Tag Archives: ideas

Thoughts

A short iMovie wishlist

I do love the way iMovie keeps getting better and better, but I have a few wishes I’d love to see as features:

  1. The ability to truly archive a project and all its files. I know that I can drag and drop a project onto an external hard drive through iMovie, and I’ll get the choice of moving the project, or the project and all its files, and that’s really nice, but sometimes, it doesn’t really move all the files, and let’s face it, I’m still left with separate folders on that external hard drive for the events and the projects. I’d like to truly archive a project and all its files, to a single, standalone archive file (maybe a DMG), where everything I used in the project, including photos, sounds, or loops from the iLife library, is included, so that I can open that project archive years down the road and still be able to access everything I used for that project, and not have to worry about losing files or folders.
  2. Proper watermarks for projects. I shouldn’t have to hack a watermark by employing a PIP effect, which requires more processing power during edits and more processing time during exports. Watermarks should be applied during the export process, after iMovie lets me configure them, Lightroom-style, through a menu that lets me pick the transparent PNG I want to use, and adjust its size, location and opacity.
  3. The ability to merge projects. I’d like to be able to drag and drop a project onto another project, and be given the choice of merging the two projects, or copying the content from one to the other and keeping them as two separate projects. This would allow me, for example, to work on a common intro that I use for a particular show, save it to a project, then drag and drop that intro into projects I use for new episodes. (I already know about duplicating projects, but this has other uses, and it’s also a cleaner way of doing it.) Or even better, I’d love to be able to…
  4. Create my own video loops and store them in the loop library, under a certain category. This would once again help with common project elements, stuff that gets re-used now and again. But when I’d bring these loops into my current projects, it would bring them in with all their component elements intact, allowing me to make changes to them just as if I were working within the original project where I made them. This would allow me to tweak the way these common elements show up in different projects, ensuring they’re never boring.
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A Guide To A Good Life

The real role of education

As debates about the direction of educational systems take place in the US and other countries, it’s worthwhile to take into consideration the possibility that we’re teaching the children too much theory and too many arcane concepts rather than practical things which will prepare them for real life.

There’s nothing wrong with knowing physics or calculus or biology, but if you have a child, wouldn’t you rather they leave compulsory education knowing the following practical things?

  • How to speak and write properly
  • How to balance a checkbook
  • How to budget their money
  • How not to fall prey to scams or predatory financial practices
  • How to maintain proper bodily hygiene
  • How to protect themselves from STDs and how to respect each other’s bodies
  • How to respect others and their beliefs
  • How not to fall prey to peer pressure
  • The importance of individuality and of having a backbone
  • How to put fashion second and budgets first
  • How to keep their homes clean and organized
  • How to avoid a consumerist mindset
  • How to respect the environment
  • How to recycle
  • How to purchase sustainable, highly recyclable, durable products
  • How to cook and wash dishes
  • How to garden
  • How to build things
  • How to paint
  • How to fix things
  • How to change a flat tire
  • How cars work
  • How to buy quality furniture
  • How to eat healthy
  • How to stay in shape
  • How to have fun without a TV or a movie
  • How to play sports
  • How to camp
  • How to explore the wilderness
  • How computers work and how to service basic hardware like memory, cards or hard drives
  • How to avoid viruses, spyware and other crap you find online
  • How to find true love and how to keep that love
  • How to take care of babies
  • How to find a job and how to do a good job
  • The importance of honesty and being forthright
  • How to accept responsibility
  • How to finish something they’ve started
  • How to investigate politicians and vote according to sound moral and ethical principles
  • How to drink responsibly
  • How to take care of pets
  • How to travel light
  • How to respect other cultures
  • How to draw
  • Basic art history
  • Basic anatomy and first aid
  • Basic preventive health

I believe this list of practical things is much more worthwhile for a child to know when he or she leaves school than other, more esoteric things, like what books a 19th century writer published, or the strength of the magnetic field generated by some electric motor. They’ll be much better equipped for life this way. Let’s leave the more advanced, the more scientific topics for those children who are interested in them, and for optional education, like college and graduate programs.

When a child finishes high school, they ought to know how to live as an adult, and that means knowing how to face the real world. I’m afraid we’re not equipping them to do that. That’s why we have so many people who fall prey to predatory scams, or who don’t know how to organize their homes, or who end up in abusive relationships or abuse others, because they don’t know better.

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Thoughts

Four wishes for Lightroom

It’s 2011, a new year, and it’s likely that Adobe will put out a new version of Lightroom this year. With that in mind, it would be wonderful if the Lightroom team could implement the following features in the next minor or major version of LR:

  • Find and Replace within metadata (details here)
  • Faster navigation and rendering when working with large catalogs (details here)
  • Filter catalog for metadata conflicts (details here)
  • More accurate time of capture for movie files captured with an iPhone 4 or a Nokia N95, or other video camera that doesn’t supply sidecar THM files (detailed explanation here and bug report here)

Thanks!

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Thoughts

My wishlist for Flickr

I joined Flickr in December 2004, and stuck with it since then because I like it. In spite of the various censorship issues that have plagued it over time, it’s still one of the best (if not the best) places to share photos. (Videos are another matter…)

Here’s a short list of what could make it even better:

  • Ability to view ALL of the photos that my contacts have uploaded. This is already available in the Flickr app for iPod touch and iPhone, but it still hasn’t been implemented on the Flickr website. It should be a simple option that would allow me to choose between seeing All or Five or One new photo(s) from my contacts. If I choose All, then when I go to my Contacts page, I see everything they’ve uploaded. It would be really useful.
  • Ability to set a licensing price for our photos. Flickr should get a bit of that money, and since they’re in with Getty these days, I suppose Getty ought to get something too, but certainly not what they’re getting now with the “Request to License” option, which is obscene when you consider they’re doing no work whatsoever on behalf of the user to market those photos.
  • Ability to set a custom domain to our Flickr photostreams, if we so choose. WordPress and Blogger already let people do this, so it’s clearly something that’s feasible to do for millions of users — the path has already been paved.
  • Smart sets, that update automatically based on criteria we set. This would eliminate the need to use third-party tools and websites, which are nice, but let’s face it, things would be even nicer if we could do it directly on Flickr.
  • Grey and black backgrounds for our photostreams, in addition to the standard white color.

You can find me here on Flickr.

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How To

Making the custom bed frame

Last summer, I made a custom king size bed frame for our bedroom, out of solid wood. I held off on writing about it until now, nine months later, because I wanted to make sure the end result was solid and worth writing about. We’ve been sleeping on it ever since, and there’s nothing wrong with it, so yes, I can heartily recommend it.

I was fed up with the laminates and particle board garbage they call furniture these days, and I wanted to build something that would last, out of a quality, sustainable material like wood. I chose pine, because it was softer and easier for me to work with. Although I’ve also built a custom cat house for our three cats, I’m no expert carpenter. I just like to work with wood. It’s a wonderful material.

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