Sony Professional: NAB 2013 – New Camera systems for Live Sports
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World Television
Now that I know that I can treat Netflix as an international film festival I do. Last night I watched the first episode of Crash Landing on You. A South Korean film about a woman CEO who goes for a parapente flight, gets caught in a storm, and dropped in North Korea.
The premise of this television show is interesting because it’s based on a true incident with a South Korean celebrity, but also because this is something we think about much less, especially in Europe, since most borders ceased to be watched.
In my own lifetime borders between France, Switzerland and other countries have been closed down for the most part. We can walk between countries without ever showing our passports. I often drive from Switzerland to Spain without showing a passport. It’s nice. Europe is a village.
That’s where Crash Landing on You is so interesting. It shows us a completely different culture, one where borders still exist. If you’re in the US or other countries, where borders still hold importance then the cultural interest is diminished.
I watch the content in Korean, with English subtitles that are sometimes displayed too briefly in some cases. They need to rethink the reading time of subtitles.
It’s great that Netflix actively encourages people to search for content by original language, but also that if we choose to watch Korean, French, or other language content, that it shows associated content. It’s a way of making Netflix more international, more multicultural, and more inclusive.
Until I found this feature I felt that Netflix was to US centric and that the content on offer was of no interest to me, for the most part.
Now that view has changed, as I have a wealth of new content to watch.
Of Photos, Aperture, and Sliding Between Volumes
Over the years I have used Aperture, Picasa and the Apple Photos Apps. In that time they have organised my files chronologically, automatically, as soon as I took pictures, in some cases.
What They Do
Aperture was well behaved. It would organise photos by year, by month and by day, so it’s easy to migrate a library from drive A to drive B. Apple Photos on the other hand makes a pig’s breakfast. It renames the files with a chaotically huge number, and then moves files into folders from 0-9 and then from A to F or some similar chaotic mess.
The Issue.
If you want to migrate an aperture or Photos library from one volume to another it will take hours, despite there not that being much data. That’s because Aperture and Photos create preview files of different sizes, caches and plenty of other files. The result is that you’re not moving x number of photos and one or two json files with the appropriate metadata. You’re moving 200,000 files within that library folder.
The 500 Gigabytes of photos that you want to move, and that would take up to five hours to move, if they were just photos in folders then take 24 hours or more.
The Cause
There are two principle reasons for this collection of aperture libraries. The first is that for a while I had a mac book air for daily use, and a mac book pro for video editing. As a result I had two libraries simultaneoulsy. The second reason is that I would backup the laptop to external hard drives every so often, and in doing so I would have several versions of my photo libraries.
Time machine is also partially responsible because it creates multiple copies so you need to reconcile the differences between versions, to avoid losing files that are not backed up.
The Solution
If you have aperture libraries that have not been converted to Apple Photos folder structure then you’re in luck. In my case I opened up each library and moved the folders containers from within the package to an external folder structure where I kept the chronological organisation. I methodically worked my way through several years of photos within half an hour to an hour, and then told Finder to move the files from Drive A to Drive B. It told me “about one hour remaining” so I took the time to write this blog post.
In the Mean Time
One of the funniest things I have noticed, while playing with my video and photo archives is that I have not seen some people that I have forgotten many of their names. It is for this reason that I need to keep at least one Photos photo library, until I have renamed faces that are recognised on Immich, or PhotoPrism, before deciding what to do with the old Photos libraries.
The Next Stage
Out of curiousity I tested to see whether I could import the experimental photo folder structure into photos and I saw that I can, and that duplicate detection works.
Combining Old and New
At the moment I have three photo libraries. I have the Google Photos and mobile phone based on on PhotoPrism. The next photo library is the one that I got out of extracting photo galleries from Aperture and Apple Photos. The final library is the one that is based on the files and folders that I have from storing files manually, outside of Photo management apps.
The next step is to clear a four terabyte drive. It will be dedicated to photos and audio books. PhotoPrism will take care of the photos, and AudioBookShelf will take care of the books.
Why I Chose Four Terabytes
I want room to expand. When experimenting with one terabyte I found that my photo library immediately fills the entire drive and when I tried with two terabytes I feel that with audio books I will be tight on space. With four terabytes I can have one terabyte for photos, one terabyte for books, and two terabytes for the libraries to grow, without having to swap the drives.
The other reason is easy backup. I plan to free storage space on at least two four terabyte drives with the newest being the primary drive and the older one being a backup. If one fails the second one will take its place.
The final reason is price. Four terabyte drives have the best price. They’re cheaper than smaller and larger drives per terabyte.
And Finally
In the past we would go out, take photos and video and when we got home we woulc create a folder with the name of the activity. Over time we would have plenty of folders but everything was organised, by default.
In the modern era our phones and cameras do all of this for us. They add the date, the location and more automatically so we don’t organise anything ourselves. The result is hundreds of folders organised by year, month and day, but without any further information. That chaos makes it so that we need Photos, PhotoPrism and other solutions. They “organise” our files.
Conclusion
Photos, by Apple, and other apps ingest our images and organise them out of sight, which is great when we’re using their apps, but awful when we’re trying to use another software solution. It makes sense to have a drive with two folders. Photos and videos, with everything organised by year, month, day and project or activity name.
In so doing we can see in the finder, which files are duplicates, or missing, within seconds. We need to organise our files, and software should just help us look through our archives.
Blogging with the Pi 5
Over at least a week I have been blogging with the Pi 5 and an Apple keyboard. I am using the Apple keyboard just because it’s the one I have, rather than out of a preference for their keyboards over others. I have a full size keyboard but it lost a part so it’s unbalanced and the rapoo keyboard is too small to be comfortable for typing.
VS Code and Front Matter
I use Visual Code and Front matter. Visual Code is good for keeping files organised. Front Matter is good for generating the Front Matter required by Hugo for each blog post. I create a new post with the required title, add the tags, and mark the post as false for draft status.
Visual Code and Front Matter work well on the Pi 5. With Front Matter on the MBP from 2016 it could take a while to load all the pages. With the Pi 5 it’s much faster. This decreases the time I spend waiting when VS Code wants to restart for updates.
Web Browsing
I have found that the Pi 5 is fine for web browsing. It struggles when you play HD video for ten minutes or more, but in that situation you could play 720p or a lower res video file to save on resources.
Git, Github and Git FTP
I use git for my blog, first to get daily practice with GIT but also because if I slide from the mac to the Pi 5 it takes seconds for device A to be ready for blogging, after using device B for three weeks beforehand. I sync to github to have an offsite backup, but also because it’s an easy way of having daily activity. This isn’t so important. It’s about getting experience with using github too. Git FTP is the most useful aspect.
Before learning how to use Git FTP I would generate the pages, and have to sync the entire folder manually, rather than automatically with a single command. Filezilla requires several steps. When GIT FTP is setup it requires git ftp push and you’re done.
Hugo
I experimented with 11ty and it worked well for a bit, but eventually I found 11ty too confusing so I switched to Hugo and it suits my workflow well. The advantage with Hugo is that once you have set it up it works well. I run the Hugo command and it generates all the files I need for the blog post. Once Hugo is done I sync git, and then run git ftp.
Legacy WordPress
There was a time when I loved the simplicity of using WordPress but for a few years now I have found it bloated and slow. I use it because it has community features but if I could drop it I would. I write my blog posts in Markdown and then copy them to Wordpress.
Mobile, Yet Immobile.
The paradox of the Pi is that it’s very easy to transport, especially if you have a small keyboard and a small mouse, and it can plug in to any device with an HDMI port if you have the right cable with you. The drawback is that it has no battery and no screen, so if you want to use it in a mobile manner you will need to have a screen and source of power, as well as the keyboard and mouse. Theoretically the Pi 5 equivalent of the Pi 400 integrated keyboard Pi would be better.
And Finally
I like blogging on the Pi 5. The setup I have works well.
Using an Xtorm Solar Charger
While in Spain for three weeks I was playing with the Xtorm solar Charger. I found that it worked well for the charging of tablets and e-book readers but not mobile phones.
For years I have wanted to play with solar power. I have wanted to buy a solar panel that I could fix to my bag or that I could use to charge devices. I often looked at the price and weight and changed my mind. I don’t want something that adds kilos to my load, especially if I am climbing.
With a small device like the one pictured above you can carry it with you and use it to charge devices. When you drive to the hike or climb, or when you stop for lunch or a drink you can take out this device and start charging your phone, gps, led lights or other devices.
if you want to charge devices to 100 percent then I would recommend charging ipads, ebooks, gps watches and other devices with this device. I found that it’s great for providing a phone with a top up charge but that because of my mobile use patterns it will only provide one full charge per day.
When we hear people speak about solar power we always hear about “How do we store the power we generate so that we can use it when we need it?” and I found a way. When I woke up in the morning I would put the solar charger near a window or outside if there was no chance of rain to charge up to over 75 percent. When it reached this charge I connected the solar charger to a 10,000mah external battery.
It is by using this technique that I have been able to keep my external battery fully charged with no need to plug it in to mains power. In effect it means that I can charge the ipad, the phone or the e-book reader without using mains power.
Strengths
It has a 6000mah battery and can charge two devices at once.
Weaknesses
If I was designing such a device I would ensure that the battery could charge within an 8-12hr window rather than 15. I found that to recharge the internal battery fully it would take two days.
This type of device needs to be rugged. It has to be rain resistant and transport resistant. I want to be able to leave it exposed to the sun without having to worry about the risk of rain. I would also like it to feel solid enough to be fixed to a bag when hiking or climbing. In it’s current configuration I would leave it near the bag when sitting for lunch or when at a climbing wall. I would not fix it to my bag during a via ferrata.
Conclusion
I’m happy with this solar charger. I have found the ideal use case for it and I look forward to experimenting with it over the summer. I think it would benefit from having a battery half the size that could be fully charged in half the time. It now tempts me to get a second larger solar panel to keep the laptop charged over the summer months.