Something funny has happened to my Picasa photo editor. It kept pestering me to let it update, so I said oh all right then, and though there was no change whatsoever that I could see to it afterwards, the settings seem to have changed, so that it will no longer import the photos from my SD card but just reads it as blank, though I can download them using the Windows photo viewer (or something) and then it will pick them up for editing. Well, really, ain't life a bummer, when you have to get your head round doing things a slightly different way, in two short steps instead of one, while sitting on your backside in the comfort of your home. But it's a mite annoying when they persuade you to put all your eggs in their little rainbow mandala basket and then mess you about. I suppose I'll have try un- and the re-installing it, but then I fear for my exports within Picasa, maybe I'd lose them, so I really ought to do a bit of boring housekeeping and shunt them off to the external hard drive, which I ought to do anyway...
However, every cloud. In downloading through the Windows programme, I discovered a couple of videos on the card which had somehow been concealed before, since evidently the Picasa downloading route wasn't set to download videos. I simply thought I'd failed to take the videos properly. One of them was this, of the plexiglass mobile sculpture at Kettles Yard the photos of which were included in this post.
However, every cloud. In downloading through the Windows programme, I discovered a couple of videos on the card which had somehow been concealed before, since evidently the Picasa downloading route wasn't set to download videos. I simply thought I'd failed to take the videos properly. One of them was this, of the plexiglass mobile sculpture at Kettles Yard the photos of which were included in this post.
The soundtrack consists of people's footsteps and voices in the background and, about a quarter of the way through, my voice saying 'Oh, it's plexiglass!'
Uploaded on Blugger's own video hosting, which isn't ideal as it comes out a bit small, but full screen is too big and pixellated.
One more gripe about Google/Blogger: spam blogs mostly seem to be a thing of the past, but now there are spam comments coming through from people using Google+ accounts, which Blogger's spam filter doesn't pick up. I don't use Google+ and have no interest indoing so, it irks me that Faizal Whotsit from Whereverstan and his ilk offering me employment opportunities or cars with girls can get onto my blog because they do. Though I suppose as they can read the WV and don't actually leave html links perhaps it's not so easy to stop. Annoying even so.
That's all for tonight!
5 comments:
Lucy, I sympathize on those technical 'updates' which often are not updates - quite irritating and frustrating when one is quite happy with things the way they are. I won't go into details on my own trials.
I love that plexiglas video and remember your earlier post on Kettles Yard. Now where can I get on of those?!
This sounds like a variant of a problem I had when Blogger took six days to re-create the world and left its users to discover that Asia Minor had been squeezed down into a black hole, China was coloured pink as if it were part of the former British Empire, and America (oh how traumatic for our friends over the Pond) had not yet received its visitation from Amerigo Vespucci. America was undiscovered!
Or to put it more concisely and more personally, when creating a new post I was no longer able to access my BlogPix folder system I had put together when I still wore short pants and had used ever since. I looked for reasons and here's an irony: it seemed as if I was being forced to relocate the pix I use in my blog to Picasa.
You and I discussed this many moons ago. You favoured Picasa for its simplicity as a pic editing tool (with pic store) whereas I was intent on creating a rod for my own back by advocating Photoshop. Both of these arguments had merit. However having to make sense of Picasa at this late stage wasn't easy; instead of my focused-down BlogPix folder I found myself wrestling with dozens and dozens of folders (now in Picasa) containing all the pix on my hard disk.
The fact was that when it came to adding a pic to a post Blogger denied me a Browse function whereby I could take my own route to the pic I wanted.
Working against the grain I experimented. I was able to reinstate the Browse function by installing - horror of horrors - Chrome. As you know, for me Chrome is a poisoned chalice and while grateful for this development I couldn't live with its side-effects elsewhere. Reluctantly I removed Chrome (now for the fourth or fifth time) and, as far as I remember, the Browse function stayed. And has stayed since. This picture-posting part of Blogger is now as it was but with several worthwhile improvements, notably greater ease of pic positioning.
I don't know if this helps and I sympathise with your fear of radical change. Chrome seemed to be the key for me and I have proved to myself at least it can be installed and removed without disrupting other matters.
NOTE I hesitate to make this comment any longer but in re-reading your post I note that, since all your pix are originals (hence importation from your SD card) you have no need for a buffer store (eg, my BlogPix folder) on your hard disk. Many of mine are (lazily) imported from Google Images and I require a way-station where pix may be cropped, enhanced, etc. But your basic problem remains: denied Browse, you cannot import easily and from where you wish.
For all the random footsteps and your voice off, this clip is strangely compelling. I have a childlike fascination for such doodads. We have a deep red glass globe contained within a wire spiral hanging from one of our trees and when it spins I can spend minutes watching the globe's apparent progress down the spiral.
Not that your voice off isn't strangely compelling as well...
I'll get my coat.
I think that I wouldn't enjoy the spinning nearly so much if the landscape outside the window were not both so bright and so windy--something pleasant about how the little tree or big shrub out-of-doors is tearing about wildly while the mobile spins meditatively, safely sheltered.
Sympathy on the computer/Picasa annoyances. They do crop up. Have you ever tried throwing a problem onto Blogger to solve? They will answer, though it's a pain to use the querying system--always hard to find where you leave a question for a human being.
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