Tag: iphoto

iLife ’09

So I’ve had iLife ’09 for about a week now and have been using it heavily. About the only 2 things I use in this though are iPhoto and iMovie. Both of which are a HUGE improvement over what was previously there.

However, iPhoto is missing a TON of features.

  • Very SLOW! – Faces and Places are both VERY VERY slow. When I add new photos, it takes FOREVER to find the faces, etc.
  • Additional Faces / Missing Faces – It’d be nice if when I click the “Add missing faces” iPhoto attempts to locate missing faces. Also, I wish that you could add the box, and then just CLICK in the Name area to name it, instead of having to click “Done” and then click again to name someone. Another thing is it’d be nice if there were a way to tag “Other people in this photo”. IE people who might not be exactly FACING the camera, but are IN the photo.
  • Smart filters for Places and Faces – These need to be expanded a LOT. I’ve always found iPhoto’s smart filters lacking and now they are missing even MORE features. I wish I could find photos who have a face but are not labeled. I wish that the Smart filters for places were much smarter. Some photos DO have geotagging, but they are not “apple’s” geotags, so it counts those as not having GEO info! Very annoying.
  • Delete from Albums, Smart Albums – I use albums, not events, to manage my photos. This is how I like to do it, I find it MUCH easier to organize. I have folders for each year and then albums in those folders for each event. I also use Smart filters a lot to find photos. But you cannot EASILY move images from the albums to the trash. Give me the ABILITY to do that with a warning or something at least.
  • REMOVE BACKUPS! – This is something people have been wanting FOREVER! I currently have 19,717 photos in my library, at 37.6Gb. But my iPhoto library takes up a whopping 51.73Gb!!! This is insane. I want to recover all the space from images that are duplicates (backups/etc). If I make edits to a photo 5-8 years ago. I don’t really CARE about keeping the original. LET ME DELETE THEM!

    • I haven’t really used iMovie too much yet, but one really annoying thing that I was hoping would be there was the ability to edit background music from within iMovie. Currently if I have a track in the background and want to quickly cut out portions of it, I have to open the audio track in another program and edit those sections out. It’s just very cumbersome. I hope that they continue to make HUGE strides in iMovie they way they have in this last release!

How to recover 2Gigs of space on your new Leopard install!

I installed Leopard the weekend after it came out. Besides the few things I wrote about in the past that aren’t working. I really like it for the most part.

I have a MacBook Pro with a 120 Gig hard drive in there. I allocated 15 gigs to Windows, so that doesn’t leave me with much space really. Since this is my MAIN desktop and the computer I use for everything, I have _everything_ on here. After my recent trip to Europe, I’m running out of space. So I went looking for ways to save some space.

I found three things you can do to easily recover 2 Gigs of space on your mac:
1) Go to /System/Library/Speach/Voices/ and delete the folder called “Alex”. This is the newest voice from Apple, but sadly it takes up a whole 700 Megs of space! Insane!

2) Go to /Library/Application Support/iDVD/ and delete the folder called “Themes”. You just saved 500 Megs.

3) Go to /LIbrary/Application Support/iPhoto and delete the folder called “Themes”. You just saved another 500 Megs!

Suggestions: Make backups on an external drive first and don’t do this if you plan on using the themes to create books/cards/etc in iDVD or iPhoto. I don’t use either of those options, so it’s an easy and quick fix.

(I take no responsibility if you break something)!

GeoTagging Photos on a Mac

UPDATED: 2008-01-22 (GPSPhotoLinker)
UPDATED: 2008-03-26 (iPhotoToGoogleEarth)

In short:

The Long Story

I’ve recently got very excited about Geotagging photos. I’m getting ready to head off to Europe for a couple weeks, visiting both Prague and Vienna. I wanted to be able to track where we go in the cities. My past couple trips, including Berlin and Paris, I always get back and start trying to comment on my photos and I no doubt have trouble remember where in the city they were taken!

So this time, I want to be able to geotag them all. Needless to say, I don’t have the money to spend on a DSLR with built in GPS support, or even a DSLR that can support an external GPS unit. So I have to find a way to tag my photos from my trusty Canon Powershot SD630.

I started off with a Garmin Forerunner 201, which I borrowed from a guy here at the office. I used it for a few days of tracking my driving, it seemed to work pretty well, but it had trouble acquiring the satellites fast enough. It would take anywhere from 5-15 minutes, which just isn’t fast enough for me. Also, I was afraid that when in Europe it wouldn’t be able to hold a whole days worth of tracks.

There were a few other issues with the device as well. First, I could not find ANY software to work with it on my Mac. Even GPSBabel couldn’t seem to find it. Second was that the windows software only exported in Garmin Training Center (.TCX) file format. After some searching I was able to find a website that could convert the files to the correct GPX file format, but this would require that I have internet connection while in Europe. Which is not a guarantee.

So, this weekend I went out and bought a fairly cheap used Garmin eTrex Vista. I didn’t need or want anything too fancy. The maps, etc are unneeded. Plus I’m going to be attaching it to my backpack, so I don’t want anything expensive in case it gets stolen while in Europe.

The device so far seems to be working pretty well. It acquires signals in just a few minutes, and can hold 10,000 track points.

As for the Mac Software, I’ve found tons of software out there, however none of it seems to actually work!

For transferring the data points from the Garmin device to my Macbook Pro, I have found the best solution to be GPS Babel. It was able to easily and quickly find my GPS unit and then transfer the trackpoints off into the correct GPX file type data.

From there, I then was able to find Photo GPS Editor. It’s a pretty straight forward interface with a really nice wizard. It even gives you the ability to select a location on the map and set that as the starting point. It will then try and find the correct information for the pictures.

My major complain with this software is the “Offset”. Probably because I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be setting here. It seems that no matter what I put there, things are “close” to where they should be, but not quite correct. I know I’ll probably never get it EXACTLY on where the pic was taken. But still, I think they should be closer then where it’s being shown. IE. I have a picture of the “Fairfax Exit” on the I-10 freeway here in LA. The Photo GPS Editor is putting that picture as being taken about 2 miles past where it was actually taken at (2 miles north on Fairfax from the I-10).

I’m also very confused by the listing of the GPS unit’s data. It shows that there are 8 different track logs with many different points each. So I don’t quite understand what those all mean.

I’d been playing around with GPS PhotoLinker before I moved over to Leopard. However now it doesn’t seem to start (Something about a missing perl module). I have emailed the developer and he says it’s a known issue and should be fixed shortly. (UPDATE: The developer has been actively releasing beta versions that work on Leopard. Check out the site here.) UPDATE:// I have been using this software for a while now that it’s working on leopard and it works great! This is by far the best software to use!!!

Lastly, I tried out ImageIngester. At first the interface is very confusing and has way too much going on. It’s in some serious need of a redesign. However! I found at this software actually worked the best out of all of them!

Even though this software is very cumbersome in the design and not very intuitive (I’m not really going to go into what should be changed here), it was relatively easy to actually get the photos tagged with GPS data. The first thing I did was go to “ImageIngesterPro” and click “Switch Mode”. This disabled a lot of the advanced features which are useless for this experiment. Second, was to click the “Tools” option and select “GPS Input” to enable the use of GPS data.

Here the Offset stuff is much easier to change. I knew that my GPS and my camera were both set to Pacific time and I knew that my camera was an hour faster then my GPS. Under the option for “Camera Time Adjustment” I changed it to remove an Hour.

Next, click the “Choose” button to select your photos, then click “Start”. It was that easy! ImageIngester did all the rest.

Some of the other software I’ve tried has been:

  • GeoTag – This was a really nice software, however it only works on Windows because there is no Java 6 build for the Mac yet.
  • GeoTagger – This software wouldn’t even start on Leopard
  • HoudahGeo – This software seems nice, but it crashed my Mac every time I tried to export to Google Earth (which is something I really want to be able to do!). I’ve emailed the developer, but he’s been unable to resolve the issue at this point. (UPDATE: The developer has emailed me saying this will be fixed in 1.3, I have yet to try it out, but I am looking forward to giving it a shot tonight)

Now, as for getting things onto Google Earth. I was hoping for a quick and easy solution here. And Sure enough, there’s one available… That is, if you still have iPhoto 6. It’s called iPhotoToGoogleEarth. It’s supposed to export directly from iPhoto to a Google Earth KML file format. Of course, I no longer have iPhoto 6. Again, I emailed the developer and he is unsure when a new version will be available. So off I go to find a new solution.

UPDATE://iPhotoToGoogleEarth now works with iPhoto ’08! Great news and it appears to work great!!

The guy who wrote ImageIngester also wrote a nice blog entry about how to do this with some simple PHP. However, this is not exactly what I was hoping for. It’s a great way to do it, but I want people to download a KMZ format file and open it in Google Earth Locally. (And hopefully have a link back to the full size image online).

It seems that Picasa is the best solution, but last I checked it’s still only for Windows?

So far it looks as though I am out of luck on this issue. I’ve spent countless hours searching the web, perhaps I’m googling the wrong things, but I just have not been able to find anything! If you have any suggestions, let me know!

There’s a great article on GeoTagging on Wikipedia.

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Big Brother State

All Employers should really read this:A Note To Employers: 8 Things Intelligent People, Geeks and Nerds Need To Work Happily.

JDub does it again. I wish I had the guts to just drop my life and get out there and do something like this. If only…

Do you own a Mac, use iPhoto? If you don’t use the photobook functions in iPhoto you should follow these instructions to save 300 megs. I’ve also found that it saves RAM when running iPhoto:

Here’s how to get rid of said folder:

Right click on iPhoto.app

Select Show Package Contents

Navigate to Applications/iPhoto.app/Contents/Resources/Themes

Delete it, burn it to disk, or offload it to external drive

Not much else really going on. I had a really annoying day today. I get in and have this meeting. I get assigned to do something. I had JUST got in, so I go back to my desk, read my e-mails and what not and then finish up another project, this all takes me about 1.5 hours. So then I go and start on this thing I was told to do. It takes me abot 20 minutes and then I run into something that i have a quick question about. So I IM the guy only to find out that he had already just gone ahead and done it. how very annoying! UGH!

I’m also getting REALLY sick of my friends/co-workers never inviting me anywhere. VERY annoying.

Random, creepy messages terrorize bisexual college students. REALLY interesting read! Who knew things like this happened!

Digg Me! I totally want one of these!

Look like a spartan. How the stars of “300” got that Greek statue look.

Private MySpace Profiles!

My god I had a busy weekend. And I’m in SO much pain again! Ugh. My body needs to get used to this shit.

But first.. What is up with these damn Private MySpace profiles. I REALLY hate them. I HATE when someone messages me, or tries to add me as a friend and the damn thing is PRIVATE. What’s the POINT of having a god damn Myspace page if you are going to make it private. I am no longer going to reply to any randoms with private myspace pages. I also hate it because now I can’t stalk anyone. 🙁 haha.

Ok, so lets see.. Friday I left work and went shopping. Spent way to much money again, just buying supplies for this weekends activities. I came home and just wired all the lights together into one cord for my GIANT TIX clock and lit it up, and hung it where it belongs.

Isn’t it pretty. You shoud see it all lit up at night. It’s crazy bright! I’m really going to have to get a dimmer for it.

I went to bed pretty early. Saturday I got up at 6:30, ate breakfast and drove up to Manhattan Beach. Met up with the Aids Lifecycle group and we went off biking. I had my first spill on my new bike too. 🙁 We were JUST starting out and all of a sudden the tail guy started yelling at everyone to stop. So I pulled my right foot out of the clip, but couldn’t get my left one out fast enough, so I fell over. My bike thankfully only took VERY minor damage. After that incident we rode about 11 miles down to just past my house to Palos Verdes. The first part of the ride was really slow and lots of stop and go via the roads. Very not my style. I was a bit annoyed. But we got to the first rest stop and half the group turned around. The rest of us started going UP-up-UP! 7% incline for 5 miles. Ouch! I thought I was going to die, but I made it just fine. Got to the top of the hill and the bathrooms were closed! I had to piss so badly! lol.

The ride back down the hill was really fun. Averaged about 40/mph coming down. For the whole ride we did a little over 15/mph. Which is ok. I usually average 18/mph, but I don’t have to deal with as much stop/go shit.

Everyone was really nice but it was AWK. I mean, you know how I get in new groups. I just stand there and don’t say anything. I tried to talk to some people but I just didn’t do well at all. I’m excited for next week’s ride though. It’s the ACL kick off and it’s supposed to be HUGE!

Came home from that and stopped at Panda Express in my riding get-up. Somone whistled at me, he was kinda hot. lol. Got home and showered, changed and then started my newest project…

It’s an 8’x5′ painting:

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And no, the shadow is not part of it. Right now it’s just the lime green. I really like it. Although someone said that it looked like a green screen that they use in TV. Either way. I was going to paint two red lines on it using the same red as the clock, but I did a sample piece that’s 4″x6″, and it just looks wierd. So Austin suggested that I do it in grey. I think I’m going to go with Silver. 🙂 I’m debating as to what to do with it.

One part of me wants to make a second one the same size, only with a bright purple, and hang them side by side in my bedroom vertically, so it’s kinda contrasting. Another part of me wants to just keep the one and use the other 4 yards of canvas for smaller things. And finially a last part of me wants to use it to sell and raise money for LifeCycle. I’m really nervous about not getting enough money for this thing, incase you can’t tell!

After that I showered again, and Austin came over, we went out to dinner in Hermosa Beach and then went out to the Dolphin. That place was SCARY! There were only about 5 people there, two of them were HUGE lesbians. (I mean huge as in Bull Dyke). So we left there and came back to my place, watched a movie, stole some of each others movies, and drank some Champagne. Good stuff. He spent the night, on the couch.

Got up Sunday, had breakfast, a meeting from 10-11 and then this guy Johnny came over at 11ish. We hung out and watched QaF. He was cute and nice. We’ll see what happens.

He left a little after 6. I had another meeting at 6:30 and then just chilled on the couch at home. Watched Heroes. It was really good, although a bit gross. I added it to my Tivo listing.

This morning it was so hard to get out of bed. My legs are killing me, and plus it’s getting really cold here (and by that I mean like the high 50’s, I’m such a fucking pussy now!) and I just want to stay under the covers where it’s warm and cozy.

I really want to go out to WeHo for Halloween.. I hear it’s crazyness.