Little Book Review: Photos

01:16 Saturday, 19 July 2014
Words: 339

I was browsing around the iBooks bookstore yesterday, and I ended up buying a small digital media volume called Photos, by Tom Rudderham ($5.99). It’s the kind of book I’d recommend to people who want to get the most out of their iPhone’s camera, especially the 5s. It’s a lovely ebook, filled with video and multi-image, semi-interactive illustrations. It offers practical advice and tips, as well as a great deal of inspiration. My one reservation about buying the book now is that Apple will release a new Photos app for iOS 8 and for Mac OS 10.10 Yosemite, which will likely alter the behavior of the app described in Rudderham’s book somewhat. But the rest of it is still worth the $5.99 asking price. It’s very well-written, though I noted a couple of errors a more thorough editorial scrub might have detected, nothing that affects the utility of the book. It covers the basic iPhone/iPad platforms, the Photos app, the operation of the Camera app, general photography tips, then some third-party photography apps, and then a large chapter on iPhoto, which is very well done. The final chapter includes the work of four photographers who use the iPhone as their camera. Sometimes I buy photography books from O’Reilly or Amazon, and I end up being a little disappointed. This one was not a disappointment at all. Update: Something I’d intended to write as I thought about this yesterday, but forgot! One interesting omission I noted was in the use of the panorama feature of the iPhone. The book describes the usual horizontal panorama, but you can also do a vertical one as well. I don’t recommend them if you’ve got tall vertical elements in your composition, but if you just want to get some additional sky in an otherwise normal landscape frame, you can use the panorama feature in a landscape orientation as well. I tried using it for some buildings in downtown Jacksonville and you get some very distracting distortion from the verticals.

Morning Nonsense

22:39 Tuesday, 19 July 2016
Words: 607

I'm trying to figure out how to get back in the swing of this, so this is going to be a sort of "cheese sandwich" post. Photos, the suckage continues: I have an Apple Developer account, though I don't really develop anything. It's always on my "one of these days" list. Anyway, I shared a photo to Facebook from Photos on my Mac. It didn't appear on Facebook as a 3.1MP image, as it should have, instead coming in at 896 x 672 (.6MP). Puzzled, I wondered if Photos was down-sampling 3.1MP images when it was sharing them to Facebook, and if an image with more resolution would ultimately max out Facebook's 3.1MP limit. So I created three different versions at 3.76MP, 4.3MP and 5MP of the same image and shared them to Facebook from Photos. Oddly enough, only not because Photos is such an unmitigated piece of shit, they uploaded in three different resolutions. Not only that, but there was no rhyme nor reason to the sizes uploaded to Facebook. The first 3.76MP image yielded a 896 x 672 (.6MP) image, same as the 3.1MP original. The second 4.3MP image yielded a 960 x 720 (.7MP) image, slightly larger. The third image, 5MP, yielded a 587 x 440 (.26MP) image! Smaller?! Shared the same (3.1MP) image from Aperture and it appeared in Facebook as a 3.1MP image. Shared the same image from my iPhone, it appeared in Facebook as a 3.1MP image. Clearly, there's a bug in Photos! In addition to its craptacular design and feature set. I logged into my developer account and filed a bug report. Got an email the next day that it was being closed as a duplicate of another report. I guess they must know about it, they're just not in any hurry to fix it. Anyway, I did my part. I don't share images from Photos on the Mac. I either do it from Aperture, or from an iOS device. Movies That Weren't As Bad As Everyone Said: Watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on the plane back from San Diego a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't as horrible as everyone seemed to say it was. Yes, it was dark. I think that's kind of okay, given that they were treating it much as the Marvel universe treated the attack on New York in the Avengers movie. I thought Bruce Wayne's suspicion/skepticism was believable. The dynamics were all internally consistent, as far as I could tell, watching it on a 7-inch screen in somebody's headrest. I liked the Martha thing. It was a nice diversion for the plane ride. Movies That Were Just As Good As Everyone Said: On the way to San Diego, I watched Eye in the Sky, which was pretty damn good. I thought Alan Rickman did not look well at all, but it was a good role to go out on. I don't happen to think that much of the movie was technically accurate, but the inaccuracies served the point of the story and didn't diminish it by being exceptionally misleading. It was fair to its subject matter, very thought provoking and discomforting. And, just to close out the movie thing, we watched Tina Fey in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot the other night and enjoyed it. Yeah, there seemed to have been some missed opportunities regarding the political themes, but maybe they were trying to maximize their audience appeal. Even so, it seemed funny, thoughtful. I liked it. Well, that's probably enough for now. Thanks for dropping by. Hope you enjoyed the verbiage. Come back by and see us again some time!

Movement

18:43 Wednesday, 19 July 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 75.24°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 91% Wind: 1.01mph
Words: 339

I mentioned the other day that walking was about the only exercise I got. I used to run a fair amount. A couple of marathons, a bunch of half-marathons, 15Ks, and so on. But I developed a persistent case of achilles tendonitis that always seemed to reappear once I got up to about 5 miles. (Not the 5-mile point in a run, training to be able to run 5 miles.) So, I gave up. Alas.

Well, that was several years ago. Now I walk and occasionally bike. I'm several years older and a lot heavier. Don't really know if I can ever run again, but I figured it was time to find out.

So, the other day, at the Outlet Mall, I bought a pair of Asics Gel Kayanos, an extra-large sleeveless, bright yellow, "Please don't hit me," running shirt and an extra-large pair of shorts.

Then I proceeded to self-sabotage by eating several pints of Ben and Jerry's, which were on sale BOGO at Publix, and that's like makin' money!

Meanwhile, the shoes have been sitting next to the bed and I try not to look at them in the morning.

This morning I was awake at 0430 and I figured, "What the hell. Let's go see."

I exercise (I won't say "run.") in the dark, so no one can see this fat old man lumbering down the road. I got a little $5 app for the phone that sets intervals for me. I did 2-min walking and 30s "running."

The good news is that the interval split was just about perfect. I didn't have a coronary. Did my usual 2.5 mile loop at a pace about 15s faster than my "fastest" walking pace. (That normally requires temps in the 50s. My pace really seems dependent on temperature/humidity.) Nothing really hurts, yet, though my right knee seems like it wasn't happy.

I'll play with this for a while. No big ambition, just see what I can do.

I'm not dead yet.

✍️ Reply by email

Rainbow Test

19:10 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 74.98°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 110

This is a test post. I've embedded the Photos to Tinderbox AppleScript into an Automator action, which I will save as a Quick Action. I can assign a keyboard shortcut to that. As "fiddly" goes, hitting that little FastScripts menu icon and then hitting the right item can be a bit fiddly. A keyboard shortcut might be nicer.

So far, the script runs fine in the Automator editor. I'll save it and try again as a Quick Action.

Then I may try it as a dictation command.

The fun and games continue here at marmot headquarters.

✍️ Reply by email

Weather Approaching

19:22 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 75.02°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 55

Works from the Services menu. Couldn't find it in the System Settings to assign the keyboard shortcut, but I just wanted to make sure it ran as a service first. Now I'll dig a little deeper and give it a shortcut.

✍️ Reply by email

Lights

19:35 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 75.02°F Pressure: 1014hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 3.44mph
Words: 32

CTRL-Shift-P (Post pic? Photo to marmot?) seems to work. Now if I can only remember it.

✍️ Reply by email

!AKMA Reply

22:08 Wednesday, 19 July 2023
Current Wx: Temp: 83.53°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 84% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 48

Bloggin' like it's 1999! AKMA tips his metaphorical hat at my fitness efforts. He's been doing remarkably well with consistency, even grappling with plantar fasciitis, which I know quite well.

I'll be fumbling along with this for a little while anyway. I actually miss running, but we'll see.

✍️ Reply by email

Cake

23:39 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 90.07°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 69% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 40

This is a test post, the latest of many. This one seems to be successful. The next post will determine if this success can be replicated.

✍️ Reply by email

Traffic

23:42 Wednesday, 19 July 2023

Current Wx: Temp: 90.07°F Pressure: 1017hPa Humidity: 69% Wind: 5.75mph
Words: 283

Mission accomplished!

In the Photos to Tinderbox script, now a system service with a keyboard shortcut, the last step was to run an Automator application called Export Photo. That's the one that actually takes the image from Photos and places it in the folder that gets sync'ed to the server and then cleans up after itself.

I figured I'd add another Automator action to that application in the form of "Watch me do..." and have the computer upload the image for me. There are probably other/better ways to do it, but that seemed easy to me.

Well, it wasn't. It would work fine in Automator, but it wouldn't work within the Export Photo application when called by the Photos to Tinderbox script. After much trial and error, I had to create a separate application called "Sync Server," that included "Watch me do..." by itself. Then the Photos to Tinderbox script calls Sync Server after Export Photo, and everything works fine.

It seems to have something to do with keeping application permissions straight in Accessibility, it can't control more than one app at a time it seems. But the script can call as many apps as it needs to.

All this does is eliminate another fiddly mouse movement, and does it faster than I can. So when I select a photo to post in the marmot, everything but the text is done for me.

After I "Export to html" from Tinderbox, I can then call Sync Server directly using LaunchBar, which is also a nice convenience.

I feel very productive today. I'm taking the rest of the day off...

✍️ Reply by email

Seneca Falls

12:18 Friday, 19 July 2024
Current Wx: Temp: 89.78°F Pressure: 1018hPa Humidity: 66% Wind: 8.05mph
Words: 449

Spent some time in Seneca Falls yesterday. Lovely little village. The National Women's Hall Of Fame is located there, and we toured that facility. It's located in an old woolen mill, the Seneca Knitting Mills, which was in operation for over 100 years, closing its doors in 1999.

Seneca Falls is also the location of the First Convention for Woman's Rights (July 19-20, 1848), and the church where it was held is a national park with a separate building housing a number of exhibits about women's rights. The church had been significantly altered throughout its history, it's been restored to the closes approximation of what it is believed to have looked like. There are portions of the original brick remaining, and the roof beams and decking are supposedly original.

The village is also supposed to be part of the inspiration for Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, where, in 1917, a young man drowned saving the life of a woman who had jumped into the canal. The village leans into the movie with George Bailey Lane and Clarence Street.

We stopped by the post office so Mitzi could put a couple of postcards in the mail. It was quite an imposing edifice for such a small town.

Then it was back to Geneva to catch the 2:00 PM boat for the lake tour. We've been on Cayuga Lake every time we've been up here. This is the first time we've been on Seneca. Since we're at the north end of the lake, the geography is much different, without the high cliffs adjacent to the shore. The air was actually quite cool and I spent some time trying to memorize the feeling before heading back to Florida.

Stopped at a craft brewery on the way back to the cottage and enjoyed a couple of beers and a view of the lake while sitting outside on the deck.

Mitzi had a zoom meeting today, so we're just heading out now to a couple of antique stores, before we do the bus tour this evening.

Only a couple of days left before we head back. While I'll welcome being in my own bed, I will really miss the scenery and the weather here.

Speaking of weather, I learned yesterday that a tornado touched down in my hometown, Canastota, as part of that severe weather system that went through on Tuesday. One man was killed in the village. Pretty rare for a tornado up here. My brother said that historically, there are an average of 13 tornado warnings per year, seldom an actual tornado. This year, there have been 62 tornado warnings and 12 confirmed tornados.

"We're not in Kansas anymore."

✍️ Reply by email

Last Night's Sky 7-18-25

06:44 Saturday, 19 July 2025

Current Wx: Temp: 53.19°F Pressure: 1020hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 4.54mph
Words: 154

Stayed up late last night (to 2300!) and stuck the OM-1 on a tripod out on the porch. Sky was clear, so I wanted to see what I could see. Posted a couple of "test" shots, (Live Composite, but only two frames) on Flickr, along with this one. Moved the tripod between the test shots and the star trails.

The Milky Way was visible to the naked eye, which was something seldom experienced where we lived in Florida. I saw it once out in Macclenny, Florida at my friend's little farm, but never in Ponte Vedra. Might have had some luck down in the preserve, or in Guana, but was never really there at night.

I'll try and make a more "serious" effort as the opportunity presents itself. It was just a spur of the moment thing, since the sky was cloudless and the moon wasn't going to be up until after midnight.

✍️ Reply by email

A Good Life

16:02 Saturday, 19 July 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 83.66°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 57% Wind: 7.11mph
Words: 928

Recently, a certain amount of angst, or public introspection, has made its way into my feeds regarding Apple and its products. Mainly because, I think, for very many years Apple had enjoyed a reputation for being one of the "good" corporations. I'm not going to rehash all the reasons why that came about; if you're reading the marmot I trust you're at least somewhat acquainted with Apple's history.

And, Apple's descent into darkness didn't just happen recently. It began during the second reign of Steve, but his illness and early death kind of obscured the darker aspects of his competitive nature. Suffice to say, this is not something recent, it's been there all along. Apple benefited from being surrounded by larger villains like Microsoft and Google.

Until Apple grew larger in so many dimensions, and began throwing its weight around in ways that invited public scrutiny and criticism.

Here are three posts from three different blogs that speak to this issue from somewhat varying perspectives.

First is from Denny at Beardy Guy Musings, who represents what may be a somewhat extreme view. He reduces the issue to a binary choice, which I think is the hallmark of most extremist positions.

I like Denny, I enjoy his blog and I understand his passion. But still:

You can agree to your own subjugation, that’s your choice. It may seem more convenient. It may seem comfortable. It may even seem pleasurable and safe. But in the end, you’re handing over your own fate.

To quote the noted philosopher Jodi Ernst, "Well, we are all going to die."

Except Kurzweil maybe. Anyone checked on him lately? Has he uploaded yet?

More recently, Manuel Morales. While not exactly an extreme view, it did prompt this post, The cost of selfishness, from Ricardo Mori that seems to locate itself somewhere in between the views expressed by Denny and Manuel.

Denny has a pretty good view of the larger picture, which is clear in his archives. Manuel and Ricardo have had less to say about the broader landscape. No judgement implied, just acknowledging that Denny has framed the discussion in a larger context, which is helpful.

Record scratch...

While Mitzi's daughter and son-in-law were here, we visited a farm animal sanctuary called, er, Farm Sanctuary. It was an interesting visit, and I'm sympathetic to many of its views, but it's another binary thing. They tried to kind of "meet people where they are," by encouraging them to maybe "consume less" meat, poultry, dairy and eggs. But any effort to engage with them eventually devolved to the binary view.

Very nice people. Well run facility. They do wonderful things, but it is strictly within their own context. (Ethics?)

For instance, the animals aren't "free." They don't have any agency of their own. Most particularly, they are not allowed to reproduce. This, after telling us how much cows suffer when separated from their calves. (They have PTSD.) So presumably a "fulfilling" life for an animal includes reproduction and raising offspring, but that's not part of their program. They're allowed to live out their days in relative comfort until they die, as confined creatures exploited to promote a certain agenda.

The hens they "rescue" still lay eggs, but they compost the eggs. I guess it's better for some vegans that some humans go hungry than an egg go to feed them.

Humans. We're such funny creatures.

But, back to Apple. And ethics.

Huge topic. Larger than I can address in a marmot post. ("So why even bother, Rogers?" So I don't have to do any of the other things I know I ought to be doing right now.)

Nobody gets to choose their parents. We find ourselves where we are, in this place and time, and we do the best that we can. There are forces, dynamics and trends, cultural practices, social customs and constructs, economic systems that we have to somehow navigate and maintain some sense of self-worth, or upright morality. And we do all that in this fishbowl we call the "internet."

Look, I think mindfulness is a good thing. I think it requires effort, because the first thing it requires is your attention, and well, everyone wants that. Attention is a finite resource. It's also has a fairly narrow aperture. That is to say, well, if your immortal soul, or your freedom from, you know, subjugation, depends on what you're giving your attention to... Well, like the lady said, "We are all going to die."

Yes, our choices matter. But we lack the capacity to be fully cognizant of the consequences of all of our choices. We lack the cognitive ability to make conscious choices at every moment that they may possible. Nearly all of our behavior is habituated.

Unconscious.

So, you know, be kind. Even to the folks who eat animals. Or use commercial software. Or vote for demagogues. (You don't have to be kind to demagogues, though it's unlikely you'll ever be in a position to really extend kindness to them. They generally don't like to be, you know, "among the people.")

"Do unto others..." And so on.

Yes, choices matter. I don't go on "cruises." I don't fly internationally anymore. I try to make choices that are congruent with how I wish to be in the world. I often don't get it right. I try to do my best.

There's a better world where the marmot doesn't exist, doesn't consume resources, doesn't consume others' attention.

But here I am.

By the grace of God, perhaps?

The beat goes on...

✍️ Reply by email