Jun 21

iPhoto, Flickr, and External HD Problems

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Today has been an eventful day.

I decided (wisely, I think) that I’d start using Flickr for all of my online photo management. Yeah, yeah…I could have gone through and tweaked out a version of Gallery, but I’ve decided to use Flickr. That’s the end of it.

So, I began investigating ways to upload photos to Flickr in bulk. They have a ton of uploading tools, which is nice. One such tool includes the FlickrExport tool which becomes a “plug-in” for iPhoto, and lets you export to Flickr directly from iPhoto. Perfect, I say.

I installed it on the eMac, but didn’t have any success. First, the export dialogue/menu opened up, but the Flickr export part of it was disabled. So I restarted…and couldn’t open the export menu at all.

It turns out that the reason for all of this nonsense is that the version of iPhoto on my eMac is old school. But hey, my PowerBook is new…so let’s put the photos through there.

I removed the external drive from the eMac, and plugged it into the PowerBook. It can’t mount it. I’m an idiot…I forgot to eject it before removing it from the eMac.

So now the partition tables are all wacked out. Thank God for Partition Table Doctor which let me rebuild the tables, and recover all of my data. Ugh.

So now we’re rolling. I’m uploading all of my photos (a veritable ton) to Flickr, and creating sets.

By the way, if you’re a Kings Pointer, check out the group I created for all your Kings Point photos. We’ll share, and it’ll be fun.

Jun 21

Open Letter to My Parents’ Generation

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Dear Sir/Ma’am -

I recognize that you didn’t grow up with computers, and that you’ve been unfairly forced into adopting technology over the last decade. I understand that where file cabinets and Rolodexes fulfilled their roles “just fine”, society’s gone and replaced them with PCs, and PDAs.

It’s a nightmare, I know.

But there is one thing you need to understand…for our sanity.

When you leave your computer powered on, and don’t use it for several minutes, oftentimes the computer will automatically activate a “screen saver”. The screen saver – though not necessary anymore – was created to prevent “burn in” on older monitors; most people use them for entertainment value, but they also have a power saving feature.

You see, most computers will TURN OFF the monitor after several minutes of inactivity (unless you change the settings…we’ll not go there). In order to get the monitor to power back up, you need to do one of a few things:

- Move the mouse
- Press a key on the keyboard
- Click the mouse

You’ll notice that repeatedly smacking the living crap out of your mouse, shaking it violently around, and stamping on the keyboard are NOT options on this list. Rather, once you’ve done one of the APPROVED methods, you’ll need to wait a few seconds…because the monitor has to power back up.

Don’t worry…that little buzz sound that happened when you initially touched the computer was just the monitor powering back up. It’ll be around in a second.

So for GOD’S SAKE: STOP BEATING UP YOUR COMPUTER….THE MONITOR WILL COME ON IN DUE TIME.