Photo library organizing, not for chromebooks yet

 I wish one day, they create an app that you can properly download your images, select the one's you like, delete the rest, tag, and then upload to google + or where ever you want.  Second thing I wish I could easily connect my Home NAS as a drive.  Maybe there is an app for that, if someone is aware of such, please do let me know.
 Otherwise, I am totally satisfied with my Acer C720.  Perfect for surfing, quick as it starts up in 7 sec, blogging, and reading.  It's Light, and the battery lasts for a long time, I remember my now considered old notebook, had a 9 Cell battery and almost lasted 6 hours, that battery is broken, as it's almost 5 years old and it's heavy and bulky compared to this Chromebook, and I don't think I've fully used what it offered, in terms of power.  It did serve me well, and I'm still keeping it around for more heavy lifting photo editing, and transferring to my NAS.  But my every day use at home is this Chromebook.  I would recommend it to anyone who needs a general use laptop, for surfing, blogging, and actually want's a portable light package.

2 weeks with the chromebook

So far I am very happy with my chromebook, for blogging, reading, surfing, and sometimes sharing photo's on Google Plus.  Currently this chromebook as is isn't fit for photography.  My largest grudge is that I can't download from an SD card, sort, tag, and then decide which goes up to the backup or G+. It's quiet, usable/stable, been through an upgrade, no hiccups. And the form factor, is an extra plus for me.

First impressions with the Chromebook experiment

  So, I started using my Chromebook full time at home.  I have found a few useful app, one is an SSH App so I can connect to my other Linux/Pi machines in my home network.  But I also found a little problem, I can't mount or access my NAS native in my Chromebook, except via browser, but I hope this will change with time.  I also found a useful syntax coloring editor called Caret, I tested it with XML, and a bash script.  I am still adjusting to the thought of having everything in the cloud.  The Chromebook also recognized my 1TB Toshiba USB 3.0 Hard Drive, though I wasn't able to play a few .flv, and .wma files, that doesn't bother me, but if you have a rather big collection of .wma files, this can be a problem.  I have already uploaded my mp3 music to google music, so I can listen to it everywhere, which I find convenient.
  I also tried importing images from my digital camera, now I am not used to this cloud thing yet.  I wasn't able to edit them until after it was uploaded to Google Plus.  I'm still getting used to it, so it may be my ignorance at this time, I'll update as I learn and find out new things.

The chromebook Experiment

The acer C720

I've been contemplating for a while on upgrading my 7 year old laptop, and I read a few articles about the Chromebooks.  I think I didn't manage to upgraded my laptop, rather it's a downgrade, but one day I consciously started testing my online usage, I spend like 90% of my time in the browser, that being chrome.  And I am all the way google, email, Calendar, and all.  So I decided to give this a shot, at $200 my lose is at a minimum, if the experiment fails.
So far what I like most about it, is really the 7 sec start up, and I'm at the login page.  It's quiet, the keyboard is a bit cramped, but I can get used to it.  The screen is small 11.6", but I think I like this form factor.  I've never liked laptops over 14", I consider those portable desktop replacement.  I've had a 12.1", a 13.3" and a 14", never even considered anything larger, this would be my first 11.6".  I'm sure not everyone would agree, but this is my opinion about laptops, they should be small and portable, naturally this comes with compromises, such as processing power, screen resolution, but I don't want to lug around a 15.6" laptop.
Anyhow, I am actually typing this on the Chromebook, and so far so good. Since I do photography as a hobby, I will be testing what workflow I can work out on the chromebook.  I've already testing downloading images from an SD card, worked like a charm, and it already uploaded it to Google Plus Photo's, though I still need to figure out how to edit before uploading, or maybe I'll just edit once uploaded. That's for the future to write about.

Private VPN

I finally figured a good use for the RasspberryPI.  I created my own humble VPN.  Though I followed an online guide, so I can't take credit for it, it worked geat.  Exept that I couldn't surf the net while the VPN was active, but I could reach my own NAS.  Still a few hiccups to work out.  This is the article if you are interested. http://readwrite.com/2014/04/10/raspberry-pi-vpn-tutorial-server-secure-web-browsing

Sabayon dropping 32-bit version

While not too surprised about the decision I was hoping I wouldn't have to re install my laptop for a while, that is why I chose a rolling release distribution. I decide to install the 32-bit version because my laptop only has 3GB of memory so I won't benefit from a 64-bit Distro. But I guess I have no choice as the 32-bit version will be supported until January 2015.  Check out the article http://www.sabayon.org/article/important-sabayon-x86-32bit-being-deprecated

Upgraded Desktop to 14.04

  As soon as Ubuntu 14.04 came out, I wanted to get the upgrade.  And the other weekend I did.  This meant a bit of instability on the first few boots, but it went away.  One thing I didn't check on, which I should have is the status of my Software RAID.  It seems after the upgrade it went out of sync, and I didn't give it time to sync up.  So yesterday, I ran an update, and accidentally thought of checking my Disk status.  And that's why the system was bit hung.
  My desktop is a bit of a mix.  I use GNOME, and KDE, my wife uses GNOME.  This sometimes causes conflicts, on my desktop.  I am hoping to clear those up.  For example, I can't properly run a distro upgrade from KDE, I had to login it GNOME, where I was able to upgrade my system, not sure why, but it worked this way.  Is upgrading worth it, so far I haven't seen the benefits, except that digiKam is the upgraded version, which I am happy for.

Testing

Testing pictures upload

This is just an experiment of posting an image

Editing on iPad

First I downloaded the photos to my laptop.  Selected the best I want to share, then edited, resized, and uploaded.  Just to think that later a frame would be a good addition.  So on google plus photo's I went to edit and wala done.  I ordered a wireless SD so editing and downloading will be instantaneous.  I tried the Wireless SD card, and I like it so far.  It is not fast, but I knew that before ordering.  I can start the camera up, and transfer the files to the iPad, Phone, or even my laptop/desktop.  It is a great feature, I feel like I upgraded my camera, and it works with my DSLR as well as my bridge.  I would recommend it to anyone.  If speed is important, make sure you read the reviews, the Transcend WiFiSD I got is a bit slow, but I don't care for speed that much in this case, while the price was decent.  The next problem I may face is the fact that I got the 16GB iPad.  My First tablet which was a Galaxy Tab 10.1 16GB I never ran into space problems, but then again, I didn't have so much content on it.  The iPad has my Favorite National Geographics subscription, which takes up approx 500MB/Issue, that's about 6GB, just Natgeo :)  and it is beautiful on the retina display :-)  Till later...

Gave in got an iPad

Not sure if you followed me, but I wrote in the past that I got a cheapo 7" Android tablet. I was all happy and satisfied with it in the beginning. But overtime the tablet started slowing down.  And after longer usage I started to realize that 7" is small. But that's not what annoyed me, it was the fact that even after I left it for a few minutes to sync, and update things it was slow. I couldn't open an article in flipboard, it became slow, or froze and locked up.

 Now the retina display on the iPad is sweet. Looking at pictures, and even editing on it is a pleasure not to mention battery life. In the end you get what you pay for. I wasn't expecting a performance daemon, but I wanted it to be usable. I wish you could try things for longer times, before buying. I liked the 30 day money back guarantee in the USA, even with some electronics. Though I may even be happy to pay 15% restocking fees, if I'm that unhappy with the product rather than being stuck with it. Anyhow will try to get rid of it.  Wrote this on the iPad :) and enjoyed it.

Do you really need a desktop?

  For the past 2 weeks, my desktop computer has been disassembled, and my wife and I don't even miss it.  We both have a tablet, and I have a laptop as well, which I use for photo processing once or twice per month.  We just talked about it the other day, that we don't even miss the Desktop.
  We can do all our online activities, reading email, social networking, and even keeping in touch with family via Google's lookout or Skype.  While I do sometimes use the laptop, for processing pictures, I don't even need a powerful machine to achieve that, and the laptop does it without breaking a sweat.
  I tried downloading and processing the images on my little 7" tablet, but this form factor is only good for reading.  If I were to download and edit images on a tablet, it would need to be at least a 10.1, and with more muscle than my little 7" Prestigio.
  Since I am an IT professional, who spends like 99% of work time in front of the computer, when I get home I don't miss the monitor, so I usually read on my tablet at night. While I don't think you can get everything done with a tablet, even if you have a top of the line tablet, a powerful desktop is no longer a requirement for everyday usage as it was in the past.  Every household had at least one powerful desktop, and maybe a laptop, that was mostly for Word processing, a little surfing and emailing.  But photo editing, and heavier stuff needed the desktop power.
  These days, even the lower category laptops can handle much more than what laptops 10 years ago could.
  I just installed linux on a sub $500 laptop, which had 4 CPU core's, and 6GB or RAM.  Now it was a joke running Ubuntu on that machine, of course, I could max out the CPU if I start Trans-coding, decoding, encoding video, but then I wouldn't buy that cheap a laptop.  That laptop, can do all that is needed for a regular household, and then some.
  I would argue even that having a Decent Laptop at home, and a tablet would cover all needs.  But then again, that's just my opinion.