Stats widgets used to be all the rage twenty years ago in the Linux world when people would theme them with extravagant graphics as part of a window manager I no longer remember.
The irony was, unless you had a reasonably powerful machine your desktop was slightly slowed down by displaying stats on it continuously. It wasn’t much, but if you had a bunch of Netscape windows open at the same time the RAM and swap stats would invariably end up red.
I guess people still use them as I read someone recommended iStat Menus a week or two ago and I installed it. Yesterday I noticed the “15 days left warning” and remembered reading this thread on replacing paid macOS apps with free & open-source alternatives.
The alternative here is Stats, and the CPU display is shown in the screenshot here.
Install it with this command:
brew install --cask stats
You can see Lightroom Classic converting a bunch of huge ARW files to lossy DNG, but also that, while idling, Claude Code really likes to trounce the CPU. Ouch.
Lightroom Classic (LrC) is fantastic for organizing large photo catalogs… but one longstanding limitation has frustrated many people: you cannot sync Smart Collections directly to Adobe’s cloud ecosystem (Lightroom CC for mobile/web). Only regular collections can be synced.
To work around this, plugins like Any Source have already implemented clever solutions but I wanted something that fit my own workflow better. That’s why I created the LrC Smart Collection Sync plugin to mirror smart collections into regular collections for syncing, with a few improvements I needed myself.
Lightroom Classic won’t let you sync Smart Collections directly, so:
This plugin automatically mirrors selected smart collections as regular collections.
Those mirror collections can then be synced through Lightroom Classic’s built-in sync to mobile/web/cloud.
The Any Source plugin does that too, but my plugin also:
Lets you set the interval when background syncing occurs, from 10 seconds to 300. This is how often mirroring of smart collections with normal collections happens, not syncing with the Adobe Cloud.
Automatically pause sync while editing (so it doesn’t interrupt your workflow)
All this makes syncing smart collections more streamlined and controllable.
Back in 2020 I posted here about using Any Source, and I’ve been using it ever since, but I never used any of the other features of that fine software and I wondered if it would be difficult to write my own mirroring plugin with the help of Claude Code that is.
The result is a new, simpler plugin. It’s also open source if that matters to you.
Install
Installation is easy enough:
Clone or download the plugin by clicking on the CODE button and clicking the “Download ZIP” link.
Place lrc-smart-collection-sync.lrplugin in your Lightroom or Pictures directory.
Add it through File → Plug-in Manager in LrC.
When enabled, it will add 2 new menus to Plug-in Extras:
Smart Collection Sync…
Sync Now
Usage
Go to File > Plug-in Extras > Smart Collection Sync…
Select the smart collections you want to mirror
Set your sync interval
Enable auto sync or run a manual sync
Check “No sync while in Develop” to disable syncing while you’re working on a photo. I noticed while editing photos that Any Source would sometimes sync, and the syncing action became part of the undo which was annoying.
Once the collections are created, tell LrC to sync them with the Adobe Cloud. You can now edit them in Lightroom.
This is the first release of the plugin. It seems to work ok for me. If it takes a while for the configuration window to appear, optimize your Lightroom Catalogue. That really helped me. I guarantee nothing except that this will take up space on your computer!
I don’t have any “new release” checks added but I’ll post here about major changes, or you can watch the GitHub repository to get updates.
PS. The Any Source plugin is really a great plugin with many more features. If you use Lightroom Classic you’ll probably find something in there that will be useful.
If you’re using Immich to manage your photos, you may have discovered that sharing photos between users isn’t as straightforward as you’d like. Many users, particularly couples or families, want a shared folder where both parties can upload photos that are automatically visible to each other, complete with face recognition and smart search capabilities.
While Immich has shared albums, they don’t quite solve this problem. The photos don’t appear in search and aren’t processed for face recognition or analysis. What we really need is a true shared library where both users have full access to the same photos with all of Immich’s powerful features.
Here’s a solution using external libraries and symlinks that creates a pseudo-shared folder between Immich users.
Important: If you rely on uploading photos through the Immich app on your phone this method won’t work for you. You’ll need to sync the photos some other way and copy them into an external library. I export my photos from Lightroom Classic on my laptop, and Syncthing syncs them to the Immich server. Everything is automated from the moment I publish them to the shared directory.
This approach uses external libraries and symbolic links (symlinks) to create a shared photo directory that appears in both users’ Immich libraries. Each user uploads to their own “shared” directory, and through symlinks, those photos automatically appear in the other person’s library as well.
Requirements
Access to the Immich server’s file system (typically via SSH or direct access).
External libraries enabled for each user.
Basic familiarity with Linux commands.
Step-by-Step Setup
Let’s walk through this with an example using John and Mary, a couple who want to share their photos.
1. Set Up External Libraries
First, both users need to have external libraries configured in Immich. For this example, let’s say the external library on the server is this folder:
/mnt/external_library/
It will be mounted in Immich at /external_library/ in this example.
For John, add an external library pointing to /external_library/john
For Mary, add an external library pointing to /external_library/mary
3. Create the Symlinks
This is where the magic happens. We’ll create symbolic links that connect each person’s shared directory to the other person’s external library.
Log in to the Immich server and run these commands:
cd /mnt/external_library/john/
ln -s ../mary/shared mary_files
cd ../mary
ln -s ../john/shared john_files
4. Upload and Scan
Now when John uploads photos to /mnt/external_library/john/shared/, they will:
Appear in his own Immich library
Automatically appear in Mary’s library (via the symlink at /mnt/external_library/mary/john_files)
The same works in reverse for Mary’s uploads.
After uploading, trigger a scan of the external libraries in Immich, and both users will see the shared photos.
How It Works
A symbolic link is like a shortcut that points to another location in the filesystem. When Mary’s Immich library scans /external_library/mary/, it finds the john_files symlink and follows it to John’s actual shared directory. From Immich’s perspective, it looks like Mary has those photos in her library, but they’re actually stored in John’s directory.
Advantages
Full Immich functionality: Both users get face recognition, smart search, and all other Immich features on the shared photos
Simple uploads: Just upload to your own shared directory—no manual copying needed
Bidirectional sharing: Both users can add photos that the other will see
Single source of truth: Each photo is stored once (by the person who uploaded it)
Disadvantages
Duplicate processing: Immich will process each shared photo twice—once for each user. This means:
Face recognition runs twice.
Smart search/ML classification runs twice.
More CPU and storage usage for thumbnails and metadata.
File ownership: Photos remain in the uploader’s directory. If John deletes his Immich library or account, Mary loses access to his photos.
Requires server access: You need command-line access to the server to set up symlinks.
Important Notes
Upload directly to external libraries: Don’t upload to your main Immich library through the app. Upload directly to the shared directory in your external library.
Backup strategy: Make sure your backup solution covers the external library directories.
Permissions: Ensure that the Immich container has proper read permissions for all directories involved.
Conclusion
While this solution requires some technical setup and comes with the overhead of duplicate processing, it provides a practical way to share photos between Immich users with full functionality. This approach has proven reliable for my wife and me, who wanted a shared family photo library without waiting for native multi-user library support in Immich.
If you’re comfortable with the command line and the tradeoff of duplicate processing, this solution provides the shared photo experience many users are looking for.
It’s hard to believe the Bohemian Rhapsody movie is 7 years old. It’s a music documentary about a band that plays the music of Queen, charting their rise from unknowns to playing sold-out gigs, just like the real Queen band.
Anyway, that’s enough of a commentary about what a fantasy the movie was. The trailer was pretty good and Brickfilm Day did an outstanding reproduction of it. This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since 2018, so it’s about time I published it. I’m impressed all the videos are still live after 7 years.
Here is the original trailer. I love what they did for their Live Aid appearance.
I’ve been using Borgmatic, a Python frontend to BorgBackup, to handle backups of my photo archive.
For a few months I had trusted macOS Time Machine to do that job, but somehow, the APFS container or something got corrupted, and I had to format a 12TB external drive to fix it. Time Machine was interrupted while making a backup and corrupted an index irreparibly. We have occasional power cuts so I did not want that to happen again.
So, back to BorgBackup. I had used it before but I wasn’t happy with how I had it configured. I don’t remember what it was now, because the reasons are lost in the mists of time. I decided to look into Borgmatic to help run BorgBackup and it made configuring it fairly easy.
Borgmatic is a configuration-based tool, so you create a .yml file defining the directories to backup, where the backup repo lives, and then run it whenever you want to create a new backup. I have it running once a day because my photo library doesn’t change that often.
Browsing BorgBackup repositories was a weak point of the system, but there are two good options:
I tried Vorta before, but you need to mount the repository to browse it, and I didn’t want to go down the route of installing a macFUSE kernel mod. However, I see from their website some promising news:
Thanks to the new FSKit backend in macFUSE, supported file systems can now run entirely in user space on macOS 26. That means no more rebooting into recovery mode to enable support for the macFUSE kernel extension. Installation is faster and setup becomes a seamless experience.
If you’re only extracting backups, you can safely ignore the popup that demands you give Vorta full-disk access.
I noticed that the Vorta app behaves like a popup window on macOS. It’s not possible to CMD-TAB to it, and it has no menu system in the top admin bar. It’s not even in the Dock. You’ll have to run it from Spotlight/Alfred/Raycast and it will be shown.
From the Archives tab, it is possible to “Extract…” from a repository that doesn’t require mounting of the backup and that does work. If you have a large repository you may see the infamous spinning colour ball if you’re using a Mac as it gets all the file info. Give it time. It may take more than a minute to show you a file listing.
I’m also investigating a web-based borg-ui that runs in a Docker container. That allows me to restrict access only to the directories I want to back up or restore, or as I have configured it now, it only has access to the backup repositories and a restore directory. I don’t need to restore files very often so I can shut down the container and only launch it when I need to.
Browsing or extracting files using Borg-ui is just as slow as in Vorta, but it has a spinning animation in a modal popup to stop you from trying to restore twice.
If you’re not familiar with Docker, give Vorta a go, but borg-ui is definitely worth a look too. Don’t depend on either of them to do your backups. That should be automated so you don’t need to remember to do it.
You should of course have a remote backup, and for that I recommend Backblaze. I’ve been using them for years. Thankfully I’ve hardly ever had to restore more than a few files from them but I check it semi-regularly. Sign up through here and I’ll get a free month if you pay for it!
Running a photography club competition used to mean juggling spreadsheets, chasing emails, and manually tallying votes. I built Photo Competition Manager to change that.
This free WordPress plugin handles everything your club needs: member management, secure uploads, flexible voting, and beautiful results displays.
This will suit a photography club that uses WordPress for their website and that has a projector for their meetings. If you already run a photo league with projected images or prints but collect votes from your club members using pen and paper you’re the perfect candidate to try this plugin.
This is the very first release of this plugin. It has been used a couple of times to run several test photo competitions and one monthly league competition. However, bugs happen. I would love if your photography club used this plugin but I will need feedback to improve it. Run a couple of test competitions first to get used to how it works.
Getting Started in Minutes
The setup wizard creates all the required pages automatically. Select the pages you need, click a button, and you’re ready to go.
Manage Your Membership
The Members page is your central roster. Add members individually or bulk import from CSV. Assign grades, track status, and send magic-link upload invitations with a single click.
Each member gets a unique upload URL—no passwords to remember, no accounts to create. They click the link and upload.
Create and Track Competitions
The competitions dashboard shows a list of competitions, allowing you to edit them and send out upload emails to members. Only one competition may be active at a time, but a competition may have more than one category.
Create competitions with custom categories (Colour, Mono, Projected, etc), grade divisions (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced), and submission quotas. Each competition can have its own rules without affecting your defaults.
Watch Submissions Roll In
As members upload, the submissions page displays thumbnails of every entry. You’ll see who’s submitted, which categories are filling up, and whose photos are still missing.
A Frictionless Upload Experience
When members click their magic link, they land on a clean upload form. They select their category, choose their image, and submit. The progress banner shows upload status in real time.
The plugin handles validation automatically—file types, dimensions, and quota limits are all enforced before the image is accepted.
Complete Control Over Voting
The voting controls page is your competition command centre. From here you can:
Open and close voting for each category independently.
Toggle the results display on or off.
Enable slideshow mode for in-person club nights.
Disable uploads once the submission deadline passes.
Show a QR code for members to scan with their phones to vote.
In the competition settings, you choose between token-based voting (unique links per member) or password-protected public voting. The voting controls page features a full-screen slideshow mode where members can vote together during meetings.
On the night of the competition we do the following:
Close uploads and hide results.
Show the slideshow with a 10 or 15-second delay as a preview.
Display the QR code and make sure every member can scan it and open the voting page.
Open voting and show the slideshow again.
When everyone has voted, close voting.
2 members of the club will then go through the images and offer a critique, using the slideshow again but in manual mode this time.
Repeat for the next category.
When all the voting is done, toggle the results page on and display the “top 3” results, and then the anonymous results page on the projector.
Finally, an email is sent out to all members showing their score, ranking in their grade and the votes they received. Names are not attached to the votes for obvious reasons.
Voting By Phone
Members can vote on the competition using their phones after they have scanned the QR code on the voting controls page.
Results That Make Sense
When voting closes, the results dashboard breaks down every score by member grade. See vote distributions, identify your winners, and export everything to CSV for your records.
The frontend includes a responsive top-3 podium display perfect for announcing winners, plus full results tables with filtering by grade and category.
Built for Photography Clubs
Photo Competition Manager was built specifically for the way camera clubs actually run competitions:
Magic-link authentication means members don’t need WordPress accounts to upload.
Grade-based scoring supports clubs that split their membership by experience level.
Slideshow mode turns any screen into a projection-ready display.
CSV export keeps your archives intact.
Get Started Free
Photo Competition Manager is free and GPL. Install it from the WordPress plugin directory or from the plugins page on your WordPress site in the usual way. Navigate to the Competitions menu to get started.
We have an 11-year-old chihuahua and while he enjoys going for walks, he’s happiest when it’s a short walk. Actually, he’s happiest when he’s cuddled up next to us in a blanket, but we all need exercise.
Diego in Dún Laoghaire
When it’s a longer walk, we bring his buggy and he sits in it, looking around, happy to be with us and king of all he observes from his high vantage point.
When our previous dog, Oscar, got too old to walk much we did the same for him, but he had to make do with a child’s stroller. We didn’t know you could get doggy buggies back then!
But then I remember I have my own hobbies and obsessions they won’t know a thing about.
My wife was told by a friend that she’d never meet a man who wasn’t interested in sport. I guess she did.
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