On 02/06/2016 04:02 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)




Yes, I did not scan every last slide or negative,

20% were not worth going through the effort.

I first sorted by year

but am also creating a data base by subject.


My system isn't perfect but still, I can usually find what I'm looking
for in less than five minutes.
Prior to this it would have taken hours.


Interestingly, thanks to digital enhancement I've been able to save some
images that what have been unprintable in a dark room.

On 2/6/2016 1:27 PM, philo wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

Yep, I found it impossible to get my slides and negatives organized until I
finally scanned everything. Now I can do something with them finally.

SWMBO's problem is that she may want to "see" this photo when looking for
scenes of running water; or, wildlife; or the desert in winter; or...
As such, there's no "single key" that she can use to sort on.

*MY* photos -- as with my technical documents -- tend to have a single
governing theme, which I can use to sort them. E.g., I won't find a
document on a technique for drawing cubic bezier curves in amongst
some documents describing fabrication techniques for integrated
circuits!

As to digital cameras, I have a friend who is such a geek...even though he is
younger than me and skinnier, I've seen him just take a photo of something on
the ground so he does not have to bend over to take a closer look.

I am not quite that lazy

I have one of these:
https://www.activeforever.com/discovery-digest/081513/A16793-enhanced-vision-pebble-magnifier.jpg
that is capable of taking snapshots (not just "live magnification").

As it is designed for very short focal lengths (as a "magnifying glass"), I
find it handy when trying to see behind any of my computers (all of which
are located on the floor, under workbenches) to locate a particular
connector (and determine the *orientation* in which it lies!).

I can just reach behind the computer in question, press the
"snapshot" button, extract the device and look at the image on the
screen! Prior to this, I would have had to pull the machine out
and *tried* to get my face behind it to see the connectors.

I also have one of these:
http://www.nanopac.com/flipperport.htm (skip down to "Details")
that I will use when I need to work in an awkward position. I
can place the camera somewhere convenient and stable -- that has
a good view of my "objective". Then, with the glasses on (the
glasses have small displays in them so you see only what the
camera sees), I am free to move my head and hands however I
want without losing sight of the "objective".

It's weird looking in exactly the WRONG direction and still seeing
your hands working on something in great detail! :-/

[One of my interests is assistive technology. So, I have a large
assortment of AT devices that I've examined and evaluated over the
years...]

On 2/6/2016 3:02 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)

Her problem is that they're all "good" (in the sense that they have
captured things (subjects/textures) that she might eventually want
to re-view. But, there's no way of deciding (at the time of filing)
how to sort/store the image!

E.g., if you take a photo of a man wearing a funny hat and a woman in
a large hoop dress, would you store it under pictures of hats? men?
women? couples? hoop dresses? etc. If you later are looking for ideas
for a composition with "interesting people", where would you expect
to find such a photograph?

She was using a program that allows her to "tag" photos with user-defined
keywords: in this case, perhaps "man", "woman", "hat", "dress", "couples",
"outdoor", "venue_name", etc. So, later, she could select *all*
photos with the "hat" tag and expect to find it. Or, perhaps all photos
tagged "hat" + "man", etc.

But, this is a tremendous amount of time "tagging" images! It may take her
an hour or two just to tag them -- and she may still not have addressed
every aspect of the photo (maybe she considered this a "colorful" scene?
does she have a "colorful" tag created? If she creates it today, should
she go back through her collection and see which *other* photos should
also have been tagged as "colorful"? if not, then what value does that
tag have as it only reflects "information" going forward?)

On 02/06/2016 05:41 PM, Don Y wrote:
my face behind it to see the connectors.

I also have one of these:
http://www.nanopac.com/flipperport.htm (skip down to "Details")
that I will use when I need to work in an awkward position. I
can place the camera somewhere convenient and stable -- that has
a good view of my "objective". Then, with the glasses on (the
glasses have small displays in them so you see only what the
camera sees), I am free to move my head and hands however I
want without losing sight of the "objective".

It's weird looking in exactly the WRONG direction and still seeing
your hands working on something in great detail! :-/



yeah, I would have a hard time getting used to that.

I've added a bit of lighting to my house but it seems there is never
enough, so always keep some small. bright flashlights everywhere

[One of my interests is assistive technology. So, I have a large
assortment of AT devices that I've examined and evaluated over the
years...]

On 02/06/2016 04:04 PM, Tony Hwang wrote:

So no one worked on a system made of vacuum tubes? Machine code
programmed punching holes on preindented blank cards with tip of pen or
pencil? Handled tape reels as big as small car wheels? Those were the
days. Memory was magnetic core bits with write wire, read wire, inhibit
wire(erasing bit) going thru the dunut holds. Stack of 4K memory was
bigger than a all in one mini PC box. Tube system needed tons of a/c
unit to keep the room cool..... Nowadays most field changes come down in
the form of software update/change. Rarely they do wiring change.


I never worked on a vacuum tube computer but am quite familiar with them
from my radio work.

The guy we hired at work to be our administrator was a veteran of the
vacuum tube computer days though and he did tell a number of stories

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 15:04:44 -0700, Tony Hwang
wrote:

philo wrote:
On 02/06/2016 02:17 PM, wrote:

I did write an inventory program in dBase.
Trying to get a bunch of hardware guys to actually use a computer was
tough but if you make the user interface easier than filling out paper
logs, they will do it. I barcoded everything and made it a design
point that nobody ever had to enter the same thing twice. It ended up
being pretty successful. Even the hard core critics became fans after
they stopped "losing" parts.
Fof a few years I did actual "board level" repairs on motherboards -
replacing chips and installing "flywires" to correct manufacturing
errors. Sometimes I even had to do the base troubleshooting to
determine where the problem wa.



snip


I guess I can tell this story now, regarding "flywires".

The company I worked for many years ago, among other things manufactured
controls for industrial battery chargers.My job was field service and I
reported "bugs" the engineers had to fix.

Our engineers were just "moonlighters" who worked for a large (unnamed)
electronics corporation who supplied the avionics for a large (unnamed)
passenger plane manufacturer.


On day a customer told us he did not like to see those "green wires" on
the circuit boards. When I reported this to the chief engineer, he just
laughed and said "but it's a battery charger we have planes flying with
those green wires."


Never had a problem though.

So no one worked on a system made of vacuum tubes? Machine code
programmed punching holes on preindented blank cards with tip of pen or
pencil? Handled tape reels as big as small car wheels? Those were the
days. Memory was magnetic core bits with write wire, read wire, inhibit
wire(erasing bit) going thru the dunut holds. Stack of 4K memory was
bigger than a all in one mini PC box. Tube system needed tons of a/c
unit to keep the room cool..... Nowadays most field changes come down in
the form of software update/change. Rarely they do wiring change.

I was contemporary with the 603 (vacuum tube) machines but I was a
1401/1620 guy.
I am very familiar with core storage and we actually used it on
machines as late as the first ten S/370 145s. We had 2 of them in
suburban DC. They were lab machines, being used while they were still
developing the solid state storage that went into the production S/370
but when IBM was selling them faster than we could build them, the lab
machines were sent into the field to IBM internal locations for
production work. We had S/N 10001 in Gaithersburg and 10002 in
Wheaton.
We dod board level engineering changes until "mainframes" became
"computers on a card" in a rack.
You used a tiny "hole saw" type tool to delete the land patterns to
the pins and wire wrap in the new circuit.
Back in the discrete transistor (SMS card) there were still a few of
us who fixed cards but only when a new one was not quickly available.
( 2 hours)
I actually fixed a core storage array on a 3890 one afternoon because
a new one would have to fly in from Atlanta and they needed to capture
the checks by 2100 or lose the float on about a million bucks.
It gave the "new guy" a little street cred after I moved here.

On 02/06/2016 01:15 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 02/06/2016 10:05 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:

I actually installed W95 recently (on a Pentium-II compatible Celeron at
333MHz). I wanted to see what my website looked like on MSIE 2.

Why get all fancy? Real men use lynx. Some sites are still more or less
usable with lynx and you certainly don't get those annoying popups.

I do test my site with Lynx to make sure it's usable that way.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 18:23:39 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:16:34 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 14:23:45 -0600, philo wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:05 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 11:48:14 -0600, philo wrote:



Understood.

I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started
in the year 2000 when it became affordable.

I had a "first day ship" 5150 PC1" but I bought it used in 84 from the
guy at work who bought it originally. That had two 128 m floppies, 16k
and an 8088.
It kept getting upgrades as I accumulated parts and ended up being
640k with a 30m Seagate.
My next machine was an AT in a wooden box. ;-)




Back in my experimenting days maybe ten years ago, I was given an ISA
memory expansion card.

Just to see if I could do it, I bumped the RAM up on a 286 I had to 16
megs, the maximum a 286 can address. At the time the 286 was built, even
if one could have put in 16 megs of RAM it would have been unaffordable.

This is the PC AT I built in the wood box. It had 6 meg on an
expansion card and 512 on the system board. I had 4 meg of that in a
ram drive and the rest for the system. dBase IV was really the only
thing that used anything above 640k in DOS

http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT.jpg
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/Woodiy%20AT%20inside.jpg

I'll bet it didn't pass FCC or DOT certification - or UL either!!!!


The problem was IBM did not think to put PCs in our budget and we
could not get any.
There were no "clone" cases that would take PS/2 parts

When I threatened to start building woodies, my boss said "you know
how to get parts don't you"? (I had a $12 million dollar parts room
right next to my desk)
After that my next boss would just show them off to people and brag
about how resourceful his people were.
By the time I finally got someone who was freaked out by them, we
were downsizing admin people and PCs were a dime a dozen.

On 2/6/2016 4:50 PM, philo wrote:
It's weird looking in exactly the WRONG direction and still seeing
your hands working on something in great detail! :-/

yeah, I would have a hard time getting used to that.

I am amazed -- now that I have that "capability" -- at how often it
comes in handy!

E.g., all of the RG6Q CATV drops for the house all terminate above
the ceiling by the front door. There's no easy way to access them
AND *see* them at the same time.

But, I can slip the camera into that space, put the glasses on and
then "watch" what I'm doing without having to actually see past
my arms (through the access panel).

The camera's autofocus capability makes it tolerant of positioning
"errors".

I've added a bit of lighting to my house but it seems there is never enough, so
always keep some small. bright flashlights everywhere

Yeah, when HF used to have the freebie giveaways, I'd make a point of
collecting the little 3AAA LED lights to scatter around the house
for "close in" work. A shame they are AAA instead of AA!

(And, had the battery compartment been a bit LONGER, I could have slipped
an 18650 lithium cell in there in place of the alkalines!)

[One of my interests is assistive technology. So, I have a large
assortment of AT devices that I've examined and evaluated over the
years...]

On 2/6/2016 4:18 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:02:50 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)
I know a guy who indexes ALL of his pictures, music, and videos in a
SQL database. so he can say he wants a western released in 1946 with
John Wayne in it, and he will get a list of all thet fit, or pictures
of birds by a river in newfoundland - and if there are any they will
pop up. Means he needs to catalog/index them as he saves them

Could be who wearing colour where when and
have
wife bathing suit red hawaii 1896
daughter cat suit greenbostonhalloween
1983

You can only do this to the extent you can ANTICIPATE the FUTURE
search criteria that will be of interest to you!

What invariably happens (with ANYTHING that you have to "categorize"
at time of "filing") is that the categories you have fill up with
more and more items. Then, you decide to further refine the
categories so there is more detail exposed in the categories themselves.

That leaves you with the problem of "how should I deal with the
items previously categorized?" -- esp given that it will usually
be a significant effort to "re-sort" them.

E.g., I originally lumped all of my books on "programming languages"
into a "programming languages" category. As the number of titles
grew, I realized I needed to subdivide this into individual languages.

Thankfully, this type of sort could be performed simply by inspecting the
titles and drag-and-drop to the appropriate folders.

But, how do you deal with things like "programming databases in C++"?
Does it go under "C++"? Or, "Databases"? Or "Programming"?

On 02/06/2016 06:41 PM, Don Y wrote:
O
But, I can slip the camera into that space, put the glasses on and
then "watch" what I'm doing without having to actually see past
my arms (through the access panel).

The camera's autofocus capability makes it tolerant of positioning
"errors".

I've added a bit of lighting to my house but it seems there is never
enough, so
always keep some small. bright flashlights everywhere

Yeah, when HF used to have the freebie giveaways, I'd make a point of
collecting the little 3AAA LED lights to scatter around the house
for "close in" work. A shame they are AAA instead of AA!

(And, had the battery compartment been a bit LONGER, I could have slipped
an 18650 lithium cell in there in place of the alkalines!)

[One of my interests is assistive technology. So, I have a large
assortment of AT devices that I've examined and evaluated over the
years...]




The lights use so little current, the AAA batteries hold up considerably
longer than the old D cell and "bulb" combination.

On 2/6/2016 4:23 PM, philo wrote:
I did not scan every last slide or negative,

20% were not worth going through the effort.
I first sorted by year
but am also creating a data base by subject.

I scanned all of the 35mm slides taken when I was a child -- family
vacations, extended family gatherings, etc.

But, scanning slides is brutally time consuming! Even if you don't bother
trying to "fixup" problems with the emulsions, etc.

So, I just opted to sort them trivially: box number 1, box number 2, etc.

I have a film scanner that can handle up to 4x6 (?) negatives but, again,
its painfully slow. Prints, by comparison, are much easier (I have a
"B size" scanner on which I can lay about a dozen prints at a time so
just have to do *one* scan to get a dozen images).

My system isn't perfect but still, I can usually find what I'm looking for in
less than five minutes.
Prior to this it would have taken hours.

But, you probably sort based on things like "Liz's wedding", "Trip to
Disneyland", "2010 Fall Vacation", etc. Chances are, you wouldn't be
looking for a photo of a particular *shirt* that you had -- unless you
KNEW when you were wearing it!

Interestingly, thanks to digital enhancement I've been able to save some images
that what have been unprintable in a dark room.

I am hoping that to be true. I recently found some prints of our
puppymonsters that were of poor quality (I'm not a photographer and,
with a film camera, can't tell what the photos WILL look like until
they are developed!). The negatives are intact and I'm hoping I
can goose the contrast a bit in photoshop to pull more detail
from them.

On 02/06/2016 01:09 PM, wrote:

[snip]

I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.

On a Western Digital card it was -g=c800:5


I had forgotten the need for '='. IIRC, without that it would execute
code at the current IP, and set a breakpoint. The segment likely was C800.

BTW, once I got through the low-level format, partitioning, and
high-level format I named that 30MB disk "HUGE".

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim."
[Tammy Fae Bakker]

On 02/06/2016 06:58 PM, Don Y wrote:


I have a film scanner that can handle up to 4x6 (?) negatives but, again,
its painfully slow. Prints, by comparison, are much easier (I have a
"B size" scanner on which I can lay about a dozen prints at a time so
just have to do *one* scan to get a dozen images).

My system isn't perfect but still, I can usually find what I'm looking
for in
less than five minutes.
Prior to this it would have taken hours.

But, you probably sort based on things like "Liz's wedding", "Trip to
Disneyland", "2010 Fall Vacation", etc. Chances are, you wouldn't be
looking for a photo of a particular *shirt* that you had -- unless you
KNEW when you were wearing it!

Interestingly, thanks to digital enhancement I've been able to save
some images
that what have been unprintable in a dark room.

I am hoping that to be true. I recently found some prints of our
puppymonsters that were of poor quality (I'm not a photographer and,
with a film camera, can't tell what the photos WILL look like until
they are developed!). The negatives are intact and I'm hoping I
can goose the contrast a bit in photoshop to pull more detail
from them.



I'm using an Epson Perfection V600 and the built-in software has very
good color correction for faded film. Keeps the use of Photoshop to a
minimum. If you don't have Photoshop, the bundled software is reasonably
good...but amazingly, at the age of 66 I have finally reached the
professional level.


What that means is if I have some really detailed Photoshop work to do,
I let my wife handle it. She's an expert.

She's full time artist and her agent has now taken a great interest in
my photography, especially the B&W 35mm and medium format stuff I did in
the 70's.

Since he deal with fine art collectors I will have to do the prints the
old fashioned way...silver-gelatin and fiber based paper.


Of course, I gave my darkroom away last year, but don't fret. My skills
in the darkroom were not quite up to snuff, and fortunately there is a
very good photo lab only a mile from my house.

Got my test print yesterday and it's absolutely wonderful.

Since some of my negatives are not so good...once scanned...
they can take an edited .tif or .jpg, turn it into a negative, then
print it conventionally.


Also found an place on-line that can skip the step of making a negative,
had them do a test print for me as well and though they were excellent,
I think the local place was a tad bit better.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:50:08 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 4:18 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:02:50 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)
I know a guy who indexes ALL of his pictures, music, and videos in a
SQL database. so he can say he wants a western released in 1946 with
John Wayne in it, and he will get a list of all thet fit, or pictures
of birds by a river in newfoundland - and if there are any they will
pop up. Means he needs to catalog/index them as he saves them

Could be who wearing colour where when and
have
wife bathing suit red hawaii 1896
daughter cat suit greenbostonhalloween
1983

You can only do this to the extent you can ANTICIPATE the FUTURE
search criteria that will be of interest to you!

What invariably happens (with ANYTHING that you have to "categorize"
at time of "filing") is that the categories you have fill up with
more and more items. Then, you decide to further refine the
categories so there is more detail exposed in the categories themselves.

That leaves you with the problem of "how should I deal with the
items previously categorized?" -- esp given that it will usually
be a significant effort to "re-sort" them.

E.g., I originally lumped all of my books on "programming languages"
into a "programming languages" category. As the number of titles
grew, I realized I needed to subdivide this into individual languages.

Thankfully, this type of sort could be performed simply by inspecting the
titles and drag-and-drop to the appropriate folders.

But, how do you deal with things like "programming databases in C++"?
Does it go under "C++"? Or, "Databases"? Or "Programming"?
That's the beauty of a sql database - it can go in all 3.

On 2/6/2016 5:52 PM, philo wrote:

I've added a bit of lighting to my house but it seems there is never
enough, so
always keep some small. bright flashlights everywhere

Yeah, when HF used to have the freebie giveaways, I'd make a point of
collecting the little 3AAA LED lights to scatter around the house
for "close in" work. A shame they are AAA instead of AA!

The lights use so little current, the AAA batteries hold up considerably longer
than the old D cell and "bulb" combination.

Perhaps. OTOH, I never *buy* batteries to replace the (crappy)
batteries that come with the lights.

And, while I've not taken one apart to verify, I suspect the
lights rely on the internal series resistance of the batteries
to limit the current to the LED's (no "ballast").

On 2/6/2016 6:37 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:50:08 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 4:18 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 17:02:50 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)
I know a guy who indexes ALL of his pictures, music, and videos in a
SQL database. so he can say he wants a western released in 1946 with
John Wayne in it, and he will get a list of all thet fit, or pictures
of birds by a river in newfoundland - and if there are any they will
pop up. Means he needs to catalog/index them as he saves them

Could be who wearing colour where when and
have
wife bathing suit red hawaii 1896
daughter cat suit greenbostonhalloween
1983

You can only do this to the extent you can ANTICIPATE the FUTURE
search criteria that will be of interest to you!

What invariably happens (with ANYTHING that you have to "categorize"
at time of "filing") is that the categories you have fill up with
more and more items. Then, you decide to further refine the
categories so there is more detail exposed in the categories themselves.

That leaves you with the problem of "how should I deal with the
items previously categorized?" -- esp given that it will usually
be a significant effort to "re-sort" them.

E.g., I originally lumped all of my books on "programming languages"
into a "programming languages" category. As the number of titles
grew, I realized I needed to subdivide this into individual languages.

Thankfully, this type of sort could be performed simply by inspecting the
titles and drag-and-drop to the appropriate folders.

But, how do you deal with things like "programming databases in C++"?
Does it go under "C++"? Or, "Databases"? Or "Programming"?
That's the beauty of a sql database - it can go in all 3.

I can, likewise, put a file in different folders with symbolic (or hard) links.

But, it doesn't eliminate the problem of *later* realizing that you want
to add more/finer criteria. And, the "inertia" that inevitably leads you to
NOT go back and update all of the "entries" that you had created previously.

On 2/6/2016 6:27 PM, philo wrote:

Interestingly, thanks to digital enhancement I've been able to save
some images that what have been unprintable in a dark room.

I am hoping that to be true. I recently found some prints of our
puppymonsters that were of poor quality (I'm not a photographer and,
with a film camera, can't tell what the photos WILL look like until
they are developed!). The negatives are intact and I'm hoping I
can goose the contrast a bit in photoshop to pull more detail
from them.

I'm using an Epson Perfection V600 and the built-in software has very good
color correction for faded film. Keeps the use of Photoshop to a minimum. If
you don't have Photoshop, the bundled software is reasonably good...but
amazingly, at the age of 66 I have finally reached the professional level.

Now, you just need to live ANOTHER 66 years! :

What that means is if I have some really detailed Photoshop work to do, I let
my wife handle it. She's an expert.

I use photoshop primarily to "fix" photos of items that I'm documenting.
Often, to remove backgrounds. Other times, to correct perspective
(e.g., I may have shot something at a slight angle instead of "square on"
so PS lets me "fix" the apparent "taper" in the image. Still other
times to isolate some specific portion of the image and remove unnecessary
detail (e.g., if I'm describing the front panel of an instrument, there's
no need/value to showing a perspective view complete with top and sides;
just crop out those other portions to highlight the front panel itself!).

Occasionally, I get creative and use it to create an "alternate reality".
E.g., taking photos of a SINGLE item in three different configurations
and then merging the three images to make it look like three different
items in those three different configurations arranged *together*.

In no case am I trying to be "artistic". I use photos as "abbreviations
for 1000 words" :

On 02/06/2016 08:11 PM, Don Y wrote:


Now, you just need to live ANOTHER 66 years! :

LOL


What that means is if I have some really detailed Photoshop work to
do, I let
my wife handle it. She's an expert.

I use photoshop primarily to "fix" photos of items that I'm documenting.
Often, to remove backgrounds. Other times, to correct perspective
(e.g., I may have shot something at a slight angle instead of "square on"
so PS lets me "fix" the apparent "taper" in the image. Still other
times to isolate some specific portion of the image and remove unnecessary
detail (e.g., if I'm describing the front panel of an instrument, there's
no need/value to showing a perspective view complete with top and sides;
just crop out those other portions to highlight the front panel itself!).



About all I do it convert to B&W if appropriate and adjust color and
contrast.

With my spotted and slightly damaged negatives, the healing tool works
wonders and is easy enough for me to use.



Occasionally, I get creative and use it to create an "alternate reality".
E.g., taking photos of a SINGLE item in three different configurations
and then merging the three images to make it look like three different
items in those three different configurations arranged *together*.

In no case am I trying to be "artistic". I use photos as "abbreviations
for 1000 words" :

On 2/6/2016 7:23 PM, philo wrote:
I use photoshop primarily to "fix" photos of items that I'm documenting.
Often, to remove backgrounds. Other times, to correct perspective
(e.g., I may have shot something at a slight angle instead of "square on"
so PS lets me "fix" the apparent "taper" in the image. Still other
times to isolate some specific portion of the image and remove unnecessary
detail (e.g., if I'm describing the front panel of an instrument, there's
no need/value to showing a perspective view complete with top and sides;
just crop out those other portions to highlight the front panel itself!).

About all I do it convert to B&W if appropriate and adjust color and contrast.

With my spotted and slightly damaged negatives, the healing tool works wonders
and is easy enough for me to use.

I will sometimes "cook" the image to make the item "look new". E.g.,
if there is an inventory control sticker in a prominent place, I won't
want that in the publication. So, I'll replicate the nearby surface
OVER the label to make it look like it was not there.

At other times, I've altered text *in* photos to suit the accompanying
narrative. E.g., if I am describing a 5 step process and showing photos
of the steps and the device has a *time* display (e.g., "current time"),
I may have taken the photos in a different order *or* at different times
(e.g., "I should insert another illustration between #4 and #5").

I wouldn't want the resulting photo sequence to show the device indicating
10:00, 10:03, 10:05, 10:06, 08:23, 10:08 etc. So, I'll go back and edit
the 08:23 image to show 10:06 or 10:08. Or, even 10:07 if I can "find"
a '7' in some other image.

[Yeah, it's "anal retentive" -- but, I'm a stickler for these sorts of
details. If I'm narrating/illustrating a PROCESS, there shouldn't be
obvious discrepancies in that documentation!]

On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...


--
Maggie

On 2/6/2016 8:55 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

Yes, these are the equivalent of symbolic/soft links.

Again, the problem is that you come up with the idea of a
new/finer categorization AFTER you've already got lots of things
categorized. Now, you are faced with the daunting task of
having to go through all the "old" items and see how they should be
RE-categorized in light of the new category.

Ans: it never gets done! As a result, the "new" category is
of little value as it only reflects additions/categorizations
*since* you created it, not *before*!

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

On 2/6/2016 5:48 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 3:02 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in
the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)

Her problem is that they're all "good" (in the sense that they have
captured things (subjects/textures) that she might eventually want
to re-view. But, there's no way of deciding (at the time of filing)
how to sort/store the image!

E.g., if you take a photo of a man wearing a funny hat and a woman in
a large hoop dress, would you store it under pictures of hats? men?
women? couples? hoop dresses? etc. If you later are looking for ideas
for a composition with "interesting people", where would you expect
to find such a photograph?

She was using a program that allows her to "tag" photos with user-defined
keywords: in this case, perhaps "man", "woman", "hat", "dress", "couples",
"outdoor", "venue_name", etc. So, later, she could select *all*
photos with the "hat" tag and expect to find it. Or, perhaps all photos
tagged "hat" + "man", etc.

But, this is a tremendous amount of time "tagging" images! It may take her
an hour or two just to tag them -- and she may still not have addressed
every aspect of the photo (maybe she considered this a "colorful" scene?
does she have a "colorful" tag created? If she creates it today, should
she go back through her collection and see which *other* photos should
also have been tagged as "colorful"? if not, then what value does that
tag have as it only reflects "information" going forward?)


I put my photos in folders and view them by thumbnail.

--
Maggie

On 2/6/2016 9:57 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 8:55 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

Yes, these are the equivalent of symbolic/soft links.

Again, the problem is that you come up with the idea of a
new/finer categorization AFTER you've already got lots of things
categorized. Now, you are faced with the daunting task of
having to go through all the "old" items and see how they should be
RE-categorized in light of the new category.

Ans: it never gets done! As a result, the "new" category is
of little value as it only reflects additions/categorizations
*since* you created it, not *before*!


I've got my images in folders with simple names. Some are titled by the
date, vacation location, or just subject of the image. It's really easy
and simple to drop the images into the folders. If space isn't a
problem drop a copy of an image into 4 different folders with different
titles. When you need an image, open the folder with the title you need
and just scroll through the thumbnails. Searching for an image visually
is much easier than trying to tag them or rename them, I think.


--
Maggie

On 2/6/2016 9:11 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:57 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 8:55 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

Yes, these are the equivalent of symbolic/soft links.

Again, the problem is that you come up with the idea of a
new/finer categorization AFTER you've already got lots of things
categorized. Now, you are faced with the daunting task of
having to go through all the "old" items and see how they should be
RE-categorized in light of the new category.

Ans: it never gets done! As a result, the "new" category is
of little value as it only reflects additions/categorizations
*since* you created it, not *before*!


I've got my images in folders with simple names. Some are titled by the
date, vacation location, or just subject of the image. It's really easy
and simple to drop the images into the folders. If space isn't a
problem drop a copy of an image into 4 different folders with different
titles. When you need an image, open the folder with the title you need
and just scroll through the thumbnails. Searching for an image visually
is much easier than trying to tag them or rename them, I think.

You're probably looking for a specific photograph.

SWMBO will be looking for examples of "running water".
Or, "interesting people".
Or, cloud formations.
Or, ...

I.e., you wouldn't categorize the photos by those criteria -- until
you'd decided that they were criteria that you were interested in!

How would you deal with ADDING a category that contains all
photos where the sky was overcast? Would you look through all
your Disneyland snapshots? What about the cookout you had three
years back? Or, the outdoor wedding reception of your friend's
daughter?

Its very different accessing photos by *portions* of content.
You don't know what aspects are significant until you want to
go *find* those!

On 2/6/2016 10:32 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:11 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:57 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 8:55 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

Yes, these are the equivalent of symbolic/soft links.

Again, the problem is that you come up with the idea of a
new/finer categorization AFTER you've already got lots of things
categorized. Now, you are faced with the daunting task of
having to go through all the "old" items and see how they should be
RE-categorized in light of the new category.

Ans: it never gets done! As a result, the "new" category is
of little value as it only reflects additions/categorizations
*since* you created it, not *before*!


I've got my images in folders with simple names. Some are titled by the
date, vacation location, or just subject of the image. It's really easy
and simple to drop the images into the folders. If space isn't a
problem drop a copy of an image into 4 different folders with different
titles. When you need an image, open the folder with the title you need
and just scroll through the thumbnails. Searching for an image visually
is much easier than trying to tag them or rename them, I think.

You're probably looking for a specific photograph.

SWMBO will be looking for examples of "running water".
Or, "interesting people".
Or, cloud formations.
Or, ...

I.e., you wouldn't categorize the photos by those criteria -- until
you'd decided that they were criteria that you were interested in!

How would you deal with ADDING a category that contains all
photos where the sky was overcast?

You can put folders inside of folders, so in the sky folder add a folder
that has "overcast" images in it. Drag a copy of the original into the
overcast folder.

Would you look through all
your Disneyland snapshots?

Copy images to a new folder with the right title as I found them.

What about the cookout you had three
years back? Or, the outdoor wedding reception of your friend's
daughter?

I'd leave them all in a topical folder like "People-Gatherings", and
have sub folders like "outdoor wedding", or "weddings".

Its very different accessing photos by *portions* of content.
You don't know what aspects are significant until you want to
go *find* those!


True, so the really only easy way to manage them is to create the
folders and add copies of images to new folders as you find them, or
think about it, or have time to do it.

--
Maggie

Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 5:48 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 3:02 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 13:08:06 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:48 AM, philo wrote:
I was not terribly interested in computers at all until I got into
digital
photography. Though I am not usually an early adapter, I started in
the year
2000 when it became affordable.

The "value" of a digital photograph completely escaped my notice
until a neighbor, in passing, said, "Why don't you just send
him a photo of it?" (something I was describing to a colleague
in email exchanges).

This had to be the biggest "D'oh!" moment in my life! Cripes, how
incredibly obvious!! :

Now, whenever I disassemble something, I take copious photos at
each stage of the process -- don't have to EVER print any of them!
Don't even have to take them off the camera! Just browse through
them while REassembling and delete when done!

Huge time saver as I repair lots of kit for friends and neighbors.
Keeping track of which screw came out of which hole is a real
challenge, otherwise!

SWMBO takes large numbers of (casual) photos -- mainly to capture
textures and shadows as potential subjects for her artwork. But,
then is faced with the daunting task of TRACKING and ORGANIZING
all of those photos (e.g., she may take 100 snapshots over the
course of a 3 hour hike -- and do that once or twice a week!)

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

At least if *I* go looking for a particular document, I have a pretty
good idea of where it *might* be stored...

The trick with pictures is to sort the good ones out right away and
put them away in a predictable place but I still keep all of my raw
images, sorted by the date they were taken. (done by the camera)

Her problem is that they're all "good" (in the sense that they have
captured things (subjects/textures) that she might eventually want
to re-view. But, there's no way of deciding (at the time of filing)
how to sort/store the image!

E.g., if you take a photo of a man wearing a funny hat and a woman in
a large hoop dress, would you store it under pictures of hats? men?
women? couples? hoop dresses? etc. If you later are looking for ideas
for a composition with "interesting people", where would you expect
to find such a photograph?

She was using a program that allows her to "tag" photos with user-defined
keywords: in this case, perhaps "man", "woman", "hat", "dress", "couples",
"outdoor", "venue_name", etc. So, later, she could select *all*
photos with the "hat" tag and expect to find it. Or, perhaps all photos
tagged "hat" + "man", etc.

But, this is a tremendous amount of time "tagging" images! It may take her
an hour or two just to tag them -- and she may still not have addressed
every aspect of the photo (maybe she considered this a "colorful" scene?
does she have a "colorful" tag created? If she creates it today, should
she go back through her collection and see which *other* photos should
also have been tagged as "colorful"? if not, then what value does that
tag have as it only reflects "information" going forward?)


I put my photos in folders and view them by thumbnail.

Burn on optical disc or store in the NAS so any one locally or remotely
can see them.

On 2/6/2016 9:38 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 10:32 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:11 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:57 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 8:55 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 2:08 PM, Don Y wrote:

I have thousands of technical documents -- but they are relatively
easily
organized. How the hell do you file a photo of an eagle purched on
a dead branch overlooking some rapids? Wildlife? Birds? Water?
Season? etc.

Create folder and you can put the image in one folder with your main
title, like wildlife, and then create other folders for each topic that
has a shortcut dropped in it to the original folder.

Yes, these are the equivalent of symbolic/soft links.

Again, the problem is that you come up with the idea of a
new/finer categorization AFTER you've already got lots of things
categorized. Now, you are faced with the daunting task of
having to go through all the "old" items and see how they should be
RE-categorized in light of the new category.

Ans: it never gets done! As a result, the "new" category is
of little value as it only reflects additions/categorizations
*since* you created it, not *before*!


I've got my images in folders with simple names. Some are titled by the
date, vacation location, or just subject of the image. It's really easy
and simple to drop the images into the folders. If space isn't a
problem drop a copy of an image into 4 different folders with different
titles. When you need an image, open the folder with the title you need
and just scroll through the thumbnails. Searching for an image visually
is much easier than trying to tag them or rename them, I think.

You're probably looking for a specific photograph.

SWMBO will be looking for examples of "running water".
Or, "interesting people".
Or, cloud formations.
Or, ...

I.e., you wouldn't categorize the photos by those criteria -- until
you'd decided that they were criteria that you were interested in!

How would you deal with ADDING a category that contains all
photos where the sky was overcast?

You can put folders inside of folders, so in the sky folder add a folder
that has "overcast" images in it. Drag a copy of the original into the
overcast folder.

Sure! So, now she'll have:
\DisneyLand
.\Overcast
\Cookouts
.\Overcast
\Weddings
.\FriendsDaughter
.\Overcast

Would you look through all
your Disneyland snapshots?

Copy images to a new folder with the right title as I found them.

What about the cookout you had three
years back? Or, the outdoor wedding reception of your friend's
daughter?

I'd leave them all in a topical folder like "People-Gatherings", and
have sub folders like "outdoor wedding", or "weddings".

Its very different accessing photos by *portions* of content.
You don't know what aspects are significant until you want to
go *find* those!

True, so the really only easy way to manage them is to create the
folders and add copies of images to new folders as you find them, or
think about it, or have time to do it.

It just doesn't work. Try it! Pick something simple: like a way to
find all photos with *men* in them. And, all photos with *women*.
Another for children.

At the same time, you want to be able to find all of your DisneyLand photos.
And, Various wedding photos. etc.

A filesystem is illsuited for grouping items (photos, in this case)
in "many" different ways.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 19:08:01 -0600, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 02/06/2016 01:09 PM, wrote:

[snip]

I remember that is could be low-level formatted using the controller
ROM. You'd start DEBUG and enter something like gC000:000C.

On a Western Digital card it was -g=c800:5


I had forgotten the need for '='. IIRC, without that it would execute
code at the current IP, and set a breakpoint. The segment likely was C800.

BTW, once I got through the low-level format, partitioning, and
high-level format I named that 30MB disk "HUGE".

I know what you mean. When I put the 30 meg in my PC in place of a
floppy I thought I would be fixed for life for disk space. Then it was
an ST4096 80meg and that was going to do it. After that I started with
SCSI and I thought the sky was the limit.
We could use AS/400 and RISC 6000 drives then. I really settled on the
857m for my go to drive after that in an AS/400 "shoebox". I had a
bunch and as long as you used the same geometry drive, a PS/2 would
handle a hot swap so that was my "sneaker net" until I retired along
with my backup media and whatever. I never saw one go bad. The same
with the 310m they used on AS/400s. They were 5" full size.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 18:57:43 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

Perhaps. OTOH, I never *buy* batteries to replace the (crappy)
batteries that come with the lights.

And, while I've not taken one apart to verify, I suspect the
lights rely on the internal series resistance of the batteries
to limit the current to the LED's (no "ballast").

That is true. They seem to work OK with the Costco AAAs so I will
replace the batteries when they go bad. I use them a lot tho.
When you take them apart, this is what you see

http://gfretwell.com/electrical/LED%20flashlight.jpg

All the LEDs in parallel with no resistor in sight.

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 21:32:18 -0700, Don Y
wrote:


SWMBO will be looking for examples of "running water".
Or, "interesting people".
Or, cloud formations.
Or, ...

I.e., you wouldn't categorize the photos by those criteria -- until
you'd decided that they were criteria that you were interested in!

How would you deal with ADDING a category that contains all
photos where the sky was overcast? Would you look through all
your Disneyland snapshots? What about the cookout you had three
years back? Or, the outdoor wedding reception of your friend's
daughter?

Its very different accessing photos by *portions* of content.
You don't know what aspects are significant until you want to
go *find* those!

The biggest problem I have is I will take a picture and name it with
something like "Christmas 2006" in the name and then later I will
figure out that may be the only picture of something I have that has
no relation to Christmas so I am still looking through hundreds of
shots.

On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 22:38:05 -0600, Muggles
wrote:


You can put folders inside of folders, so in the sky folder add a folder
that has "overcast" images in it. Drag a copy of the original into the
overcast folder.

The problem with that is a backup program will see that move as a
different file and it gets added to your backup set. Pretty soon you
have many copies of the same file, on the same drive.

On 2/6/2016 10:43 PM, wrote:

The biggest problem I have is I will take a picture and name it with
something like "Christmas 2006" in the name and then later I will
figure out that may be the only picture of something I have that has
no relation to Christmas so I am still looking through hundreds of
shots.

Coming up with *a* name for (damn near ANYTHING!) is virtually
impossible -- if you want to LATER be able to determine what
the significant aspects of that "thing" might be.

I've been involved with several small companies/startups
that are trying to put procedures/mechanisms in place upon
which to build.

Part numbering systems are my favorite example of peoples'
inability to acknowledge the complexity inherent in the description
of any THING! Invariably, "some guy" sits down and tries to impose
some "order" on the numbering system: I'll let the first digit
indicate whether it's a fastener, solvent or raw material; the second
digit will REFINE that (e.g., "fastener, screw" vs. "fastener, nut");
the third will refine *that* (e.g., "fastener, screw, reeds&prince"
vs. "fastener, screw, philips")

And, they are invariably pleased with themselves for how CLEVER
they've been!

Until someone shows up with an item that doesn't quite fit one
of their neat little categories: e.g., a "threaded standoff"
(a male "screw" on one end but a female "nut" on the other!).

They then resort to adding a special category called "other".
And, the number of items in this category starts to grow -- making
it impractical to "search". I.e., any time they want a list
of screws, they have to list the *screws* part numbers plus all
of the "other" parts -- in case there are some items in there
that sort-of qualify as screws.

And, if you start changing part numbers ("names"), then existing
documents that reference the "old" numbers don't work anymore!

This was one reason for abandoning a "file system" as the persistent
store in my current project. Moving everything into tables
("relations") lets me add qualifiers later without mucking up
existing "data". E.g., I can add an attribute called "color"
without having to alter the name of the item to reflect that "color".

At the same time, it lets me *tag* attributes so I can look
for "COLOR=red" instead of trying to search for "red" in the
NAME of an item!

On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 23:07:15 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:43 PM, wrote:

The biggest problem I have is I will take a picture and name it with
something like "Christmas 2006" in the name and then later I will
figure out that may be the only picture of something I have that has
no relation to Christmas so I am still looking through hundreds of
shots.

Coming up with *a* name for (damn near ANYTHING!) is virtually
impossible -- if you want to LATER be able to determine what
the significant aspects of that "thing" might be.

I've been involved with several small companies/startups
that are trying to put procedures/mechanisms in place upon
which to build.

Part numbering systems are my favorite example of peoples'
inability to acknowledge the complexity inherent in the description
of any THING! Invariably, "some guy" sits down and tries to impose
some "order" on the numbering system: I'll let the first digit
indicate whether it's a fastener, solvent or raw material; the second
digit will REFINE that (e.g., "fastener, screw" vs. "fastener, nut");
the third will refine *that* (e.g., "fastener, screw, reeds&prince"
vs. "fastener, screw, philips")


Fortunately by the time I got into the parts business we had
computers. The part numbers were pretty much random and the computer
would tell you what it was. In the system I wrote, we actually put a
bar code on every box that came into the parts room and from then on
we tracked that bar code number. From that I had the part number, the
description, everyone who may have taken it out and brought it back
with the dates. From that point I could also go into our time tracking
and dispatch system and figure out where the part was used if they
didn't bring it back.

We really only tracked high dollar parts but they could easily be
worth more than a new car. Some were more like the price of a house.

On 02/06/2016 08:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
X
At other times, I've altered text *in* photos to suit the accompanying
narrative. E.g., if I am describing a 5 step process and showing photos
of the steps and the device has a *time* display (e.g., "current time"),
I may have taken the photos in a different order *or* at different times
(e.g., "I should insert another illustration between #4 and #5").

I wouldn't want the resulting photo sequence to show the device indicating
10:00, 10:03, 10:05, 10:06, 08:23, 10:08 etc. So, I'll go back and edit
the 08:23 image to show 10:06 or 10:08. Or, even 10:07 if I can "find"
a '7' in some other image.

[Yeah, it's "anal retentive" -- but, I'm a stickler for these sorts of
details. If I'm narrating/illustrating a PROCESS, there shouldn't be
obvious discrepancies in that documentation!]



Most of my life I've been fine with doing things "good enough".

When I was working though I develop some pride and would always take
that extra step.


Eventually that "pride of workmanship" found it's way into my general
way of doing things...or at least part way.


Fortunately the deadline for me having my photos ready October but my
goal is to have the project completed well in advance.

I have three additional projects in the works and expect to have one
more complete within the next month.

My wife and I have self-published a number of books using Create Space.


Having your own book is kind of the 21st century version of a business
card. They only cost $6 each or so.

On 2/7/2016 6:22 AM, philo wrote:
On 02/06/2016 08:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
X
At other times, I've altered text *in* photos to suit the accompanying
narrative. E.g., if I am describing a 5 step process and showing photos
of the steps and the device has a *time* display (e.g., "current time"),
I may have taken the photos in a different order *or* at different times
(e.g., "I should insert another illustration between #4 and #5").

I wouldn't want the resulting photo sequence to show the device indicating
10:00, 10:03, 10:05, 10:06, 08:23, 10:08 etc. So, I'll go back and edit
the 08:23 image to show 10:06 or 10:08. Or, even 10:07 if I can "find"
a '7' in some other image.

[Yeah, it's "anal retentive" -- but, I'm a stickler for these sorts of
details. If I'm narrating/illustrating a PROCESS, there shouldn't be
obvious discrepancies in that documentation!]

Most of my life I've been fine with doing things "good enough".

When I was working though I develop some pride and would always take that extra
step.

Eventually that "pride of workmanship" found it's way into my general way of
doing things...or at least part way.

I've always adopted the "do the best that I can" attitude in all my
endeavors. To me, this is easier -- I don't have to make a decision as
to what *specifically* is "good enough". How are you ever *sure* that
your decision was correct? That you've not fallen short? Or, overshot?

By contrast, "doing my best" lets me shrug in those cases where it
may not have been "enough": "Well, it's the best *I* could do..."

Anecdote:

In one of my digital (electronics) labs in school, for our "final project",
we each had to design and build something using the prototyping tools
available in the lab. *You* decided what you were going to design; *you*
decided how you would design it; *you* decided its functionality, etc.

There used to be an arcade (video) game called "Breakout". You controlled
a small "paddle" on the screen. A "ball" bounced off the edges of the
screen and, hopefully, your paddle (if it managed to get past you, that
"turn" was "over").

On the opposite edge of the screen was a wall of "bricks". Each time the
ball (deflected by your paddle!) hit a brick, the brick would disappear
and you'd get a point. The goal was to eliminate all of the bricks before
you'd run out of "turns".

[Pretty lame but this was the 70's...]

Another (earlier) game of this vintage was "Pong". Essentially, it was
"table tennis" -- two players (represented by two paddles) volleying to
keep a ball "in play" between them.

I opted to combine breakout with pong to make a double-player breakout.
I.e., TWO walls of bricks on opposite ends of the screen. A paddle
in front of each wall. So, *your* paddle "defended" your wall of
bricks; if you missed the ball, it would get past your paddle and
(typically) knock out one or more bricks -- giving *me* points! And,
vice versa. So, instead of missing the ball costing you a "turn", it
just cost you *points* -- once in play, the ball never left the playfield!

Professor came through the lab on "judgement day" evaluating each student's
project. I explained mine and he was quick to grab a "paddle" (controller)
and say, "Let's play!". I wasn't real eager to join in -- don't like
all those "eyes" (rest of class) watching me.

While I was standing there, idle, the ball was obviously getting past "my"
paddle pretty regularly. So, his score was mounting while mine was
essentially '0'. Still egging me on -- now with comments from the
peanut gallery -- he kept pressuring me to "play him".

I sighed, reached up and flipped a switch. *My* paddle turned to a solid
wall -- i.e., no way "I" could "miss" the ball! As if I was now an expert
player -- leaving *him* on the perpetual defensive (he can NEVER get
any points from the bricks that I've just "protected" -- yet *I* can get
points any time he misses the "return volley"!).

[Of course, this is really little more than a "single player" version
of the game -- it allows someone to play without a "human" counterpart
(knowing that the "machine" will NEVER MISS!)]

My fellow students thought this was great: professor is going to
LOSE in a very visible way!

Professor wasn't a fool; he reached up and turned the switch off,
restoring "my" paddle to its normal size and, once again, exposing
my bricks (allowing him to gain points).

Again egging me on -- and with an unspoken warning that I could no
longer resort to that "trick" -- he kept trying to get me to join
the play.

Being distracted, in the process, he missed the ball and it got
past his paddle and took out a brick or two of his. I quickly
reached up and flipped *another* switch: HIS paddle turned to a
solid wall! But, now the ball was trapped between that wall
and HIS BRICKS! In that tiny space, it very quickly "ate
through" most of the wall -- giving me LOTS of points!

The class thought this was great! Even better than the previous
"trick".

Professor froze. I could almost HEAR his thinking:
"I can understand adding the FIRST switch to allow a 'single player
mode'. But, what's the value of having the SECOND switch?"
He looked at me with that question OBVIOUS in his eyes. It was
obvious that he'd not considered that possibility -- just like he
hadn't considered the possibility of the FIRST switch! I just
smiled and answered, with my eyes, "Why NOT?".

His shoulders visibly fell as he conceded "defeat".

I.e., would ONE switch have been "good enough"? Or, perhaps
*no* switches? (i.e., you need two players to play) Adding
the second switch didn't FORCE it -- *or* the first switch -- to
be used, but left open that possibility!

Fortunately the deadline for me having my photos ready October but my goal is
to have the project completed well in advance.

Ah, "punctuality" is often the casualty in my approach. I'm always
rethinking my work to see if there was something I could have done
better. And, if there is, then I'm "forced" to fix it. :

I have three additional projects in the works and expect to have one more
complete within the next month.

My wife and I have self-published a number of books using Create Space.

I wrote a large, technical "user manual" many years ago (~600pp, several
hundred illustrations, fully indexed and cross-referenced, etc.). It
was the most challenging project I'd ever undertaken! *I* hadn't
designed the piece of equipment so the first part of the problem was trying
to understand the device in very intimate detail -- BEFORE I could lay
out an approach to the documentation. Then, having researched every aspect
of it's operation (uncovering scores of bugs in the process!), I had to
figure out how to make it feel like it SHOULD have been designed the
way that it was (though *I* would have taken an entirely different
approach). Finally, writing all the prose, making all the illustrations,
etc. All the while knowing any screwups *I* made would be very visible
to any reader!

Lots of things that I was unhappy with in the final product (but didn't
know how to "do better"). But, I figure it was well received as
customers were hearing about it through the grapevine and calling up
to "order a manual" (despite the fact that the device was delivered
*with* a manual -- just not THIS revised manual!)

The take away from that effort was that writing the manual BEFORE
designing the product is a huge win! It lets you imagine how the
user will interact with your device. If you are thorough, you will
discover all the "can't happen" situations while you are writing
and will know how to address them in the eventual design, later.
It forces you to do all your thinking "up front" and in a very
visible (to others) way. No surprises after-the-fact!

Having your own book is kind of the 21st century version of a business card.
They only cost $6 each or so.

On 2/6/2016 11:55 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 06 Feb 2016 23:07:15 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/6/2016 10:43 PM, wrote:

The biggest problem I have is I will take a picture and name it with
something like "Christmas 2006" in the name and then later I will
figure out that may be the only picture of something I have that has
no relation to Christmas so I am still looking through hundreds of
shots.

Coming up with *a* name for (damn near ANYTHING!) is virtually
impossible -- if you want to LATER be able to determine what
the significant aspects of that "thing" might be.

I've been involved with several small companies/startups
that are trying to put procedures/mechanisms in place upon
which to build.

Part numbering systems are my favorite example of peoples'
inability to acknowledge the complexity inherent in the description
of any THING! Invariably, "some guy" sits down and tries to impose
some "order" on the numbering system: I'll let the first digit
indicate whether it's a fastener, solvent or raw material; the second
digit will REFINE that (e.g., "fastener, screw" vs. "fastener, nut");
the third will refine *that* (e.g., "fastener, screw, reeds&prince"
vs. "fastener, screw, philips")

Fortunately by the time I got into the parts business we had
computers. The part numbers were pretty much random and the computer
would tell you what it was. In the system I wrote, we actually put a
bar code on every box that came into the parts room and from then on
we tracked that bar code number. From that I had the part number, the
description, everyone who may have taken it out and brought it back
with the dates. From that point I could also go into our time tracking
and dispatch system and figure out where the part was used if they
didn't bring it back.

We really only tracked high dollar parts but they could easily be
worth more than a new car. Some were more like the price of a house.

My point is to avoid the temptation to put structure/significance into
things that you can't truly embody all of the NECESSARY structure/significance.
Yeah, you *may* be able to tell me the part number for a 1/2", Philips PHMS
"off the top of your head". But, how does that help anyone else? And,
can you tell me the part number of a 7/16" Clutch FHMS with the same
level of certainty? I.e., can you live with JUST your "mental system"?
Or, will you also need to rely on some other "system"? (in which case,
why not rely on it for everything??)

When I went into business, I sat down with 00000001 and assigned that to the
first "item" that I needed to "control" (it happened to be a specification).
Then, 00000002 assigned to the second item (it may have been a screw!).
I.e., no reason to have one set of numbers for specifications, another
for "hardware", still more for individual source code modules, etc.

I've designed two "process monitoring" systems in which I arbitrarily
assign "identifiers" to "objects". The identity of the object -- along
with an indication of its *type* -- is stored in a table. Objects
are then tagged with barcodes so they can be "identified" whenever their
corresponding label is scanned.

So, "Bob" (whose employee badge has the barcode 1432123 printed on it)
can hand a stipend check (payable to "Joe", carrying the barcode 5858590
printed on the check to identify this check -- payee, date, amount)
to "Larry" (whose employee badge has the barcode 33333 printed on it).
"I" can see the 1432123 identifier from Bob's badge and know this
transaction is taking an asset currently controlled by Bob, transfering
it to Larry and identifying the specific asset in the transaction.

Now, Larry is liable for that asset. If Joe calls and wonders where his
check is, "I" can tell him that "Larry" has it. If Larry *claims*
he has given it to someone_else, I can verify or disprove that
claim just by querying the table of transactions for that asset.
If Joe has already received the check, I can verify that, as well:
"Joe, my records show that Bob gave the check to Larry on Thursday.
Larry then gave it to Brenda later that afternoon. Brenda gave it to
*you* on the following Saturday -- because *YOUR* ID was scanned in that
transaction! (at 3:27PM, if you doubt my data)"

No need to deal with "people IDs", "check ID's", "requisition ID's", etc.
An ID is just an ID -- let the RDBMS keep track of the actual details
concerning *what* it is!

Now, you can print off sheets of barcode labels, slap one on an object,
scan it and then "tell" the RDBMS what "it" actually is. No need to
reprint a "lost" barcode label. Only one instance of *any* label
ever comes into being! No possibility of encountering a CHECK with
the label 12345 and an EMPLOYEE with that same 12345 (cuz we only printed
ONE "12345" label)

On 02/07/2016 09:51 AM, Don Y wrote:
X

snipped but read

Having your own book is kind of the 21st century version of a business
card.
They only cost $6 each or so.




Here is what might have gotten me off to a bad start.

In high school, for a science project I built a code practice oscillator.

It was 100% from scratch and I thought I did a great job.

When I asked my teacher why she only gave me a "C" she informed me that
all I did was assemble a kit.


She absolutely did not believe I had built the whole thing myself.


After I brought in a note from my parents, she reluctantly raised my
grade to a B+

She could not even give me an "A" because I think she still did not
believe that I did it myself. She probably thought that if it was not
from a kit, then my father did it or helped me.

On 2/6/2016 11:17 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 2/6/2016 9:38 PM, Muggles wrote:
On 2/6/2016 10:32 PM, Don Y wrote:

How would you deal with ADDING a category that contains all
photos where the sky was overcast?

You can put folders inside of folders, so in the sky folder add a folder
that has "overcast" images in it. Drag a copy of the original into the
overcast folder.

Sure! So, now she'll have:
\DisneyLand
.\Overcast
\Cookouts
.\Overcast
\Weddings
.\FriendsDaughter
.\Overcast


If you have them sorted that way, why can't you just do a search using
the keyword "overcast" in your images folder? It will bring up the
location of all folders that contain "overcast".

True, so the really only easy way to manage them is to create the
folders and add copies of images to new folders as you find them, or
think about it, or have time to do it.

It just doesn't work. Try it! Pick something simple: like a way to
find all photos with *men* in them. And, all photos with *women*.
Another for children.

At the same time, you want to be able to find all of your DisneyLand
photos.
And, Various wedding photos. etc.

A filesystem is ill suited for grouping items (photos, in this case)
in "many" different ways.

Of course it can be done many different ways, so, a person should create
a filing system that works for them.

OR, someone could create an app that could actually file, store,
identify, and tag images automatically.


--
Maggie

On 2/6/2016 11:45 PM, wrote:
On Sat, 6 Feb 2016 22:38:05 -0600, Muggles
wrote:


You can put folders inside of folders, so in the sky folder add a folder
that has "overcast" images in it. Drag a copy of the original into the
overcast folder.

The problem with that is a backup program will see that move as a
different file and it gets added to your backup set. Pretty soon you
have many copies of the same file, on the same drive.


It's just a matter of how you want to sort your own images, I think.
I've tried different ways of doing it as I've accumulated more image
files. Sometimes, I file them in folders by project, or image
challenge, or topic, even.

--
Maggie