Month: June 2013

  • Google Drive Whine from Microsoft

    I’m have embarked on a shift in personal computing. I’ve ditched my high power laptop ((“Ditch” isn’t the right word. The three-year-old laptop is running out of oomph for current applications. I’ll keep it around, of course.)) and am going to a desktop and Chromebook instead.

    The advantage of the desktop (for me) is that I can get the speed and power that I want at a fraction the cost that a laptop would require. I also would be able to install enough hard drive space on the desktop to make my current laptop+external hard drives system superfluous ((I have a lot of image files.)). Why I bought the laptop in the first place, three years ago, was for portability, which mainly had to do with email and surfing and being able to be connected to my blogs on the go.

    A lot of those advantages of a laptop have been superseded by the smartphone that I carry with me everywhere ((It’s not a phone; it’s a computer that happens to make phone calls.)). I rarely need to open up my computer to check email. I also don’t need the laptop for connecting to my blogs, although it’s generally a pain in the butt using the phone. Thusly, the next portable device I need isn’t a powerful laptop, it’s a keyboard and screen that views the internet, i.e. a netbook.

    Unfortunately, most netbooks suck. However, they don’t suck because of their hardware; they suck because they’re forced to run Windows and be bogged down by programs designed to run on more powerful machines (like MS Office, etc.). Netbooks suffered from a lack of vision. Then came the Chromebook.

    Chromebooks are netbooks running a Chrome OS. While the hardware hasn’t changed all that much since 2009, the OS that Google has designed is unapologetically optimized to run on a small mid-power machine and do only one thing: surf the web.

    Thankfully, Google has also provided a suite of tools that are based in the web. Tools such as Google Documents (now, Drive), Gmail, and many others which let you do things that previously required a dedicated program on a powerful machine.

    I’m currently typing this on my Samsung Chromebook while porting into the internet through an open wifi I happened across. If I weren’t online, the offline Drive application would save my words until I was connected back to the Googles and then everything would be in the cloud.

    What this long-winded lead up intends is for an amused nod at this linked article by Microsoft talking about how evil and terrible Google Documents are. What the document implies is that Google Docs can’t do what you need. What it actually says, though, is that if you convert a Microsoft Word document into Google Docs, it will turn out crappy. Which I don’t think anyone will ever argue.

    I am a mid-power user of Microsoft Word. I’ve preached and proselytized to my colleagues about how to use it correctly. I’ve written blog posts. I am a person who could be considered an expert at Microsoft Word. I will not dispute Microsoft’s assertion that converting Word documents to Google Drive documents is a bad idea.

    But! Remember what their goal is: they want to discourage use of Google Drive and get people to purchase Microsoft products. The Microsoft article puts up lots of side by side scary screenshots of a Word document next to a converted Google Drive document. All of the fancy whiz-bang graphics and cool formatting in the Word document gets hosed when converted to Google Drive.That made me ask the question, “Why would you be converting this complicated document to Google Drive in the first place? If you’ve put in the time and considerable effort to build such a complicated document, why would you be forcing it into another format?”

    The answer to that is, “You wouldn’t.” Again, if you’ve built a document of that magnitude, I’ll hazard a guess that you know the sort of trouble converting formats can get you into. Anyone who ever tried to port from Wordperfect to Microsoft Word knows that. Hell, anyone who’s tried to port a Word 2003 file into Word 2010 or 2013 knows that.

    The whole article written by Microsoft is a strawman arguing that because a complicated Word document ((Or uncomplicated one. I tried uploading one of my own files and converting it and the formatting got all knackered.)) can’t be converted into exactly the same looking file in Google Drive then Drive is an abject failure that should be abjured ((A deeper point along these lines is that even Microsoft Word documents may not look the same on different computers using the same software. This has to do with the way Word paginates when told to display on a screen or a printer, however that discussion is too technical for this posting. If you truly want a document to look the same no matter who prints it, you should be using a desktop publishing software, not a program like Microsoft Word)). This misses the point of Google Drive, or of Microsoft Word.

    The reason to use Google Drive is for: online access to your documents from any web browser, collaboration with co-authors at a distance, and easy sharing of online documents with readers. Reasons not to use Google Drive include complicated document formatting and high-powered multi-function document attributes. Google Drive cannot do the things that I require when writing a complex engineering document ((Automatic cross referencing; tables of contents, figures, and tables; subtle style changes based on need, etc.)) but it is an excellent word processor with all of the functionality needed for basic documents. It’s also intended as a web-based document which means it is developed around displaying differently on different browsers. This is a feature, not a bug, but invalidates the method that most people use Microsoft Word (static document display for print or PDF). Microsoft Word has never been designed or optimized to produce documents for web display. This again, is a feature, not a bug, and if you’re looking for ways to produce awesome web content, you should look away from Microsoft; it’s not their forté.

    For the near- to mid-term, most of the web postings I develop will begin life in Google Drive. Once they’ve reached a stage of readiness, they’ll be sent over to my wordpress admin screen or other process for final formatting. Google Drive lets me through words on the screen without cluttering up the environment with a ton of buttons and formatting choices. The chromebook does similar things with the entire computing environment. I’m looking forward to this experiment. Even if Google is giving all my data to the Federal Government.

  • Chromebook Enters my Life

    The Samsung Chromebook I ordered has arrived in the mail. It was almost perfect timing because I was sitting on the couch, crunching through a document on my 8 pound desktop-replacement laptop, when the tiny 2.6 pound kitten-computer arrived. The difference in size and weight is stark and I love it.

    Samsung Chromebook

    One item that will be challenging on this is the hard drive size–only 16 GB. ((In fact, it’s actually only 9 GB after all of the other OS software is loaded.)) One of the purposes of this computer is backing up/storing photos while on the road. My camera has two 8 GB compact flash cards permanently with it. If you do the math, that’s way more than this hard drive can handle. The Samsung has a slot for an SD card, and I’m sure I’ll be using that, but I’ll be interested to see how quickly I use that 9 GB of free space as I load up apps or keep documents offline ((I’m not yet sure how the Chrome OS handles that. Is there a permanent collection of synced documents sitting on my hard drive? Not that the typical number of spreadsheets or reports will fill up 9 GB.)).

    Another item which I’ll be delighted to torture test is the off-line capability of this computer. So far I’ve only had to actually do one thing to ensure my offline utility; that was to install the Offline Gmail app. The Google Drive (old Google Docs) works natively as you’re moving between wifi-covered and uncovered areas. ((Note: spell check doesn’t work offline. It turned back on as soon as I logged back into my wifi.))

    Test #2 was to whip the computer out in my car in a parking lot as I waited for a friend. Could it fit and be used in a car on a bright sunny day? The answer is yes–so far. I was fortunate in the sun angle, it wasn’t shining directly on the computer, but I think if it were, I’d still be able to type, at least. There probably would not be enough contrast for web browsing, though. This test lets me know that yes, I’ll be able to use this thing on a plane, something my 17” desktop replacement laptop was very very bad at. ((These tests are not in any particular order; they happened as life happened.))

    The Chromebook starts up and shuts down as quickly as advertised. After I picked up the aforementioned friend at the parking lot, I asked if she wanted to see my new toy? I explained that it’s really small and fast. I pulled it out of my bag, flipped it open and [poof], there was this document right away.

    Jessica said, “Wow. That is fast.”

    I’ve also had the opportunity now to use it in a bed-time setting. It’s comfy, small, and less rocket-hot on the family jewels than other laptops. Part of that is because of the solid state hard drive, the other part is because it’s just not that high-powered a device and produces less heat. It also is light enough to provide for endless entertainment opportunities for intrepid explorers.

    Samsung Chromebook and Cat

    A usability issue I noted as I was writing this post was the way that Google Drive deals with spell check corrections. I have no idea if this is something that is Chromebook-specific or is just something that happens with Google docs, but if you “right click” on a misspelled word to fix it, the pop up menu makes you traverse the mouse a looooong way to get to the selection. See the image below. The selection that is most likely should pop up right next to your cursor.

    Chromebook Functionality

    All in all, I find the Chromebook very functional so far. I’m still getting used to the keyboard which is a good size and I’m merely having issues with the keys not being in precisely the locations I’m used to. I’m also still finding the keyboard shortcuts (Hint: hit ctrl-alt-? for a screen display of the shortcuts) but that’s normal with new software, and I’ve never used Chrome before.

  • Photo Supreme Test Drive

    Photo Supreme Evaluation

    A few months ago I lamented that Idimager had been discontinued and that I was going to have to figure something out. Photo Supreme is the software that has replaced it and I am inclined to keep going with this stable of products simply to be sure I keep some of the functionality I’ve spent years learning and depending on.

    To recap, there are several key features that I require for my photo management software:

    • Easy and intuitive tagging and retrieval of images. This is the most important one for me as I spend 90% of my time with the images assigning tags (labels, keywords) to them so that I can find them later. For example, for the past few months I’ve been assigning the tag “baby” to images that particularly deal with Jenn’s pregnancy or items surrounding the child to be. Later on I’ll be able to select them all and reassign the tag as “[baby name here]”. I can also search and find all of the images that (say) have “baby” and “boa constrictor” in the tags, rather than looking through all the individual “baby”-labeled shots for the one with the snake. This is the power of a good tagging program and the key feature.
    • Basic Photo Manipulation. I don’t want to load Photoshop just to crop, adjust white balance, pump up the contrast, or whatever. I want to do this natively in the photo database software.
    • Export Functionality. One of the things that Idimager trained me to use is a series of batch operations for sending photos to various places for various reasons. Not to belabor this list, but I export to Flickr, to a local folder for my iPhone syncing, to another local folder for blogging, to Dropbox for sharing, and to various other places. Each of these batch operations has slightly different parameters (size, sharpening, whatever) and it’s nice to be able to select some images, push a button, and done. A few years ago, this wouldn’t be a required feature, but now I want it, dammit.
    • Internal File Management. According to Idimager, I have 54,001 files attached to its database. These files are subdivided into hundreds of different folders. A required feature of a photo management database is the ability to move these files and folders around and have the database updated simultaneously. Having to move folders using other file management utilities and then individually find and relocate each folder or file is a total bust and would be a no-go for selecting a software product.
    • Control of my files. I don’t object to using cloud backups or the like, but I want control of my own data. I don’t trust the cloud for primary files, nor will I always be internet-connected.

    As I have a job and other things to do, the list of products that I evaluated in the past was relatively short: Idimager and Adobe Lightroom. ((If you click through to that post, you’ll see I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Idimager for a while. In fact, when asked for a recommendation for photo management software, I have replied “I use a good one, but I can’t recommend it to you.” Unless I knew that a particular person was insane and willing to deal with the exceptionally steep learning curve, I never recommended Idimager to them.)) Now that I’m evaluating a change to Photo Supreme, I’m back in the same boat. Photo Supreme vs. Lightroom. I know what Lightroom can do, and it meets the requirements I have above. What it didn’t do as well as Idimager did, was the tagging and export batch functions. That was the place where Idimager’s faults became its features: it was personally customizable through the batch functions you built yourself. Lightroom didn’t allow that.

    But today, we’re looking at Photo Supreme, not Idimager and/or Lightroom from two years ago. Let’s go for a test drive.

    I downloaded and installed Photo Supreme version 1.8.1.131 and imported a folder of images that I had lying around. My first impression was that the layout was much cleaner and more user-friendly-looking than Idimager ((Idimager could be extremely intimidating to look at on the desktop with icons and buttons and just shit everywhere. This is a great improvement.))

    PhotoSupremeSS1

    Tagging

    The first real task I tried was tagging some images. Remember that tagging is synonymous with assigning keywords in other programs. Idimager, and now Photo Supreme, approaches tagging a bit differently than other programs in that, while all tags are keywords, they are also hierarchical in nature. Or at least, they can  be. You could assign all tags as plain keywords, but that would defeat a lot of the utility of the hierarchical tag assignments. For example, I can assign a tag to myself (“Bill Ruhsam” )which is within the hierarchy of “Family” and “People”. The “People” and “Family” tags are assigned automatically as soon as an image is tagged with “Bill Ruhsam”. I don’t have to do any other work. This allows for more powerful searching functions. ((An example search here would be all images with “Chainsaws” and “Family”. I could have searched for “Chainsaws” and “Bill Ruhsam” but I also wanted to see the other chainsaw-related images associated with my close relatives. I don’t have to ever assign the keyword “Family” to individual people because it’s done automatically during the tagging, and I don’t have to search for “Bill Ruhsam”, “Mom”, “Dad”, “Uncle Bubba”, etc. because they’re all automatically filed under “Family”.))

    The tagging seems to be just as intuitive and easy as it used to be in Idimager. I can assign keyboard shortcuts to tags that are frequently used and the various ways of favoriting or labeling images are still there (i.e. using 1-5 for the number of stars on a picture and 6-9 for color assignments. I use the stars assignments for doing initial passes through images for pictures to keep—3 stars, then modify—4 stars, then export—5 stars).

    Initial evaluation: Tagging works as needed. Not that I had expected that to change. If Photo Supreme had lost that functionality then the company might as well have closed shop.

    Complaint #1: Function key 1 (F1) doesn’t open the help dialogue. Come one, guys. F1 has been the default key for help for decades.

    Basic Photo Manipulation

    Through some screwing around I found the same features in Photo Supreme that exist in Idimager: size, crop, white balance, contrast, etc. It seems like they cleaned up some of the annoyances that plagued Idimager, but they’ve added a few new ones ((It’s harder to see what modifications (called Recipes) have been applied and turn them on/off. The keyboard shortcuts I’m used to don’t work and I can’t see if they’re new ones. Things like that)). I’m sure I could get over those.

    PhotoSupremeSS2

    Export Functionality

    I took the image shown above and tried several ways of exporting it. Here’s where I ran into my first big usability problem: For some reason, when I exported it to a folder (copy to folder) it wouldn’t apply the recipe. I flailed around and cursed and tested and read the documentation (unhelpful) and tried this and that. Eventually, I discovered what I think was the issue ((I make no warranties that this was the actual problem, but I think it might have been.)). Do you see the tiny “cancel” and “apply” buttons on the bottom right of the image above? If you don’t hit “apply” here, the image does not get exported with the recipe applied, no matter that the recipe is saved in the sense that if you go away and come back, it’s still there. That was exceptionally annoying, but I think I’ve figured it now. Usability aside, it seems to be working.

    Likewise, it seems that the exports for sending to Flickr, email, Facebook (boo hiss!), and other typical locations is there and usable.

    Internal File Management

    The big test! Can I move files and folders around without spending days upon days relocating files?

    Not really.

    You  can cut/paste folders within Photo Supreme to other locations on your computer. However, from my evaluation standpoint, I can only move folders to locations that have already been mapped by the Photo Supreme catalog. For example, I’m using a series of test folders shown in the image. I successfully moved the “Test Folder 3” from being a subdirectory of “New Folder” but there doesn’t seem to be a way for me to move the folder to a location such as the “My Picture” folder.

    PhotoSupremeSS6

    There does seem to be a function for scanning my computer for folders, but I’m afraid that might start importing all of my images, which isn’t something I’m ready to do. ((Once I’ve decided this works I’ll be importing my Idimager V.5 database, so I have no desire to do a fresh import of all my images.)) So, for now, I’ll have to mark this one as “not working”.

    The particular reason why this is so important for me to be able to manage files from within the image database is because I’m currently operating on a laptop with a 400 GB drive. 400 GB is not enough to contain my entire image collection, so I keep most of them on an external (USB) hard drive. As I fill up the internal laptop hard drive, I will occasionally move a great number of files from the C:\ drive to the external hard drive.

    From other discussions, it appears that there is functionality for relocating missing folders, which is what would happen from the perspective of the database if I were to move these folders from within Windows explorer, but that’s a problem because of the number of folders involved. Time for another screen shot.

    PhotoSupremeSS7

    The easy way to do this move would be to move the entire \2013\ folder shown in the computer and then relocate the folder with Photo Supreme, but that won’t work. Why? Two reasons:

    1. Because I want to have about the last 12 months worth of images actually on the laptop so that I can get at them. Moving the entire folder means on January 1, 2014, I’ve got no pictures.
    2. Because I can’t guarantee that I won’t run out of hard drive space sometime in July of 2013. Sure, I could move the entire folder then but what happens with the next six months? I suppose I could rename and have an \2013-2\ folder, but that’s a kludge and I don’t like it.

    Item  number two is the easiest to do away with, but again, this would irritate me. ((From a database standpoint, it doesn’t matter where the files existing on the hard drive, they’ll always be located inside the database with its own pointers. However, if I want to go into the file system and find a particular folder, it’s great when those are relatively well organized.))

    Conclusion (For Now)

    I have a baby coming and there’s a ton of work to do so I’m not yet ready to pull the trigger on a new software. Idimager V.5 is still operating fine for what I need and I’ll keep using it for a while longer. If nothing else, I need to do full backups and various other things before I try moving databases around. For another, I may be purchasing a new desktop computer in the next couple months which would be able to contain all of my images on the native hard drive, so that would eliminate the external hard drive transfer problem. For a third, I want to give Lightroom another try and poke around for additional options before I settle on something.

    I’ve really like the way Idimager and now Photo Supreme have given me the power to customize the way I work with my images. If only it were more user friendly, had better documentation, and occasionally didn’t do the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to do, I’d be the software’s biggest fan and pusher. Unfortunately, from what I can see of Photo Supreme it may be more user friendly than Idimager, but that’s not a high bar to clear.

  • Word Cloud

    Yesterday, we attended a 3 hour class entitled “Becoming Parents”. We learned some things we didn’t know therefore the class was successful.

    At the beginning the instructor took us through an exercise designed to demonstrate what sort of impact a new child would have on our daily routine. We listed the various activities we did on a daily basis, then she added on the tasks a newborn requires for proper care and feeding and invited us to think about what we might have to alter or cut out to make the time work. It was an exercise only intended to foster discussion between partners, and as Jenn and I are already past the obvious discussions (such as this one) I became bored.

    2013-06-01 09.46.00

    I was staring at the whiteboard when I realized it would make a wonderful word cloud, and I imagined what the impact a baby would have on that word cloud. Here’s a typical day in the life of our generic workshop attendee.

    wordle2

    Now let’s add a baby.

    wordle3

    Sums it up, I think.