Indoors on such a beautiful day
Jun. 9th, 2013 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howeirdSlept really well, possibly because I shut the cats out of the bedroom, punishment for pooping in the livingroom. and partly to have a door between me and the Drama. Kaan has been trying very hard lately to be friends with Domino, Domino is being a total grouch about it, growling and hissing and taking swipes. Kaan is 3x her size, but backs off instead of fighting. But 20 seconds later he's back trying to get close to Domino.
Anyway, I didn't wake up till 9:30, which meant my plan to bring the car to the installer at 10 was going to be pushed back. Got there at 11:30, they needed an hour or 2 to pull out the radio, check the camera connections, and figure out why the camera was only showing 2 views instead of 4. They pointed me at a very nice coffee shop, lots of eye candy both sides of the counter - the woman at the cash register is about 5' tall, and has a cleavage big enough to host a Westercon. She suggested an iced vanilla latte, which tasted great. I also had an apple turnover. After an hour, I ordered a refill and a banana nutella crepe. Hood crepe, but I would rather have had the mushroom/fancycheese which they were out of.
12:30, tech called, stumped about the radio controls not working, so he offered to install the aux switch, I said go ahead. Another 15 minutes and I walked back there, he was finishing up, I waited in the air conditioned 2-person waiting area. The bad news is it's a software issue with the main unit, which he did not sell me (Toyota sourced it) and he will contact them to see what they suggest. Good news is the aux switch gives all 4 views, one of them is very useful - it shows what's coming from the left and right corners behind the vehicle. It was very handy when I was trying to pull out of a very busy parking lot later. The other good news is at my request he checked the radio antenna connections, and discovered they were wrong and fixed them. Now I have a ton of AM, FM and HD stations coming in. Yay!
From there to UPS, picked up a package long-awaited from ScanCafe. I had sent 45 rolls of B&W negatives to them February 17. They received them the 19th. They said they would have the scans done and on DVD for me by April 22. More than two months is a long wait, but it was a lot of work. Finally getting them back June 8 with no real updates on their handydandy web site, not acceptable. The quality of the work was okay, but not worth the 69 cents a frame they charged. So I won't be linking to them here, and can't recommend them.
Got home, 88° outside, and OCD fool that I am, I sat in the car and programmed the radio. 6 AM and 18 FM stations. I started with the HD stations.
Went inside long enough to drop the box from ScanCafe onto a table, then grab my rental renewal form and took it to the office. Which was closed, with three people waiting. I went back home and faxed it in, including a nastygram about how I would move out at the end of the current lease except the company hasn't decided if we're moving. And probably won't for 6 months. Craigslist has many apartments in Sunnyvale for $500/mo less rent. But I don't want to move again so soon, and I don't want to move to Someplace else in Sunnyvale if the company moves to Redwood City. :-(
Programmed the new internet radio, was disappointed to find that it does not sync with the other two, or use the same android app. Probably will sell it on eBay and order another squeezebox from overstock.com. Or not. I mostly program them from the radio, and don't sync my bedroom one with the kitchen one anyway.
Opened the UPS box, and was attacked by Styrofoam peanuts. FAIL. The object was supposed to be to keep the negatives flat, and away from static electricity. Pulled out the DVD, popped it into the PC drive and at least they did something right - the images are in folders which have the same labeling as the negative holders: year-month-roll# except they used underscores instead of dashes, which makes it harder to use a 10-key pad to type them.
I transferred all the folders to the hard drive, and then to the backup drive, and started to upload them to Flickr, when I saw that instead of naming the photos with my system, they had their own 40-character order code ending in the cumulative number of scans. So by the time I got to the 3rd roll we were up to 00107_bn_13ajwmyu9h0107_z.jpg. So I killed the ones on Flickr, and went through the tedious process of renaming every photo in every folder. If you ever have to do something like this, here's the process I used (Windows 7):
\
1. Open a command line window (aka DOS window)
2. cd to the first folder with a roll of pictures (my first one is 1975_04_01)
3. enter "dir >> dir.txt" (this creates a file named dir.txt which lists the folder's directory)
4. Do this for each folder
5. In Windows, open Excel and have it look in first folder for *.txt files
6. Double-click on dir.txt
7. Excel will ask some things about the file. Tell it it is delimited, and to start importing at line 8. Hit "next"
8. Select "spaces" as the delimiter. Click "finish"
9. Select column A and hit "delete" on your keyboard. This will clear any data out of that row
10. select columns B, C and D and right-click on them. Choose "delete". This will completely remove them.
11. Fill column A with "REN" (DOS command to rename a file)
12. Type the new filename in column C. If it ends in a number which you want to increment, simply drag its lower right corner until you reach the end of the names in column B. If you are not using numerics, just be sure to end the new name with the right extension (in this case ".jpg"), save the file and skip to step 17.
13. If you are using numeric incrementing, fill column D with ".jpg" and save the file.
14. Open the folder which has this massaged dir.txt file and right-click on it. Tell the PC to open it with Word
15. In Word, select "replace" and type in "^t." (up carat, t, period) in the top field and "." (period) in the replace with field. (Excel will have added a tab between the file name in column C and the .jpg in column D). Replace All.
16. Save the file
17. In the folder window, right-click on dir.txt and rename it dir.bat.
18. Double-click on dir.bat.
19. voila! all the files are renamed. If they aren't, rename it back to dir.txt, and open it in Word to see if it missed any extra tabs.
20. Delete dir.bat
21. Repeat for every folder.
This took me from 5:30-9:30 pm, with an hour break for dinner.
NOW I was ready to upload to Flickr, one folder at a time, as its own set. another 90 minutes or so. And finally, open each set, arrange alphabetically, and d&d a meaningful thumbnail to the title column.
And then post on FB.
Here are some samples
My first view of the GG Bridge, from Fisherman's wharf. Our group gathered at SF for "staging" before flying to Thailand.
Our oldest volunteer, Nellie Norkus, getting vaccinated (we all were) during staging. Nellie had two Ph.D.s and was a charming person. She had a heart attack during the first year, but recovered from it and finished her term of service.
And editorial comment from Nancy Cooke. I think. Nancy had a degree in Chinese and was assigned to teach in Phuket, which has a large Chinese population. She now works in Beijing with the US Chamber of Commerce.
Rainy season.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I took a business trip there in January 1976
Me and one of my co-workers at the Rubber Research Center. A very talented artist and ag extension agent.
Plans for tomorrow:
Redwood City, see the final reading of Sexbot 2600
Maybe go across the street and see a movie. It's probably going to be another scorcher.
Anyway, I didn't wake up till 9:30, which meant my plan to bring the car to the installer at 10 was going to be pushed back. Got there at 11:30, they needed an hour or 2 to pull out the radio, check the camera connections, and figure out why the camera was only showing 2 views instead of 4. They pointed me at a very nice coffee shop, lots of eye candy both sides of the counter - the woman at the cash register is about 5' tall, and has a cleavage big enough to host a Westercon. She suggested an iced vanilla latte, which tasted great. I also had an apple turnover. After an hour, I ordered a refill and a banana nutella crepe. Hood crepe, but I would rather have had the mushroom/fancycheese which they were out of.
12:30, tech called, stumped about the radio controls not working, so he offered to install the aux switch, I said go ahead. Another 15 minutes and I walked back there, he was finishing up, I waited in the air conditioned 2-person waiting area. The bad news is it's a software issue with the main unit, which he did not sell me (Toyota sourced it) and he will contact them to see what they suggest. Good news is the aux switch gives all 4 views, one of them is very useful - it shows what's coming from the left and right corners behind the vehicle. It was very handy when I was trying to pull out of a very busy parking lot later. The other good news is at my request he checked the radio antenna connections, and discovered they were wrong and fixed them. Now I have a ton of AM, FM and HD stations coming in. Yay!
From there to UPS, picked up a package long-awaited from ScanCafe. I had sent 45 rolls of B&W negatives to them February 17. They received them the 19th. They said they would have the scans done and on DVD for me by April 22. More than two months is a long wait, but it was a lot of work. Finally getting them back June 8 with no real updates on their handydandy web site, not acceptable. The quality of the work was okay, but not worth the 69 cents a frame they charged. So I won't be linking to them here, and can't recommend them.
Got home, 88° outside, and OCD fool that I am, I sat in the car and programmed the radio. 6 AM and 18 FM stations. I started with the HD stations.
Went inside long enough to drop the box from ScanCafe onto a table, then grab my rental renewal form and took it to the office. Which was closed, with three people waiting. I went back home and faxed it in, including a nastygram about how I would move out at the end of the current lease except the company hasn't decided if we're moving. And probably won't for 6 months. Craigslist has many apartments in Sunnyvale for $500/mo less rent. But I don't want to move again so soon, and I don't want to move to Someplace else in Sunnyvale if the company moves to Redwood City. :-(
Programmed the new internet radio, was disappointed to find that it does not sync with the other two, or use the same android app. Probably will sell it on eBay and order another squeezebox from overstock.com. Or not. I mostly program them from the radio, and don't sync my bedroom one with the kitchen one anyway.
Opened the UPS box, and was attacked by Styrofoam peanuts. FAIL. The object was supposed to be to keep the negatives flat, and away from static electricity. Pulled out the DVD, popped it into the PC drive and at least they did something right - the images are in folders which have the same labeling as the negative holders: year-month-roll# except they used underscores instead of dashes, which makes it harder to use a 10-key pad to type them.
I transferred all the folders to the hard drive, and then to the backup drive, and started to upload them to Flickr, when I saw that instead of naming the photos with my system, they had their own 40-character order code ending in the cumulative number of scans. So by the time I got to the 3rd roll we were up to 00107_bn_13ajwmyu9h0107_z.jpg. So I killed the ones on Flickr, and went through the tedious process of renaming every photo in every folder. If you ever have to do something like this, here's the process I used (Windows 7):
\
1. Open a command line window (aka DOS window)
2. cd to the first folder with a roll of pictures (my first one is 1975_04_01)
3. enter "dir >> dir.txt" (this creates a file named dir.txt which lists the folder's directory)
4. Do this for each folder
5. In Windows, open Excel and have it look in first folder for *.txt files
6. Double-click on dir.txt
7. Excel will ask some things about the file. Tell it it is delimited, and to start importing at line 8. Hit "next"
8. Select "spaces" as the delimiter. Click "finish"
9. Select column A and hit "delete" on your keyboard. This will clear any data out of that row
10. select columns B, C and D and right-click on them. Choose "delete". This will completely remove them.
11. Fill column A with "REN" (DOS command to rename a file)
12. Type the new filename in column C. If it ends in a number which you want to increment, simply drag its lower right corner until you reach the end of the names in column B. If you are not using numerics, just be sure to end the new name with the right extension (in this case ".jpg"), save the file and skip to step 17.
13. If you are using numeric incrementing, fill column D with ".jpg" and save the file.
14. Open the folder which has this massaged dir.txt file and right-click on it. Tell the PC to open it with Word
15. In Word, select "replace" and type in "^t." (up carat, t, period) in the top field and "." (period) in the replace with field. (Excel will have added a tab between the file name in column C and the .jpg in column D). Replace All.
16. Save the file
17. In the folder window, right-click on dir.txt and rename it dir.bat.
18. Double-click on dir.bat.
19. voila! all the files are renamed. If they aren't, rename it back to dir.txt, and open it in Word to see if it missed any extra tabs.
20. Delete dir.bat
21. Repeat for every folder.
This took me from 5:30-9:30 pm, with an hour break for dinner.
NOW I was ready to upload to Flickr, one folder at a time, as its own set. another 90 minutes or so. And finally, open each set, arrange alphabetically, and d&d a meaningful thumbnail to the title column.
And then post on FB.
Here are some samples
My first view of the GG Bridge, from Fisherman's wharf. Our group gathered at SF for "staging" before flying to Thailand.
Our oldest volunteer, Nellie Norkus, getting vaccinated (we all were) during staging. Nellie had two Ph.D.s and was a charming person. She had a heart attack during the first year, but recovered from it and finished her term of service.
And editorial comment from Nancy Cooke. I think. Nancy had a degree in Chinese and was assigned to teach in Phuket, which has a large Chinese population. She now works in Beijing with the US Chamber of Commerce.
Rainy season.
In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I took a business trip there in January 1976
Me and one of my co-workers at the Rubber Research Center. A very talented artist and ag extension agent.
Plans for tomorrow:
Redwood City, see the final reading of Sexbot 2600
Maybe go across the street and see a movie. It's probably going to be another scorcher.
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