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iPhoto 5 crash on import bug solved

I was having one hell of a time troubleshooting an iPhoto 5 crash on import problem. The images were imported to the proper folder, but after the crash were not showing up in the iPhoto database. Re-importing would cause duplicates and more problems.

I rebuilt the database, first using the built in command and then manually (actually re-importing all 14,000 some odd photos. The issue was still happening regularly. I changed camera cords, but then noticed it was happening when I imported from the finder.

Finally I started looking at the Console logs. It was crashing with after writing an error re not being about to malloc. This led me to investigate my Virtual Memory setup. I had the swap on another drive (internal). Apparently iPhoto 5 does not like this and if it tries to allocate virtual memory it dies. I reset the swap to the default location. Problem solved.

I tried this on a second machine to see if it was a bug or something on that particular drive, the crash started happening on that second machine. I think it's a bug.

Lacie d2 Bigger Disk Extreme 1TB Mini Review

It's big. About the mass of 3 250 LaCies.

It's noisy. Mine sounds vaguely like a dish washer on low. Much noiser than the 250s...even several of them together.

Speed is less than spec. I get 17.61MB/sec Uncached radom read w/ 256K blocks, 16.21 MB/sec unchached random write.

44.08 mb/sec uncached sequential write. 61.68mb/sec uncached sequential read.

Sounds pretty good, but it's about the same as the cheaper non-"extreme" 250's.

Going from one firewire drive to another firewire drive is very very slow. Haven't speced it out, but s l o w.

Would I buy another one. Probably not. The noise is the real dealbreaker.

iPhoto 2005 Review

We finally received our copies of iPhoto 2005. around here. Some quick notes after installing it on my own machine:

The program upgrades your existing iPhoto. No clean install option (you have to delete your old iphoto if you want a clean install).

Upon first startup my old thumbnails had to be converted. My library has 12,314 files. The conversion took 25 minutes on a 1.8mhz G5.

When it finished, my new iPhoto crashed. This happened again after restarts.

I determined the problem was one or more of the many plugins I had used in my old iphoto. So I threw out the old program and the old prefs and reinstalled.

This time everything went smoothly. Startup to screen with thumbnails took a long time (over a minute), but once up scrolling on my large library was much smoother than with the old version of the program.

The search box is welcome. It will search for terms in tags, in roll titles, and photo titles. Unfortunately there is still no simple or handy way to enter tags. Keyword assistant doesn't seem to work with the new iphoto... Apple could learn quite a bit from flickr when it comes to tags and tagging. They could also learn some lessons from flickr on date views (Flickr's organizer is leagues ahead of iphoto...and believe it or not, it's written in flash). In fact Apple should just buy flickr outright and replace the photo area of .mac with it.

Speed is still an issue. Scrolling through and selecting photos is fine. The problem comes when you change a date, a keyword, or make an edit. The program seems to write files after every edit. Fine with small images, a big issue when your images are 10megs or 20megs. Also the interface is sluggish when you have complicated views. For example if you are viewing by film roll and have some rolls open, some closed and are moving around with the keyboard, the program struggles to keep up.

There is no simple way to batch change dates. This is something I do all the time and it's a bit of a pet peeve.

Batch change does not include keywords. In order to add a keyword to a photo you must add a keyword in preferences and then get info on a photo and select that keyword. Obviously Apple doesn't think of keywords as tags... this implementation like the previous one is clumsy.

The best new feature is the addition of folders. Finally I can find things (I think hierarchically). One nice feature is that selecting a folder shows all items inside all subfolders. This allows for fine grained control over the set of images displayed.... What's lacking? A simple way to sort lists of folders/albums.

The new edit tools are certainly welcome, although they could be much better. I would have appreciated a set of pre-canned controls for common problems (interior lighting, neon lighting, etc). Also I wish there were some more advanced controls (like the shadow/highlight control in Photoshop or the healing brush). Still the new controls mean that I will go to photoshop much less.

Email export still doesn't allow for control over sizes.

I found the new slideshow a bit confusing. Automatic Ken Burns Effect is selected in preferences and then there is a second box for Ken Burns Effect. on each slide. Huh? I don't understand what the big deal is with the Ken Burns Effect to begin with.

The "Share" menu is confusing. Unlike virtually every other Mac program "Print" is in the Share menu as is "Export". Why Apple is eating it's own good HI rules is beyond me.

I also had a chance to try out Picasa 2 today. While I won't be using it much (I do most of my photo stuff on my Mac and it's PC only). I think it's generally ahead of Photoshop when it comes to managing large photo collections. I basically agree with this review by David Pogue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/technology/circuits/20stat.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1106273179-LG6QMBjfLRYbnJ34G28Zlg&pagewanted=all&position=

All in all, this version of iPhoto is definitely as step in the right direction but far from the major leap I had hoped for.

Flickr

S & M at school005
Originally uploaded by Africanfuturist.

If you want to see the future of the web go to www.flickr.com and browse around a bit. Flickr is a community based site where people can upload their photos, drawings, and scans. Doesn't sound like much as there are many sites that allow you to upload photos, but flickr does 3 other things that make all the difference. It allows you to see what other people are uploading, by default it allows you to share your own photos, and it lets you add metadata. So think of it as one part ofoto, one part friendster one part google.

Viewing other people's photos instantly puts you into a stream of images from around the world. So there is always something going on. Check back in 5 minutes and the site might have an entirely different vibe. You can join the stream or not by sharing your images.

But the real genius of flickr is that it uses metadata. Meta data is extra information that makes other data useful. Meta data in itunes is the name of the song, the name of the album, the year of the recording. Metadata on a photo is the camera info (date, exposure) as well as info that you put in (mexico family house). These bits of data are called tags, and one of the best things about flickr is that you can browse tags either by going to the main tag page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ or by putting in individual tags. Here's what happens if you put in a tag for jump. Don't know if it makes sense yet, but if not just hop over there and try it out. Give it some time, you'll like it.

One of the great OS 9 utilities for those of us with large screens was TaskMenuBar. It was simple it put small 16x16 icons of all running apps up in the menu bar. This allowed one click application switching without taking up any screen real estate. I have yet to find a solution for app swtiching under OS X that offers me the same one-click, no screen realestate, visual feedback convenience. OS X shareware guys? Anybody? Come on this can't be that difficult. My $20 is in the mail the minute it works.



Under X I use Launch Bar as a launcher/switcher. Sometimes for certain projects I'll use drag thing and create a process dock to mimic taskmenubar but it's on the workspace and invariably gets in the way.

Limiting Nikon Scan 4 Processor Usage under OS X

This is kind of nuts, but it works if you have a fast machine and plenty of memory.

I've been annoyed that Nikon Scan 4 is hogging my G5's CPU taking 60-70% even when in the background (and even when it is simply driving the scanner and not actually processing anything). My guess is that the software was a crappy quick and dirty Carbon port... It has the same clunky feel of many early carbon ports like Internet Explorer or Remote Access 1.0. Anyway it sucks (and it tends to crash if the scanner runs into a jam... )

These 2 solutions work surprisingly well:

1. Install the windows version of Nikon Scan under Virtual PC 7, then set the amount of background cpu VPC 7 uses to something small. Scan away. This is surpringly effective. You can save all the files to a shared folder that resides on your OS X drive to avoid the hassle of having to drag files back and forth. This cuts down background CPU usage to 20-30% and allows to to batch process slides in the background without photoshop stutters.

2. Run the OS 9 version of Nikon Scan under Classic. This has the advantage of running native and not having the VPC overhead. You can use a freeware utility to control the amount of processor juice classic is allowed to gobble up.

Both the Windows and OS 9 versions of the software are decent so you also get software that doesn't crash to boot.

review: Nikon Coolscan 5000/ w/ SF-210 Slide Feeder

Well not really a review of the Nikon, Coolscan 5000, but some more observations.

1. I had to trade in my original slide feeder (it eventually stopped being recognized). The second feeder is more reliable.

2. I've now figured out how to tweak the settings to get the best possible scans. Don't believe the scan time posted on the literature. With all the settings on so that an average slide is processed for dust and scratches, it takes 2-3 minutes/ per scan. So doing a batch of 50 is s l o w.

3. Vuescan software (http://www.hamrick.com/) plays much nicer with your machine (no crashes, it's multi-threaded so it can walk and chew gum at the same time, and it's not such a horrible processor hog), but the files it produces are slightly less nice. If you are scanning for the web, no problem, but if you are scanning for print, the Nikon software makes better images. At least that's my initial conclusion. With some tweaking of the vuescan software things might get better. Scanning times are just as slow, but image processing is a bit faster. If I get motivated, I might do some side/side comparisons with clocked speed tests.

4. The scanner does a shockingly good job with overexposed slides. With some tweaking in photoshop you can really make good images out of slides that you might have otherwise thought were wast. Underexposed slides are more of a problem.

5. If your slides aren't terribly dusty you can try importing them without dust reduction and then batch fix the images later in photoshop using the free Polaroid dust and scratch remover. Free download from their website.

Nikon Super CoolScan 5000

If you are ever in the market for a film/slide scanner you'll find that the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 is reviewed over and over again as being the best deal it's it's price category. Many reviewers wax poetic about it being speedy and reliable with well written software. My question is in relation to what?!

Here's the real deal:

-These scanners are slow. It often takes more than 2 minutes to scan most slides. (If you do processing on images, the scan times increases over the stated time also the the time it takes to focus and calibrate is not counted in he manufacturers scan time).

-The software (at least on OS X) is buggy and crashes often. There is no support email for bug reports.

-The software is a processor hog and ties up the computer.

-The software doesn't follow OS X HI standards.

-The software is unthreaded which means that it can't do 2 things at once.

-The Digital ICE part of the package is not explained thoroughly.

-There are plenty of options to control image quality, but not enough to control how the image is saved and at what resolution.

-There aren't nearly enough pre-canned settings for common situations.

-The sliders are often so fine grained that a slight motion can have a huge effect.

-The automatic feed attachment (Nikon SF-210) basically doesn't work with old slides that that have bent mounts or curved edges. This means that it's hard to just load 50 slides and just walk away.

The ultimate question I suppose is, would I buy this scanner if I had to do it over again. I'm not sure if I would

iTunes DRM... the long view

1. I have records that are 50 years old. Ideally I'd like to keep my itunes music... well forever. In 50 years does Apple really expect that the current format they are using will still be usable? Will they still be authorizing computers to check if songs were legally purchased? The whole thing is rather Rube Goldbergian.

2. Playlists are now limited to 7 burns. Sounds reasonable. But see #1. What about over the course of a lifetime. It would be much more fair if we were limited to say 7 burns a year. But that would also be rather Rube Goldbergian... How to check what year we are burning in...

3. Computers change. Formats change. Life moves on. Over the years I have copied my records to tape and then to CD and now to MP3. The important thing was that I had a good original to use for those copies. What happens when I can't play an album of AAC files on my computer because of some DRM issue and have to revert to a burned CD of those files to move the music to the next platform. AAC is already degraded... it is degraded further when it is burned... eventually the copy of the copy of the copy will sound like garbage. Not good.

What to do. Well for now I've stuck to buying CDs and records and I rip everything myself. It's old fashioned, but I think I'll be happier this way in the long run.

Note that these problems aren't Apple specific. Almost all DRMs have some version of these issues...

Earthlink SMTP from Abroad

Recently I've had problems recently sending Earthlink email via Entourage from abroad.

2 solutions

1. Use webmail. You can use Earthlink's webmail (lame service btw) or mail2web (http://www.mail2web.com) which I like because you can easily set up an account with multiple POP emails.

or

2. Set the Earthlink SMTP server to smtpauth.earthlink.net and then push the "click here for advanced sending options" and click "SMTP server requires authentication", and then Log on using Account ID = your full email address and your password = your password.

Pretty easy and awfully nice to check your email in a cafe in Florence or a beach in Belize. Surprisingly I am finding open airport networks everywhere I am going. Using a little keychain Wifi Finder helps: http://www.kensington.com/html/3720.html

Solving Airport 3.4 Issues

All around the Mac web there are reports of problems with airport after Apple's recent 3.4 update and after a recent security upgrade.

There main issues are:

-Weakened Airport Signal

-Loss of Internet Connection (but not airport signal) when connecting to multiple streams of data (like if you are downloading several things at once). The only ways to restore the internet connection are to reboot, 'sleep and wake up', or manually kill airport in the terminal and restart it there.

-SMTP issues.

I have seen the first 2 problems on a variety of machines and believe I have a fix.

1. Inside Library/Preferences in your home folder delete com.apple.systempreferences.plist and com.apple.airport.adminutility.plist.

2. Upgrade to Airport 3.4.1

3. Reboot

SMTP problems were solved by quitting Entourage, restarting with the option key held down, and rebuilding the Entourage database. On some machines the smtp settings had to be re-entered.

Sorry no fix for Mail yet.