The second day of snow and Storm Emma will make landfall around 9pm tonight apparently. Schools were closed, hardly anyone driving but kids were out playing in the snow. I'm glad we're watching Peanuts the Movie tonight!
The local Mill Pond was frozen over, temperatures didn't rise above 0C all day but it was nice to see blue skies.
Snowman & snow castles!
There's one thing you have to do when it snows and that's building a snowman. My son got a bucket and added castles all around it to protect him from the maddening hoards of invaders that befall every snowman!
Fingers crossed Storm Emma isn't as bad as we all feared!
The snow has arrived! The #BeastFromTheEast is upon us! In Blarney snow fell this morning for about 40 minutes and left the ground looking lovely and white when you're inside. It was awful if you had to go out in it though!
-3C in the car this morningThe school runI carried Diego most of the way to the school, and back. He was happy to get back in the car!Clearing the windscreen on Carr's Hill. Photo Credit: Ki Bosch.The Sun is shining
The snow fall didn't last long. Getting back up the hill into my estate was fun, involving high revs in first gear. Thankfully some of my neighbours had put gravel down on the road which helped. The relief as I felt the tyres catch on the rough surface was wonderful.
School is out at 11am though, so the kids get snow and bright pleasant, if cold, weather.
"The National Emergency Coordination Committee has asked everybody in Munster and Leinster to be indoors by 4pm tomorrow and to stay there until midday on Friday.
Or “El Ministerio del Tiempo” as it’s called in it’s native Spanish.
I’ve only watched one episode but this time traveling sci-fi series is off to a great start, and the whole thing is available on Netflix. Thankfully with subtitles!
Aaron Feis threw himself in front of students and was shot protecting them from a gunman during a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Another staff member, Scott Beigel, was also killed while ushering his students into his classroom out of harm's way. Image found on Reddit.
Hi everyone, my name is Sid, I'm a Junior at Stoneman Douglas and I'd like to share my story of what went on in room 1214, the third room that was shot into by the shooter, and where Nick Dworet (second to top right) and Helena Ramsey (second to bottom right) were killed. 2:20 PM – We are working on the laptops doing an online activity when we hear about 10-15 gunshots outside of our door. Everyone scatters and from about 25 kids, two groups were split in different corners. I was in the corner that is immediately to the right of the entrance, Nick was in the back right corner that could be immediately seen from the entrance. The group with Nick and Helena were trying to form a barricade with a cabinet and a computer cart (one that holds laptops and charges them) but without even 20 seconds to react, the shooter comes to our door and starts shooting through the window of the door. He was shooting at the corner that Nick and Helena were in as well as about 12 other students with them in that corner. Nick got caught in the fire and died immediately, Helena also got caught and was shot twice in her chest. I was in the opposite corner so I couldn't see his body because a cabinet was in the way, and I'm thankful that I didn't witness his body because it probably would have affected me much more. A girl told me she had to use Nick's body as a shield once she saw he was dead immediately 🙁 Here is an edited version of the map to show the corner where I was hiding (blue), where Nick and Helena were (orange) and where the shooter was shooting from (red). Thank you for the support you have been giving. And if any of you came out to the vigil yesterday, I have no words for how happy I am that you came to support.
Google's Security Checkup is useful. It reminds me of all the problems I had getting a phone with a display that didn't have a fault. I think I ran through the entire stock that shop had for one reason or another.
I used to work in Liam Ruiséal’s bookstore more than twenty five years ago. I still remember sorting through books upstairs while Everything I Do I Do It For You played every day at 1pm as it sat at the top of the charts in Ireland for nine long weeks. I was so sick of that song.
The late summer, back to school, rush in the nineties was a crazy time to work in a school bookshop. I think I only worked there 2 or 3 years, brought in during the late months of the summer holidays, and worked those months in the store room around the corner. It's the shop across the road from the side entrance of AIB, an auctioneers now.
There were constant deliveries, constant orders being made up, piles of books brought up to the shop on a trolley. I haven't really thought much about it since but I wonder what became of the people who worked there in the early nineties? William Geoghegan pictured here looks very familiar and it appears Bríd was still running the place in 2016!
It's sad to see it close but the last time I bought a school book in there was the mid to late nineties. Unfortunately I never thought of it as somewhere to buy fiction.
One of the country’s oldest independent bookshops, Liam Ruiséal’s in Cork city, is to close later this year after over a century in business. Bríd Hughes, a granddaughter of shop founder, Liam Ruiseál, confirmed this afternoon that the shop will close “within a few months”.
There are many articles out there that explain how best to store your photo archive if you use Lightroom. I was going to write one too but I don't think the world will really benefit from me rehashing what other writers have already said.
If you watch the video above by Peter Krogh, who wrote the book on Digital Asset Management, you'll have a good idea of the basics. I organise my photos in a very similar fashion.
Use Dated Folders
You may have read elsewhere or seen YouTube videos that encourage you to put descriptive titles in the folders where you store your photos, but I would urge you to keep the folder names as simple as possible. I agree with Peter Krogh that you keep the directory names simple but instead of using project names as he did above, I use dates. I use YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD as the folder name when importing. Using project based folder names makes things complicated. Occasionally I won't bother copying photos off my camera, especially if they're just snapshots, so it would be an extra hassle importing first my cat photos from Friday, and then my street photos on Saturday. It's much easier to go into "Previous Import" and add a few keywords. This won't happen that often, but I guarantee it will.
When you're looking through your photo archive it probably won't be through a file manager, it'll be in Lightroom, so the folder names don't matter, but the dated folder names provide a logical and predictable naming convention that will always be the same.
Instead of relying on folder names use keywords and collections to sort your photos. Use ratings or colours to refine further. You can then use Lightroom filters to quickly find whatever photo you need. This short tutorial on collections explains how to use them.
Use Import Presets
As well as DSLR photos, I import photos from my phone into Lightroom, and now that I'm doing a 365 day photo project too I'll be importing fully edited photos from my phone. I use Snapseed to edit those photos so I wanted some way of identifying those photos. Import Presets were the answer!
I use import presets to configure import options like destination folder, file renaming, metadata information, keywords, and even develop settings:
Away: used when I'm not at home with my laptop. Usually on a work trip or holiday. The destination folder is on the local drive. Everything else goes to an external one. When I get home I move the files to external storage and tell Lightroom where the missing files are.
Jacinta's Photos: my wife's camera phone photos go in a specific directory with different keywords and metadata.
Mobile Import: import photos I've already synced from my phone. Adds the keyword "phone" and puts the photos into a different directory structure.
SD Card: settings used when I'm importing DSLR photos.
Snapseed: my newest import preset. This adds the keyword "snapseed" and moves photos into the same folder as the Mobile Import preset. I use the keyword to
identify these files.
Use Publish Actions
These allow you to export photos with particular settings. This allows you to tailor your photos for different sites. For example, Instagram uses 1080×1080 pixel images. Your blog will have a different width. Facebook has other restrictions.
Use the WordPress Lightroom Plugin?
The Lightroom Exporter for WordPress allows you to export photos from Lightroom into your WordPress.com or self hosted WordPress site (if you're using Jetpack).?
There has been so much written about Adobe Lightroom it's not hard to find answers to whatever questions you have. This was just a short summary of my thoughts about photo organization. I have a photo archive going back to 2001 and it has worked well for me. It'll probably work well for you too.
Ho Ho Ho! The folks at Backblaze must be feeling the Christmas cheer as they're adding 3 months of Backblaze backup to anyone who signs up within the next 21 days.
I’m a huge fan of Backblaze, having paid for the service since 2013 and had to recently use their backup to restore more than 3GB of photos I took on December 1st and 2nd.
So, if you’re not backing up your data I can recommend Backblaze. Sign up here for a free trial, and if you buy a subscription you’ll get 3 months free, but only if you sign up within the next 21 days. I get 3 months free as well which will make me very happy too. 🙂
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