iLife 08: iMoan but iLike it really

I'm a bit disappointed that iPhoto 8's implementation of albums is still still so inferior to iTunes playlists. In an application designed to manage large photo collections with simple rules it's unfortunate that the implementation doesn't allow chaining rules together to query your data with and/or/either.

In order to do this, you need to be able to reference one "smart album" (a photo album based on a rule or rules) when defining another, and you can't: the operation of creating a smart album is not closed.

iTunes allows this. Say you want all music that's been added to the library in the last six months and is either disco or funk. Easy: create a smart playlist that has genre=disco or genre=funk by using "Match any condition", and another smart playlist where the playlist is the one you just created and the date added is in the last six months.

Not a very real query, but the best I could think of. In iPhoto, I specifically wanted to create a query where the (keyword=Daisy or the keyword=James) and it's been added in the last year. This is to create a playlist that I can then send to iDVD to make a slideshow from with some nice music on to send to my mum. But, it can't be done: I can create the first two options easily enough in a smart album using "Any" with the two keywords, but I can't chain that to another album to restrict by the date.

It's easy to hack around this manually by creating static albums, filtering photos by keyword and dragging them to the album, until you get to a state where you can use a smart album to get the final set you want, but this is annoying because it doesn't update as new photos are added and needs to be redone every time.

Oh, there's another thing you can do in iTunes that would be very handy in iPhoto - you can context-click a track in a playlist and choose to open the track in any other playlists it is a member of, or in the default music collection. I was using an "Untagged" smart album and it would have been very handy to be able to jump to the photo within it's event or in the main photo list even.

Still, I like iPhoto's implementation of Events a lot. I got the new version in the middle of tagging 8,000 photos - I was accused of taking more photos of our eldest child than the younger, and there was only one way to find out. So as well as having 4,000 photos to tag I had 8,000 photos to put in events as well.. It took me a little while to adjust my workflow to the new keyword interface, and I usually have the keyword window over the album list which isn't the perfect usability. I have my events as months, so I don't have too many but they don't have too many in, but I like being able to have special events - holidays, birthdays - in their own events. It would be nice to be able to autosplit events monthly: I tend to take a few pictures a few times a week rather than a lot in one day. One thing I found annoying was that I would open an event I wanted to split into separate months, split it, then return to All Events. Usually then I would want to merge the split events into existing months, but iPhoto has automatically selected all the albums you have created already, and if you're not careful to deselect those before clicking on the one you want to merge, you can end out re-merging all the photos you've just split with some others!

Incidentally, when you delete the current photo in a smart album, if you then try and use the arrow key to navigate, at least under some circumstances you get summarily dumped to the top of the list. Annoying, but at least you can delete from within a smart album now. I deleted 1,200 out of focus photos as part of the tagging project, so it happened to me a fair few times.

Pigment map courtesy of MacBook Photo Booth

Every bit of non-vitiligoed skin shows up, even bits I can't see. I will have to find out which effect this is. (Edit: it's 'Glow' of course)

It doesn't get any better than this

First day of the football season in an odd year (*) watching MOTD with no idea of the football results and the newly promoted Black Cats (Sunderland **) beat "Top Four" Tottenham with a goal in the final minute. Joy! Or rather schadenfreude, which all football fans know is just as good.

* Odd years - ie 2007, 2009, 2011 - have neither a World Cup nor European Championships to fill the tedious close season.

** My family on my mother's side, the Oswalds, are (or at least were) Sunderland fans. My Uncle Dick packed in a grocer's stall my Granddad had bought for him so he could go down the pit because he'd get Saturdays off to go to the games. He'd been bought the stall (it might even have been a shop, I will ask my Mum, also about the date which I estimate 1933) to keep him out of the pit of course.. in the '50s, incidentally, Sunderland were called the Bank Of England club because they spent so much money chasing success: in the end they won nothing, and the sums spent seem tiny compared to the modern game.

Hmm

I crutched to Sainsbury's today (in my car - you can't carry shit with a crutch) and a woman said to me (presumably about some geezer) "He's a cheeky bugger - they're all the same, after it every minute. I don't know why they come after me, I haven't had it for twenty-seven years, I can tell you".. then I dived down the butter aisle.

Mac Blindness

I spend so much time staring at my MacBook I worry that spending too much time on a short fixed focal length will damage my eyesight, and I have a bet with Beck that she'll need glasses before me. It's a bit of a worry..

To the rescue!

Breaking a bone in the outside of my foot has caused my walking pattern to change, putting a lot more weight on my heels, and causing the hard skin on them to crack open. Ouch. I've been suffering for a few days, Becky got me some cream to soften them. The instructions said to beware putting the cream in the open cracks, bit of a problem on my left foot with old Grand Canyon Crack. So I had a brainwave - superglue the cracks together before applying the cream! Worked a treat, they are a lot less sore. Wish I'd done it last week.

If you think I'm crazy (Beck did) then google for "superglue cut": there are vague concerns that cyanoacrylates (the chemical in superglues) are toxic, but a) it's on the outside and b) it isn't much and c) I got more on my fingers anyway and d) life is toxic, man.

Come to think of it, there must be a statistical split with superglue users, something like:
30% - perform gluing operation perfectly with no residue or spillage
30% - perform gluing operation satisfactorily, but get glue on your fingers resulting in some sticky moments while trying not to touch anything for more than 3 seconds so as not to get stuck to it - while still getting the gluing done.
30% - perform gluing operation, but get glue on fingers and get stuck to the thing being glued.
10% - perform gluing operation, get glue on fingers, then inadvertently squeeze the rest of the tube. With hilarious results..

Stupid Technorati crap

It's that or give them my account details (over unsecured HTTP, why not, eh?)

Technorati Profile

New thing

I find myself watching a program on channel a hundred or so called [adult swim] which is apparently an animated comedy sketch show. Cruel, ruthless and funny: of course, that could be just the episode I'm watching. Let's try another.. seems some are just one scenario, some are many quickfire jokes.

How cool is that?

Lisa and Steve's Lego Wedding cake

See also the bride and groom

Broken foot

I have a spiral fracture of the fifth metatarsal on my right foot - nice clean fracture, no displacement. I got it last Tuesday playing football, it'll be a fair few weeks before I play again - old bones heal slower.

So, if you ever turn up to football and you've forgotten your boots or trainers and someone offers you theirs but they're a size too small - go home, and don't play.

This is what it looks like:

Airport Extreme

There's an airport on Ebay for a million pounds - postage is free, of course.

You know what it's like..

.. when you get something new, and what you had before is suddenly revealed to be instantly obsolescent?

My Mighty Mouse came today! Daisy sellotaped the old Pro mouse up the other day as part of one of her installations, not that it was bothered, and James has given it a lot of stick. Let's see how this new fancy-dan thing stands up to it.. in the mean time: right-click! middle-click! amazing scroll ball! mmmm.. thanks to RTB for persuading me.

Update (August): No problems, mouse truly is mighty. Daisy stopped after Sellotape Untitled IV: James hammers it as you might expect, it just keeps working. He did get loads of jam in the scroll wheel but after a few cleaning scrolls it was OK.

Fantasy celebrity sprog

If Bob Geldof had had a son he would surely have called him Gandalf Geldof..

Formally assimilated

I bought a refurb white macbook from Apple today: spent some of the £100 saving over the new core 2 duos on extra memory [not from Apple!] and I get a superdrive out of it, may come in handy one day. Delivery date is on or before Friday..

When I was checking out the purchase from the the Apple store, I realised I have mislaid my VISA card: I remember them all falling out my wallet "somewhere, the other day". I also remembered the security code on the back which I needed to quote to make the purchase which was just as well, as the refurbs go fast.

Fight! Fight!

Armoured suits for cats and mice. Ippon!

Microthinking

I grudgingly admit the possibility of the existence of Microsoft Desktop Search plugins, and I understand that if I am stupid enough not to realise that uninstalling said Desktop Search would scupper said plugins then I could be mildly inconvienced: and yet, when uninstalling the software (>my< system resources, thankyouverymuch!) I was amazed when presented with this: couldn't they at least have removed the security updates from the list?

Another switcher

> From: robinthebear@robinthebear.com
> Subject: Ordered

> iMac, 24-inch, Intel Core 2 Duo
> NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB SDRAM
> 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
> 750GB Serial ATA drive
> 3GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM
> Wireless keyboard (English) & wireless Mighty Mouse + Mac OS X (English)
> SuperDrive 8x (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)

Chulo!

Losses

The wonderful French radio station FIP has disappeared from the Brighton airwaves, and Porky Whites are no longer available from Asda.

What I want do do though is say goodbye to Kurt Vonnegut who spoke many words directly into my brain. This image, at the time of writing, is the home page default:



Eidt: FIP is gone for good now it looks like, Porkies are back, and Kurt Vonnegut is still dead..

Astroturf

I played football tonight for the first time in years: I have never played on astroturf before and I had no idea how abrasive it is.

I can never stay on my feet when I play in defense: I like to go for the ball and get it no matter what, so I end out doing sliding tackles: astroturf is more like glasspaper than grass, so I have no skin on my right knee or elbow. Other than losing miserably I enjoyed it a lot: it reminded me of the last time I played, back when I lived in my old flat.

I was turning out for an Ericcsons team in their sports and social league as a favour for a guy I worked with (who was a Kiwi and had never played 'soccer' in his life before: I also have a medal for being part of a winning ESSC baseball team) and managed to get a decent grassburn one week: I was cleaning it with peroxide (yes, I was a single man) when I dripped much too much on the graze and kicked upwards involuntarily: I must have had shoes on (I don't remember it hurting my toes) so the Stanley knife I used to keep on my coffee table took up, turned over once lazily in the air, and embedded itself into my leg. I didn't know which to say ouch for, I imagine I swore a bit.

(We did play at Glastonbury a few years ago but that wasn't an organised game: we were on tv though according to legend)

Long sleeves and trackie trousers next week! Shinpads are a bit woofy though, without boots.

Google Desktop/Mac

I've never installed a Google desktop search product on Windows, let alone seen the need for one on the Mac - why would you when you have Spotlight? - but seeing as Mr Pinky asked so nicely I will give this new Google Desktop/Mac a go on old failthful G3 iBook.

My main problem with these multi-search programs is that I always know in advance where I am looking. If I'm looking for a document or file, it's on my local disk. If I'm looking for a web page, it's on the internet, and the two don't really coincide: equally, if I'm looking for an email, I search there, whether that's local or internet (ie Gmail). I can imagine that under some circumstances you would want to look for all info about a topic, whether as emails or files or webpages, even though I can't think of one myself. Perhaps the program will offer that opportunity (if it ever finishes indexing!)

Edit: on reflection, I would probably use this type of search at work (where I don't have a desktop search program anyway, mostly because everything is stored on the network somewhere and/or on an Exchange server)