After a photo program

I am pulling photos from directories to put on a card for a digital photo frame for Jacqui. So I am checking every folder in /Pictures and I am finding a silly amount of duplication. I have one family christmas in 3 places for instance. Disk space doesn’t matter but a little more organisation would be nice. It would also be laborious and prone to error. The error does not matter as the photos are on the mini and a hd and mirrored on another hd but the laborious does. So that’s 9 folders of that one event. Daft. So there has to be a program that wil do all the sorting surely?

It would:

  • place all dupes into a single folder
  • sort all remaining images by exif data
  • place all those images into folders by month/year
  • place all images with no or incomplete exif data into another folder

Such code has to exist so I shall start trawling photo forums later today.

Posted in Photos | Tagged | 1 Comment

Creepy Apple

The Magic Trackpad I bought does not work despite my trying everything I could find. I even took the MBP into the garden where any interference would be less but it still refuses to work. Posted to the Apple forums but the problem does not seem to exist except for  few so I got the junky one. The emailed receipt – or as they put it ‘Billing Document” – arrived so after one last check of their forums I rang their number to arrange the return.

Usual robotic voice answers and I was expecting the “Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for …”. Instead I get this female voice saying that she can understand full sentences so to just ask what I want. I’m sure some people will go to Google and type “How can I take my horse to water and make him drink?”. Too long. “Horse water drink” or even just “horse water” is what I type so in this case I said “Refund”. And I hear what I think is typing. This robotic voice has said she can understand full sentences and now she’s typing? A couple of questions later and I’ll swear that the sound was of someone typing. If you can understand my voice like that you don’t need to type. I can see that if I were stood at a desk and a robot were dealing with my request that the sights and sounds of a what was a human activity would be in some way reassuring but this is a phone line. I don’t need that. It is creepy. Someone somewhere in an Apple meeting debuted their new answering / understanding bot and someone else said “Hey, sound effects!”. Why?

Posted in Apple | Tagged | 1 Comment

A glow bowl

“It looks like you guys slaughtered a unicorn in your bathroom”

YouTube Preview Image
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New shiny

I’m sitting in front of two machines, both belong to work. My laptop belongs to work. The other computers in the house – and there are a few – do not have my name on. So if I want to just browse the net, or do non-work stuff I have to do this on a work machine. And work is work, I can’t help but see that xchat is open, adium is showing incoming, twitter searches are in the dock as are 3 browsers and any other programs I might be using that day. There is no getting away from the fact that these two are Work. They are almost identical too so that should this one fail the other is there to rely on. Anyway, no computer, no personal web stuff. I couldn’t compartmentalise any online activity. That works as an excuse for a new shiny but it’s actually real.

Don’t need a desktop or a SFF machine because I don’t need what it can do. I don’t need a laptop because what I want to use it for does not warrant the size, weight or ability. So – that leaves a notebook. Checking several sites in the end I opted for a Compaq CQ10. It’s running Windows XP (and it arrived with no activated crapware) so I’m quite happy there. All the programs I want are now installed, I have a few gb of music and when the extra gb of RAM arrives (it runs well but as it’ll take 2 it can have 2) it’ll be all the smoother. OS is tweaked a little, custom theme installed. And no work programs. Pidgin will be Live and ICQ only, no Skype, irc is there but not for work. It’s a work-free machine, one I can use and see just what I have created. I do have a couple of plans for some non-work work which I can move to it which will be better. And if I am out and it is lost / stolen then unlike my laptop I don’t need to worry about work passwords/data. So all is good.

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Sync

Dropbox – cannot have 2 accounts on 1 machine.
Mozy – does not sync or if it does I have no idea how.
Sugarsync – nice icon, crap program.
Spideroak – nice icon, stupid program.

What I want is 2 dropboxes but without the hassle of the second on the mac. Didn’t get it to work before and have no intention of trying again yet. I’ll keep looking though at this rate I’ll just email files to the laptop. And seriously the last above? Stay away.

Posted in Programs | Tagged | 4 Comments

Colours at Kiva


There are now some prettier images at kiva for the what where and why of loaning. My loaning more to females is deliberate as is loaning to the Phillipines / Cambodia and other countries there.
You should loan at kiva.

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A WTF from the PM

BBC Mr Cameron referred to the situation in 1940 during an interview with Sky News in which he was asked about the changing nature of the “special relationship” with the US and his meeting with President Obama on Tuesday.

“I think it is important in life to speak as it is and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US but we are the junior partner,” he said.

“We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis.”

David Cameron is in charge of the govt and he hasn’t the balls to stop sucking up to the US. Still, those that voted the Govt in must be proud of him. Someone has to be. But the rest of knew and now have the proof that he’s an idiot. A toffee-nosed, silver spoon in the mouth sycophant. I wonder when he’ll have the history books changed.

Posted in Idiot, Inane, Politics, USA-WTF, WTF | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

An excellent portable speaker

The amazing Altac Lansing orbit M

Used one of these on holiday for us and our daughter and boyfriend had another. We were all very impressed with the sound quality and volume. I really could not find complaint if I tried. Very much recommended,

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Hotel Orquidea

Bingo abroad
If you have kids then Hotel Orquidea Bahia Feliz is the place to go. It is seriously fantastic. If you have a wheelchair, do not. It is increasingly unfriendly in design and the hassle, stares and outright ignorance just is not worth it. J was using the disabled toilet and the door was tried a couple of times. When she came out she found it was a Thomson rep waiting to use the disabled toilet. The rep was of course fully fit. That sums up much of the experience.

Anyway, airline was good, Customs on Gran Canaria had one evil bitch on duty who we managed to get really really angry – which was sort of fun. After all, if she takes some spirits saying “100ml, no more” and I point to a 500ml bottle of water and a 250ml tin of Red Bull in my bag and ask what about that 100ml she said they are okay, just water, it’s okay. Asked for the spirits back she said no, 100ml! I said what’s that – and held the water. She said water so I put it back in my bag. Asked for spirits, she said no. Saying ‘But how do you know it’s water really’ caused her to get really mad, ripped open my bag, pulled out the drinks and headed to the large box for confiscated material. I did ask for my water back – it’s only water – but she was too busy stomping, gesticulating and informing all her other .. colleagues .. of what we were doing. I did ask where my water was when she got back and enquired why because it was actually only water. She probably could not swear given the presence of her colleagues. Had she listened however I could have taught her some. Stupid woman.

Summary: started ‘Anna Karenina’, am some 500 pages in and it is wonderful, started ‘No Plot No Problem’ which has insights I want to use away from any sort of writing. Love my Sony Reader for the above and I’m in the middle of another book on it the title of which I forget. New Bluetooth kb to use and learn as keys have changed slightly – should be fun. Not so many pictures taken this time and almost all are of youngest and her boyfriend so I’d not publish those anyway. Not sure if I like that pic above. Orquidea do not serve coffee – they serve ‘brown’. Broken Dreams across the road do nice Calypso Coffee. There is no diet Red Bull or variant anywhere. Really.

And as with everyone who returns from holiday I’ll slide slowly back to those little ruts where in that short space away I saw there was something I could do better but I’ll never get round to them, something will always need doing first and in a year I’ll do the same again.

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CNET with Metacritic have no money left

CNET have to be skint. It is the only way to explain the continual breakage of the Search function at Metacritic.

CNET have to be potless because otherwise they would pay for a real mobile site. Shovelling a full desktop version into a smartphone just doesn’t work.

And this isn’t new, it’s been going on for months. Someone should buy Metacritic and make it as good on a mobile device. CNET can’t afford to so they’ll love the money.

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