Category: that’s a bit mad

Which Lightroom?

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I bought a maintenance plan along with my laptop. I didn’t know that I had done this, but apparently, it was a perk of the purchase. I’m always wary of maintenance plans, but this one seems to have paid off. So far, anyway.
I spent 75 minutes on the phone to Ron in the Philippines yesterday, and we decided that before sending someone out to fix my continuing connectivity problems, a full factory reset was required.
I’ve never reset a computer before. Phones, sure. My router, often. But never a computer.
It’s worryingly easy to do. (Although, to be honest, you’re very unlikely to slip and fall on your keyboard and reset your PC, so don’t panic.)

Last night, I began the process of reinstalling stuff. And first on my list was Lightroom.

But which Lightroom?

I don’t recall there being two Lightrooms when I installed it just a few weeks ago. Suddenly there’s Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic CC (which is the new name for Lightroom CC).

I looked at several websites which attempted to explain the difference to me, but they didn’t do it very well. I was still completely lost.

Thankfully, there’s a new voice in town (for me, at least) when I need to find out about all thing photography. Step forward Peter McKinnon. Popping onto his youtube channel, I was delighted to see this offering:

Sadly, I was less impressed when he actually started speaking:

I want to talk about Lightroom versus Lightroom. The new version versus the… the new version versus the old version which is the new version. It’s confusing. It’s super confusing. I was confused when I was sitting in the audience at Adobe Max while they were trying to explain it to me.

Eish.

Fortunately, he does manage to elucidate on the differences between the two, and fortunately, it seems like I had (somewhat inadvertently) picked the right one to download and install (which is good, because these aren’t small programs and the internet in South Africa isn’t as fast as yours).

Basically it comes down to whether you want your photos on the cloud, and therefore being available to edit available wherever, whenever and on any device (in which case, Lightroom CC); or if you prefer “old skool” desktop and hard drive editing and storage (in which case Lightroom Classic CC). There are a few other small technical differences, but that cloud vs desktop is the main thing and should be the basis for your decision. I prefer the latter, but given the speed of the internet and price of data in SA, it’s kind of academic anyway.

I only lost a few recently added files when I reset my machine (always back up, folks!), but only one major thing. And I’m fairly sure that I can redo that anyway. On the plus side, the reset seems to have sorted the connection problem (touch wood) and there’s the excitement of having a brand new laptop again – even though it’s actually really just the old laptop rebranded as Laptop Classic CC.

Hits

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I’m not one of those bloggers who desperately chases hits. Of course, it’s nice to have people read my stuff and I have a daily number that I like to get to (and which is a very modest number, so I usually do), but should I fall short, it’s really not the end of the world.
If I was one of those bloggers who chased hits, I would have given up years ago. It’s simply not working.

I am one of those bloggers who like stats though, and so when I stumbled upon a plugin which offered me my all-time stats, I was never going to say no. So I said yes.

I’m not really sure what “all-time” entails. I know for a fact that it can’t include the early years of ballacorkish.net and 6000 miles… because I wasn’t even using that software back then (also, the numbers really don’t match up). So there’s no indication of how long this is over, which would be helpful. But let’s not get antsy over what is, after all, a free bit of software.

What was most interesting for me was the map. How cool is it that people all over the world have read my blog? Well, I say “all over the world”, but I haven’t reached everyone yet. Because, despite there being absolutely loads of visits to the blog, I am apparently yet to have a documented hit from any of these ten nations, listed in order of population:

North Korea – 25.537m (well, ok)
Niger – 20.671m (infamously mentioned here)
Chad – 14.450m (disappointing from my African brothers)
Turkmenistan – 5.662m (flag with a carpet on; amazing.)
Guinea Bissau – 1.821m (see Chad)
Solomon Islands –0.599m (hey! 600,000 readers can’t be wrong, guys)
Western Sahara – 0.513m (excuse: political upheaval/no internet)
Greenland – 0.056m (2.166 million km² of potential readership)
Falkland Islands – 0.003m (I’m actually surprised at this)
Svalbard – 0.003m (despite constant mentions of Norway on here)

The first visitor from each of these countries/territories will add their homeland to this list of places who have visited 6000 miles… just once:

Iran
Sierra Leone
French Polynesia
Martinique
American Samoa
Tajikistan
Djibouti
Togo
Bhutan
San Marino
Tonga
Benin
St. Martin
Cape Verde

Some impressive French overseas territory representation there. Bonsoir, Rodney. Bonsoir! 

I’m not really sure why I’m sharing this, save to ask that if you are going to any of these places in the near future (North Korea – lol), a quick visit to 6000.co.za would be much appreciated. I’ll also be doing my bit to lever few mentions of outstanding counties into my posts over the next few weeks in a shameless attempt to dominate the globe.

Black Friday at 6000 miles…

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South Africa has been completely taken over by Black Friday. More so this year than all the other years, as Americreep continues to insidiously envelope the entire world, bit by bit.
Next year, we’re going to do Thanksgiving as well. Turkeys.

Probably.

I’ve ignored the phenomenon completely, save for marvelling at all the camera lenses I (still) can’t afford at Orms. They’ve knocked a bit off a lot of nice stuff, but as with a lot of SA retailers, there are none of the HUGE discounts which are the norm in the USA today.

I’m here to remedy that, with an incredible 6000 MILES… BLACK FRIDAY DEAL for my regular readers. And also for everyone else.

In a moment of madness, I have decided to give you all up to 90% (Ninety Per Cent) off your 6000 miles… read today. Forget the 10% that [a jewellery store] is willing to discount your necklace. Roll your eyes at the 50% that [a well-known supermarket] is giving you off your instant coffee (limit of 6 per customer). And laugh loudly and falsely right in the face of [the online retailer] whose site isn’t even working.

lol wut? Remind me how your business works again? (aside from repeatedly breaking promises on delivery times)

Anyway, enough of taking the piss out of the opposition. I am offering ALL POSTS on 6000 miles… for an incredible NINE TENTHS OFF for TODAY ONLY!!

To take advantage of this amazing offer, simply read ANY POSTS on the site between the hours of 12 midnight this morning and… er… 12 midnight this evening, and pay JUST 10% of the usual fee of R0 (£0, $0). You will not find a better discocunt anywhere today.

Remember: IT’S JUST FOR TODAY: BLACK FRIDAY!!! BUY! BUY! BUY!

bye bye

Don’t crash

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I’m hoping to get some flight time in today. The weather forecast is looking good (I’m writing this ahead of time so that I have time to get some flight time in today) and I’m hoping to have much of the local coastline to myself in the traditional pre-December tourism lull in Cape Agulhas.

I got an email from DJI today (this today, not that today, as mentioned above). DJI is the company that made Florence the Mavic, so they know what they’re talking about when it comes to drones.

The email was divided up into four different sections: each with a link to a relevant webpage on their site:

DJI Go 4 Manual: The Pilot’s Handbook
Not sure what all those buttons do in DJI Go 4? Dive into our DJI 4 manual to learn ins and outs of DJI’s powerful, multi-purpose companion app.

Helpful advice for what is (necessarily) a rather complicated app.

5 Great Third-Party Mavic Pro Accessories
Looking for new add-ons to make your Mavic even more powerful? Read this article to discover five great Mavic accessories. 

An attempt to sell you more very cool, but very expensive, toys.

How to Make the Best of Your Drone Photo
Struggling to take good-looking drone photos? Check out this article and get one step closer to becoming a master of aerial photography.

You know from reading this blog that this is a never-ending learning experience and any help is good.

And then… this:

How to NOT Crash Your Drone in 15 Easy Steps
Even the bravest drone users worry about crashing. Here’s an article that can help you prevent accidents.

I like the emphasis on the NOT, as if you were considering any other options. And look, it’s a good idea for an article (albeit that it is written about the Phantom Pro, rather than the Mavic), but are there really fifteen separate steps you need to take to avoid the fiery demise of your drone?

Of course, it turns out that many of them refer simply to following the rules and using common sense (which you were doing anyway, right?).

Presumably, this means that if you follow the rules and use common sense, you’ll be fine. So that’s what I’ll do today.

Faster wifi on planes

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The future is now.

To be honest, the future was actually already then, when I was on a flight over Turkey, tracking my flight over Turkey en route to nearly kill my Mum by walking into her kitchen while she thought I was 6000 miles… away.

Wi-fi on planes is incredible. Not just because it’s useful as a communication, productivity and time-passing tool, but also because of the way it works. From your device to the on-board router, then pinged from the top of the plane moving at close on 1,000kph to a satellite about 35,786km up (which itself is moving at 18,000kph) and then down to earth and then – obviously – back again.

Like, I said: Incredible.

In fact, the only issue with the wi-fi on planes is that it’s not very fast. So sending photos or anything larger than a Whatsapp message takes ages or doesn’t really work at all. Especially just after dinner.

But now it’s about to get better:

Emirates has partnered with Thales to bring 50Mbps connectivity to its Boeing 777X fleet in 2020.

That’s five times faster than I get at home. Five.

And look, I know I’m very lucky to have a generally stable internet connection at home. But my house stays where it is and is attached by a long cable to the place where the internet comes from (which also stays where it is). It’s relatively simple to get internet to go back and forth along that cable. But they still can’t do it at more than 10Mbps.

I think the potential solutions here are fairly obvious: move my house to an Emirates 777 (clearly not an option), or park an Emirates 777 in my back garden (it could be a contemporary sculpture).

The neighbours might not be happy, but at least they’d have really speedy internet.