… and, as usual, it was a good one. They (almost) always are, weekends.
I managed to finish tagging, rotating and generally cleaning up my photo collection. In the end, and after deleting duplicates and so on, I ended up with a bit less than 10.000 photos, none of them in Canon RAW format. This allows me to use iPhoto to manage the entire collection without any problems which is a good thing TM.
I decided to stop importing Canon RAW images directly to iPhoto because 1- They where just too big and iPhoto would choke on them (even with 1GB of RAM); 2- iPhoto processed the information on the pictures wrong and always assumed they were taken one month earlier than they had actually been taken on; 3- I had no real benefit in using Canon RAW on iPhoto.
So now I have the original files (I call them my “digital negatives”) on the server’s disk and on the CD and DVD backups and if I ever need them it’s quite easy to locate them, but for picture browsing, selecting and desktop- or web-viewing the JPEG versions I have on iPhoto are more than adequate, so that’s that.
I found out about a neat feature of iPhoto which allows the switching or libraries at startup if you press and hold the option key when you launch the application. This is extremely good because if (or rather, when) my collection outgrows iPhoto’s ability to deal with it I can just move some pictures to another library and leave the latest months or years in the “current” one. Very cool feature!
I’m also making good headway into the two design books I’m currently going through.
“designing with web standards” is indeed a great resource. Even if I already knew (or had guessed by now, through trial and error) most of what it teaches, it does consolidate what I knew in a very precise way and, of course, I’m learning a lot from it.
“the Zen of CSS design” on the other hand is not so much a “text book” as it is a “learn by example” one and it is just so inspiring! I absolutely love to read it. I’ve always liked the CSS Zen Garden a lot, but actually seeing an explanation of all the nitty gritty that’s behind it is beyond cool, not to mention educational.
Saturday, being father’s day, there was lunch with my father at his home (always a good excuse to get the family together around the latest newcomer) ;-) and dinner with Tuxa’s father and her brothers here at home (always a good excuse for her to experiment and explore alternative cooking. This has become a much harder task since she became a vegetarian as none of her brothers are particularly adept at anything of the “vegetal” persuasion. Still, she manages to do well every-time and this instance was yet another success!)
There was also some advance on the home-renovation department. We have chosen the colors we needed to choose and we have gotten the paint. This was a difficult process and from here on there are really no more tough choices to be made, so it was a good development.
Vasco and Sofia came back from their first-ever snow trip, so this evening there was the usual display of pictures and small movies. Man, I miss the snow already! I know I say this every single year, but I do wish I could ski more often. I really love it and I really miss it. One week a year is not nearly enough, but any means.
But then I’m not crazy enough to drive to Sierra Nevada on the weekends. Not only do I absolutely hate skying on the weekend with all the crowd, but I also have severe problems with making all those long car trips (8 hours each way). Much as I love road trips, I don’t like having to make this kind of a trip in order to ski for a day and a half and come back again. My back would kill me.
And after seeing what Serra da Estrela has to offer I also pass up on that. You don’t mitigate your craving for riding a motorcycle with a weekly ride on a kiddy tricycle.
Sigh…
Oh, almost forgot, today, finally, I got to watch “High Fidelity”. I know it is far from a new release. I know everyone and his mother has seen it. I know most people I know think it is a great movie and can’t believe I’ve never seen it, the fact is that I hadn’t seen it.
And they where right. What a great movie! I loved it, absolutely loved it.
I already loved it’s soundtrack, which I’ve had for a rather long time and I thought I would probably enjoy the movie. I was right about that.
But now it’s late (of sorts) and I won’t go into much detail about the movie or why I like it so much because I’m going to try and go to the gym tomorrow before going to work and so I have to get up early… ish…