Still backuping and pano uploading

This morning I went out in the garden to see there were any insects around. I saw some thrips on the window sills, and some flies on one of the plants, but didn't see any other insects. The pond was getting low despite the rain we had yesterday, so I topped it up.

I came back inside and went on my comp. Syncback had completed it's CRC checksum comparison of a folder on my PC and a folder on the backup disk, but it said there were 97 files or 17% that it couldn't calculate a checksum for. I'm not sure what the 17% meant - did it mean that 17% of the backup consisted of files that it couldn't verify? If it can't calculate checksums for large files, I guess this could be true, though 97 files being 17% of the backup does seem a bit massive.

Anyway, of the files it could checksum, it didn't find any difference other than the new files I've added to the folder on the PC that haven't been backed up.

I looked at Beyond Compare again, and found there was an option for binary compare that I hadn't ticked - so it doesn't use binary comparison by default. I ticked binary comparison, then opened the folder compare, and guess what - it was really slow just like the other programs when using binary or checksum comparison.

So I think probably the best idea is to do normal backups, and then just do a binary comparison every so often (maybe even just once a year) to check that files haven't been corrupted. I think that my photos that have been corrupted got corrupted when copying the files from one drive to a new (larger) drive (I used windows to copy the files normally instead of a backup/cloning software). So it would make sense to do a binary comparison after copying files like this as well.

Also, after I'd had my shower I cleaned out my ears of shower water mixed with a bit of earwax, like I always do, and somehow my hearing in my right ear was restored. (Since coming back from holiday in October last year, I haven't been able to hear properly in my right ear). It's quite weird, everything sounds really loud and somehow different (maybe because I can hear in stereo now).

I read a bit more of John Shaw's Close-ups in Nature, then went in the garden to try and get some photos. I got a few of a leaf hopper (or something similar), but spent most of my time trying to find it in the view finder without success, checking where it was with my eyes (since it would move about), then repeating this process.

I came back inside and went on the pinternet for a bit, then Beyond Compare had finished its compare. So it took about 5 hours, which is quite a bit quicker than Syncback, which took about 9 hours for its CRC checksum comparison.

After lunch I looked at the Beyond Compare binary comparison results. In the actual compare it didn't look like there were any differences that weren't due to the backup just not being up to date. But in the log, it said that it couldn't compare some files due to access being denied (which is not an error that came up when doing the normal (non binary) compare).

Looking at the files, I found they had the wrong permissions/owner. Unfortunately, setting the owner on the folder that contained the files, and telling Windows to apply the changes to all subfolders and files didn't work - Windows didn't do anything. I also found that if you select multiple files, then the Security tab in the file propeties dialog is missing, so you couldn't change the owner of the files that way either.

Instead you would have to go through each file changing the owner, and then allowing full permissions for the users or groups you wanted to be able to access that file. You have to go through quite a few dialogs for each of those steps, and then repeating that process for multiple files would be very time consuming and annoying indeed.

I did change the owner and permissions on one file, just to see if the file was okay, and it was just the permissions that were trashed. After doing this, it did seem it was just the permissions that were broken. I checked the same folder on the backup, and thankfully they were okay. So I tried copying the backup files over the broken files. But both Beyond Compare and Windows Explorer wouldn't let me do this as I didn't have permission to overwrite the broken files.

So I went into a command prompt and deleted the folder from there

rmdir "directory name" /s

That deleted the directory without any permissions problem. Then I used Beyond Compare to copy the backup of the directory back.

I had two directories with this problem. I then backed up the folders that needed backing up.

I started checking / fixing / converting more panos for my panos website, and did that until dinner.

After dinner I watched an episode of Star Trek, then looked to see how I could get my panos to display the cube faces as they are loaded. I found an option called 'loaderStreamed' which does this, it worked fine on my local copy of the site, but was really slow when using it on the live site. So I asked on the FPP website if anyone knew of how to get your pano to display as it is loaded.

The weather was mostly overcast and it rained quite a bit. Occasionally the sun would break through the clouds for a bit.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Chocolate Crunch Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Ham with Watercress and Mediterranean style Salad Sandwich made with fresh Bakery Bread; ½ Crust of fresh Bakery Bread with Honey; Grapes; Satsuma; Piece of Tiramisu; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Slice of home-made Pizza; ½ Jacket Potato; Chips; Peas. Pudding was an Aero Mousse with a couple of slices of Kiwi fruit. Coffee; Bit of Easter Egg.

Not a lot

This morning it was overcast, but then the cloud started to clear and there was a bit of blue sky, so I hurried out to try and take some panos of the blossoming trees and flowers in Welland Park. Unfortunately by the time I'd finished my first pano the sky had become mostly overcast, and just about totally overcast by the time I'd finished my second pano.

I thought I might as well just take one more pano of the blossoming trees, since the blossom isn't likely to last very long, then I went back home.

I checked the Web Squeeze while waiting for some photos to upload (which I seem to be doing a lot of the past week).

I spent the rest of the morning and first part of the afternoon editing and re-uploading the old panos of Welland Park that I processed the other day. I would notice a problem with one of the panos, edit the original file to fix it, save out the TIFF, JPEG, sharpened sRGB TIFF, convert to cube faces, and then upload the updated JPEG and cube faces. Then after I'd done that I'd either notice a problem with one of the other panos, or notice another problem with the one I'd just worked on, and have to repeat the whole process over again.

Later in the afternoon I was trying some backup software called 'SC-Lite', as it does a binary comparison. I set it to do a compare of my photos folder and backup, but it didn't have a progress bar and was maxing out a CPU core. Due to the high CPU usage I thought it would be best not to do anything resource intensive on my comp (like editing more panos in Photoshop). I went on the pinternet for a bit, but then couldn't think of anything else to do that didn't involve resource intensive programs on my PC.

After a bit I remembered that I've got loads of books I haven't read, so I read a bit more of John Shaw's Close-ups in Nature. It also stopped raining so I went in the garden to see if I could find any soggy bees. There were a few flies around, but they looked like Coenosia Tigrina (fly I've already got 100s of shots of). There were also little green leaf hoppers, but they kept flying around so I didn't even bother trying to attempt a photo of one. I didn't see anything else except a slug on a daffodil and a snail I only noticed because I heard its shell crunch under my foot.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, then I checked my comp and the SC-Lite binary comparison was still running so I decided to just close the program. I opened SyncBack and tried that. It doesn't do a binary comparison, but can do a checksum comparison.

SyncBack was verrry slooow so I'm not sure if binary comparisons / checksum comparisons are super slow (there was a note on the option that I ticked to enable checksum comparison that it was very slow). I wonder how Beyond Compare does its comparisons so fast (unless it's not really doing a binary comparison)?

While I was waiting for SyncBack (like SC-Lite, it used a lot of CPU), I looked into the latest flash diffusion techniques for the MT-24EX. There seem to be 3:

1. Concave diffusers (translucent cap from a stick or roll-on deodorant), placed up against the flash head and surrounded by reflective material.
2. Vellum Paper or similar material hung over the front of the lens like a canopy, with flashes in normal or raised position shooting through it.
3. Gary Fong Lightsphere II bowl section (that fits in the top of the Lightsphere II) positioned away from the flash head and in convex position.

So I spent a while looking at the deodorants online, but it is hard to tell what the caps are like, how transparent they are, and how large they are. I checked on the boots website, and there is a boots in town, so I may have to go there and have a look one day.

I also spent a long time looking at Lambency Flash diffusers, which is the Chinese knock-off of the Gary Fong Lightsphere II (which is very expensive). Unfortunately, the Lambency Flash diffuser don't seem to be available from many places now (wierdly Dealextreme didn't have any flash diffuser products, when it used to stock quite a few).

There are a few available on ebay, but mostly they are quite expensive. I also found them on focalprice.com, but a reviewer on there said that whether you get the bowl/dome and what colour it is depends on the supplier focalprice is getting them from at the time you order. Since I would mainly be buying it for the white bowl/dome, that wasn't too encouraging.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Chocolate Crunch Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Mature Cheddar Cheese with Watercress Sandwich; Grapes; Satsuma; Piece of Home-made Flapjack; Rocky; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Shepherd's Pie; Broccoli; Carrots; Tomato Ketchup; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was Lemon pud with Custard. Coffee; Bit of Easter Egg; 6 pieces of Galaxy Chocolate.

Photo uploading

This morning I went in the garden and took a few photos of a butterfly that had decided to spend the night on a daffodil. After a bit it had warmed up, and flew away.

I came back inside and checked my email while a virus scan ran. I had been hoping to go and take some panos of the park today, but the weather was quite overcast, so I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Hopefully we'll get a nice sunny day soon, otherwise all the blossom will be gone and I'll have missed it.

Actually, it's been quite windy lately, so the blossom may all have been blown away already.

When the virus check was done I did a backup, then looked into different backup software. I had found that Beyond Compare wasn't very good for backing up various folders on different drives to one backup disk - you would have to do a seperate backup for each drive you wanted to backup folders from, selecting the folders on that drive you wanted to backup, and then tell Beyond Compare to do a Mirror sync with only the folders you've selected.

With Synkron, all you need to do is to load the backup 'profile' of the stuff you want backing up, then tell it to sync all.

I looked at Macrium Reflect, but that only does complete hard drive and partitioning mirroring, not multiple folder backup, which is what I want.

I also looked at FBackup 4, but I couldn't see how it compared files to see whether they needed backing up not. What I'm looking for is backup software that uses a binary comparison or CRC checksum comparison to decide what files need backing up. This should hopefully indicate any files that have changed due to becoming corrupted.

I gave up on the backup programs and started adding metadata to the panos that I processed / finished processing yesterday. After lunch I carried on with this. I also checked my email, digitalphotographyblog.com, and bythom.com while I waiting for metadata to copy across to the psd files, as this takes quite a bit of time. (All the EXIF is lost when creating a panorama using PTGUI, I use exiftoolGUI to copy the EXIF back from into the panorama from one of the original images).

After dinner I watched Star Trek TNG with Mauser and L, then carried on updating my panos website with the old Welland Park panos I'd been working on.

The weather was overcast most of the day and it rained a bit.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Chocolate Crunch Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese with Salad Sandwich; Baby Plum Tomato; Banana; Piece of Tiramisu; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Slice of home-made Pizza; ¾ Jacket Potato; Watercress. Pudding was a slice of Jam Swiss Roll with Ribena, Custard, and Smarties. Cup o' Tea; A few bits of Galaxy Chocolate.

Processing panos

This morning I finished uploading the Korea day 2 photos to my photo website, then started work processing the 2008 Welland Park panos that I wanted to work on yesterday.

The large majority of the panos were actually already processed, but my workflow has changed quite a bit since 2008, so I modified the existing panos to suit my current workflow. Previously I was using Pano2QTVR to remap the pano to cube faces, and then patching the nadir as a cube face, and then storing the final pano as cube faces.

But what I do now is to patch the nadir on the equirectangular image (or patch it as a cube face, then remap back to equirectangular), and store the final pano as an equirectangular. I also make more use of Local Contrast Enhancement and curves adjustments to boost colour and contrast than I did back in 2008.

In the afternoon I carried on working on the panos and also processed one that I hadn't done before. I started updating my panos website, then had dinner.

I also received my waving chairman mao pocket watch and a normal watch. The pocket watch I spent quite a while trying to work out how to set the time on it. But I couldn't find out how to do it, so I posted to the DX forum for the product.

I also spent quite a while trying to resize the normal watch. I found some instructions on the DX forum for the product, which said you had to resize it by knocking the little pins in the links out with a nail and hammer. Strangely this works, while just pushing on the pins with a nail (or similar object) doesn't move them at all.

After dinner I watched Star Trek TNG with Mauser and L, then carried on updating my panos website with the old Welland Park panos I'd been working on.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese with Salad Sandwich; Baby Plum Tomato; Piece of Flapjack Clare made yesterday; Rocky; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Spaghetti; Mixed Veg; Cheese Sauce; Chicken Nuggets; Chilli Sauce; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a large slice of home-made Flapjack. Coffee; Bit of Easter Egg.

Uploading images

Today I was just uploading photos to my photo website from the 2nd full day of our Korea trip in October last year.

I also attempted to process some old panos of Market Harborough from about this time 2 years ago (yes I am behind on my processing). I wanted to try and get them processed, then I can go out and take some more to show what the park and blossoming trees look like this year.

Unfortunately Photoshop would keep crashing when I tried to use it to edit one of the panos. I would guess this is because I was running my VMWare Ubuntu Virtual Machine at the same time, but I couldn't quit that as I needed it for updating the photo website.

So instead I started writing the blog posts about our 2nd day in Korea for my photo website blog.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L.

The weather started off sunny, then had clouded over by about 10am. In the afternoon it got sunny again, and there was probably a nice sunset.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese with Salad Sandwich; Baby Plum Tomato; ½ Slice of Chocolate Sponge Cake L made the other day; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; Bit of Easter Egg.
Dinner: Slice of Bacon Quiche; Peas; Potatoes; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a large slice of home-made Flapjack. Coffee.

Cutting out Pogs in Photoshop

Today I was mainly cutting out pogs in Photoshop, then updating my pog website. I also went to Church and watched Microcosmos with Mauser, L, and Clare. A really good film, although it would also be good with an optional David Attenborough explanation style soundtrack to explain what the different insects were doing.

And in the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L. I checked Moose Peterson's blog, and also read about Processionary caterpillars, which were in the Microcosmos film.

The weather today was sunny all day, but with a complete cover of hazy cloud (so the sky was white, not blue).

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Chilli Con Carne; Cheese Flavour Nacho/Tortilla Chips; Rice; Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese. Pudding was: Aero Mousse; Chocolate Fudge Crinkle Crunch; HobNob. Coffee; Bit of Terry's Chocolate Orange.
Tea: Ham with Dijon Mustard, Salad, and Sliced Baby Plum Tomatoes Sandwich; Slice of Chocolate Sponge Cake L made the other day; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; Half an Easter Egg.

Photo uploading

Today I was just updating my photo website. I uploaded some more photos to it, and while I was waiting for the photos to upload I checked through all the keywords listed on the website's database. When I found an incorrect one (like a mis-spelling, or two keywords where I'd missed the semi-colon between them so they'd become one keyword), I corrected the database and the images on my hard drive.

I also checked through a few of the photos on my hard drive before uploading them to the website, and processed a couple that I hadn't finished yet. To process the photos I needed to use Capture NX 2 (at least that's what the photo was originally processed with, so I thought I'd need Capture NX 2 to be able to open it again). But my trial of Capture NX 2 had run out.

I did try to buy an upgrade a few days ago before the trial period had ended, but the website I used was dodgy and I wasn't sure if they had taken any money from my credit card. Since the situation was now urgent I tried to log on to my credit card provider's website. This took about half an hour (maybe more) as you have to go through a long security process, and then I found that the account I'd logged on to was an old one for a cancelled card, so I had to do it all over again for my current credit card.

Anyway, I was pleased to see that the money hadn't been taken from my card, so I could but Capture NX 2 from a different place. However, I did see a transaction on my online statement from 'asknet-shops.com'. I had no idea who this was, so I googled for them and found reports from many people saying that they had unauthorised transactions on their cards from asknet-shops.com.

I checked asknet-shops.com, and on their FAQ, they have a question There is an unknown charge/ double charge on my credit card from asknet, but I have not placed an order/ placed only one order, which has the answer

The company asknet is a service provider which is responsible for the online purchasing process for several software producers. You may therefore find "asknet shops" listed on your credit card bill, even though you have purchased software in a store with a different name. Therefore, we would like to ask you to check whether you have recently ordered software.

I remembered that I had purchased a renewal of the 'upgrade protection' policy for PerfectDisk recently, and the amount on the statement looked about right. So I checked through my emails to find the receipt from PerfectDisk, which indeed says

The following position will appear on one of your next credit card billing statement:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
asknet-shops.com Amount GBP 7.82
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

So that settled that.

Next I looked for retailers of Capture NX 2. Unfortunately it seemed to be really expensive from reliable shops, and also out of stock at most places. In the end I ordered an upgrade copy from Warehouse Express for £85 (which is on backorder). I got a serial from Pirate Bay so I can continue to use Capture NX 2 (albeit illegally) while I wait for Warehouse Express to get new stock in and ship it out to me.

I also finished watching 'Greed' with Mauser today. It was a great film, but would have been even better with the full footage (which was lost) instead of the footage mixed with stills. I didn't care much for the colouring either.

The weather today was sunny all day, but with a complete cover of hazy cloud (so the sky was white, not blue).

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Strawberry Crisp Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Elevenses: Cappuchino; HobNob; Chocolate Fudge Crinckle Cream.
Lunch: Ham with Dijon Mustard and Salad Sandwich; Satsuma; Slice of Chocolate Cake with Golden Syrup and Vanilla flavour Buttercream; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Beef Burger; Baked Beans; Chips; Salt; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a piece of Chocolate Cake that L made today with Custard. Coffee; 8 squares of Galaxy; 2 smarties.

Getting annoyed with computer stuff

This morning I was doing a backup again, but had the same problem as I did yesterday morning. The backup was going super slow (weird, since the same backup yesterday evening to my other drive only took about three quarters of an hour).

I went on Mauser's comp for a bit and checked dpreview, canonrumors.com, nikonrumors.com, bythom.com, and luminous-landscape.com. I also looked into CRC checking, since I wanted some way to confirm that my backups are okay and none of the files have been corrupted. Likewise, if a file on my PC becomes corrupted, I would want to know so I can replace it with a valid file from the backup.

Eventually I gave up on the backup, and decided to stop it. This took ages until Synkron actually stopped, and then ages to shut my PC down (in the end I had the same problem as yesterday, and had to reset the PC). While I was waiting I read a bit of John Shaw's 'Close-ups in Nature'.

When I'd got the PC running again, I tried disabling AVG and PerfectDisk, as AVG did an update that required a restart recently, and I'd recently installed PerfectDisk 11 (though I had had a beta version of PerfectDisk 11 installed before with no problems). I thought that maybe these programs were causing Synkron to get messed up and go so slow. However, after disabling them and restarting, I found that a couple of AVG processes were still running, despite being disabled from startup in msconfig and the AVG services being changed to manual start in the Windows Services config.

The one I was particularly concerned about was avgrsa.exe, the AVG Resident Shield process (which I had disabled from the AVG interface since installing AVG). I thought that possibly this was scanning all files as they were being transferred to the backup drive, thus slowing it down immensely. So to disable it, I just renamed the avgrsa.exe file.

I restarted the PC again, and now the avgrs process wasn't running. I was kind of hoping I'd get an error message to say that avgrsa.exe couldn't be found, and give me some indication of how it was being started, but I didn't get any error message.

Next I checked to how to get Synkron to use a binary comparison, as info I'd found suggested that this should be able to detect corrupt files. However, I couldn't find the option anywhere, so I looked at the Synkron FAQ, and found that it only uses the most recently modified date for comparisons. I'm sure I remember Synkron having an option to compare by time only, compare binary only, or compare using time and binary. Maybe that was a different backup program.

I had a look at SyncBack SE, which is a backup program I've read a few people recommend, but I couldn't see if it supported binary comparison or not. So I decided to just give Beyond Compare a trial, since I knew that did a binary comparison.

I installed the Beyond Compare trial, and then ran a folder comparison. Interestingly, it picked up some files it said were different (but both had the same last modified date, so Synkron hadn't noticed the difference). What the actual difference was, I don't know. It was 2 TIFFs and a PSB. The TIFFs rendered previews on both my hard drive and the backup, and the PSB on my hd opened okay, so I decided there wouldn't be any harm in overwriting the backups.

I did a sync, but then after the sync the comparison still looked the same. I did a full refresh, but it was still the same. So I checked and found that you need to do a mirror sync instead of a sync sync. I did that, and it went okay, but then I couldn't 'safely remove hardware' to remove the backup drive, so I shut down.

I was expecting to have the same problem as before, with the computer being really slow until it gets to the 'Logging off' screen, then hanging there, but actually the computer did shut down properly.

I checked the metadata of some more photos from day 2 of Korea, then had lunch.

After lunch I geocoded some images that had got the wrong co-ordinates already geo-coded, but then when I came to check their metadata, I found that the Korean characters had got messed up. Weird since I didn't think Robogeo would change any data other than the GPS tags. According to the FAQ it sounds like it shouldn't be doing it either:

Is RoboGEO's EXIF and IPTC lossless?

Yes. When information is written to the EXIF or IPTC headers, none of the image data is lost and all of the existing comments are preserved.

So I sent an email to them to say it was messing up the description and tags with foreign characters.

Now I had to go back through the images I'd geo-coded with Robogeo today and yesterday (probably about 20), and correct the broken characters. Luckily Robogeo doesn't work with psb or psd files, so in most cases I could export the XMP from the psb/psd file and then import it into the messed up TIFF or JPGs.

It still took quite a while to correct though. I also found on my website some images that have been uploaded with 'faulty' tags, so I'm going to need to spend quite a while going through them, updating the website and the original images.

I received a reply from the guy who makes Robogeo, who said that Robogeo can't be messing up the XMP description and keywords as Robogeo doesn't change the XMP at all. I did a test using exiftool to dump the XMP from a file before geocoding with Robogeo, and then the same after geocoding the image with exiftool, and he was right, the XMP was still the same, with the Korean characters showing up correctly.

But when I checked the geocoded image in Adobe Bridge, the Korean characters were showing up as gobbledygook. So obviously the problem was with Adobe Bridge. I thought that there must be a character encoding tag somewhere that Robogeo is setting to something other than UTF-8, which is causing Bridge to use the wrong character encoding to decode the XMP.

So doing some googling, I found that there is an IPTC tag 'CodedCharacterSet', used to store the character encoding. I checked the original image, and the geocoded image, and found the original had an IPTC CodedCharacterSet of UTF8, while the geocoded image didn't have a IPTC CodedCharacterSet tag at all. I used exiftool to add the IPTC CodedCharacterSet tag to the geocoded image, and give it a value of UTF8. I then checked the image again in Adobe Bridge, and it now displayed the Korean characters in the XMP correctly.

So it seems that Bridge relies on the IPTC CodedCharacterSet tag to determine the character encoding of the metadata, and if there isn't one, then assumes a default encoding (probably latin-1). While this might be sensible for EXIF and IPTC (if Adobe also provided a way that you can change the default character encoding), XMP is always UTF-8. Adobe created XMP, so why can't they even follow their own standard?

I let the guy who makes Robogeo know, and I will file a bug report with Adobe.

In the afternoon I also went in the garden for a bit. I saw quite a few bees, but they would only stay at each flower for about a second, so not long enough to try and get a photo. I also saw some mating weavils, but after a few shots they decided to jump away, which made me jump.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, and watched some videos by the film studio that makes Mio Mao.


The weather today was sunny all day.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Strawberry Crisp Oat Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Sausage with Mayonnaise, Sliced Cherry Plum Tomatoes, Wensleydale Cheese, and Salad Sandwich; Satsuma; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; Bit of Easter Egg.
Afternoon snack: Small bowl of Mackie's Ice Cream; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Battered Fish Portion; Peas; Mashed Potato; Salt; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a Toasted Teacake. Coffee; Cream Egg.

Backing up and uploading photos

This morning I started doing a backup, but it was going really slow, so I stopped it, and started it again, but it was still really slow. So I tried to use the 'safely remove hardware', but it didn't do anything. So I shut the PC down, but nothing happened.

I went on Mauser's PC for a bit and checked dpreview, where I read a bit about the Samyang 14mm/2.8 lens. I checked my PC, and it had now got as far as the 'Logging out' screen. I went on Maccy's PC a bit more, then checked my PC, but it was still on the same screen. A bit later my PC hadn't got any further, so I restarted.

I got the 'You didn't shut the PC down properly' screen, but chose to boot normally, however, the PC just reset partway through the loading process. So I chose to go into Safe Mode, then shut down. I removed the hot swap backup drive, booted into windows, and then put the drive back in again.

I started the backup again, and it was okay first of all, but then went really slow again after about 20 files. I went on Mauser's PC again as my PC was being really slow while the backup was going. I checked that AVG resident shield wasn't on (it wasn't) and that the drive and folders weren't being indexed by Windows (they weren't) in case these were causing the slowness.

I went on Mauser's comp a bit more and also went in the garden until the backup was done.

When the backup was done I started checking the metadata of the Korea day 2 photos, and then uploading them to my photo website, and running the script to update the photo website. This is what I did for most of the rest of the day (the checking of metadata, upload speed, and script running speed is quite slow).

I also went in the garden for a while in the afternoon, and saw a large wasp. There was also a few bees and a bee fly around, but they wouldn't stay still for me to get a photo of them.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, a bit of Toy Story 2, and some Youtube videos.

I also had some problems with my photo website, one which I fixed, and a couple of non-urgent ones, which I just put on my to-do list.

The weather today started off with a frost, then was sunny all day.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: 2x Cheese on Toasts; Grapes; Satsuma; Bit of Pineapple; Rocky; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Eggy Bread with Bovril; Baked Beans; Sausage; Bacon. Pudding was a slice of Blackcurrant Cheesecake with a bit of Mackie's Ice cream. Coffee; Bit of Easter Egg; Piece of Galaxy Chocolate.

Photo Processing

This morning I did some website work, just server stuff, then processed some more Korea Day 2 photos.

After lunch I processed some more photos and made a video from one of them. I sepnt ages looking for a miguel phone first of all, but eventually gave up and used McRad's comp, which has a microphone attached (and with its wire tangled up so you can't remove it). I took my sound recording and then made the video in Adobe Premiere Pro, which took quite a while to get the timing of the images reasonable.

I processed some more images and went in the garden a bit. I did see a couple of Bee flies, and also a couple of other other flies, but they would always fly off whenever I got near them at all.

After dinner I watched Lost with Mauser and L, then watched a bit of a film with Mauser. The film was originally 9½ hours long, but apparently the studio cut it down to 2 hours (against the director's wishes), and the other 7½ hours of film has been lost. So the film uses photos of the scenes that were removed, which is a bit rubbish really.

We stopped watching it after about an hour, then I did some more photo processing.

The weather today was a mixture of clouds and sun with a cold wind all day.

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Ham with Salad Sandwich; Clementine; Slice of Jamaica Ginger Cake; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; Bit of Easter Egg.
Dinner: Slice of Chicken & Ham Pie; Potatoes; Peas; Gravy; Fried Leek. Pudding was a slice of Chocolate Cake with Melted Milk and White Chocolate and Tinned Mandarin Segments. Coffee; Bit of Easter Egg.
Supper: HobNob; Dark Chocolate Digestive; Cup o' Tea.

Photo Processing

This morning I went out on a walk, down the old railway line towards Lubenham, then up the road towards East Farndon, then turned off about half way towards East Farndon and went down the track and across the field that comes out near the bridge over the Welland.

I found that it wasn't very springlike at all. The Blackthorn or Hawthorn was flowering, but that was about it. Down the old railwayline it was still mainly brown grass, and some sections of it were still quite boggy, despite the lack of rain for the last week or so. I saw 2 flies, 1 hoverfly, and glimpsed 1 butterfly. I also saw a few birds. The wind was pretty chilly, but walking with a backpack, and wearing a sweater, I found I was just the right temperature.

I also brought along my thermo-cup that McRad had bought me for my birthday last year, giving it it's first outing. I found it worked well, and kept my tea warm until I got back home.

When I got back home I processed some photos from the 2nd day in Korea, back in October last year.

After lunch I carried on processing photos, then went on the pinternet a bit and also watered a bit of the garden.

After dinner I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, processed some more photos, then looked into panos on the iphone/without flash. It seems that you can get panos on the iphone using an app the viewer must download, or there is also a thing you can pay a license for (so I presume not an app), but I'm not sure how it works.

There is also a panorama player being developed using WebGL, something which I think is supported in the Firefox and Webkit nightlies, but not in the release browsers. Since Apple refuses to support Flash or QuicktimeVR, lets hope they hurry up and decide to support WebGL (and hopefully roll out the support as an update to existing iphones/ipads).

The weather today was a mixture of clouds and sun with a strong cold wind all day.

Food
Breakfast: Chocolate Muesli Bar; Cup o' Tea.
Elevenses: Bit of a Choc Chip Cookie; Malted Milk; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Slice of Tiger Loaf Bread; ½ Wensleydale and Salad Sandwich made with Tiger Loaf Bread; Honey Sandwich made with Tiger Loaf Bread; Banana; Grapes; Slice of Angle Cake; Wagon Wheel; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Spaghetti Bolognese; Tomato Ketchup; Ground Black Pepper; Green Beans; Grated Parmesan. Pudding was a slice of Bakewell Tart with Custard. Coffee; Bit of After Eight Easter Egg; 5x squares of Galaxy Chocolate.

Photo Processing

This morning and part of the afternoon I carried on processing and sorting the photos from the Falcon and Owl sanctuary. The rest of the afternoon and evening I processed some more photos from the 2nd day of our Korea holiday, back in October last year.

I also tried to buy a copy of Capture NX 2, as my trial runs out in about 3 days. But the website I used just had a 404 error when I tried to checkout, and their email address bounces, so I don't know if they received my order or not. I guess I should have known from their reseller rating that they were a scam, since they had 2 comments saying so. But they also had 1 comment where someone said they didn't have any problem with their order, and gave them 5 stars.

Anyway, I'm hoping that they didn't get my order at all, and so won't take any money from my card. Then I can just order from a real place (though at quite a bit more cost). I was hoping that a demo of Photoshop CS5 would be available before my Capture NX 2 trial expired, so I could check how well it handles removing CA from the Tokina 10-17mm/3.5-4.5 fisheye zoom lens compared to Capture NX (which seems to remove the CA perfectly, much better than I could ever do with sliders).

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser and L.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Mustard Ham with Dijon Mustard Sandwich made with Bakery Bread; Grapes; Pear; Satsuma; Wagon Wheel; Cup o' Tea; Approx Half an Easter Egg.
Dinner: 1⅓ Donner Kebabs; Chilli Sauce; Turmeric coloured Rice; Stir Fry; Salad. Pudding was 1½ Caramel Wafer Biscuits; Hot Chocolate. Coffee; Bit of After Eight Easter Egg; 2x squares of Galaxy Cookie Crumble Chocolate.

Various

This morning I started cutting out some Pogs in Photoshop, then continued this after Church and after dinner. Eventually I had done a few, so I updated my Pog website. I updated my faces made from food website as well, then did a backup while I wrote up yesterday's blog post.

After that I tried to install the latest version of PerfectDisk, but couldn't work out how to do it, and couldn't see any info on the PerfectDisk website on how to take advantage of the free upgrade protection that I'd paid for, so I sent a message to customer support asking how to upgrade from PD10 to PD11.

After that I watered the garden a bit, and added some more water to the pond. I did some vacuuming, then sorted and processed some photos.

After tea I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L, then I checked Moose Peterson's blog and sorted/processed a few more photos. I watched the 2nd part of the DSLR video shootout, and was a bit disappointed they didn't bother showing how film did above ISO 400 or whatever it was film they were using. It was interesting to hear about the 'Real' ISO levels though, and how they weren't at the natural stops you'd expect (normally ISO starts at 100 and doubles from there, but they found the real ISO level starts at 160).

Food
Breakfast: Tangerine Marmalade Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Chicken Curry; Mixed Veg; Raisins; Rice. Pudding was a Muller Light Cherry, Vanilla, and (hardly any) Chocolate Yoghurt. Cup o' Tea. Some Easter Egg.
Afternoon Snack: Piece of Freshly Made Victoria Sponge Sandwich Cake with Strawberry Jam.
Tea: Mustard Ham Sandwich made with Bakery Bread; Grapes; Piece of Chocolate stuff that Shaz and Mark made the other day; Slice of Pineapple; Cup o' Tea.

Driving around going nowhere

This morning I processed a few photos, then Mauser asked if I wanted to go to the Rutland Owl and falconry Centre (or sumat similar), so I said I would.

So we (me, Clare, Mauser, and L) went off in the car. Mauser had put the post-code of the place into the GPS, but unfortunately, with it being out in the country, the postcode covered quite a wide area, and the GPS brought us to a farm.

We went along the road a bit more, and then turned round and went back down some other roads, but didn't find it. We did find something like the 'Rutland Railway Museum', but that was closed. Anyway, we stopped at the side of the road opposite the railway place, and had our lunch there.

We drove back to Oakham, and had a walk round the town. We saw an art exhibition in the town hall, which was kind of a mix of abstract and landscape painting (can't remember the artist's name though). We also went to see Oakham Castle.

Oakham Castle doesn't seem much like a castle as the fortified walls and moat have all disappeared, and all that's left is the Great Hall, which was building inside the castle grounds. Inside the Great Hall, it looks a bit like a Church. I think this is because it was last used as a Court room, which has a similar seating arrangement and wooden 'pews', like a Church.

On the walls of the Great Hall are loads of 'horseshoes'.

Photo by Simon Garbutt
There was a law passed that any peer who stepped foot in Oakham had to present a horseshoe, and many royals have presented special presentation horseshoes to the town.

We then resumed our search for the falconry centre, and found a road with a sign pointing up it that said something like 'falconry Centre'. So we went up there, but after a while we hadn't seen any sign of the Falconry centre, and were back on the piece of road we'd already been along a few times when we were looking for the place in the morning.

So we went into a bakery shop, and Clare asked there if they knew where it was, and they said it was back down the way we'd came. So we went back the way we'd come, and we did see the sign this time - it was just a home-made sign with a bit of paper stuck on it.

So we got to the place, and there was only about 2 other cars there. It wasn't near the lake, and was £5 each to get in. It was mainly falcons, owls, and similar birds in cages, so you couldn't really get good photos of them (since you couldn't get right up to the cages to put your lens up against/near the wire). There were also quite a few though that weren't in cages, and were on perches with a rope tied round one foot to allow them to move about a bit, but not enough to attack visitors, and of course, it prevented them from flying off.

The ones that weren't in cages weren't that great for photographing either, since they were in the shade, and there was bright sun on the ground behind them. Anyway, it was nice to just look at the different birds and admire their spectacular plumage (none of the birds looked dirty or tatty at all). I did take a few photos, but most of the time kept the camera in my backpack.

We also went for a walk through the woods that are part of the place, and saw quite a few deer in the woods.

After this we went back down the road, and went to a bit of Rutland Water, but it cost £3 for parking, and I had only wanted to go there to look around for 5 minutes, so we just went straight back home instead.

When we got home I went in the garden for a bit, but there didn't seem to be any insects around (other than the normal midge swarms). I did a bit more work on a photo I'd started processing in the morning, then it was dinner time.

After dinner I watched Star Trek with Mauser and L, then finished processing the photo. I read the lastest news on dpreview, canonrumors.com, and nikonrumors.com. I watched a video about various DSLRs compared to each and film for shooting video, which was quite interesting. Film had a considerable advantage over the DSLRs in terms of dynamic range.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Turkey meat with Mayonnaise and Salad Sandwich; Packet of Barbeque Flavour Crisps; (not very) Jammy Wagon Wheel; Cup o' (weird tasting) Tea.
Afternoon Snack: Bowl of Mackies Ice Cream; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: 2x Sausage Rolls; Mashed Potato; Baked Beans. Pudding was Home-made Fruit Salad. Coffee.

Getting annoyed with Windows

This morning I woke up about 6am, I went to sleep again, but unlike yesterday didn't get woken up by L.

In the morning I added metadata to a few more photos. After lunch I was trying to amend the hierarchical category of some photos. I had put photos from the National Folk Museum of Korea in the Gyeongbokgung category (as the National Folk Museum of Korea is inside Gyeongbokgung). However, I now decided that it would be more sensible to have National Folk Museum of Korea as a separate category to Gyeongbokgung.

Now, while it would be easiest to use Adobe Bridge to remove and add the hierarchical keywords, Bridge has a nasty habit of adding the hierarchical keyword to the keywords, and re-arranging all existing keywords assigned to an image so they are in alphabetical order. The way I structure my keywords for Korean items is:

Translation or transcription if no translation available; Hangeul; Transcription if translation was used as first keyword; Hanja;

e.g. One of my images has the following keywords:

Nongak; 농악; 農樂; Pungmul; 풍물; 風物; Pungak; 풍악; 風樂; National Folk Museum of Korea; 국립민속박물관; Gungnip Minsok Bangmulgwan; 國立民俗博物館; Asia; Korea; 한국; Hanguk; 韓國;

Writing the keywords in this format makes it relatively easy to see how each keyword is related to the Hangeul and Hanja version of that same keyword.

Ideally, each keyword would be enclosed in an alt-lang block, since Korea; 한국; Hanguk; 韓國 aren't actually separate keywords, but rather different versions of the same keyword. Sadly the Dublin Core XMP specs don't allow for this, and I didn't think it was worth creating my own XMP keywords spec just to allow for this.

Anyway, thanks to Bridge's re-ordering of the keywords (according to the spec, keywords are an unordered list (bag), so there's not actually anything inherently wrong with Bridge doing this), my keywords get all messed up so that I can't tell what Hangeul keyword relates to what English keyword, and likewise with the Hanja and transcribed keywords.

So instead of using Bridge, I decided to use exiftool.

Removing the existing hierarchical subject is easy, just open a DOS prompt, cd to the directory where the photos are that need modifying, then run

exiftool.pl -xmp-lr:HierarchicalSubject= ./

Adding the new existing hierarchical subject should be just as easy, in my case I ran

exiftool.pl -xmp-lr:HierarchicalSubject="Places|Asia|Korea (한국; Hanguk; 韓國)|Seoul Special City (서울특별시; Seoul Teukbyeolsi; 서울特別市)|Jongno-gu (종로구; 鐘路區)|National Folk Museum of Korea (국립민속박물관; Gungnip Minsok Bangmulgwan; 國立民俗博物館)" ./

But all the non-latin characters rendered in the command prompt as question mark ? characters. I checked the XMP of the modified file, and that had question marks instead of the Korean characters as well.

So I did some googling, and found on the exiftool FAQ Special characters don't display properly in my Windows console. Following this, I changed the font to TT Lucida Console, and changed the code page to 65001 (UTF-8). Now when I ran the same command as earlier, I got squares instead of Korean characters (interestingly, when I try to copy one of the squares from the console output and paste it into this blog post, it turns back into a Korean character).

I checked the XMP of the modified file, but the Korean characters had been saved as question marks again.

According to Phil

On some Windows systems, using UTF‑8 doesn't seem to work. In this case, a Windows character set may be the best alternative: For instance, for Windows Latin1 (cp1252) type "chcp 1252" in the console to switch to cp1252, then run exiftool with "-charset cp1252" (or -L). This same technique can be used for other supported Windows code pages.

So I looked for the codepage number for Korean, according to Windows Code Pages, it seems to be 949. But when I ran chcp 949 I just got back Invalid code page.

So I decided to try a simple-as-you-can-get perl script instead

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

my $output  = `exiftool.pl -xmp-lr:HierarchicalSubject="Places|Asia|Korea (한국; Hanguk; 韓國)|Seoul Special City (서울특별시; Seoul Teukbyeolsi; 서울特別市)|Jongno-gu (종로구; 鐘路區)|National Folk Museum of Korea (국립민속박물관; Gungnip Minsok Bangmulgwan; 國立民俗博物館)" ./`;
print "$output\n";

Now since all this script does is make a shell call, I didn't hold out much hope of it working, since I thought it would be essentially the same as typing the command in a command prompt.

However, I ran it, and it did work! Windows is so annoying!

I managed to update one folder of files, but then went I went on to another folder, I came across another problem. When running the exiftool command to remove the Hierarchical subject from the XMP, I got an error

Error renaming ./HONCHE~1.JPG

It seemed that it didn't like a filename that had Korean characters in it.

I installed Windows Powershell, and tried executing the command from that, but that just brought up a DOS prompt which flashed up (looking like it had some error messages in it), then closed.

I looked at the Exiftool FAQ, and saw that adding new tags to a list overwrites any existing tags by default, so actually there wasn't any need to remove the old Hierarchical Subject tag before adding the new Hierarchical Subject. So I tried just running the perl script to add the new Hierarchical Subject, but I still got the same problem.

I tried downloading the windows executable version of exiftool, to see if this had the same problem (though I'm pretty sure the problem is windows, not exiftool). But I couldn't get it to process the current directory, I tried '.', './', and '.\', but all gave me a message saying Error: File not found.

I next tried cding back to the parent directory of the directory I wanted to process, and specifying the directory name. I tried various variations, including the full path to the directory, but always got No file specified.

I did some googling, and found the answer, on the exiftool home page:

In Windows, ExifTool will not process files with Unicode characters in the file name. This is due to an underlying lack of support for Unicode filenames in the Windows standard C I/O libraries

It's enough to make you wonder if the cost of a Mac might be worth it, despite the lack of power compared to a similarly priced PC.

The sun had come out, so I went in the garden for a bit. I saw a bee fly, so I tried to take a photo of it, but the camera's battery had run out. I guess I should remember to check it (or just always put it on to charge) whenever I finish using it.

So I came back inside. I decided to just rename the files with non latin characters in them, run exiftool to replace the Hierarchical Category tag, and then rename the files back to their original filename. Luckily there was only one of these images with a non latin script filename.

After updating all the images that needed to be updated (they were in various folders, so it took quite a while), I took my camera battery off charge and went out in the back garden again.

I actually saw 3 bee flies in the same place. Mainly I just got photos of one Bee fly that was quite co-operative and stayed on the fence. But being on the fence also meant there weren't a lot of angles I could shoot at, especially after it moved and went below some ivy. Really I wanted to try and get a photo of one feeding on a grape hyacinth.

After dinner me, Mauser and L watched an episode of Star Trek TNG. Most of the episodes haven't been that good so far really.

After that I went out in the garden again, but there weren't any insects around other than the midges, which were flying about and not really photographable. So I came back in and watched a silent Japanese film with music from 'Once upon a time in the West' and Jean Jacques Perrey (the film was missing a soundtrack). The film was quite boring, but it was interesting to see that it was quite Americanised, despite being made in the 1920s.

One of the women wore one of those head hugging hats (a bit like a thin beanie), they went to eat at a European restaurant (with European style tables, chairs, and cutlery), and the main woman's boss' house was very Western style as well. Actually, the only thing really japanese about the film was the main woman and her mother's dresses. One of the blokes in it also looked like Charlie Chaplin.

A difference with western films was that it had quite large title boards, with lots of text on each one, whereas western silent films tend to only have a couple of lines of text on each title board, and you have to guess what's going on from the acting.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun all day.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Maple and Pecan Crunch Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: 2x Cheese on Toasts; Orange; 2x delee Chocolate things that Shaz and Mark made yesterday; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Battered Fish Portion; Peas; Potatoes; Mushrooms; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a Muller Light Yoghurt. Coffee.

metadataring

This morning I woke up about 6am. I had just managed to get back to sleep again when L came and woke me up so we could watch Lost before he went to school and Mauser went to work.

After watching Lost I went on my comp, and processed a couple of photos. Then I spent the rest of the day adding metadata to photos.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L.

The weather was overcast all day.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Maple and Pecan Crunch Cereal with Cornflakes; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese Sandwich; Packet of Chilli flavour Doritos; Banana; Home-made mini Doughnut with Honey & Sugar; Fox's Triple; Cup o' Tea; Bit of Easter Egg.
Dinner: Slice of Home-made Pizza; Chips; Salad. Pudding was 3x Delee Chocolate Things that Shaz and Mark made.

metadataring

Today I was still just processing and adding metadata to images (mainly research/adding metadata).

I managed to finally finish adding the metadata to the Gyeongbokgung photos. Now I just have the sejongno and National Folk Museum grounds (which is actually in Gyeongbokgung, so I guess you could say I haven't finished Gyeongbokgung yet) to add metadata to. And of course, I still have to process all the photos. But at least I am making some progress.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L. We didn't get to watch Lost today as the internet (well, actually wireless connectivity of the router) kept breaking, meaning it hadn't finished downloading by this evening.

Sarah and Mark also came to stay for a few days today.

The weather was sunny most of the day, though the wind was quite cold.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Fruit 'n' Fibre Cereal; Cup o' Tea; ⅓ Easter Egg
Lunch: 2x Cheese on Toasts; Clementine; Fox's Triple; Cup o' Tea; ⅓ Easter Egg.
Dinner: Shepherd's Pie; Broccoli; Green Beans; Mashed Swede; Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese; Ground Black Pepper; Gravy. Pudding was some Mackie's Ice Cream. Coffee; A bit more Easter Egg; Some Galaxy Chocolate.

metadataring

Today I was still just processing and adding metadata to images (mainly research/adding metadata).

One of the websites I found quite helpful was this one, which has quite a bit of info on Cassidinae (Tortoise Beetles).

I also read quite a bit of opinion on the new content-aware fill in Photoshop CS5. Interestingly, it seems this facility has been available in GIMP for quite some time.

In the afternoon I also went in the garden for a bit to take some photos of a Bee Fly. But when it was resting on the soil, whenever I got near it, it would fly to a new spot. Then it went on a flower, but moved round behind the flower where I could only see part of it just before I pressed the shutter. I moved round to get a better angle, then it flew off and landed on the mud under a bush. I looked away for a moment, and then it was gone altogether.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L.

I re-geocoded some images, and scanned in some new pogs I received today, then did some more metadataring.

The weather was sunny most of the day. It became overcast before sunset though. There was a bit of wind.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Asda Golden Balls Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Ham with Dijon Mustard Sandwich; Clementine; Slice of Genoa; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; ½ Easter Egg.
Dinner: Slice of Chicken & Ham Pie; Carrots; Cauliflower; Potatoes; Gravy. Pudding was Ginger Sponge with Golden Syrup and Custard. Coffee.
Supper: Shortbread Finger; Dark Chocolate Digestive; Cup o' Tea

Photo Processing and metadataring

This morning I did some vacuuming, then tried to find out about a China Post prize draw. I had received a letter from China back in January I think, which had a code on the back for a prize draw, so I wanted to see if the code had won a prize. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything about the prize draw on the pinternet.

Most of the rest of the day I was processing and adding metadata to some photos.

In the afternoon I also watched the Adobe CS5 launch video. The content aware fill and puppet warp in Photoshop CS5 looks like it might be useful. Photoshop CS5 also has a new HDR feature, complete with anti-ghosting tickbox for removing ghosting caused by movement, so if I get CS5 I might give HDR another chance.

The stuff they showed in Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver didn't look particularly exciting. Likewise Premier Pro, the guy doing the presentation on Premier Pro just seemed to keep going on about how the CS5 version is 64 bit. One good thing in CS5's video ability was intelligent rotoscoping. There didn't really seem to be anything worth shouting about on the Flash front either (they made a do about Flash Player 10.1, but that's free, and not a reason to shell out for CS5).

In the evening I also watched (with Mauser and L) an episode of Star Trek TNG and 'Strike', a political film based on true events about a strike in pre-communist Russia. I was surprised with the way it ended, but I guess that's because it was based on real events instead of just being pure propaganda.

The weather was overcast most of the day, then brightened up later in the afternoon. Possibly there may have been a nice sunset, but I can't see the horizon where the sun sets. It was quite windy today.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Asda Golden Balls Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Ham Sandwich; Clementine; Slice of Genoa; Rocky; Cup o' Tea; ½ Easter Egg.
Dinner: Pasta with Cheese Sauce; Ham; Parmesan; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a Strawberry Muller Rice; Dark Chocolate Digestive; Shortbread Finger. Coffee.

Poggin'

This morning I started cutting out pogs in Photoshop, then went to Church.

After Church I carried on cutting out pogs in Photoshop until lunch time. After lunch I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser and L, then finished cutting out Pogs in Photoshop. I tried to upload them to my Pog website, but the internet was broken.

So instead I processed a few photos and went in the garden for a bit and moved some flowers from under bushes where you couldn't see them very well. (Actually I mainly wanted to move them because bees like them, and there's no way I could take photos of the flowers or visiting bees when they're under a bush).

Later in the afternoon the internet was working, so I updated my Pog Website.

In the evening I watched Dr. Strangelove with Mauser and L. It was a bit boring, but not too bad. I gave it 5/10. After that I processed a few more photos, then went to bed.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun, though mainly sunny. There were a few wispy clouds around at sunset, and they got lit up quite nicely. Nothing spectacular though. It was very windy, and the wind made it quite cold.


Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Asda Golden Balls Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: 2x Chicken & Stir fried Vegetables Fajitas; Rice. Pudding was some Mackie's Ice Cream. Coffee; Bit of L's Easter Egg.
Afternoon snack: 2x Scones (made with Cinnamon Doughnut mix) with Strawberry Jam and I cannae believe it's nae butter Jock.
Tea: Packet of Prawn Cocktail Flavour Crisps; Banana; Slice of Genoa Cake; Mint Club; Cup o' Tea.

Metadataring

This morning I was researching a photo description. Doing the research, I came across this article, which says

The roofs of the palace gates are hipped while the roofs of the main structures are hipped and gabled. Decorative ceramic figures in the shape of dragons and other animal heads are at each end of the ridges and rows of chapsang, which are clay figures derived from a popular Chinese story, line the sloping ridges to guard against evil spirits.

The photo I was researching the description for didn't have the clay figures on the roof, but some photo's I'd already written descriptions for, and some I had yet to write descriptions for did. So I thought I should do some research on the 'chapsang' so I could improve the descriptions for my photos featuring the roof sculptures.

However, a google search for 'chapsang' didn't reveal anything relevant. I also tried the Korean transliteration '찹상', which came up with 1 result, that was just a page with a couple of lines of content (maybe a 404 or error page).

The terms in the article are using the McCune Reischauer transliteration of Korean, while the tool I used to convert 'chapsang' to '찹상' uses the Revised Romanisation transliteration (I think). So I tried to see how 'chapsang' transliterates to Hangeul using the McCune Reischauer system, but it seemed to be the same, still 찹상.

Next I just tried googling for various terms like 'Korean roof sculptures', 'Korea roof statues', 'Korea roof guardians', 'Korean roof figures', and various variations along those lines. I checked a number of results for each search, so it took quite a long time.

I remembered that I'd seen a photo of the roof sculptures in one of my previous searches, so I thought I should try and find that page again, since it might have had more information on the roof statues. I remembered that it mentioned that some of the roof figures were of monkeys, so I tried searching for 'Korea Roof Monkeys', but couldn't find the page I was looking for, or any other relevant pages.

Then I remembered that the page had come up before when I looking for information about the Chinese Zodiac statues outside the National Folk Museum of Korea. So I searched for that again, and found the page I was looking for, on the second page of results.

But unfortunately, the information about the roof figures on that page didn't give much info on them. Going back to the original page that started my quest for information on the roof sculptures, I saw it said they were derived from a popular Chinese story. So searching for 'Chinese figures roof', I finally hit some info. Unfortunately the article only gives info on their use in China. But it does include three different Chinese names that the roof figures were known by, both in traditional and simplified Chinese.

So I tried searching for the traditional Chinese names, one at a time, on google.co.kr, and selecting to only show Korean search results. I then checked a number of pages for each result to see if they had anything relevant. But none of the pages had any images of the Korean roof sculptures.

After lunch I started trying to research the description for another photo, and strangely enough, I found some info on the chapsang roof decorations that I'd been trying to get info on all morning. It turned out that the revised romanisation of the roof decorations is not 'chapsang', but rather 'japsang', or 잡상 in Korean. So then I spent quite a bit of the afternoon trying to find info on Japsang.

While I did find some info (they are based on the characters from a Chinese story, 'Journey to the West'), I didn't find out much more than that. If only I knew Korean or Google translate would provide good translations. Some resources I found were

• http://blog.daum.net/gjg695/15720033
• http://blog.korea.kr/app/log/chlove/40606501
• http://picpoke.com/im/2b89kk

So all my searching had resulted in very little info on the roof sculptures. I also checked my guide to Changdeokgung that we brought back from Korea with us, but I couldn't find any info about the roof statues in there either. My searching on this subject took me most of the morning.

I went in the garden for a bit, then did more photo research/description writing. I had a photo of a throne, and found a couple of websites with brief info on the throne here and here. But then I realised that my photo was of a different throne. Unfortunately my photo was geocoded as being outside Geunjeongjeon (the main throne room), which is incorrect. Google searching for 'throne gyeongbokgung' just brings up photos of the throne in Geunjeongjeon, not the throne I had a photo of.

The next photo I had was of an information board, so I assumed this information board must be near where I had taken the throne photo. Taking the name of one of the buildings from the information board, gave quite a few results, but none seemed to be of the correct building (the buildings were all closed up so you couldn't see inside them).

Next I checked on panoramio, and one by one clicked through the photos in the area I thought the building containing the throne might be in. After a few clicks, I found a photo of inside a building, with the same inside as my photo (the photo was looking up more so you couldn't see the throne). So I looked up what building that photo had been geotagged to, and found it was Cheonchujeon 천추전. I did a google search for 천추전, and found various photos, but it didn't seem to be the correct building.

So I went back to panoramio, and checked through some more of the photos nearby, and found one of the same throne as my photo. It was in a different position to the previous photo, but by the same person?!

So I found the names of the other buildings nearby, and proceeded to check them in google to try and find photos of them to determine if they were the same building as my photo. I also used 360cites.net and checked the panos there to see if I could see a building with open doors/windows and railings so you couldn't go inside.

Eventually I checked Sajeongjeon, and found that one of the websites that I'd initially used to get info on the throne before I realised it wasn't the same throne as the one in Geunjeongjeon. And when I checked the page, it had a photo of the throne in Sajeongjeon (as well as the photo of the throne in Geunjeongjeon I'd been looking at before). So instead of an hour or two searching, I could have just scrolled down that page, and would have found the location info I wanted. Doh!

In the evening I watched an episode of Equalizer, then did backups while reading bythom.com (who had an impressive overhaul of his home page for April Fools day), nikonrumors.com, and canonrumors.com.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun, though mainly sunny until sunset when it started to cloud over more. Not sure if there was a sunset, as I can't see where the sun sets at this time of year, but I didn't see the clouds get lit up at all, so I'm guessing not.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Asda Golden Balls Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Mature Cheddar Cheese Sandwich made with Bread-maker-made Bread; Crust of Bread-maker-made Bread with Blackcurrant Jam; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: 2x Sausages; Fried Leek; Fried Sliced Mushrooms; Potatos; Carrots; Gravy. Pudding was a slice of Home-made Chocolate Cake with Cream. Coffee.

Metadataring and nice day

This morning I went in the garden to try and take some flower photos as it wasn't very windy. But the particular flower I was interested in went into the shade, so I found my photos of it weren't looking too good on the camera's LCD (too dark), and it didn't look very good with flash from the MT-24EX either.

The rest of the morning and first bit of the afternoon I was researching and adding metadata to photos from the 2^nd day of our Korea back in October last year.

Me and L went in the back garden for a bit, and L did some burning, but managed to put some stuff in his burning tin that had a wasp on it. While L was attempting to set fire to the stuff in his burning tin without letting the wasp out to sting him, I took some photos of the flower that I'd been trying to photograph in the morning. It now had sunlight on it, but the early afternoon light was too harsh compared to the softer early morning light. So I got my big 5 in 1 reflector panel, and used the semi-transparent middle to put the flower in shadow, preventing the harsh shadows caused by the sunlight.

I also took photos of various other plants and insects. I wanted to try and take some ladybird photos, so I check my flash diffusion. Yesterday when I took photos of ladybirds, they had really bad large harsh highlights on them. Since the diffusers seemed to work okay last year, I think it must be that I forgot to use the flash ratio. So I wanted to take some more ladybird photos, but using the flash ratio, so I could check that the diffusers were working okay.

But while there were lots of ladybirds on the trellis yesterday, there weren't any today. I did find one on a daffodil leaf, so I took a few photos of that, but I can't compare the flash diffusion to yesterday's shots since I was taking front-on shots of this ladybird instead of top-down shots like I was with the ladybirds on the trellis yesterday.

After a while I came back inside, and did more descriptions for photos.

After dinner I watched Star Trek with Mauser and Maccy. We've finished Star Trek TOS Season 1 now, and since Mauser doesn't have any more seasons of TOS, we started watching TNG. We'd already watched the first episode before, so we watched the second episode today. It was totally skill, and Picard does a weird thing where he's talking to Dr Crusher (sounds like a wrestler's name), and then he just does a random Youtube poop style repeating a sound quickly for about half a second.

There's also a bit where he goes into the doctor's part of the ship and does a really small weird little jump. There's also the usual cringeworthy Star Trek stupid weirdness that makes Star Trek so great. The purposeful jokes on TNG aren't as good as the ones on TOS though.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun, though mainly sunny until sunset when it started to cloud over more. Not sure if there was a sunset, as I can't see where the sun sets at this time of year, but I didn't see the clouds get lit up at all, so I'm guessing not.

In the evening I did more research for photo descriptions.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: 2x Cheese on Toasts; Orange; Slice of Genoa Cake; Mint Club; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Breaded Fish Portion; Peas; Mashed Potato. Pudding was a Pink flavour Mousse plus a couple of biscuits. Coffee; a bit more than half an Easter Egg.

Metadataring

I spent most of this morning trying to get the info for a description of one of my images. I managed to find a Korean website that had some info on the buildings in my photo, though as usual, the quality of the translation via Google Translate meant I didn't actually get much info from the article other than the building names and building/rebuilding dates.

The article did include the meaning of the building names, one of which Google Translated as complete hameul delighted. So I spent quite a while trying to find what hameul 함을 means. But despite my best efforts, I couldn't find out. Babelfish said it meant 'box', which doesn't make sense, but was the only translation I could find. Articles that used 함을 in them didn't seem to have any common thread where the word was used either.

I do love the way my UPS saves my PC from resetting whenever there's a sub-second power cut. (Happened just now, I checked Mauser's PC after my UPS buzzed, and found it had restarted, while my PC is still running fine.)

The rest of the day I was still researching and writing photo descriptions. I only got about 4 done in the whole day!

I also washed the bird table with L, and went in the garden for a bit and took a few macros of laybirds mating.

The weather was mainly sunny until sunset when it started to cloud over. Not sure if there was a sunset, as I can't see where the sun sets at this time of year, but I didn't see the clouds get lit up at all, so I'm guessing not.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese Sandwich; Clementine; Slice of Genoa Cake; Slice of Home-made Chocolate Cake; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Chicken Pie; Peas; Carrots; Potato. Pudding was a slice of Home-made Chocolate Cake with Cream. Coffee; small Cadbury's Flake; some Easter Egg.

FPP

Yesterday evening I remembered that I needed to find out how to make the escape key quit a flash panorama, and also a show/hide button for the panorama navigation controls. But I remembered after shutting my PC down. I had been wanting to ask this question(s) since working on my pano website, a couple of weeks ago now. I knew I'd just forget it again, so I wrote a reminder on a piece of tissue (I don't have any 'normal' paper around by my PC), and put it on my keyboard.

So this morning I saw my reminder, and looked into this. Rather than just asking the question on the Flash Panorama Player Forums, I thought it would be a good idea to first see if the answer(s) was already available. I checked the forums first, and found this thread, where someone was asking a similar question to me. The answers there referred to javascript and script inside flash, but didn't explain how you write or access javascript or flash using FPP.

So next I checked the FPP blog, the website, the Google Groups Group (no point me adding a link there as you must have purchased FPP to be able to access it), and the Tutorials/Examples that come with FPP. However, I couldn't see anywhere on any of these how to add script to FPP. I also did some Googling, but didn't find anything helpful.

I was going to post a message on the FPP forums asking how you add script or functions to FPP, but then reading the thread about Closing the SWF from Hotspot more carefully, I noticed that the last post was actually asking this same question. This post was made on 26^th March, and hadn't been answered. There seemed little point in me asking the exact same question.

So I took a look at the FPP plugins folder, and opened (in Flash CS4) the .fla file for the openFullscreen plugin. Initially it opened with a view of the stage (or whatever it's called), which was just a grey box with an open and close graphic outside it. I tried to find out how to see the code view, and eventually found it under Window > Actions.

Looking at the code, I thought that this must be what 360VT.co.uk was talking about when they said the script inside flash. So now I had some flash code, I could edit it to hopefully do what I wanted. To test my edits, I was going to export the flash code to a SWF file (the file format FPP seems to use for plugins), and then upload this file to the local copy of my pano website. But then I remembered that to get the browser to download the new version of the file each time I made an edit and saved it out as a SWF, I would have to clear the browser cache each time before refreshing the page.

So instead I downloaded the relevant files from the local copy of my website, onto my desktop. I then changed the file paths in the HTML and XML, to point to the correct files instead of the website files. I then loaded up the HTML file in my web browser, and checked everything was working correctly. When everything was working correctly, I edited the XML file to also include the SWF of my plugin, which I had modified from the openFullscreen plugin. I refreshed the page, and found my plugin didn't work.

But the way it didn't work was that I got a message saying that Alert wasn't a recognised class or object, or something to that effect anyway. In my plugin, I had just changed it so that on a key press it would alert 'hi', so I could see the plugin was working. The message that alert wasn't supported when I pressed a key served the same purpose anyway - it showed that the plugin registered the key press and fired the function as I wanted.

Next I changed my function to check if the event's keyCode was 27 (this corresponds to the 'Esc' key), and if it did, then to fire the doClose function that was part of the openFullscreen plugin's code I hadn't deleted. Unfortunately, after making this change, nothing seemed to happen when I pressed 'Esc'.

I needed some way of debugging, so I checked my Actionscript file for my custom Adobe File Info XMP Panel, and saw it had

import mx.controls.Alert;

So I added this line into the flash file for my FPP plugin, but after refreshing the page, Alert.show still didn't work.

I remembered seeing something about debugging in the FPP documentation for the Hotspots plugin, so I checked that. That said to download the Flash Tracer plugin for Firefox. I went to the website, and found that the latest version works with the Firebug plugin. So I downloaded and installed the debug version of Flash, installed the FBtracer plugin, changed my Flash code to use trace instead of Alert.show, and tried again.

Now I could see my trace in Firebug, which just output the KeyCode of the key pressed. I could see the correct key was being pressed, so I checked the doClose function, and found it wasn't what I wanted. I changed my function to just do the closing window bit from the doClose function, i.e.

if (ExternalInterface.available) {
   ExternalInterface.call("eval", "window.close();");
  }

I tested this, and got an error about not being able to call a function that communicates with the internet (I think it actually means the browser since no calls to 'http' URLs were made at all). The ExternalInterface calling eval looked a bit strange, so I checked the correct way to communicate with javascript from Flash, which is more like .

ExternalInterface.call("window.close");

So I changed my Flash code to just call a javascript function named 'j'. I added the j function to my javascript, which just alerted 'hi', so I could check it worked. But I still got the same security error as before.

I wrote most of the blog post so far, then it was lunch.

After lunch I got the plugin working on my local copy of my pano website. I had a bit of trouble getting the files to update, first I had forgotten to change a constant that contained the site address, so this meant it was loading everything from the live website instead of my local website. Then I found I'd hard-coded the site address in some places instead of using the constant, so I had to update that. Then lastly I remembered that I was using wp-supercache, so the page was always refreshing from the cached page (which was using the address of the live site for all static files).

So I logged into the Wordpress admin panel and disabled super-cache, and finally I could now get the page to refresh and reload all the static files. Weirdly, when I checked my Nginx config for the site, it didn't have any rewrite rules in it to do with supercache, so I'm not sure how it worked?

Anyway, my FPP plugin worked okay on the live site, and I could execute the javascript to remove the flash object from within flash.

Next I took my tried commenting out bits of the existing openFullscreen plugin code, starting with a bit that said

function newPano (link:Object) {
 pano = link;
}

But then the plugin didn't work, and I got an error when the pano loaded. I looked at the other FPP plugins provided with FPP, but none of these seemed to use a newPano function. But I couldn't see any consistent way in which they hooked into the load event of FPP plugins provided with FPP either.

So I did some googling and found Understanding Basic Flash Panorama Player Plugin Architecture, which says that you do need a function named newPano, and FPP will fire it automatically when the pano is loaded.

So next I tried copying my code and pasting it into a new Flash file (since I didn't need the graphics on the stage included in the openFullscreen plugin). I now got an error (when exporting the SWF in Flash CS4) about not being able to find flash.display.InteractiveObject. Strange since the openFullscreen file didn't have any problem, despite being the exact same code (in the Actions view of Flash CS4 at least). I tried just commenting out the line

import flash.display.InteractiveObject.*;

and now it exported okay. I found I could also comment out some of the classes I didn't need importing as well.

After getting the escape key to close the pano okay, I now needed to add something to allow you to hide or show the panorama controls. Looking into this, it seemed that it should be done using the XML for hotspots. Using this blog post, the documentation that comes with FPP, and the aforementioned forum thread, I managed to get a button that when clicked faded out the other buttons. I added the following properties to the global tag:

  <global onEnterFullscreen="full.alt=exit fullscreen" onExitFullscreen="full.alt=enter fullscreen" onOver="glow=3.1,600;glowColor=#339933;glowBlur=30; tint=0.5,200;tintColor=#339933; depth=20" onOut="glow=0,600;tint=0,600;" fadeHotspots="left.alpha=0,1000; right.alpha=0,1000; down.alpha=0,1000; up.alpha=0,1000; zoomOut.alpha=0,1000; zoomIn.alpha=0,1000;" hideHotspots="left.visible=0; right.visible=0; down.visible=0; up.visible=0; zoomOut.visible=0; zoomIn.visible=0;">

and then I modified the fullscreen button (which I was using to test my hiding buttons function like so:

<spot id="full" alt="enter fullscreen" smartScale="1" static="1" align="BC" salign="BC" staticX="225" staticY="-5" url="http://static1.360vrs.con/pano-content/images/black_f.png" onClick="fadeHotspots(); timer+=1,1000,,hideHotspots"/>

Next I decided to look at other sites to see how they deal with hiding and showing the pano controls, but the show/hide button looks like, and where it should be positioned. But looking at Panoramablog.com and Panoramas.dk, I found they both have small controls in the bottom right corner, rather than large centered controls that can be shown or hidden (which is what I was planning).

So I decided to just copy them, and have permanent controls in the bottom right hand corner. It took me quite a while to figure out how to do that and get the icons aligned nicely though.

After doing that I went out in the garden, and saw a Dung fly on a daffodil that looked like it might not mind being photographed (it wasn't sunny and was quite cold (as usual), so it probably didn't have much energy. I wrote some more of this blog post, then I put my macro kit (450D, MP-E, MT-24EX) together, and went out to take a photo of it. But it had started to rain (again) so I didn't even bother trying to get a photo of the dung fly.

In the evening I watched Lost, which was ultimately Desmondy and Widmoreish, and processed some more Korea photos.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun, with mostly sun, but a strong wind.

Food
Breakfast: Blackcurrant Jam Toast Sandwich; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Smoked Ham with Dijon Mustard and Mixed Salad Sandwich; Banana; Slice of Sultana Flapjack; Mint Club; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Jacket Potato; Baked Beans & Sausages; Grated Mature Cheddar Cheese; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was a slice of Chocolate Cake that Clare and L made today. Coffee; some Easter Egg.

Metadataring and photo processing

This morning I was still adding descriptions for my panos from Gyeongbokgung palace. Here are some webpages I found helpful:

• Wikipedia (of course!)
• Gyeongbokgung Official website (English)
• Gyeongbokgung Official website (Korean)
• Map of Gyeongbokgung (English)
• Map of Gyeongbokgung (Korean)
• Google Map with 360 panoramas
• Photos and info about Geoncheonggung area of Gyeongbokgung (Korean)
• Photos and info about Geoncheonggung area of Gyeongbokgung (Korean)

I don't know any Korean, but the Korean pages are useful for getting the Hangeul and Hanja names of buildings, and cross referencing their photos with your own to make sure you are writing a description about the correct building. You can also run the Korean pages through Google Translate, though usually the translation doesn't make much sense.

In the afternoon I processed a couple of panos and also researched the descriptions for them.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek with Mauser and L. I finished researching the description for one of the panos that I'd processed today, and then checked the pinternet while doing a backup.

The weather was a mixture of clouds and sun, with mostly sun, but a strong wind.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Asda Honey Loops Cereal; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Bacon with Tomato Ketchup and Salad Sandwich; Apple; Slice of Sultana Flapjack; Cup o' Tea.
Dinner: Shepherd's Pie; Fried Sliced Mushrooms; Carrot Batons; Ground Black Pepper. Pudding was 2x Apple Pies with Custard. Coffee.
Supper: 2x Home-made mini-doughnuts; Cup o' Tea.