Month: August 2011

The No. 1 Reason Why I Hate Bricks & Mortar Shopping

Lines.  Out of control.

Yesterday I had to go to Micro Center to get an external hard drive to archive some of my old Windows stuff.  There were exactly two cashiers, and probably 25 people in line.  There were some other employees milling around aimlessly.  I told one of them they needed more cashiers.  He said he would try to find a manager, and promptly went back to milling around.

Today, I needed a magazine.  So I went to Barnes & Noble.  There was exactly one cashier.  And he soon stopped taking customers while he waited for someone, who was undoubtedly busy goofing off somewhere, to bring a cash drop.  You know, change for those 20 or so people who were waiting in line.  To give Barnes & Noble some money.

I don’t have many rules.  But one of them is this: if someone wants to give you their money, do not make it hard for them.  Make it easy, so maybe they’ll give you more later.  Long lines and empty cashier stations is a recipe for going out of business.

Bricks & mortar stores have forgotten the most important rule of all.  Make the customer experience a positive one.  So customers will be conditioned to come back.

When I buy something from Amazon, it shows up at my door two days later.  Movies, music and software are instantly downloaded.

Hard drives from Micro Center and magazines from Barnes & Noble?  An exercise in needless frustration.

All of which leads to this…

Show me someone who prefers to buy things at a store that can be easily purchased online, and I’ll show you someone who either has a lot of free time to kill or is a very inefficient liver.

It’s up to the bricks & mortar stores to change this.  I’m not holding my breath, or waiting in lines I can easily avoid.

Mars Edit Update: I just couldn’t handle it.  I’m back to using the native WordPress editor, which also sucks.  Never has a market been any more ripe for the taking than the Mac blog editor space.

MacAge: iPhoto Hates the Cloud

Icloud

I’m now well into my latest Mac era, and things are generally going well.  I adore my iMac.  I like iMovie.  And I love iPhoto.  With one exception.  iPhoto does not play well with the Cloud.

Once I took my Windows computers and my Windows Home Server offline, I decided on a two-part, redundant back-up plan.  First, I replaced my wireless access points with two Airport Extremes and a Time Capsule.  This did four important things for me.  One, it allowed me to attach some external hard drives to that equipment to replace the network storage (not backup; just regular storage for raw video production files, music production files, etc.) I had on the Windows Home Server.  Two, it allowed me to create a roaming wireless network, since all of the gear is Apple.  With a roaming network, you connect at one location, and then your connection automatically switches to other access points as you move around the house.  Three, it allowed me to install a mobile Airport Express that I can use to stream my music to other places in and around the house.  And four, it allowed the Time Capsule to back up the various computers.  Time Capsules make backing up your Mac about as easy as possible.

So as far as the local network goes, I’m all set.

Then, the cloud.

I have a ton of SugarSync space (get additional free space by signing up via that link), and have used it happily for many years as my primary cloud backup service.  As I’ve noted before, it’s a pain to switch computers in SugarSync, because you have to re-upload all the stuff you’ve already uploaded.  If you have hundreds of Gigabytes, that can take a while.  So I decided to put all of my previously uploaded photos in a SugarSync storage folder, and only back up my iPhoto Library, where all of my current and future photos will reside.  In other words, all of my existing photos will stay right where they are, and only the new ones will get uploaded from my iMac.

Great plan, right?

Nope.  Because SugarSync cannot sync or adequately backup the iPhoto Library.

iPhoto imports your photos into a file bundle, which shows up as “iPhoto Library” on your computer.

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That’s fine and dandy, but it makes it impossible to sync your photos via SugarSync or another cloud-based service.  Even worse, it makes it very hard to back up your photos in the cloud.  In fact, to prevent users from corrupting their libraries by trying to sync their iPhoto Libraries, the iPhoto Library doesn’t even show up in the SugarSync file manager.

Add Folders to SugarSync 1

This is what those of us in the know call a BFP.

There is a work-around that will let you back up the original photos, which iPhoto stores in a “Masters” folder within the iPhoto file bundle.  But that’s not what I want.  I want to backup my entire iPhoto Library, so I can download it and restore everything in the event of a catastrophic data loss.

Some will claim that the forthcoming iCloud will be the answer.  Maybe, but if 50 Gigabytes of space costs $100 a year and your iPhoto Library is triple Gigabytes, it looks like you’re out of luck.

There’s a newish service called Dolly Drive, that let’s you back up data to the cloud using Time Machine.  That sounds like a perfect solution, but I don’t want to pay for yet another cloud, and am not willing to trust my data to just anyone.

So…

I dig my Mac.  But I am frustrated by the inability to set up an automated, incremental, cloud based backup for my photos.

Mars Edit Update: I’m trying.  Really.  But after using Live Writer for so long, Mars Edit feels like writing in quicksand.  Or concrete. Need a small example, of many?  There is no way to set link targets, so links open in a separate page.  Really.

A Grateful Dead Gem, Discovered 40 Years Later

Grateful Dead Tomorrow Is Forever 9 26 72 YouTube

I’ve been listening to the Grateful Dead since I was old enough to scrape a few dollars together and find my way to the nearest record store.  I named my first child after a Grateful Dead song.  I listen to the Grateful Dead channel 75% of the time I’m driving.  I have a recurring and wonderful dream that I am in the band, playing on stage sometime during the Europe ’72 era.  In other words, I am a committed fan.  I thought I’d heard every song they’ve ever recorded.

But, as it turns out, I hadn’t.  Because tonight, on the way home from work, something wonderful happened.

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It’s a special treat to hear a new Grateful Dead song.  Even if it was recorded almost 40 years ago.  Is this really a cover of the Porter Wagoner song? Apparently so.

And it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard in a long, long time.

It’s not on Spotify (the Porter Wagoner version is).  No luck on Amazon.

A little research indicates that this show was in Jersey City, NJ.  It was in the second set, between The Greatest Story Ever Told and Truckin’.

Here’s the entire set, via Archive.Org.

 

Life in the Fast Lane: Adios Load Hogs

Now that I’m all into minimalism and whatnot, I decided to clean out my study.

Chill

And my blog.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a substantial increase in the load-time for Newsome.Org.  The culprits change from time to time.  One of them was Wibya, which I dumped several weeks ago.  Another was Lijit, the blog search application I have used for years.  I like the way it shows you what people are searching for, and where- geographically- they came from.  But if the page never finishes loading, no one can search it.

So today I gave Lijit the boot.  In favor of a good old Google site search.  Sure, some of the tracking data is gone, but the script loads quickly.  And results are shown right on the page, as opposed to a separate window.  It seems fast, and bare.  I dig that.

Facebook seems to drag a little too.  I haven’t dumped the “Like” button yet, but it is on my watch list.  My new mantra: be fast or be gone.

I’ve used the Yahoo Media Player for years and years.  I hope it doesn’t die with the rest of Yahoo.  Fast and lean replacement suggestions are appreciated.

And then there’s Disqus.  It seems to drag a little sometimes.  My love of its features and my dread at the prospect of replacing it without losing thousands of comments lead me to hang on, for now.

I want things fast and simple.  There are very few features worth the wait of a slow-loading page.

Oh, and I got a new backpack to tote my gear around.  It’s much better than the old diaper bag backpack I was using.  And now that I’m using a MacBook Air, there’s no poop of any kind in it.

Stm

Fast.  And lean.  That’s the ticket.

MacAge: Filling the Live Writer Void

I’m almost a week into my all-in Apple era. So far, it’s mostly wonderful. The iLife apps are far better than anything available for Windows- iPhoto alone makes the switch worth it.  Adobe let me switch my Photoshop license to Mac (though they stubbornly insisted on snail mailing me the discs, even though I’ve downloaded my last several Photoshop versions).  The machine is elegant, and my study is much more relaxing without the big, loud HP computer, dual monitors and all the associated hardware.  I understand what people mean when they say that Macs “just work.”

The keyboard is taking some getting used to, after decades of Microsoft ergonomic keyboard use.  The typos are legion, but I’m getting there. I think.

On the other hand, I really love the magic trackpad. I am surprised at how easily I have abandoned my much-beloved Trackball Explorer. Those things are hard to find, and now I have a couple to sell.  Stay tuned as I try to turn all my Windows gear into a family iMac.  Need a scanner, or some new 27″ Dell monitors?  Drop me a line.

Tbe
Thanks for the memories!

But, boy, do I miss Live Writer. I am mostly OK with the WordPress embedded editor, but I miss the added features and resulting speed of a dedicated blogging app.

So, I’m test-driving some of the scant Mac options. This post is being written in Mars Edit. I can make it work, but it’s a harder than via Live Writer. Maybe it will have the iMovie effect- you know, where something looks really messed up at first, until you suddenly realize how awesome it is. I hope so.

I’ll have more later on my transition, including my dumping of Windows Home Server, largely because of Microsoft’s dumping of Drive Extender, for a Time Capsule. For now, I’m going to see if I can get Mars Edit to connect with my blog so I can post this.

I’m In Love with My Air

Queue the Queen song (Spotify link) and change a couple of letters.

So here’s how it went down.  First, Delaney made all A’s for the entire school year, thereby earning herself a MacBook Air.  She loved it from the first minute.

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Then Raina killed her 30th or so computer via some combination of misuse, her weird electrical charges and bad luck.  I talked her into getting a MacBook Air.  My thought was that it would be harder to kill than her 31st Windows desktop.  She loved it from the first minute.  It’s still alive after a couple of weeks, so it’s already outlived several of its predecessors.

Then I realized that I couldn’t really travel for more than a day or two without a laptop.  I love my iPad, but I have to have the ability to edit Word documents and whatnot.  I looked at my old, massive, HP laptop.  And said “hell no.”  No way I’m lugging that thing around.

So I bought my own MacBook Air.  And I loved it from the first minute.  The trackpad takes some getting used to at first, but after a day or two, you realize how well it is made and how logically it works.  I like it heaps.

In fact, after finally figuring out how to get video files from my camcorder into iMovie (the secret is to plug the entire camera into the computer, and not just try to import the stripped out video files; which is an annoyance, but by no means a deal stopper), I started thinking about going all-in.  I probably will, when my aging HP desktop bites the dust.  I see an iMac in my future- maybe.

I do miss Live Writer, though.  Not enough to install Parallels, but a lot.  It’s too bad there isn’t a Mac equivalent, but there isn’t.  And yes, I’ve looked at the available options.

So, I am now fully Apple where mobile technology is concerned.  MacBook Air, iPad and iPhone.  All that’s standing between me and complete Apple capitulation is a shiny new iMac.  Somehow I think resistance is futile.

Earl is going to tell me he told me so.  And he did.