Photo metadataring

This morning and the first bit of the afternoon I was adding descriptions etc. to the photos I took on the walk I went on with McRad yesterday morning.

In the afternoon and evening I uploaded the photos to my photo website. I also processed some moth photos and added descriptions to some other moth photos, then uploaded them to my photo website.

I also watched an episode of Super Sentai Jetman and two episodes of Power Rangers with L and Clare.

Walking and photo processing

This morning I went out on a walk with McRad.

In the afternoon I finished processing some photos of a moth, then sorted some photos. I geotagged my photos from this morning's walk, then started processing them.

In the evening I finished processing the photos from this morning's walk, but they still need descriptions etc. adding, so I'll have to do that tomorrow.

Also today I watched an episode each of Super Sentai Jetman and Power Rangers with L.

Poggin'

This morning I went to Church and cut out some pogs in Photoshop.

In the afternoon I finished updating the pog website, then checked various photo websites. I corrected the different places that I'd got the pano description wrong that I noticed yesterday evening.

In the evening it looked like there was going to be a nice sunset, but it turned out to just be an orange slither of sky with dark grey clouds above it (the clouds didn't get lit up by the setting sun).

I processed some moth photos all evening, and also took some photos of a crambid snout moth that had landed on a toilet roll.

Cleaning my camera sensor

This morning I checked a couple of my panos that I'd been working on for the past week for dust spots. Thankfully I didn't see any evidence of dust spots, but I did find a blending error in both, so I fixed them, then re-uploaded the relevant images to my photo and pano websites.

While they were uploading, I tried cleaning my D200's sensor, and ended up using 2 visible dust sensor swabs doing a wet clean.

In the afternoon and evening I processed some insect photos, and also checked the remaining 3 of the panos I'd been working on last week, and was relieved not to find any dust spots. And I didn't notice any other problems with them that I'd missed either.

I also uploaded one of the images to various photo sharing sites, then discovered that the description was wrong, it said the field was near Lubenham, when it should be East Farndon. No idea how I made that mistake, but now I need to change it on all the photo sharing websites I've uploaded it to, the original images, my photo website, my photo website blog, and my pano website.

I can't be bothered with all that now, so I'll do it tomorrow.

Stuff taking too long

This morning I processed some photos while waiting for the panos I've been processing the last few days to upload to my photo website.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening preparing the panos for my pano website, and updating that. I've no idea how it managed to take so long, but it did.

In the afternoon I also watched an episode of Chōjin Sentai Jetman with L. And in the evening I watched 3 episodes of Power Rangers with L.

When I'd finally finished updating my pano website I wrote a blog post for my photo website about the walk I took the panos on. And then I did a backup.

Annoyingly, when preparing one of the last panos for the pano website, I found that it had a dust spot. Very likely this dust spot also appears in all the other panos, but I just didn't notice it somehow (and it will appear 7 times in each pano - once in each of the 6 shots around, and once in the zenith shot).

So I will have to check the panos to see if they all have the dust spot, fix it, and then re-upload the photos. Doh!

There was also a really good sunset today, but I didn't want to go out taking more photos when I hadn't even finished uploading the panos I took last time I went for a walk. I still have lots of recent insect photos to process as well, not to mention the extremely large amount of older photos that are now so old (about a year and older) I've designated them as low priority.

Pano processing and metadataring

Today I was just finishing off processing the panos that I took a few days ago.

I managed to finish them by mid afternoon, then needed to add descriptions, keywords etc. to them. One of the photos was of a field that has a development sign in it, and I thought this sign might give some info about the field and location. So I went out for a walk in the rain to look at this sign, since it's not too far away from where I live.

Unfortunately, the sign didn't really give any info other than confirming that it was Farndon fields (Farndon fields farm shop is indented into the field, so this wasn't too hard to guess).

I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening researching online the locations of the different images, but didn't find much helpful.

One thing I did find out today though, is that you can create symbolic links (different to shortcuts) in Windows. I was trying to use the Super Cubic plugin to patch the nadir on one of the panos, but when I used it, I got an error that it couldn't save the settings.

This is due to Windows 7 security settings - the Photoshop plugins folder is in the Program Files location, and you need administrator privileges to be able to write files there. One solution would be to run Photoshop as an administrator so it has privileges necessary. But I saw in the plugins folder that the Topaz plugins just use shortcuts to the plugin folders, which are actually saved elsewhere.

So I thought I'd just save the plugin in my Useful files folder (which I had already done), and create a shortcut to it from the Photoshop plugins folder. But I got a message that I couldn't create shortcuts in the Photoshop plugins folder.

So I googled to see if it was possible to create the shortcut from the command line, but couldn't find anything until I stumbled across Mklink. And Mklink actually creates a symbolic link rather than a shortcut. It would be interesting to see if it can be used to create filepaths longer than the arbitrary 260 character limit.

The weather was rainy all day today (there might have been a half hour break in the morning). It was only light misty rain until the evening, when it got a bit heavier.

Moth photoing and Pano processing

I was hoping to carry on processing my panos from the other day this morning, but found my shower drain was a bit blocked. So I had to spend a while cleaning all the hairs out of the shower drain.

After breakfast I put the washing out on the line and had a quick look round the garden.

Then I remembered that I'd captured a moth I found in the house last night, so I decided to take a few photos of it. But when I moved it to the window sill in my bedroom, to get a nice white flat surface to photograph it on, it decided to go on a walk and fell off behind my bedside cabinet.

So I moved my bedside cabinet out and could only see a dead moth and lots of dirt. I vacuumed up behind the cabinet, then found the moth, which I managed to get back into a position suitable for photographing.

Somehow, a moth that had been a spider's meal had appeared on my windowsill near the moth I was photographing, so I took a few photos of that too.

I put the live moth in a bush in the garden, then checked my email, then wrote this blog post so far. It's now 11.17am, so I'm not doing too well at executing my original plan of processing panoramas this morning.

The rest of the day I was just working on the panos. Annoyingly Photoshop crashed when I hadn't saved for ages, so I had to re-do quite a bit of work on one of the panos. I managed to get 3 or 4 panos processed today.

The weather today started off sunny, but clouded over quite quickly. It was overcast most of the morning and quite a bit of the afternoon, then rained for the rest of the day.

Backup and pano processing

This morning I did a backup, and read PhotographyBlog's review of the Sigma SD15 while I was waiting. I was surprised that the review had so many comments, many of which are more helpful than the actual review itself. I don't plan on getting an SD15, but there is a slight possibility that I could purchase an SD14 (mainly for infrared work).

One of my backup drives didn't work though (it either wouldn't be detected by windows, or would make windows really slow, and the drive would be really slow if you tried to copy anything to it). It was one of the Western Digital 1.5TB drives I have had the same problem with two times before, but I thought I had solved with my new hot swap drive bay.

However, this drive wouldn't work properly connected internally by SATA so I RMA'd it, like I had to with the other two drives.

I sorted some photos and uploaded them to my photo website, then went down town to post the faulty hard drive. It rained a bit while I was out, but I managed to shelter under a tree for the worst of it, and it was only a couple of minutes shower.

When I got back home we had lunch. For the afternoon and evening I processed a couple of panos that I took yesterday evening.

I spent quite a while trying out the Oloneo PhotoEngine HDR software that I downloaded yesterday. Unfortunately, just like all other HDR software that I've tried, it can't handle movement well. The plants in the field in my bracketed photo that I tested were moving about quite a bit in the wind. In the Oloneo HDR version of the photo the plants had become all blurred due to the movement between the bracketed shots.

I didn't find the type of blurring very objectionable, and I think it would be fine if you wanted the plants blurred to show that it was windy. However, I generally prefer to have the plants relatively sharp and static, so it doesn't seem like Oloneo PhotoEngine will be of any use to me. So I'll keep processing my photos the time consuming way using masking in Photoshop.

The weather today started off with a clear blue sky, then gradually got cloudier during the morning. It was relatively overcast most of the afternoon. A bit before sunset the sun came out for about half an hour, but then it had clouded over again by sunset.

Various stuff

Most of this morning and a bit of the afternoon I did some more work on server side marker clustering for google maps and google earth.

The code spits out some clusters, but I'm not sure whether it's working properly as it produces a different number of clusters each time I run it! I need to create a google map to actually see the markers it is producing as I can't visualise it from the var_dump of the clustered markers array.

Mid morning Mauser went off on his Europe trip, and Shaz went back to Sussex. Before Mauser went though, he showed me this amazing video:


The rest of the afternoon and a bit of the evening I was adding descriptions to and processing various photos. I spent quite a while researching the mites that travel on Aphodius rufipes.

Then I went out about 7pm to try and get a photo of a nearby farm building in the evening light. I had taken a pano there a couple of weeks ago during twilight, but I hadn't set the exposure properly and the images were all too dark. So I wanted to take the pano again, but exposed properly.

But when I got there, all the rubbish that gave the place a lot of character had been removed. So I took a pano from a slightly different spot, though nearby, where there was a lot of old pots.

I then walked across the fields towards East Farndon. When I got to the field near Lubenham Road and East Farndon, the sun went behind a cloud. So I waited there for a while for the sun to come back out, then took a couple of panos there.

Then I walked back along Lubenham road towards Lubenham, and took a couple more panos shortly after sunset. I took one last pano near the house on that road, then walked back home along the old railway line.

Unfortunately the old railway line was rather wet due to the rain we've had recently, and I couldn't see where was wet and where was dry very well due to it being dark. Although I stepped in quite a few puddles and mud, my feet didn't actually get wet. The bottoms of my jeans are wet though.

Various stuff

Today I went to Church, updated my pog website, sorted some photos, took some more photos, set stop losses for my shares, watched an episode of Star Trek TOS, watched an episode of Power Rangers, did a backup, and read Moose Peterson's latest blog posts.

The weather was hot and sunny in the morning, then warm and overacast most of the afternoon and evening. After the sun had set, some of the clouds were lit up a nice purple colour.

Google Map and Earthing

The last few days I've been busy looking at PHP server side marker clustering solutions for google earth and google maps.

I found two example scripts, I was surprised I couldn't find more, as I'm sure this must be a relatively common job when working with google maps and earth. I found this one (on the web archive - the actual links in the message are still live, but the website the message was posted on has disappeared) and this one.

The first one I got working after a bit of hacking, but it is based around showing a certain number of points rather than geographic spread of points. This means if your marker count is set to a maximum of 80, and you're viewing a location where all the points are in one place, you'll get around 80 points all in the same place, instead of just 1 point.

The second one I couldn't get working properly.

I think I will try hacking the two together.

Helping L make a youtube poop

This morning I checked some more website stats, then spent most of the morning and afternoon helping L make a Tommy Wiseau Green Ranger youtube poop.



After that I checked my email, and attempted to update my Facebook fan page and twitter, but the internet was incredibly slow from L uploading the video to youtube.

Eventually I got fed up of the internet not working so I took a photo of POG The Game that I received a few weeks ago, and updated my Pog website with it.

By the time I'd done that the internet was working, so I updated my Facebook fan pages and twitter accounts.

After dinner me, L, and Mauser watched an episode of Star Trek TOS.

The rest of the evening I was trying to install the Geo::IP Perl Module so that I could get visitor breakdown by country in awstats. While I eventually got it to build in Ubuntu, I got an error when building it on the web server, so I posted in the GeoLite forums: Problem building Geo::IP Perl Module.

Various stuff

This morning I did some vacuuming while my computer did a backup.

After that I finished off my photo blog post about using filters on the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens. I checked my email, then tried to take some photos of a moth I caught in the house last night. It was originally quite co-operative, but I found that the MP-E lens was too high magnification to get full body shots.

So I changed to the 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens, but then the moth became quite active, and after much waiting for it to settle down, it eventually flew off out the window. So despite spending about 40 minutes with it, I didn't actually get any good shots.

I updated my pano website, then the internet broke so I went in the garden and took a few photos. It was quite dark and overcast outside (especially for August), but it was very still (no wind) and peaceful.

Lil' L told me I needed to come in urgently and make some cookies with him, but then when I came in he hadn't got anything ready. After waiting 10 minutes for Clare's laptop to switch on and Internet Explorer to open, L found that the internet wasn't working and so decided that we wouldn't actually make any cookies now. Thanks for wasting 10 minutes of my precious time L!

I switched the modem off for a bit, then on again, which fixed the internet, then posted a new image to deviant art and responded to some favs on there.

After lunch I made the cookies with L, since the internet was now working to get the recipe. Then I went in the garden for a bit. The sun had come out, and it was nice and warm. I came back inside and noticed I had a little bug supping on my T-shirt where L had spilt some cookie dough mix on it. I tried to take some photos of it, but it started to run around so I couldn't find it and keep it in focus.

I went back out in the garden for a bit, then came back in and replied to some emails. I then checked awstats for one of my websites, something I haven't done for about a year, so I couldn't remember how to get it working.

When I did finally get awstats running, I found I had some 404s and 301s, so I fixed the code / pages that were causing them. I also had a lot of other 301s and 404s that I couldn't explain.

I had a lot of 404s that were due to someone requesting a page like /beans when the actual page was /beans-(azoy).xhtml. It seems these requests would all cut off when they reached a non url-encoded character (like a bracket, or Korean character). I could probably fix this if I wanted by url encoding all my URLs, but given that I only had one or two 404 errors like this for each page, I don't think it's worth the trouble.

I am hoping the web addressing system will move to Unicode / UTF-8 in the future anyway.

The weather was a mixture of clouds, heavy rain, and sun today.

Photo processing

This morning I finished off my youtube poop I was working on yesterday, and then uploaded it to youtube:


The rest of the morning I did some work on the pano that I was having trouble stitching the nadir images for before.

In the afternoon I checked the different images from last Tuesday, and then converted them to cube faces etc. and uploaded them to my pano and photo websites.

I also went in the garden for a bit and topped the pond up - despite all the rain recently, it still wasn't full.

In the evening I watched a webinar about product creation. It was quite interesting, suggesting that you outsource the product creation to someone on elance.com for about $500-750. That way you can get a professionally produced e-book on a subject you don't know much about. The e-lancer will do all the writing and most of the research, though you should give a fairly solid outline of what information you expect the book to include.

The webinar said you should also be detailed and specific on things like layout, font size, number of pages etc. to avoid any misunderstandings between what you're expecting and what the elancer thinks you want.

I also wrote a blog post for my photo website about photographing a sunset, and another one about using filters on the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens.

Waiting in a carpark in Corby

This morning I cut out some pogs in Photoshop and went to Church.

After dinner I updated my pog website, then the whole family went out to Corby. Waiting in a car park for half an hour was quite boring, but I was entertained by a quote from P Robably that was on one of the buildings - The Best Jobs In Town.

After waiting in the car park for Mauser to buy a book for £7 from WHSmith's that he could have P Robably bought for 25p from the Oxfam shop across the road from the car park, we eventually went off to Rockingham. We went on a walk in Rockingham, mostly through the countryside rather than the village, and saw lots of different insects.

We got back home about 5pm I think, then I worked on a youtube poop for the rest of the day. Mauser and Ben had challenged me to make one since I always say that they should do ones of different things, but they say it's too hard. And I must admit, it is actually a lot harder to make a youtube poop than you would think.

Photo processing

Today I was still mainly sorting and processing insect photos that I took last week.

I also went in the garden to try and get some more Eristalis photos, and saw a small Dragonfly and a Hummingbird Hawkmoth, which is the first time I've ever seen one of them. Unfortunately I saw it just as it started raining, so I had to run inside.

Then when it stopped raining for a few minutes, I couldn't see the Hummingbird Hawkmoth, and the Dragonfly flew up higher where I couldn't get any good photos of it.

In the evening I also watched the last episode of Star Trek TNG season 3 with Mauser and L. It ends on a cliffhanger, but we're going to watch season 2 of TOS before we go back to watch TNG season 4.

Photo processing

Today I was just sorting and processing some insect photos from last week. I also found a winamp plugin that lets you upmix stereo to 5.1 in winamp on Windows 7 and Vista.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG and also spent quite a long time looking at my Eristalis photos to see if the eyes had bands of hairs or not. I couldn't tell whether the eyes did have bands of hairs, or if it was just the camera angle making it look like there was. I hope tomorrow I can find an Eristalis sp. and then photograph it from the top and the front.

That way I can be 100% sure that both images are of the same individual, and can compare whether the eye appears to have bands of hairs from both angles.

I did get my PTGUI upgrade serial today, but didn't install the new version yet.

The weather today was mostly overcast and rainy.

Pano processing

Today I only managed to get one pano processed!

I spent all morning working on one pano in PTGUI, just manually adding control points to the images that needed it. But then when it came to optimise, it seemed like PTGUI had got stuck, and ticking viewpoint correction on the problem images, didn't fix it.

So I upgraded to the latest version of PTGUI that can use a standalone PTOptimiser program for doing the optimisation, but I haven't received an email with the key yet.

I spent the rest of the day processing a different pano.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek TNG and the rest of 'Invaders from Mars' with Mauser, Clare, and L.

Pano processing

Today I was mainly just processing a couple of panos from yesterday.

In the morning I also watched an episode of Power Rangers with L.

In the afternoon I also went in the back garden for a bit and tried to get some photos of a grasshopper, but it kept moving whenever I moved the camera near it.

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

Photo taking and processing

This morning I processed my pano that I took yesterday evening.

In the afternoon I took some insect photos in the back garden. I also prepared some more pog images for my pog website, and updated it with the new images.

In the evening I went on a walk and took some more sunset panos. I took one in the nearby field of oilseed rape that has currently been half harvested. They had actually half harvested it by the end of yesterday, but I guess with the rain last night and this morning they decided to put off harvesting the rest of it until it had time to dry fully.

When I was taking the pano I could see the farmer coming along in his tractor, and was half expecting him to shout 'Git orf moiy land!' but he didn't even come and ask what I was doing.

I hope that I can process all the evening's panos tomorrow, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes me longer. I was planning to do some work on my websites this week, but it's looking like I won't actually get any website work done (other than adding new content).

When I got home I copied the pics across to my comp, watched Power Rangers with L, geo-coded all the pics, and then did a backup.

Uploading photos

I spent most of today adding metadata to and sorting my sunset photos from a couple of weeks ago, and then uploading them to my photo website.

In the afternoon I also went to help Trevor with his computer for a few minutes.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser and L. After that I went out to take a photo of the sunset, which turned out to be a pretty rubbish sunset. When I got back home I watched an episode of Power Rangers with L.

Poggin

This morning I started cutting out some pogs in Photoshop, then went to Church. After Church I made dinner for me and L, then watched an episode of Power Rangers with L.

In the afternoon I carried on cutting out pogs in Photoshop, and updated my pog website. I also found this skill bloke called Mr B. The Gentleman Rhymer who does skill banjo and posh english covers of rave and rap songs:



After tea I watched an episode of TNG, it was the first one to feature 'Barclay', Dwight Schultz of A-Team fame. The rest of the evening I processed the pano I took yesterday evening, and even managed to get it up on my pano website. A turn around of just over 24 hours, must be a record for me!

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get it up on my photo website as the upload speed was being too slow and I didn't want to leave my comp on uploading all night.

After writing that line above, I checked Filezilla again, and it had magically cleared its queue, so I thought that actually I could upload the image to my photo website tonight.

But then the light started to flicker, and there was a power cut. My UPS stopped my PC from cutting out, so I just switched it off normally as quickly as possible (the UPS battery only lasts for a few minutes).

It was pitch black, but luckily Mauser's Google phone has a bright LED that can be used as a torch, which enabled us to find some real torches. Since there wasn't anything to do in the dark without electricity, I just went to bed, it was after 10pm anyway.

Loads of people's burglar alarms went off due to the power cut. I'm not sure if it was the power cut that triggered them, or if people had gone to bed already and switched them on, then triggered the alarm while they were fumbling around in the dark trying to find a torch.

Having a cold and being in bed

This morning I processed a couple of photos from a couple of weeks ago, then went to bed the rest of the morning as my cold got the better of me.

In the afternoon I processed some more of the photos I was working on in the morning. In the evening I went out and took a pano of the sunset in a nearby field. I thought that the sunset was sometime between 9.30pm and 10pm, but actually it was at 8.30pm, so I got there just as the sun had set, instead of a good time before it set. This was quite annoying as I wanted to get the sun in the shot, and have the warm sunlight spreading across the field.

And thanks to my cold I was really out of breath and having difficulty breathing while I walked back home.

Photo processing

Today I was just sorting some more Barnsdale photos, then I uploaded them to my website. I spent quite a while writing a blog post for my photo website with some of the Barnsdale photos.

In the evening I watched another episode of Star Trek TNG and processed a few of my sunset photos from a few weeks ago.

There was a really nice sunset, similar to yesterday except some of the clouds had some texture, the clouds were lit up further than they were yesterday, and they went a beautiful pink colour.

Uploading photos

This morning (and a bit of the afternoon) I was mainly checking my email and uploading my Barnsdale panos to my photo website.

Later in the afternoon I did a bit of sorting of the other Barnsdale photos. I also looked at my webhosting, which is coming up for renewal.

To upgrade to my hosting plan with WebFaction to Shared 3 it would cost me an extra $9.50 per month (on the yearly plan), which would get me an extra 40MB memory. But the Shared 1 plan is only $8.50 per month, and comes with 80MB of memory.

So I wondered if it was possible to have both a Shared 1 plan and a Shared 2 plan. I was going to send a message to WebFaction support asking about this, but then saw their FAQ states (Emphasis mine):

An account can have multiple plans. Multiple shared plans aggregate disk space and bandwidth across servers (memory is not aggregated). Dedicated server resources are not aggregated.

It seems a bit unfair that the memory can't be aggregated, and that the extra memory costs a lot more to add to a plan than it does compared with opening a new plan. But I guess this reflects more on how cheap / generous their basic plan is than the memory upgrade costs being unreasonable.

In the evening I did some more photo sorting / metadataring and also watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser.

There was a really nice sunset where the overcast sky was lit up a firey orange, and the hills in the east were lit up the same colour.

Shell scripting

This morning I updated my pano website with the panos from Barnsdale Garden. After that I looked at an XMP FileInfo panel someone was having trouble with.

In the afternoon and evening I was trying to write a shell script that would batch process a folder of images, using php to update the database, and ImageMagick to resize the images. I needed some way that php could send data back to the shell script so the shell script could get information needed for executing the ImageMagick commands.

Unfortunately, it seems that you can't set a shell variable from PHP, and have that variable visible in the shell script that called PHP. You can get the output of the PHP script, and assign it to a variable, but if you need more than one variable then you're stuck. I spent quite a while looking into FIFO / named pipes, but couldn't really see how you would use it to send variables to the shell script from PHP.

In the end I decided to just call the existing batch php script from php, very simple, and I was annoyed how I hadn't thought of it before. I found this blog post very helpful: PHP and long running processes.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek TNG.

Processing panos

Today I was still processing panos from our visit to Barnsdale Gardens last week. Unfortunately I wasn't as quick as yesterday, and only managed to get about two done in the morning, then I finished the last pano off in the afternoon.

After that, I spent most of the afternoon and a bit of the evening adding metadata to the panos. Most of the time was spent waiting for the metadata to be written to the files, since the PSB for each pano is around 2GB writing any extra info takes quite a while. And when you update each file multiple times (add hierarchical keyword, add main metadata, add exif, correct orientation from exif import), all that time adds up to quite a bit.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser and Bo. I went in the garden for a bit, dead headed the Buddliea, and looked for any newts in the pond (though didn't see any). And I prepared the Barnsdale Gardens panos for upload to my pano website.

Processing panos

Today I was mostly just processing panos from our visit to Barnsdale gardens last week.

I managed to get 3 done in the morning (though one I had started work on yesterday), 2 done in the afternoon, and one in the evening. That's very good going as far as I'm concerned. I used Topaz Remask for doing some of the exposure blending, and was quite impressed.

In the evening I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG with Mauser and Lad. I also went out in the garden and topped up the pond. I saw a newt in the pond, so that was good.

Various stuff

Today I went to Church, updated my pog website, finished watching 'Grey Gardens' (Maysles brothers docu), watched an episode of Star Trek TNG, read various photo websites, and started work on a pano from Barnsdale Gardens.