Waiting

Reading Time: 3 minutes
As I write this I am waiting for my Apple Laptop to complete two tasks. The first task is to convert all my audible books from AAX to MP3 format. This is taking days to complete because I have over 500 books and my mac book pro is slow, due to it being from 2016.

## Very Slow Time Machine

I’m also waiting for my mac book pro to backup to a one terabyte external HD, before repurposing a one terabyte SSD. It’s a waste to have an SSD working as a time machine backup when it could be used for more interesting tasks.

## Flickr Backup

I recently downloaded all of my photos from flickr. I want to consolidate my photos from iPhoto, now Photos, with Picasa photos, Now also Photos (but by Google), as well as by flickr, which is still just flickr. I checked and PhotoPrism is written so that it can get metadata from Flickr export files and populate PhotoPrism.

## Unzipping

At some point I need to spend several hours unzipping over one hundred and fourty files. I want to use a Linux system because with Linux images are unzipped into a single folder structure, whereas with MacOS each zip file becomes an individual folder, and when you have 140 zips you don’t want to go through 140 folders to reconcile all the files into the structure they should be in.

This is important, because exported image files are organised by folders, but their creation date and modified date correspond to when the zip was created, rather than the files. This means that I need Photoprism to see the photo files and find the JSON data that goes with them. I wanted to reorganise my files manually, by date, but I can’t.

## PhotoPrism Duplicate Detection

there is a silver lining. PhotoPrism is designed not only so that it can see the photos and read the json files with exif information but it can also detect duplicates. I was going to do it manually because I thought it would be faster, but it isn’t faster, and could become very messy later, if I mess around with photo files. JSON files will no longer have the right information to go with the photo files.

## Replacing Time Machine and Google Backup with NextCloud

In theory I don’t need to wait for Time Machine to backup to an external hard drive because I could setup Nextcloud to take care of backing up for me. I will do that, once this backup is over.

## Ubuntu From Target Drive

In the past I have run Linux on a mac using the Target Drive mode but the issue is that you need to shut down the machine if you want to move it. With an SSD I could theoretically move the computer whilst it’s hibernating or sleeping. It would give me the flexibility of having a Linux system, without having to wipe MacOS.

I want to wipe MacOS from that drive anyway, but first I want to ensure that Ubuntu or another version of Linux runs well before taking the plunge.

## And Finally

### Time Machine

Time Machine is demonstrating why it makes sense to replace it with a self-hosted instance of Next Cloud. It shouldn’t take a day and a half or more to backup a laptop. With Next Cloud I will have an always on backup of files from the laptop.

### AudioBookShelf

Yesterday I moved audiobooks and podcasts from the Pi SD card to an external hard drive and it worked flawlessly so I know that this migration is easy, as long as I update the docker-compose file.

### PhotoPrism

At the moment I have a photoprism library, that I will need to reconcile with my flickr and local versions of photos. I know that some duplicates remain so the question is whether to place flickr in one folder within import, and the local versions of photos in another folder, and import both at once, or should I import local files first, and then move the flickr files?

### Time Consuming

I have been collecting files for at least two decades. By experimenting with self hosted versions of PhotoPrism, Nextcloud and more I was pushed to clear the chaos in my drive collection. It has taken a lot of time but the result is that I will soon have a few drives free to re-use for smaller projects.

## A Good Feeling

It takes hours to move files from smaller drives to larger drives, and to detect and remove duplicates. It can feel overwhelming and tedious but in the end you get something worthwhile. I now have all my photos in one place organised chronologically, all my videos across two drives, organised chronologically and soon all my audiobooks and favourite podcasts organised.

When all your files are across several drives you lose track of where things are. Now, I might spend hours waiting for files to move from drive to drive, and for photoprism or openaudible to convert files but the result is that I regain access to files that were lost in a chaos of drives and duplicates.

I also regain several terabytes of space on hard drives, providing space to store and work on new projects.