Two Wrongs Make a Right?

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More like two oops make a not so bad. I brought the removable drive with all my backups to a Geek Squad location inside a BestBuy store. Told them my sob story, and they told me they would fleece me to recover the data. Likely hundreds of dollars. Crap. I didn’t really want to give up on our baby pictures of Kate. The girl said she could plug it in and see what was there. She could see a bunch of home movies, and some empty folders. I was very confused. They must be seeing one of my first formatting/foldering setups I though. I left. Thought I might look for a different recovery place.

I got home, plugged in the drive, and saw what she had seen. Oops. I packed up and brought the wrong drive. Plugged in the second one, and there was the bad one. I decided to look around again. I found a folder called older, looked inside, and saw images from 2002-2007. These are all the point and shoot images that I taken that I thought I had lost. There were still here. I immediately backed them up to a working removable drive.

So… oops. Looks like I have most of the stuff I care about. What don’t I have? I don’t have the “backup” files from Annie’s and my computers from the last few years, and I don’t have all of my ripped music. I can spend several hours sometime to rip the music again, and there wasn’t a whole lot of value on the backups. Probably stuff we would have kept if we knew about it, but not so important that we can’t remember what’s there.

I still might get an estimate on data recovery from someone else. I didn’t do a format, the folders shouldn’t be that munged.

Big, big take away from all of this: Never have just one copy of a file. Even if you think it was just going to be a day or two until your new NAS was up (like me), don’t take that chance. ALWAYS have at least two copies.

Data loss means enough is enough

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openfilerI have been building a NAS for quite some time. That’s the problem. It was just taking too long to get going. I had it to the point where I had a Linux box with software raid, and LVM, and ssh going. I was using rsync over ssh from my Macs to get data there. But that just wasn’t good enough. I wanted Samba and NFS running securely with user accounts. I have got them to work before. It just takes some work. I decided that I would move on. Get something that was already working. Open source to the rescue.

I took a look at FreeNas and Openfiler. I thought that FreeNas would be everything I was looking for, then I realized that it couldn’t use LVM, so I would have to make static partitions. Not the worst thing in the world, but….

Openfiler looked to be the ticket. I decided to take it out for a spin. However, it would not recognize the data I had on my old raid array, or my other drive that was a backup of some of the data. I would have to repartition. So, I took one of the new 1TB external drives that I just purchased to hold my RAW picture files, and coppied everything over. Then, after making sure the data was there, I set to work setting up openfiler. This is not the most intuitive setup. And I had an idea of what I was doing, and wanted to do. I was getting frustrated. I could not create a share. It took me a couple of days to figure out that you had to create a folder, then tell openfiler that the folder was a share. As well, you must authenticate over LDAP, or Active Directory. They have a built in LDAP server, so I used that, but it was an extra layer of issues that I didn’t need.

If you are getting the idea that I should have just taken the time to get Samba running, I think that you are right. I was then messing with trying to get a rsync server working. You can’t do rsync over ssh. It won’t start anymore. It used to. It doesn’t now, and doesn’t return any error messages. Now I am frustrated.

So somewhere in this mess, I disconnect the “backup” drive from my Mac. (I had added some other stuff from my computer directly, so that when I when to add the data to the new NAS, I could plug in the removeable drive and just move it locally instead of over the network.) For some reason, the iMac does not think that it should be disconected yet. I was sure I told it to eject, but it must not have, because I got the message that says that I am an idiot for disconnecting a drive that wasn’t first ejected. Well, guess what, the fat32 partition table is hosed. Garbage there. Crap.

I am going to need a trip to the GeekSquad to try to get them to recover the data. I will have to spend more money than if I had bought an extra drive and had two backups. Maybe I need a blueray drive to do my 2nd backup. Anyway, I am screwed. Maybe. We’ll see.

readynasSo, I decided enough is enough. I ordered a Netgear ReadyNas NV+ from New Egg. It is a ready to go home/small business NAS that can take up to 4 drives. I will have 3 in a raid 5 configuration. It supports an interesting tech called X-Raid too that I will have to consider. It will let you replace the drives with bigger ones later one at a time, then rebuild when all are replaced. Pretty cool.

The box will do CIFS, NFS, HTTP (WebDav), FTP, and RSYNC. That coveres pretty much all the bases. It will send alerts when errors occur, and automatically rebuild when you put in a new drive. There are other nice things too, such as an iTunes server, and a media server that is auto discovered by media players. You can even set it up to access files remotely through an encrypted channel using netgear sotware you install on your laptop. You can even plug other drives into this box to share them.

I have debated something like this for awhile. What kept me back was the price and the ability to rsync. This device does rsync. This device will be far cheaper than the time is has taken me to putz around with other “solutions”.

I guess I am done for now with the “Building a NAS” series. I just wasn’t worth my time. Sorry.

P.S. It looks like I never did post my bit on getting LVM up. Maybe I will do that sometime.

Digital Wake Up Call Minneapolis

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wakeupcall

This blury noisy photo courtesy of my iPhone is from the Sheraton Bloomington, where last night the David Ziser show came to town. I took it while pouting that I didn’t win any of the over $5000 in prizes given away. It was quite a night. David had from 6-10 to cram in all the information he wanted to, but I think it was closer to 10:30 before we left, and he had to skip or gloss over a good chunk of material. He had a ton of information to give us.

Luckily he had a script, and it was all in a booklet that he handed out. Sort of like a powerpoint outline with advertisements. There will be time to review this later. Not only that, but there is a DVD that came with the program that has this talk and some other tutorials on it. I will have to take a look at that later and let you know exactly what was on that DVD.

I guess I must be a bit of a fan boy, as I picked up some of his other training DVD’s too. (I am a sucker for a sale price) Again, I will blog later about what I thought of them, and if they seemed worth it.

It was a good show. Definitely worth the $59 dollars to get in. He is all about the light, and how to get it quick and easily. As David mentions, there is no time to set up and move around softboxes at a wedding. His tips on how and when to use on and off camera flash seemed useful, and it will be interesting to give them a try.

The software tools part would have been pretty ho hum for me, except that he demoed a software package to layout books, prints, and collages that is simply amazing. It is called FotoFusion by LumaPix. It looks to be quite the time saver. Easier than Apertures layout editor that I have been using.

The marketing part of the evening was some of what I was most interested in, but we were quite behind at that point, and David had to turn into an auctioneer.¬† As well, I was starting to tune out. I was getting tired. We still have the printed materials, and the DVD’s, so I will have to check those out and see what he has there.

Anyway, glad I attended. If you get a chance to catch him in another city, I would recommend it.

Adobe Upgrade Scam

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Fake Adobe Scam

I got an email from what looked like Adobe. Adobe Systems Inc. Title: “Your Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended trial is almost over. What’s next?” It was an HTML email that looks identical to that of other email that I have received from Adobe. The only thing that was odd, was that it told me my trial for CS4 Extended was up, and they had a link for an upgrade. I recently tried Lightroom, but not CS4. Hmmmm……

I hovered over the links and got an address of www.adobeinfo.com. I thought that was strange. I went to www.adobeinfo.com and got some sort of privacy page thing. Then I googled it. http://www.aboutus.org/AdobeInfo.com that said it was a phishing site. I then tried further google fu, but couldn’t find people suggesting this was a phishing site. It sure seems vary odd though. I wouldn’t upgrade through them anyway…

Snow Leopard Upgrade Time?

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I was supposed to receive my copy of Snow Leopard to upgrade my Macs today. I was away when delivery was attempted, and it requires a signature. Probably a good thing. I think I need to hold off on the upgrade on my laptop at least.

This software compatibility list shows that I may have a few problems. Lots of things are working, and CS3 issues about whether it works or not appear to be resolved. But there are a couple of key items that have issues still. VM Ware Fusion, and TrueCrypt still have issues. They will need to be fixed for sure before I upgrade.

Lightroom is supposed to work, and I just got an Aperture update to make it compatible, so that covers the photography stuff I use. I wonder if there are plugin issues?

Make sure you do a survey of all your software before you pull the plug on the upgrade.

Update: Looks like MacFuse, which TrueCrypt uses to overlay the encrypted volumes is the real culprit. Version 2.0.3 is what I have installed. There is another beta build called 2.1.5, but not sure what it brings. There is a change log , but it wasn’t updated since v2.0 in 2008. Hmmm…

The Compromise Lens

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Nikon 18-200 3.5-5.6 VRThat’s a bit of a misnomer. Every lens is a compromise. Even the best lenses have some compromise, such as being heavy or really expensive. What I just recently bought is what many people believe to be too many compromises. I bought a reconditioned Nikon 18-200 3.5-5.6 VR. The old one. (The new one isn’t out yet, but was recently announced by Nikon. Maybe not great timing.)

Here is a review at DP Review on the lens. If you jump to the last page of conclusions you will see that the review thought that it had distortion through out, and was soft at the long end. Despite this, Scott Kelby has used this lens on vacation many times and got great pictures. So, when it looked like I was going to be going on a trip where even a DSLR would be kinda heavy, I figured I needed to get to just one lens. (I couldn’t see myself going with just a point and shoot.)

The range you get with this lens is amazing. I went for a short ride on my bike with a fanny pack to check out the lens. It is crazy you can go from wide to really zoomed in just a twist of the lens.

As it turns out, the trip isn’t going to happen this year. Maybe another time. But I still have the lens. I think I am going to keep it. I have always wanted a better “walk around” lens. I find my 17-50 too short. I am often at the wide end of it, but sometimes you just need the reach. It would be great to have on photowalks so I didn’t feel I needed to carry more than on lens. It would have been useful on the beach when I was taking pictures of the girls too. The 17-55 was useful there, but sometimes…

It looks like this will be a very useful lens for anything that I am not doing client portrait work. It will take some getting used to the smaller aperture. We will have to see after some more use how I like that for people shots. I am often working at the 2.8 end of my lenses, so this is quite a change. I need to take and look at more pictures before I can know for sure. For now though, I will be walking around with just one lens.

Photoshop Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers

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lightroom2The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby is too long a title for a book. But I will forgive Kelby for the title seeing as the book is such a great resource for Lightroom.

I had decided to give Lightroom 2 a trial 30 day workout. I figured that if I wanted to really get into the software, I should get a book so I didn’t get bogged down. I have a couple of other books by Scott, and figured that this one would be good too. I wasn’t disappointed. I like his writing style, and his “just explaining to my pal” way of telling you how to do things.

From my last post, you can tell that I really liked Lightroom 2. I wonder how much of that was from the book. I started by reading the book before I even imported some images. When I went to import, I knew exactly how I was going to set up my import, how I would apply some basic meta data on import, and most importantly, that I should go get a sandwich while the import process happened.

There is a lot of good info and tips in this book. Many books on how to use software are of the sort where they go through menu options, and buttons and tell you what they do. Not really that useful. But thankfully, this book is not like that. It is truly useful. For example, in the beginning chapters on importing, he covers the pro’s and cons of where you might store your photos, and how you might organize your folder structure. How to convert your RAW files to DNG seemed simple enough, and I decided to do that on import. I doubt I would have without the book. Now I get my metadata like keywords saved back into the DNG file without needing a sidecar file. I doubt I would have figured this out without the book. Explanations on creating metadata templates for copy write info, file name templates, practical info on what the initial preview setting actually does and how much time it adds to import if you pick 1:1 round out some of the other useful things I picked up.

Coming from Aperture, there are many things similar, but sometimes you make assumptions that can be frustrating if you don’t get some help. It was great to find out some of the things that Scott himself uses to make his workflow easier. I liked all the short cuts he gave, and how to switch between viewing modes, and especially how to use the lights out mode to see just your image. I still don’t use short cuts with Aperture. The way Lightroom stores images and how best to use collections and the way he sorts his images was all great info. I may not use or set up Lightroom exactly the same way, but hearing how someone else is using it is a great start instead of just clicking around hoping what you are doing is a good idea.

I think that if I was to go on about this book, it would end up being the same thing about every section. Scott tells you exactly how he uses Lightroom, some other possibilities, and shortcuts on how to do it. Everything is explained in a very simple manner as if he was standing over your shoulder telling you what to do. The images perfectly complement the text. There are just the right number of images that help you figure out what is going on. This just happens chapter after chapter. For example, I jumped ahead and tried to use the printing module in Lightroom without reading that part of the book. I figured some of the stuff out, but was getting confused about margins. After reading that chapter, it all makes sense. And he doesn’t just have a paragraph on how to set margins, he shows you how to create a couple of different print layouts, which shows you how to use almost all aspects of the tool with real examples. This is why this is a great¬† book.

If you plan on getting Lightroom, or even if you want to really get a good sense of the software during the 30 day trial, I definitely recommend this book. Get it before you download the trial or buy Lightroom and read the first few chapters. It will make your time with this tool much more useful and productive.

Sisters in Matching Dresses

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Sisters

I think I forgot about posting these pictures. When I got home these pictures were waiting printed in 5×7 size to go in a frame that holds the three of them. The frame doesn’t look quite like the picture, but I did it up anyway.

These girls in matching dresses that their mother made are my little girls Kate and Lily. It is hard to get them to sit or stand for a portrait. I had used a small light box, and you can see it miss Lily and just hit the side of her face because she kept moving. Note to self: with kids use very large softbox or umbrella.

First Lake Winnipeg Beach Pictures

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I had the girls up at my parents cottage in Lester Beach, just north of Winnipeg in Manitoba. When I was growing up, we used to spend the entire summer up at the cottage. This year I was lucky enough to be able to spend two weeks with my parents, sisters and my girls there.

Cottage at Lester Beach

That’s Lily in front of the cabin. Notice the lack of grass. Nice to be somewhere that doesn’t need mowing. Here are a couple of other pictures of the girls from the beach. There were hundreds more taken, I just wanted to get a couple up.

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