MacAge: iPhoto Hates the Cloud

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

The Mac Age

I warned you.

And now, it has happened.

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Look for a slew of posts as a guy who started on a Mac in the 80s and moved to Windows in the 90s re-enters the Mac Age.

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.

Great Old Music: Fever Tree

When I was a kid, there were these things called newspapers. Basically, someone took some wood pulp, pressed it into into thin sheets, wrote stuff on it, and sold it to you. Crazy I know, but it really happened.

Today at work, I walked by my secretary’s desk, and lo and behold, there was one of those newspapers. Just laying there. Beside some compact discs, paper checks and Burma-Shave signs. A cornucopia of dead technology.

Curious, I picked it up. Before I could reminisce about how it must have been to get day old news in flimsy print format, I noticed another relic of the past. I read that someone has uncovered a previously unreleased live record by Fever Tree, one of the best (of the 3 or 4) bands to come out of Houston, and it was going to be released next week. Immediately, I dropped the newspaper, wiped the ink off my hands and ran to my computer to read about this.

It was true!

Not only that, but it turns out Fever Tree’s keyboard player is the organist for St. Luke’s. That’s the local Methodist Church for rich people. I go to the local Methodist Church for non-rich people, but Cassidy has attended drama camp and worked as a vacation bible school counselor at St. Luke’s. So she may have met the guy who might have played on one of my favorite songs ever.

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I can’t really explain why I dig that song so much, but I have, from the first time I heard it.

That record is not on Spotify, but here’s one (from 1968) that is. There’s a good Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out cover on there. Ninety-Nine and One Half rocks, as does Where Did You Go. Good stuff.

Hopefully, I’ll get my hands on the new old record. If so, I’ll do a review.

RIP Topify

I’ve praised Topify before, saying that it was one of the most useful little apps in my toolbox. I’ve used it for over two years, and it has saved me a ton of time, by allowing me to manage my Twitter follows and un-follows (for those dumbasses who think auto-DMing someone will somehow make them money) via email.

Last week, Twitter changed the format of its email notifications, which broke the Topify’s method of identifying and processing Twitter notification-related emails. I don’t care enough about Twitter to explore this in any detail, but my general impression has long been that Twitter has a very schizophrenic relationship with the developer community- they love them- until they don’t.

I was immediately worried that the end may be near for Topify, and today I received an email and read a blog post that confirmed my fears. Topify is shutting down on August 5, 2011.

There’s theoretically some way to work around this change, but Arik Fraimovich, Topify’s developer, made the understandable decision to throw in the towel:

I considered switching to using the Streaming API in the past, but the only option for Topify is to use the Site Streams version of it. But Site Streams are still in beta, and according to the documentation there is no estimated date for it to exit beta. Considering this last episode and other actions by Twitter in the past year, I have no desire to expriment with their beta offerings. Not only this can result in unstable service for you, they might just shut it down one day.

Unless you are making a butt-load of money in the meantime, why in the world would developers work on small value-additive apps, when they know from experience that Twitter can and probably will pull the rug out from under them at any time?

All I can say to that is, thanks Arik for a great little service. I used it every day for years, and it will be missed.

Now I’m going to have to visit Twitter to un-follow everyone who auto-DMs me

Spotify Launches Artist Radio in the U.S.!

When Spotify launched in the United States., the artist radio feature that is available in Europe was absent. Even without that feature, Spotify is a great service, and well worth the premium subscription price of $10 a month.

Still, people being people, many complained and begged Spotify to enable some sort of radio feature.

Much to my happy surprise, when I fired up Spotify tonight, the Artist Radio feature was there. No announcement, no bells and whistles. It was just there.

This makes an already excellent service even better. Hopefully over time, Spotify will add more ways to fine tune your radio.

Here’s the bottom line. If you like music, even a little bit, there is no rationale basis for not signing up for Spotify as fast as you can. It’s damn near perfect already, and it just gets better and better.

A Girl, a Tooth & Some Pliers

The other night, Delaney came downstairs and told me that her permanent tooth was coming in underneath a baby tooth, and causing the baby tooth to stick out. This made her retainer uncomfortable.

She asked me to pull the tooth. I asked her if she was sure. She said yes.

She’s a lot tougher than her daddy was at that age.