Not on a network drive. What to do?

I was also reading pro photographers' blogs at the time, and one of them mentioned Irfan View.

Heck, yeah, Irfan View. Irfan View laughs at displaying 2,000 image directories it’s never seen before, creating thumbnails from any image format file faster in a blink, and then giving you all the bulk handling facilities you want and some you didn't know you couldn't live without. You have to see it in action to believe it. It's ridiculously robust and stable, and it's developed, seemingly, by a single man called Irfan Skiljan. It's free, though after a while, you really will want to donate. Along with Evernote and Dropbox, it's on all my (Windows) computers. So on a Mac that means WINE. Tried it. With Winebottler. That worked fine though I had to hack round the fact that Wine bottler wants the 433 version of the install exe, and the current download is 438. And suddenly I had Irfan View up, except... wait... I had more images than that in that folder. And that one. For some reason it will only show me 45 random images from a directory. Nothing on Google about this, which makes me think no-one else has used this on larger directories. So that's that option.

So Picasa. I know. Google. The Evil Empire. How can anything written - actually, acquired - by Google be good enough? By now I had learned not to do images over wifi, so I downloaded it and started slowly. And actually, it’s not bad. It’s better than that. It’s good enough for the job.

And that’s the point: for the job. moving away from iPhoto means I had to think about my “workflow”. "Workflow" is what replaced "developing and printing" when everyone went digital. In the Days of Film, photographers developed the negatives, made up contact sheets (analogue thumbnails), and then looked at each one through a loupe, and indicated the keepers with a flamboyant - and presumably removable - pencilled circle. These they printed full size - being professionals they wanted to keep the costs down. They kept the contact sheets and the negatives. All of them. Forever. Often un-marked in boxes, draws and faded brown envelopes that filled every inch of their tiny Manhatten apartments - the latter years of many famous photographers’ lives are a study in obsessive picture taking.

That’s kinda what happens now, but digitally. I return with a camera full of images that...

1. have to be copied onto my computer, which gives me a directory full of images most of which won't be worth keeping, so I have to...
2. delete the ones that make you say “Meh”...
3. and archive the rest after putting some rudimentary tagging on them. From those I choose the obvious goodies plus those that might work if cropped, processed and re-worked in whatever image editor I have...
4.work on those ones that could be tweaked...
5. add in tags and ownership details data to the image files for the spiders to crawl...
6. because in the end I’m going to publish them even if it’s only on this blog.

A real pro follows the same system, but better. And for money. To do all this, I need software to import the files from the camera and a library manager, which iPhoto and Picasa do, and an image editor. Lightroom is for advanced image processing, not library management, cropping, rotating and applying a few neat tricks. That’s what iPhoto and Picasa do.

Plus I’m cheap, and Picasa is free. Except for it’s Google’s way of paying for all that valuable information in my searches and e-mails and calendar. Because I’m the kinda person you really want to sell things to. Or I’m not, so the advertisers don’t waste their money advertising to me.

So that brings us to the culling and filtering process. The artistic vision thing. I’m not a pro, so the only client I have to keep happy is me. And this is another subject again.

Changing the Computer Stock

My trusty six-year old 15" MacBook Pro developed Flickering Graphic Card Syndrome in September. The guys down in the basement at Mac1 Spitalfields gave me a quote of around £350 + VAT to fix it. Then you're left wondering how long it will be before the next thing fails. My first thought was, of course, "need new MacBook Pro". Yeah. At £1,300+ for a 15" screen. Retina only. The 13" non-Retina is still £899 for the base model. Faced with decisions like this, the best thing I can do is keep looking until the right answer appears from all the obvious ones.

My current stock is:

Asus EE PC 1000P netbook (about five years old) Win 7
11" Mac Air with 128GB SDD (nearly two years old) OS X Mavericks
17" Samsung desktop replacement (about five years old) Win 7
15" MacBook Pro (see above) OS X Mavericks

I've been using the Air as my walk-around computer, and the Asus as a cheap internet media centre. The real issue is that the Samsung will be next to go, and I'll need a replacement Windows workhorse. These get cheaper and better all the time, but right now...

Windows 8

Wow. Just. Wow.

Windows 8, like Vista, is proof that a building full of geniuses can still produce a camel in response to the spec for a horse. So the whole buy-a-15.6"-Wintel-machine-for-next-to-nothing option is on hold.

After a great deal of gazing at Mac Pros and other kit, I thought "Let's look at Chromebooks". Because I never have and of course you'd replace a MacBook Pro with a Chromebook. Right?

Except that most of my computing now is browsing and Evernote. Evernote runs in Chrome. If I need to use a Latex editor / compiler or maybe use Lightroom to edit stuff (this is another post) I can use the Mac Air or the Samsung. The blogs of a number of pro photographers sing the praises of recent Mac Airs using Lightroom. What I need is a computer with a decent size screen to browse, play media, and use Evernote. That's a Chromebook.

See what I mean about waiting until the right decision appears from all the obvious ones?

So the new stock looks like:

Portable: Asus C P1000P netbook (about four years old) Win 7
Serious Computing: 11" Mac Air with 128GB SDD (nearly two years old) OS X Mavericks Windows Workhorse: 17" Samsung desktop replacement (about five years old) Win 7
Normal Stuff at Home: 14" HP Chromebook

When the Air packs up, I will get whatever the entry-level MacBook Pro is: by then it will weigh nothing and have the computing power of a Cray mainframe from the early 2000's. When the Win 7 machines pack up, with luck Win 9 will be out and be something people would actually want to use.

Done.

Why You Should Get A Santander 1-2-3 Account

(Disclosure: I work in retail banking. I do not now nor ever have worked for Santander or the companies it bought. This is a public service announcement.)

Savings rates are a joke right now. The banks and wholesale markets can get cheap money from the Government and Bank of England: they don’t need to pay us a decent rate of interest to attract our funds. The Government is schizoid: it wants us to save for our pensions, but it wants us to spend, spend, spend so that the economy will recover, and preferably on VAT-able items so its tax take will go up. Good luck squaring that circle.

Very few people have large amounts (more than £50,000) of cash-based savings. I have nothing like that and still shuffle my money around once a year, with the main aim of trying to get as much as possible into an ISA so I avoid tax. 1.5% tax-free equates to 2.5% gross. Go find 2.5% anywhere.

Well, first there's 4% on up-to £5,000 from the Club Lloyds current account. You need to pay in at least £1,500 every month (which puts it past about half the population), but you don’t have to leave it there, so you could transfer it from your present current account and then spend it. Push £5,000 in, set up a standing order and you’re done. You may think it a bit too much fuss for £5,000.

So then there’s Santander’s 123 account, which gives 3% up-to £20,000, and cashback on Council Tax, Telecoms, Water, Gas, Electricity and other bills. If like me you’re living in a former People’s Republic of London, getting cashback on Council Tax alone feels like some kind of symbolic revenge. Santander’s web site has a calculator which you should look at as soon as you’ve finished reading this.

You need to transfer in at least £500 a month, set up five direct debits and have at least £1,000 on deposit before the benefits kick in. My guess is that those five DD’s are a carefully-chosen obstacle - it feels like a number someone researched. Santander offer a current account transfer service, and my guess is that many people will prefer to do a full transfer than go through what they think is the trouble of changing the details on five DD’s.

Changing the bank details on your DD’s is as simple as calling the council / water company / electricity company / telco etc and telling them you want to change account that pays the DD. They will ask for identification – I didn’t have my account numbers with me and it still all worked - and the 123 account sort code and account number. Done in a couple of minutes, though you may need a headset to make it easier to wait until an operator becomes available. My telcos even let me change the DD account details online.

You need to delete the DDs in your original current account once they have been paid for the current month. That doesn’t take long to do online. If you are the last person left in the UK who doesn’t do online banking, now is a good time to start.

Applying for a 123 account online takes about 10 minutes and Santander do an electronic credit check. I got an e-mail confirming my application about ten seconds after I clicked Submit and a confirmation of getting the account about a minute later. As part of a security process they send the account details and multiple-part security letters over a period of about two weeks.

It sounds like a lot of fuss, but it’s a couple of hours at most and will gain you about £200 or so (depending on how much money you have and the size of your bills) over letting your money rot at 0.5% somewhere. When was the last time you were paid £100 an hour?

It’s incumbent on as many of us as possible to remove money from savings accounts and toss it into a high-interest current account. Until lots of us do, banks won’t raise their savings rates.

The Best Things In Life Are Free - Janet and Luther

Every time, and mean every time I hear this, I’m smiling and singing along. So play it and do the same.



Happy Days....

August 2014 Review

Do you know that feeling when your state of mind shifted, but you’re not sure how and with what results? I took a week off in August, and that happened.

For one thing, I deliberately stayed up late, so I’d lie in (07:30 is a lie-in for me) each morning. I noticed it made me feel... calmer? more mellow? less desperate? the next morning. I still got 6-7 hours sleep. So I do that Friday and Saturday night.

I decided to go to the gym every other day, so I do the spinning and yoga classes every other week, and get a decent run of weight-training in the other week. I get to go straight home and have quiet evenings with a clear conscience, which is restful as well as giving me a day’s recovery in between training days. Then I resurrected the brisk 5-8 minutes or so of very light weights exercises first thing in the morning - and I mean before coffee. Gets me moving and stirs up the hormones. Shower afterwards.

I decided to experiment with what I eat, because it’s still a little too much, and I’m still doing that. I went back to eating meat at the weekends, stopping the fish thing I’d been on since reading a book on nutrition. I feel better.

The To-Do list got busy, as I ordered a pair of Fat Gripz - comments later - and started looking at watches - my take on that later. I found a gardener to do the heavy work involving fences and shed roof, and he will start sometime way later. Gardeners are always busy in autumn. I added a bunch of dance events at Sadlers Wells to the dairy as well. And changed up the work shirts: I have been wearing plain blue and slightly heavy regular fit shirts, but started getting a unhappy with the look, so I spent a while in Tyrwhit and found some fitted, single cuff, cut-away collar shirts with thin vertical stripes in blue, green and red. Nice change of look and it makes me look slimmer (it’s all about my vanity, oh yes). The idea of a subscription to the Economist suddenly seemed sensible, though it took awhile to get it past the purchasing committee, and I’m now a subscriber. Why? Because I’m fed up with even the online broadsheets: they’re free for a reason.

There was also the eye-test thing, triggered by an arm on my Silhouettes breaking: this is expensive. The updated replacements, which have amazing lenses, are even more so.

I started taking more photographs with the Lumix, though I still need to read the whole of the manual. I found the line that turns green when the camera thinks it’s level, and that helped me adapt to the hold-it-at-a-distance manner of digital cameras. That was before I got the shots of the steam train at Hammersmith station, which just happened to be there on my way back from breakfast in Notting Hill. Unlike the dozens of overweight and weird-looking Trainspotters taking pictures, for whom it was the highlight of their week.

I made excellent progress with the cohomology section of the Riemann-Roch paper, and I’m back in the groove with that. I read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, John D MacDonald’s The Key To The Suite, Warren Ellis’ Gun Machine, Peter Pettinger’s How My Heart Sings: Biography of Bill Evans, gave up on a lousy Kindle edition of Hegels’ Science of Logic, did the first 450 pages of Sergio de La Pava’s A Naked Singularity and Alex de Campi’s Smoke / Ashes. At the movies, I saw Step Up: All In, and Lucy at Cineworld; All This Mayhem, The Congress, Welcome to New York, Finding Vivien Meyer at the ICA; and Art Party, Two Days and One Night at the Curzon Soho.

You see what I mean about changing things up?

Sis and I had supper at the Union Street Cafe, and I ate at Picture, Rowly’s, House of Ho, Clos Maggiore and Arbutus during the week. All my holidays start with a visit to the guys at Picture. 

Delayed 19:20 to Reading, Platform 20, 31st July