Monthly Archives: February 2015

February 18, 2015 · 23:08

Landlubber!

It’s 22:50 already? What happened to the day, and the night as well? Oh, yeah, got that done, and feel good about slaying that dragon at last, and the Kings won again tonight (six in a row, back into a playoff spot, woo hoo!), but there are no more functional brain cells in the creative part of my grey matter.

Back to the Silly Word Flashcard deck!

Tonight’s word is “landlubber.” I’m guessing that most of us know what it means, but it’s in here because it sound silly, not because we don’t know what it is. (Unlike “smellfungus!”) It’s defined as “someone who doesn’t know about boats or hasn’t been out to sea.” Fair enough.

The first thing that grabs me about the other information on the card is that under “Similar Words” is says, “This word is one of a kind!”

I beg to differ.

There might not be any similar words pertaining to the sea, but there are plenty of words for someone who doesn’t know about a particular aspect of life. The first thing that comes to my mind is what I was called (among other things) when I moved to Vermont at age 13. In Vermont, if you come from outside, particularly from another state or, worse, from one of the big cities like Boston or New York City, you are a “flatlander.” It’s not a compliment.

Terms such as “carpetbagger” or “snowbird” indicate someone from outside the area, often referring to someone coming in to take advantage of the locals or take away something they’re not entitled to. But “landlubber” and “flatlander” refer to someone without experience, with an overtone indicating that in their ignorance they’re missing out on something wonderful and glorious and should be pitied or scorned because of it.

The second thing that I see is the “See Also” recommendation — “Cats.” There’s a subtle humor in there which I find charming.

Finally, I recall that in several science fiction novels there are created terms that would be the space age equivalent of “landlubber,” indicating with the same scorn someone who has not been off-planet. “Dirtgrubber” or something of the same ilk.

Any of my Vermont friends have any further insight on the use of “flatlander?” Any other terms that anyone can think of to fit into the same category as flatlander and landlubber?

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Filed under LA Kings, Paul, Science Fiction

February 17, 2015 · 22:08

Panorama: Hannibal, Missouri

My last stitched panorama post was also from Missouri and also featured the Mississippi River. It’s a sheer coincidence, other than the fact that it’s a part of the world I grew up in and seem to visit more often than not. Not a theme. (Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.)

Where last time I showed Chain Of Rocks Bridge near St. Louis, this time (a different trip) we were up by Hannibal. If you’re familiar at all with classic American literature, you know what Hannibal represents and why it’s a huge tourist draw.

When I was a kid growing up in Kansas City we visited Hannibal a couple of times. I remember those trips very fondly, especially since I was a voracious reader from an early age and was well familiar with “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn.” Even in the mid-1960s Hannibal was a tourist town playing up its history as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens (aka “Mark Twain”) and I was thrilled to get a chance to see the actual sites which many of the scenes in the books were based on. (The infamous cave where Tom and Becky Thatcher got lost is fantastic!)

This panoramic picture was taken in August, 2007. (Click to enlarge.) This time the whole family was visiting my son, who was stationed nearby at Scott Air Force Base. This view is from the “Lover’s Leap” outlook, from which you get a fantastic view of the town of Hannibal and the river that is its lifeblood. You can see the paddlewheel boat that gives tours up and down the river – we took the evening dinner cruise. The food was okay, the cruise was wonderful.

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This panorama comes from fifteen images of 3456 x 2304 pixels (8 megapixels each) taken with a Canon Rebel XT DSLR, combined into a trimmed image of 24,357 x 2203 pixels (53.6 megapixels).

The other vivid memory of this day came after dark when we were headed back to the St. Louis area. We were on a state highway (taking the scenic route back) rolling through farmland. We ran into a couple miles of HUGE clouds of bugs, tens of thousands of them smacking into the windshield so that the wipers could barely keep up. It was unusual, fascinating, and utterly grotesque.

 

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Filed under Family, Panorama, Photography, Travel

February 16, 2015 · 23:38

Drones

The FAA has issued some preliminary outlines for regulations it wants to put on remote-control drones. Folks are starting to have all kinds of concerns over their use, whether or not they’re safe, what privacy concerns they may pose, and so on.

The short version is:

  • Daylight only
  • Must remain in sight of the operator
  • Max speed: 100 mph
  • Max altitude: 500 ft
  • Max weight: 55 pounds
  • Operators must be certified, at least 17 years old, pass periodic reviews to stay certified, and be vetted by the TSA

I’m sure there’s more to it, but let me share a few thoughts (in no particular order) given that initial information.

  1. There’s got to be a distinction between “hobby-class” drones and “military-class” drones. (I made up those labels, but I think you get the drift.) The rules for a 50 pound, $1,000 machine, bought through Amazon or at a R/C hobby shop, with 15-minutes of fuel don’t make sense to apply to a 5,000 pound, $17M+ machine, built for the military, with a 24-hour fuel load. (See my pictures of Ikahna from the NASA Social at Armstrong.)
  2. Having seen what NASA is working on at Armstrong in order to bring Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s = drones) into the National Airspace System (NAS), there’s every expectation that large UAV’s will be integrated into the system within the next few years. It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of when, not if.
  3. But it sounds like NASA’s getting ready for some version of  the “military-class” UAVs (possibly both military and civilian, i.e., commercial), not “hobby-class” drones. (I’m no expert by any means, but phrasing that way might be closer to the facts than what I’m seeing in the press about this.) If these new proposed regulations apply to the latter group, fine.
  4. These proposals are a start.
  5. Enforcement’s going to be a real bitch. These things can be small, zippy, and if you’re on the ground being bothered by one, there won’t be any good way to ID it. If you see a plane or helicopter going overhead, you can get the “N-number” to ID it, or at least describe it. A small drone at a couple hundred feet is going to be a dot. If you see it at all, you probably won’t even be able to tell if it’s got four or eight or sixteen rotors, if it’s got a camera, or what kind of other equipment. Unless you see someone launching and/or retrieving it, you’ll never know who it was.
  6. They need to put a 100% no-fly zone around any and all airports. Let’s say, two miles, or better yet, three. As a private pilot, I’ve landed at night in early July and had fireworks bursting all around me like I was on a bombing run deep in enemy territory. Not fun. I’ve also come way to close to sea gulls and other birds, which can leave you really dead in a small plane, or even in a large one. (Ask Captain Sullenberger.) Smacking into a 5-pound drone at 100 knots isn’t going to be any different from smacking into a pigeon or seagull. I doubt too many of the hobby-class drones will go up to 1,000 feet or more, but when you’re landing and at 500 feet on short final, a collision would be a disaster.
  7. While you’re at it, put no-fly zones around large sporting events and places like amusement parks. Get a couple dozen (or more) drones buzzing around over the Rose Bowl during the UCLA-USC game and then have a couple of them collide and come down in the crowd…
  8. What happens the first time that someone actually uses one to kill someone or cause a huge problem? For example, what if someone starts buzzing trucks on the freeway until they get one to swerve and crash, causing a multi-vehicle, multi-fatality accident that ties up the interstate for hours? What happens when someone (certified or not) flies up over a hostage situation or a major fire and gets tangled up with a police or news helicopter?
  9. There are already people loading good-sized hobby-class drones with drugs and flying them across the border from Mexico into the US. If the cops knew about it they couldn’t or didn’t stop it – it only hit the news when one crashed. Do they really think that the people doing that will pay attention to any new regulations?
  10. On the other hand, while everyone’s all up in arms about the possible problems with hobby-class drones, there are also some pretty neat things that can be done. From real-estate sales videos (something that they’re used for a lot here in LA already), photography for getting a new viewpoint or photographing an event such as a wedding, monitoring a disaster (I’m sure fire fighters on a large forest blaze would love to have fast, accurate aerial views), news reporting — there will be a million other good, legitimate, honest, incredibly useful applications.
  11. They’re a tool, just like any other. Used correctly and intelligently, they can do amazing things. Use stupidly and irresponsibly, they can be the cause of a disaster.

Pandora’s Box is open on this one. It’s going to be interesting, to say the least.

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Filed under Disasters, Flying, Politics

February 15, 2015 · 22:52

Air Traffic Control As Entertainment

My favorite airline to fly is United, in large part because often (not always) they put the ground-to-air radio traffic from the cockpit on one of the audio channels. It’s at the pilot’s discretion, but they have it more often than not.

I just loved listening to this when I was flying long, long before I started my flight training. At that time I didn’t know much about what was going on, since it really is something of a different language. Despite that, or possibly because of that, I felt like I was getting a peek into a world that I always wanted to be a part of.

Pre-internet, pre-having-my-own-radio, this was the only time I could hear the Air Traffic Control (ATC) chatter. These days, even if you don’t have your own radio, you can listen in at any time online.

Check out http://www.liveatc.net to hear it for free any time. Pick an airport near to you, or pick one far away. If you really want to follow what’s going on, load up http://www.flightaware.com and pick the same airport, you’ll be able to follow the radar tracks of the all of the incoming and outbound flights and match them up visually with what you’re hearing on the radio feed.

If you pick a large airport (O’Hare, Boston, JFK, Dulles, LAX, and so on) you’ll get a list of possible frequencies for different services. Approach. Departure. Clearance. Ramp. Tower. Ground. Just pick the Tower frequency, this will be the one giving planes their final landing clearance and telling departing flights when to take the runway. If you pick a smaller airport (say, CMA, which is Camarillo, CA where I hang out) there will only be one frequency handling all of those different tasks.

If you’re a pilot or if you just learn to follow what’s going on (it’s not THAT hard, I learned it after all), it can be a wonderful “background noise” source. For me in the spring and summer, baseball games do that, a familiar pattern, cadence, flow that’s soothing and comforting. When they’re not playing baseball, ATC will do the trick.

It’s like comfort food for the ears and nerves.

Tonight, out of curiosity at first, I’ve been listening to the tower at Boston’s Logan International. Of course, Boston’s gotten slammed with one blizzard after another and Logan was shut down for many hours, leaving quite the mess with cancelled flights, stranded travelers, and delays across the country.

I checked at first just to see if they were open again. They are, sort of. It sounds like they’ve only got one runway open (33L), only a few taxiways open, many gates still blocked by snow, and they’re still getting lots of ice and blowing snow which makes braking somewhat dicey at times.

With just one runway open, they’re using it for both takeoffs and landings, slowing things down a lot. They normally would use one runway for landing and another for takeoffs so the two activities don’t interfere with each other.

With all of that, the guy on the mike tonight should get a freakin’ medal! I don’t know who he is, but I’ve been listening for a couple of hours. He’s had to deal with one mess after the other, and it’s great to hear a patient professional doing his job and doing it well. The pilots also do their part, but this guy just gets one after another after another.

Also fun are some of the “non-standard” exchanges. For example, an incoming flight being told that the gate they’re assigned to is already occupied and there are multiple planes waiting for an open gate said, “And the hits just keep coming!”

I also appreciate the pilots that just drop in a quick “thank you” or “appreciate your help” as they’re departing the area. When flying I’ve always tried to do that (time permitting), I feel that it helps to keep things human.

As a pilot who hasn’t flown in a while, listening to ATC gets my head back into the game, reminds me of what I’m missing, and lets me practice anticipating the responses from the tower and the corresponding transmissions the pilot needs to make. That’s useful, and fun.

Check it out! If you have questions about terms being used or what’s going on, ask away! I’ll be glad to help.

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Filed under Computers, Flying

February 14, 2015 · 22:26

Valentine’s Day 2015

In the Willett household there’s a long-standing and wise tradition, which I (of course) wrote about last year. I just went back and read it, still like what I wrote, so I’ll just leave it as “an exercise for the student” to go back and read that.

Meanwhile, not being blind to what the day can mean to other couples, particularly those who are in a new relationship, I would just like to hope that all of you feel the emotional fireworks going off when you’re with the one you love. Young, old, straight, gay, black, white, we all just want that one special connection.

Reading the common cinematic euphemism into the imagery of fireworks is, again, left as an exercise to the student.

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Filed under Fireworks, Photography

February 13, 2015 · 23:23

The Digital Dark Ages Start Here!

I really am thrilled with the way the idiot silicon slave decides to go on strike just when I’m trying to wrap up for the evening with a dozen different windows open and browser tabs all over the place. No warning, no little “heads up!” Just all of a sudden the cursor stops moving. Try this, do that, swear at it a bit, flip it the bird, all to no avail. (Of course I had been backing everything up as I went through the day. More or less.)

Hit the power button and hold it for seven seconds…

Now every program on the disk wants to tell me it’s got an update to install before I do anything else. Yeah, right, I’m not going to fall for that one again! This isn’t my first rodeo!

Best of all, the first thing that pops up when I start loading programs again is a news headline about how Vint Cerf of Amazon is warning of an upcoming “digital dark age.”

You don’t have to tell me twice. If you need me, I’ll be over here printing out the Internet. In duplicate. On acid free paper.

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Filed under Computers

February 12, 2015 · 23:21

Flash Fiction: Beach Road (Act One)

This week at Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge, we’re back to one of my favorite games, the group sequential writing project. We’ve done these a couple of times (starting here and here) and I’ve enjoyed them a great deal.

The concept is simple – this week we all write the beginning of a story. Next week, we’ll all look through everyone else’s Act One posts, pick one we like, and write the Act Two for it, advancing the story, but not finishing it. Then Act Three, followed by Act Four where we’re now working with roughly 3,000 words from three other writers and finding a way to wrap it up.

This time around we’re allowed to make each act a bit longer than before, up to 1,000 words. I got this scene in my head full blown as I was having an orange at lunch and I really like how it turned out. I’m looking forward to seeing what someone else can do with it next week!

BEACH ROAD (Act One)

She peeled the orange slowly, cautiously. Her eyes were moving constantly, wary, nervous, darting between the fruit and her surroundings.

She had found the orange in the bottom of a rank and disgusting refrigerator. Everything else in there had long ago gone bad, rotting long before the door had been left ajar by some previous looter. At least one person had cleaned all of the canned goods out of the kitchen, leaving nothing but broken glass and debris.

Somehow the small fruit had been overlooked, and despite the fungal paradise above it, it seemed to be more or less edible. Four months ago she wouldn’t have touched it on a dare, but today it was a feast.

Eating carefully to make sure not a drop of juice was spilled, she watched the sand dunes for any sign of unusual movement. A few gulls wheeled and drifted on the breeze, some of them diving into the surf for fish, but all of them too leery to let her get anywhere near.

The sudden loss of scraps and garbage as a food source had decimated the gull and pigeon populations. Being trusting, fat, and slow had not helped. But the survivors were no longer any of those things. That made them much harder to catch.

Just like her.

Shouldering her pack, she started south along the beachfront road, keeping her head on a swivel. Ahead, behind, to her left. Occasionally she would glance to the right, checking the beach and surf. She had never known an attack to come from the sea. But there was always a first time.

Travelling along the coast had its benefits and its hazards. It did let her focus on just three directions, but it also could leave her trapped against the sea. So far it had worked. Opportunities to experiment with strategies were limited. The price of failure was extreme.

After the road rose for a mile, climbing a hundred feet above the beach, she reached the top of a small bluff. Ahead, the road sloped down into a large saltwater marsh. A long causeway took the highway straight across to the hills on the far side.

She got down on the ground to avoid being silhouetted against the sky. A precious pair of binoculars let her slowly survey the whole marsh. There was no sign of anything moving other than the sea birds scattered across the mud, weeds, and tide pools. It must be near low tide now, with only a winding channel coming from inland betraying where the fresh water was meeting the salt.

On the far side, the opposite bluff looked much like the one she was on now. She couldn’t see where the road went once it topped the rise there, but in the distance she could see the coast curving away to the west. She was pretty sure San Diego would be out there somewhere, but in the afternoon haze she couldn’t see any signs to show her where.

Turning her attention back to the bridge, she looked it up and down for any signs of trouble. There were a dozen or more cars scattered along its length, some parked, some crashed, but their arrangement never blocked the bridge completely. It didn’t appear there were any other problems with the route.

At least, no problems other than the fact she would be exposed to anyone else watching the area, and easily trapped out in the open with precious few options once she was crossing. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…

Packing everything back up and making sure it was secure, she balanced the pack carefully in case she had to start running while wearing it. She also got herself mentally prepared to abandon it if it came to that. She checked to make sure her knives were ready, then set off down the hill.

There was enough low brush to give her some cover away from the road and the slope wasn’t severe, so she stayed off the road. While the grassy brush didn’t give her a tremendous amount of cover, it also didn’t give much cover to anything else.

Reaching the bottom of the hill she found a small stream, a branch off from the main river snaking through the weeds to the sea. She took a moment to drink and fill her water bottles. The extra weight would be a problem if she had to run, but the extra water might save her life if it stayed dry on the other side.

Crouching in the brush at the side of the first causeway segment, she paused one last time to check for any signs of danger. She couldn’t see anything moving other than the birds, including the largest flock of blue herons she had ever seen. At least they were doing better than the gulls and pigeons.

Listening and hearing nothing but the sound of the surf a quarter-mile away and her own nervous breathing, she prepared to make her move. Keep moving, keep steady, don’t run and waste energy until you had to. Stay alert and keep track of anything that might serve as cover if needed. Be quick, but don’t hurry.

Just as she started to move, a distant sound caught her attention. Puzzled, she stopped for a few seconds before scrambling back to her previous position in the bushes. Straining to hear over the soft sounds of the wind and distant surf, the metallic sound drifted and faded before coming back from somewhere far ahead of her. It started to slowly grow louder.

Pulling out the binoculars again, she scanned the road and the far hillsides for the source of the unfamiliar sound, but found nothing. Suddenly a glint in the air caught her attention and she shifted her binoculars to the spot. With a gasp she recognized the sound and was torn between being elated and terrified.

The helicopter was flying just a few hundred feet above the road, coming straight for where she was hiding.

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Filed under Writing

February 11, 2015 · 23:01

Boston (Part One)

Without really planning it or meaning to, all of my “couple times a month” travel picture posts for 2014 were about my three-country, three-kids, three-weeks tour. (Great planning, subconscious!) Starting in Shanghai on January 21st, going to Seoul on March 17th, then spending half the year going on about Kyoto, finally ending on December 9th. I hope you enjoyed the tour. I most certainly enjoyed the trip.

But I realized that between one thing and the other (lots of Comet Lovejoy and NASA Socials, so I’m not complaining!) I haven’t done any travel pictures in a while. After a whole year of pictures from Asia, let’s get back to the United States.

As you may have heard, the city of Boston is buried somewhere under approximately a half-mile of snow this year. Growing up in Vermont, I had occasion to make many trips to Boston and it’s a favorite place. My last visit there was during the late summer (no snow in sight), playing “arm candy” for The Long-Suffering Wife when she was at a business conference. While she was conferencing and meeting one day, I went and walked The Freedom Trail.

The Trail is only 2.5 miles, mostly flat, and has one historic site after the other. If you’re just there for the afternoon, I guess you could do it in a couple hours, but I recommend you spend at least a full day. Start early, take your time, dawdle, poke into side streets, find interesting places to eat, and enjoy one of America’s great cities.

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Our hotel was just a block or two away, so I started at the Boston Common. A lovely park, a great place to chill for lunch if you work downtown, and I’m sure a great place to go sledding right now if you can get there. I liked seeing the boxes of street chalk left along with an invitation to draw whatever you wanted on the path.

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I’m a sucker for old sculptures, fountains, and other artwork. This is the Brewer Fountain, a gift to the city in 1868, a copy of a fountain from the Paris World Fair of 1855. At the time I was there it wasn’t functioning, but it was restored in 2009 and re-dedicated in 2010. I’ll have to go back and see it fountaining.

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The statues are of figures from Greek mythology and are obviously more influenced by their French origins than any Puritanical New England standards. Maybe the guy on the left is supposed to be in a contemplative pose, but it seems pretty obvious what he’s contemplating!

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The “Shaw – 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Infantry” memorial was created by Augustus Saint Gaudens, one of America’s premier sculptors of the late 19th Century. It shows Shaw leading his regiment, the white officers at the front and the black volunteers in the back, off to battle in the Civil War.  The memorial is at the north end of Boston Commons, across the street from…

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…the Massachusetts State House. A monumental structure when built in 1798, designed by Charles Bullfinch, located on land donated by John Hancock, it’s still the location of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Chamber. But I suspect that all of those far more modern white buildings hidden in the back are where the hundreds and hundreds of offices are.

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Just across the street is the Park Street Congregational Church. Built in 1809, it was the site of William Lloyd Garrison’s first anti-slavery speech in 1829, kicking off the emancipation movement which thirty-two years later would be a major factor leading to the Civil War. There are a whole list of other historic events and speeches made here (for example, the song “America” was first sung here on July 4, 1831) and the church is still in use. Services every Sunday morning at 8:30, 11:00, and afternoon at 4:00, and 6:00. (That’s as of 2008, check before you show up this week.)

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Next door to the Park Street Church is the Granary Burial Ground which dates back to 1660. Another thing I love is visiting old cemeteries and seeing old gravestones and monuments. (Remember Rockingham Meeting House?) In this particular burial ground lie three signers of the Declaration of Independence (John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine) as well as seven former Massachusetts governors and assorted lieutenant governors and judges. Also buried here is Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, who was a key figure in the Salem Witch trials, sending twenty people to their deaths in 1692. Near the entrance by the Park Street Church are the remains of those killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770.

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The headstone for Samuel Adams, third governor of Massachusetts and Revolutionary War rabble rouser. While I’ve always been interested in his cousin, John Adams, Samuel also had a fascinating role to play in instigating the movement to break the colonies away from England. (He has nothing to do with the beer.)

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The headstone of Paul Revere, remembered for his midnight ride to warn of approaching British troops. He was also a successful silversmith and one of the leaders of the American Revolution. (He has nothing to do with Paul Revere and the Raiders.)

Now we’re on our way, but are we sprinting or dawdling? If sprinting, you probably didn’t stop to peruse the headstones (I was there twenty minutes or so, but could go back for hours). We’re only about three blocks from the start in Boston Commons, time to head north on Tremont Street.

 

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Filed under Photography, Travel

February 10, 2015 · 22:32

A Really Good Photo Library Program?

Does anyone know one?

As I might have mentioned, I TAKE A LOT OF PHOTOS. In addition, I’m also something of a pack rat with electronic images that I find “interesting.” Having an iPad and an iPhone have only made it easier to save “interesting” photos and harder to keep them sorted.

In this case, “interesting” means:

  • Anything from NASA
  • Anything related to astronomy
  • Anything related to space exploration
  • Anything related to airplanes
  • Anything related to my extended family
  • Great pictures from my far-flung friends
  • Great action shots from my favorite sports teams
  • Great looking travel photographs (@BEAUTIFULPICS on Twitter, for example)
  • Any cartoon or joke or meme that can make me snort
  • Anything I might want as a reference later, for example, something that might relate to a blog post entry I’m pondering
  • Interesting charts & graphs for topics that interest me
  • Interesting news photos or political photos, particularly about causes I’m passionate about
  • Iconic topical or historical pictures that I might want to use in a snarky or smartass fashion later
  • Just about anything else that tickles my fancy at the moment and I think that I might want to share, use, or repost later

I understand how difficult it is to get a computer program that can “recognize” what a photo’s subject is. If I could write that algorithm I would be a very rich man, as in “Zuckerberg” rich. That may be what I want, but it’s not what I’m asking for here.

I know that there are programs like Picasa that want to organize and file photos for you — not at all what I’m looking for. I’ve been forced to deal with programs like this, and I truly hate how they take your photos away from you, manipulate them, and “do what’s best for you.” My photos are my raw data, my unrefined ore, and the clay from which I create my visual art. I don’t want any program altering it, moving it, or manipulating it without my complete control at any point I wish. Programs that “help” by taking control away from me are an anathema.

No, what I would like to start with is a program that can quickly scan through my tens and hundreds of thousand of pictures and collect some key data, building a database out of that data. File name, file location, file date, file size, image resolution, and image size to start. Maybe a couple other basic things that I’m forgetting off the top of my head. Then, if the files have EXIF data included, probably things like exposure time, f-stop setting, and so on. If the files are georeferenced, snag that data as well.

Rule #1 for this program — never, ever change the original file. Never. Ever.

Once all that data is in the database, I want a quick and easy way to flip through the pictures and add tags. Build a library of tags with people’s names, places, subjects, and so on. Make tagging intuitive and offer tools which I control to tag multiple files. For example, if there are 200 pictures in a directory labeled “5th Anniversary – Las Vegas,” how about quickly tagging all of them with the tags “5th Anniversary” and “Las Vegas”? Then go through them to tag individual ones with additional tags such as “Paris,” “Ronnie,” “Rio,” “The Strip,”, or whatever.

Allow for a fair number of tags for each photo, say maybe, a dozen per photo.

Put in functions or modes that allow image files to be sorted and re-filed under my complete control in a directory and subdirectory structure which I can define and change as I need. For example, if I dump 3,000 pictures from a long vacation off of memory cards and onto the computer, make it easy for me to look at them en masse and pick this batch of 30 or 40 and put them in a subdirectory, then this next batch, then the next…

Never, ever change a file — but have tools for sorting and organizing, with the database updating file names and file locations as it happens.

Now I’ve got a huge database of file information and a huge hard disk full of the original, untouched, unmodified photo and image files. Without touching or changing any of those original files, give me tools to play with the database information.

Let me query for all photos with a certain person in it, or Joey Chan, or Lucky Puppy, or Oreo, or one of my kids, or a friend from school or the hanger. Let me do more complex queries, with date range limits, or using “AND,” “OR,” or “NOT” delimiters. For example, all pictures with the tag “family” AND “Vermont” but NOT “birthday”, between 2001 and 2007.

Once I get that subset identified in the database (remember, we’re never ever touching the original files except possibly to sort and organize), let me copy it to a temporary directory or some working directory where I can manipulate, edit, or modify the file copies to my little heart’s desire, while the original files remain untouched.

The one exception to the “never touch” rule, maybe, would be a “show me duplicate files” command. Show me files that might be identical, duplicates, and allow me to decide if they really are and what to do about it.

Now, is that too much to ask?

As I said, the tough part would be in the tagging and identifying what’s in each image. I suspect the data gathering of file information, the file sorting and organization functions, the de-duplicating function, and the database manipulation and queries would all be straightforward.

I know of individual programs that do all of those functions, especially for files in general, but I don’t know of a single program that does all of those things. In particular, I don’t know of any program that does all of those things and is optimized for photos and images.

And, as I said with Picasa and its ilk, the programs that I do know for photo and image handling that have some of these functions don’t have any way of letting me control them and protecting my original files as I need.

So there’s my wish-list rant of the day. I would just about kill for a really good program that did what I wanted and did it well. I’m not asking for it to be freeware or shareware. I would be more than willing to pay a decent price for a really exceptional program.

Any suggestions?

Anyone else thinking, “Damn, that would be a fantastic program, I would love to have a copy of that myself! When your write it, Paul, I’ll be your first customer!”

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Filed under Computers, Photography

February 9, 2015 · 23:24

I Hope I Don’t Die For A Stupid Reason

There was an event today, probably minor in the big scheme of things, but it was a problem at the time. In the course of dealing with that, the thought crossed my mind that, somewhere, somehow, I had heard that people had been known to die while dealing with such a problem. It was rare, it might be apocryphal, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were true.

That got me to thinking not-so-deep thoughts about my (presumably) inevitable demise. I say “presumably” because I still like Kurzweil’s ideas about The Singularity. He might be a full of crap and just as batshit crazy as Hubbard was with Scientology, but we’ll see. Maybe I did make it in time to have medical miracles, DNA-rebuilding nanobots in my blood, anti-aging regimens, and a lifespan into the hundreds of years.

But probably not.

So, back to my (probably) inevitable demise. Of course, if we’ve gotta go (and we do), it would be great if we could all go saving a building full of orphans from a fire, throwing ourselves on the grenade to save our whole platoon, or anything generally noble, sacrificial, and leaving the world a better place despite our passing.

That would be great.

More realistically (I’m getting there, slowly but surely) most of us are going to die from some useless disease that has us wasting away for our last few months or years, or else some moron on the freeway is going to be texting and drunk when that light turns red and we’re going to be a somewhat squishy hood ornament.

I could live with any of those – well, maybe “live” isn’t the right term. But at least my final thoughts wouldn’t be something along the lines of, “How am I ever going to explain THIS to St. Peter with a straight face?”

Given the choice (and I won’t be), I would prefer to not die of something STUPID.

Because those methods of passing also exist all around us. The odds may be in favor of disease (eight of the top ten causes of death are medical conditions) or accidents (cars seem to be first, guns second) but there are all of those weird and low-odds accidental causes of death that just linger for us, out there in the long tail of the bell curve.

Some of those are just “sucks to be you” accidental deaths. You’re in the wrong place, wrong time, and all the planning and precautions in the world aren’t going to mean a thing. There’s a gas explosion, an earthquake, your cruise ship sinks, a tidal wave hits the beach, the plane crashes…

Actually, in my case, being in a plane crash is probably higher on the list than for most folks, simply because I have my pilot’s license and I occasionally (i.e., every chance I get) fly in old WWII planes and go fly aerobatics. I also want to go skydiving, and scuba diving, and hike the Appalachian Trail, and learn to fly a glider, and…

You get the idea. I don’t want to go out in an easy chair watching “Star Trek” reruns unless I’m at least 110. But at least none of those flying- or adventure-related deaths would qualify as “stupid” in my book.

Being hit by lightning? If it’s a “shit happens” event, fine. If you’re standing out on a golf course holding a metal club and ogling that odd-shaped cloud with your mouth open — stupid.

Watching fireworks which you dearly love and a freak accident detonates thirty tons of skyrockets all at once and you catch a piece of shrapnel while sitting a half-mile away? Not your day, sorry! Dying while making a “Jackass” video and lighting off M-80’s while drunk — stupid.

Pretty much anything that involves being a victim in a major natural disaster or catastrophe gives you a good story to tell while you’re in line at The Pearly Gates. If the National Guard, NTSB, and CNN are out there picking through rubble or debris looking for you, it’s probably not your fault. Tornado, earthquake, thermonuclear weapons, all are acceptable, at least so far as this particular idiotic rant goes.

Anything that involves the paramedics coming in and taking pictures to pass around at the station along while playing “Can You Top This?” — stupid.

“Yep, you think that’s good? We found this guy, wearing just a thong and his wife’s wig, covered in whip cream, spread-eagle, with this weird opera music playing full blast, and a goat in the room…”

No paramedics laughing so hard that they can’t even check to see if you’re still breathing. Please.

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Filed under Disasters, Farce, Flying, Health, Religion, Tornadoes