Lossless Rotation in Xee

Writing this down somewhere I know I can find it again, since it’s the second time I’ve had to teach myself:

iPhoto saves a duplicate of rotated photos, because it saves the original untouched copy of all edited photos, and a rotation counts as an edit. Thank you, iPhoto—hard drive space may be really cheap these days, but not on a laptop.

So, when space gets really tight on my laptop, I start rotating photos before I import them into iPhoto. Actually, since iPhoto ’09 stopped re-organizing photos into folders behind the scenes and just using dates for folder names, I now create folders before importing too.

But, when you edit a JPG, it loses quality. So you need something that does lossless rotation. Enter Xee, a lovely little piece of freeware that is a tad underdocumented.

In Xee, open the first image in the folder. Use cmd-arrow to flip through the images. When you get to one that needs rotating:

• cmd-R to rotate (or cmd-shift-R to rotate the other way)
• option-0 to resize the image to the window and see what you’ve got (optional)
• cmd-S to save losslessly
• cmd-arrow to go to next image.

This is why I didn’t import photos between late September and Christmas—too much friction in the workflow. Sorry to all those people I was supposed to send photos to in the betweentime. Or between Christmas and April. Yeah, my bad.

 

Small Technical Trick

So, the key to managing information is having it available when you need it, but not letting it clutter your mind or life until then.

A potential approach, for the geeky-minded Mac user. If you’ve ever wondered what use Automator or AppleScript might be, here’s one way I use them. Even then, this post is probably really boring.

I keep notes on the projects and photogifts I am working on in iPhoto, in a quick-to-launch TextEdit file. I never need these notes unless I am actually in iPhoto, doing stuff.

So, I made an Automator workflow that opens my iPhoto Notes file, and saved it in the script menu that always sits in the main Mac menubar.

So—information accessible in two clicks when I need it; but entirely out of the way and not cluttering my OS-wide Favorites menu since I don’t need it that often. Nothing for me to remember about where I saved a file or what I named it (or what words I used in it—full-text search isn’t really the end-all, be-all of file organization, if you ask me). To keep the script menu from becoming cluttered, I saved the workflow in username/Library/Scripts/Applications/iPhoto. Putting it in an application-named folder inside Applications means it will only show up in the script menu when iPhoto is active. (Huh. Maybe you’d think an Apple application might have its own script menu, to make it easier to use AppleScript? Apparently not. Thank you, Apple.)

This is Microsoft’s idea—it’s my attempt to replicate the Work menu in MS Word, which lets you pin certain files that you want quick access to, but that you don’t access enough to keep them in the Recent Documents menu. My Work menu generally consists of my current syllabi, and the Extended CV file where I enter every little thing I’ve done re teaching workshops, showing up at a prospective students day, etc.

The other use I’ve found for this approach is reminding myself to what size I want to crop a photo for my blog header, information I need maybe every 3 months (except for using it 3 times in the last week or so). For this one I used an actual script in Script Editor rather than an Automator workflow (thank you, Apple, for doing a half-assed job with Automator so it isn’t nearly as useful as it could be).

tell application “Acorn”
display dialog “Ocean Mist Theme, default header size is 736×229.”
end tell

“Display dialog” pops up a little dialog instead of launching TextEdit to show me a file, a wee bit quicker for short bits of information.

(I don’t understand how it is that Acorn 1 understands “display dialog” but doesn’t seem to be scriptable such that I could just automate the resize and the crop setting, but okay.)

 

Things That Never Crossed My Mind

My dyslexic student came in, in tears. I don’t really think of her as “my dyslexic student” because I don’t have any exams in this class and so it doesn’t make a difference, she’s very bright, a good writer, and gets the reading done fine. She didn’t even bring me the paperwork this semester, I just know because I had her before.

But in this class, I walk them through a research paper based on primary sources.

She wanted to do a medieval Henry VIII topic. [oops! thanks, moria. I know better, too]

It was impossible. Like reading a foreign language.

Anyhow—she switched topics; we worked it out; it’s all fine. But I feel like I should have been able to predict and guide her away, so I am spreading the word.

 

Merging or Combining PDFs

I am working through the transition period with a new laptop (macbookpro).

I was really excited about merging PDFs in the new version of Preview included with Leopard (OS 10.5), but:

Apple’s PR showed us a clever way to merge PDFs, which apparently isn’t documented anywhere. Open two PDFs in Preview, then choose View | Show Sidebar. When Sidebar pops up, just drag the pages of one PDF to the Sidebar of the other and hit Save. The two are now merged into one PDF doc.

Well, that’s a godawful hassle the minute you get over two documents, or don’t have a huge screen. And how do you make Preview show Sidebar for all open windows at once? No wonder they didn’t bother to put it in Help.

I’ll stick with Combine PDFs, thanks.

Incidentally, the task at hand is sorting, cropping, merging, and converting the high-res tiffs from the digitized volume I got from the archives. I am using Graphic Converter (which came free with my old powerbook) for the cropping and converting, so that I have, for instance, a lovely single PDF document of a petition to the king, nicely zoomable at need.

 

RBO Making Use of Pictures

Again, making a photo book of a big trip, etc, is totally worth the time, and it’s really nice to create something.

***

Report on my ornaments from Snapfish: eh. The color was less vibrant than I hoped, but I guess that’s what happens when you print on porcelain. Three of the seven were unsatisfactory—in one the image was off-center, with the other two I had uploaded a picture with a slight color shift that was unacceptably magnified in the ornament such that one half of the pic looked all washed out. But Snapfish put a credit for three free ornaments in my account within 24 hours of my complaint, and I’ll be happy enough to use them (although it does mean I have to pay shipping again).

However, the packaging was very safe.

For future reference, the post-Christmas clearance sale went to 50%, then vanished by 21 January.

***

It looks like CafePress does the type of magnet I most prefer. Now I just need to find someone who does panoramic photos wrapping around a mug. And learn how to take/make panoramic photos. Cafe Press also has ceramic coasters instead of those cork things—although considering the above re photos on ceramics, I should probably not order seven the first time.

***

I’m really glad iPhoto ’09 came out before I got anywhere with making a photo book of my many road trips . I was totally planning to create map pages, and now it will basically do it for me.

***

I’ll have to check out Mpix, which offers fancy paper which I think meets archival standards. Although I think that the structure of a book is such that even non-archival paper can survive pretty well for a long time.

 

Don’t Be Jerry

If I have one piece of advice for people applying to grad school, beginning grad school, or in grad school, it’s this:

Don’t be this guy.

Jerry, via Rate Your Students, is bitter and unhappy because he feels cheated, he did everything right and only now figured out there are no jobs.

You HAVE to get the PhD for yourself, not for the job.* When it stops being for you, it’s time to choose a new path, even if that means walking away in the middle.

*It follows from this that accumulating debt for the PhD is a bad idea.

 

Blog for the Future!

Alternate title: For Fuck’s Sake, Bloggers, You Are Driving Me Fucking Crazy

Dear Bloggers,

When you write, can you think about someone trying to retrace this discussion next week, or next month, or next year?

How will they do it, when you randomly reference but do not link posts?

This means you have to link exactly to specific posts, not generally to the home page of a blog.

Yes, this also means that sometimes you have to link to yourself. So what? This is a conversation, and you are following the conversation. It’s okay to speak up more than once in a conversation.

Sincerely,

Dance

ETA a year later:
I am a historian, and I revere the archive. The archive we are creating here will be useless without specific links.

Also, it is often possible to link even to specific comments, and worth doing so.

 

More on Finances

Still blogging about money, I decided to try to be helpful rather than just self-interested. So, in a Google Docs account, I put the spreadsheet that has been my main financial tool since I was in grad school. You can see what it looks like.

The spreadsheet is a sort of mix of budget and overview of your cash flow. It just adds up income for each month, and subtracts expenses for each month, but presents it in a year form that lets you forecast what’s going to happen. It’s designed to let you be able to see at a glance that if you do not earn at least $1000 over a summer without TA salary, you will be unable to pay your rent in August.

I tend to enjoy keeping track of my money, but I think this spreadsheet is simple enough that people who don’t may still find it useable. Around the first of each month, I would update the “in bank on first” number, to update the projection over time. That’s the only necessary upkeep (which does require sitting down and sorting out bills, reconciling check register, etc, but doesn’t require tracking expenses as you go). You can also update the numbers for electric bills, etc, if you want to use the spreadsheet to track your expenses, but your projection will be correct without that (assuming your numbers for entertainment, etc, are close enough to accurate).

This is just a dummy sample, but I’m happy to approve anyone’s email to let you edit and play around with it in Google Docs. I aimed the numbers at grad students. If you want to try a similar approach in Excel, the math in it is very simple—formulas are only used in two places. The “in bank at end of month” cell adds all income for that month and subtracts all expenses. “In bank on first of month” cell is set as equal to the previous “end of month” cell.

I’ve checked out Quicken and a few other financial programs, but I’ve not found anything that dealt with the uneven income and expense pattern of academics as clearly and easily for me as my own spreadsheet. Budgeting tools came closest but never quite did what I wanted them to do. Even as a professor, with more money, I still use this simple tool, but now it’s just a subset of my finances instead of the entire picture.

 

The Many Advantages of a Multi-Purpose Piece of Cloth

Today, the £2 wrap that I bought yesterday on Oxford Street, in addition to keeping me warm, has nicely dusted off my computer screen, and served as a book support in the British Library, when I accidentally had something old sent to the Humanities Reading Room and didn’t see a real support around (in Humanities you are allowed to actually touch the books, unlike Manuscripts and Rare Books).

I have made a single brightly colored sarong work as a wrap, as a towel, as a skirt/bathing suit cover-up, and as a closet as I changed clothes on the beach not-exactly-in-public. That was all in one trip.

A wrap has also been a bandanna, covering the nose and mouth against dry 100-degree air rushing in the car window, catching breath for a little humidity as we drove through a semi-desert landscape. And later, when it was too hot to sleep, I dampened a sarong in cold water and draped it over me. It did the trick.

 

An Open Letter

Dear Organizer,

When you are sending an email with the announcement of your event, please consider not how you want to present the event, but whether you want anyone to show up. In that light, think about how people will read the email, and recognize that we are all snowed under with too much email and want to move through it as quickly as possible. Take me as an example.

First, I will look at the subject line. Thus, the subject line should communicate enough information that I can instantly decide whether I want to read further. It is nice to precede the main subject with something like TALK, FILM, etc. People who are not interested in talks can immediately stop reading.

Do not use the title of the talk in the subject line. Talk titles are evocative, metaphorical things. They are not well suited to actually communicating what the talk is about. Use a vocabulary that the non-specialist will recognize, preferably not more than three or four pithy words. All you are trying to do here is state the general topic so that people who are interested in that field will actually open the email instead deciding that it needs some time to evaluate, and never getting around to going back to it.

Consider that a long subject line may get cut off. Get the important information out first. The most important information is not the date and time, because I am never going to say, “oh, I’m free for a talk Thursday. I wonder what the talk is on?” I am going to say “oh, talk on MyFavoriteTopic. I wonder when, and if I can fit it in?” It’s okay if I have to read to the end of the subject line for when.

In the email itself: Do not expect people to forward a big flyer, or even to open a flyer. If you want to use a flyer, put it on the web and send around a link to it. Nevertheless, always include a short plain text statement of what/when/where. Again, people who are interested will click on the link—people who are not sure may never get around to clicking on the link, as they will set it aside to think about later.

People who are forwarding announcements–please edit the subject line if necessary, and be sure to delete all the forwarding information. It only takes you a few seconds, and you will save countless people the second it takes to scroll past it.

Sincerely,
Dance

 

Rum Punch Recipe

I gave a party, and the rum punch was a big hit (is rum punch ever not a hit?). I blended a couple of different recipes based on what I could easily find in the grocery store (unsweetened pineapple juice? who has time to find that?), so here’s the one I guess I can claim I invented (to add to the myriad of rum punch recipes on the web. Really, the lesson here is that you can mix just about anything citrus with rum and be fine).

I’m not sure what the measurement I’m using here is. A liter? A quart? Whatever—the numbers give the approximate proportions, ending up with a drink that’s about 4 parts mixer, 1 part alcohol. Do it per-cup, if you want.

1 orange juice
3/4 club soda
1/4 lime juice (Rose’s, natch)
1/8 grenadine (ditto)
1/2 rum

Mix and adjust to taste. The second batch came out differently, for sure.

 

On Being a Packrat

I figured out a method to make it easier to get rid of clothing.

Take a picture first. Suddenly the donate bag received a good eight items that I had been holding onto out of nostalgia. Instead of needing the clothing to remember the days when I was 19 and went dancing all the time, I can just look at the picture.

Admittedly, now I’ve got a little extra clutter in iPhoto, but that’s not really a problem. Much easier to deal with clutter on my computer than in tangible form.

 

Please Print This Form, Fill It Out, and Mail It In

I’d like to plug Formulate, most beautiful program ever. At this point, after years of having my own computer, my handwriting is complete and utter crap. There’s nothing I hate more than a form I am supposed to print and fill out by hand—I’m guaranteed to make errors and turn it into something messy and junky looking.

I tried to do this in Acrobat Pro, but I find Acrobat difficult to figure out, and it was a lot of trouble.

Formulate to the rescue! Formulate lets you type on a form, then print it out. Especially good for recommendation forms. Simple and easy to use. And free, although I need to bestir myself and send along some money.

Mac only, although I’m sure there are Windows programs that do the same thing.

 

L-A-C-I-E spells Relief

Ah, the joy of a fresh 500 gig external hard drive, and knowing that my data is backed up and cloned six ways from Sunday. Okay, I only cloned the drive once, not six times, but next week I’ll do it again.

 

From Dissertation to Book: A Compendium

A couple of weeks ago, there was an informal meme going around some academic blogs on the process of moving from dissertation to book. I’m collecting links here, so I know what to go back and give some sustained attention to.

Dr. Virago at Quod She

Dr. Crazy at Reassigned Time

jbj at The Salt Box (a new blog for me)

Not sure I got them all.