iPhoto: How big can an iPhoto library become? It used to be around 25'000 to 50'000 but what about now?

I'm at 90'000 pictures and iPhoto does not really work fast.

Manual iPhoto photo deduplication? Looks like failure again.

Deleting manually duplicates from iPhoto seems to be a very time consuming process as for some reason iPhoto does a lot of IO to go through some process before actually deleting the pictures, some 10 minutes for 400.

The firewire 800 drive does really not help.

Actually the Photo deletion is quite quick, i.e. the photos appear immediately in the trash, but the library update takes a while even for 153 photos in 10 events somewhere around 5 minutes.

iMac 27" 2010: Faster storage? Only USB 2 or Firewire 800, Cheap? How about WD 3TB Firewire 800?

Generally the disk looks good and connects easily.

Top speed is about 70 MB/s solid transfer rate as opposed to the 33 to 39 MB/s that some USB2 drives are capable of. Don't forget that some of the 3.5" drives are 7200 RPM and the 2.5" can be 5400 RPM. The speed they provide is quite solid.

But a 4 year old IBM Thinkpad delivers 55MB/s internally. So USB 2 is still lame.

Now the 1TB internal disk in my iMac is continuously busy with some application and other, so I though it to be wisely to put the 500GB iPhoto library, the iTunes library and the movie collection on the external drive to have some benefit of having the load distributed.

But it does not really work, it's not really worth the trouble.

Well I thought that ultimately I'm going to purchase some Synology or Qnap and benefit from a Raid 10, but that's way over budget. So I bought the WD 3TB Firewire 800 for $175 and though that's not to bad since all the 3TB USB3 disks are around $129. I mean I would like to use USB 3 but my iMac has only got USB2/FW800.

Ok purchased it, did some tests and found out that it provides solid 70MB/s and it looked like an improvement.

But boy it does not help when using iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie or anything with thousands of small files. The transfer rate is absolutely not worth talking about.

I know, I know my business provided laptop has a SSD Drive and it blazingly fast, applications load in 3 to 5 seconds (or at least they did at the beginning), seek time are almost nonexistent as compared to a physical harddrive (also not true), but I cannot affort a brand new Samsung 840 (not even the TLC), way to expensive.

So here I am and pondering what to do next with a tight budget.

Did I mention that I could just outright buy the new iMac 27" for $4000 with the fusion drive or even all SSD (I believe) and the world would be ok? Well not really I think I would spend it on the new MAC Pro with some Raid 10 Lightning Array.

iPhoto, Aperture duplicate picture detection: Found Duplicate Annihilator, ultimately failed!

After my 500GB library with 95'000 pictures merged and Aperture failed to present me the duplicate detection (do not import duplicates section) I was looking on what I can do to avoid going through manually.

The merge took 12 hours and a restore probably would also do that and I still would not have reached my goal of merging all libraries and removing duplicates.

So out I went, tried to read upon what to do next and tried to understand what  the apple script does, then took a look at duplicate cleaner for iPhoto and ultimately bought the duplicate annihilator for iPhoto and Aperture.

While running the iPhoto version against the library it told me it is going to take 4 hours but then later it told me it will take 10 hours but to my horror the family iMac where the library resides goes offline every so often. First Annihilator continued to work and the next morning it was still doing some business. That same day I came home after work and I found iPhoto to be responding but duplicate annihilator did not show any window anymore. I could not get the window back so I killed the process and started it again and it was at point blank!

Now this is very frustrating, but I could try again, this time deactivating PhotoStream as they recommend, but hey I want my PhotoStream activated and still be able to remove duplicates.

On the web I found some other people running into issues with larger libraries, but at this point I think I'm going to do it manually. The good thing is that I'm able to delete events rather than photos, so it should only take me about 10 to 12 hours work and it'll be done.

Shame on me to have purchase the software and never going to have used it properly. What a waste!

Aperture and iPhoto failure: merge library of 65'000 with 30'000 and aperture crashes without giving you a chance at duplicate detection

After some 12 hours of merging and analyzing Aperture died on me and I could on restart not select to remove the duplicates that it should not have imported.

The total library size being 500 GB I did not want to try to restore and start over. Manually going over the 95'000 pictures some 7'000 events is possible but time consuming.

At least the merge per se of multiple iPhoto libraries with Aperture is possible!!

Samsung Galaxy S4: The screen size that apple should have done, should do. iOS 7 to the rescue!

I use on a daily basis an iPhone 5 and the iPad 3, with the Mac Book Air 13" as my main computer and then the 27" iMac as the family bastion.

I'm an iDad and we were quite happy, but mobile iDevices seem to loose rapidly the stronghold in our age 12 to 15 category. They all crave for the Samsung device and I think it's mainly the screen size.

Apple with iOS6 looks old and the devices don't look like much fun. iOS 7 is a big winner, it looks and feels much fresher and cooler than all the androids and windows phones, especially since they introduced much more colorful icons in the settings and brought a lot of features.

The only real thing lacking is screen size. They might end up like Nokia and Ericsson. Small was beautiful and compact size was the crave du jour. 

But I have used the S4 and everything makes a little bit more fun. The iPad mini is too big, the S4 can still fit in a pocket, even in business trousers and while cycling it does not fall out (in my experiences). The iPhone and iOS7 are quite gorgeous but a little bit more screen and it is amazing. The version on my iPad does not really work today and does not look as amazing as the iPhone version, don't really understand why but I think from the iPad's size I expect more of a Mac Book Air quality experience than a mobile OS. Something like Surface Pro and not Surface RT. To this day I cannot really make use of the iPad for productivity work, even though I use the more than great Zagg keyboard, but I much prefer the Mac Air. Nexus 7 is no real alternative as the ratio of width and height are strange to me as well as the 10" Galaxy tab. Not for me.

Screen size 5" or something alike and you see a big difference, try it for yourself. Look at some web pages and pictures and they really are different. Yes the iPad is also gorgeous but to big (both the mini and the regular size).

Apple annoyances: Being an iDad of a 6 member family with more than 10 devices, FAIL! Support won't help

As our family grows the number of devices also increases since we are lucky enough to get older Macs and iDevices from our kids grand parents.

The only real big issue is that Apple does not make exceptions for larger than usual families. We have now more than 5 computers and more than 10 iPads/iPods/iPhones combined, many different models and generations.

Now this is over the limit of 5 or 10 devices for iTunes Match and other limits and Apple just plainly tells that no, there is no exception.

Please somebody from Apple should care enough for us more than 3 person families and make an exception and increase the limit.

When I opened a case with Apple Support, the first thing I expected was that they told me how great they think that a single family has all devices from them and support them in every way possible but no. We have a limit. That's it.

Well my oldest son has already move away from the apple sphere with him being the first to use a Samsung Galaxy S4 and me and my stowed away Nexus 7 (which I really don't like using, despite the 4.3 upgrade improvements (speed mainly)).

Maybe I should write to Tim Cook and tell him to devise some scheme to allow us to use all our Apple devices to the fullest.

Mac osX: disable spotlight indexing

While merging 2 iphoto libraries with aperture, indexing slowed down the already 6 hour process and I had to find a way to disable the 3TB external disk indexing. So I quickly disabled it and the merge process seems to be going forward faster.

http://www.mikesel.info/disable-spotlight/

iOS: How to delete all photos on iPhone at once from Mac or PC

http://www.mactrast.com/2012/12/how-to-remove-all-photos-from-an-iphone-at-once/

TEchREad: A look into dropbox from usenix woot

Very nice, contains some interesting facts and techniques.

Would love to see them taking a look at wuala.

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot13/woot13-kholia.pdf

Word 2010: Number alignment wrong at 10

Default number alignment has incorrect spacing after you reach 10.

The solution is to right click a paragraph and select Adjust List Incidents, then increase the text indent until you're satisfied. 

But be aware that when reaching 100 or 1000 the list could be in peril again.

Solution found on:

http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/NumberAlignment2007.htm

Linux: Force traceroute to use ICMP and not udp>33000

traceroute -I 1.1.1.1

as usual I recommend -n as well to not have to wait for name resolution of all the intermittent responders in a first step as it slows down a first recognition to detect some ICMP block.

Usually most of the IP addresses have no PTR record in a reverse lookup zone, so you have to use some whois search to locate the owner of the IP.

FWSM: TCP timeout

FWSM Code 2.x: only global

FWSM Code 3.x and higher: per port basis possible

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/security/fwsm/fwsm31/configuration/guide/mpf_f.html

only one global policy-map, must be edited or replaced.

Firewall TCP timeout: usually 1 hour (3600 seconds)

When it comes to firewall issues, one of the most common is the TCP timeout, where most firewalls will remove a connection from their tables if there was no incoming or outgoing traffic using that connection.

Usually the default is 1 hour (3600 seconds), but it can be tuned.

Word 2010: How to create a style where spell checking is disabled for CLI or code?

Don't you hate it if Word always underlines all the code or console commands you paste into it?

I did, but there's an easy way out.

I prefer to use 2 styles for my copy paste from the console. One style is for the commands usually bold and the output of the commands.

Now the only thing to make sure the output is not underlined because of the spell checker, just do the following:

• Select one paragraph that is already using style "command" (my custom style based on "plain text" style)
• Click Review tab, select Language, set Proofing Language and then check the box "do not check spelling or grammar"
• Right click your style in the quick style gallery (I always add the ones I frequently use) and select update "command" to match selection.

Yep, that's it.

Update: not really, for some reason not all underlines disappear immediately, and even if you click your style from the gallery again. But they do if I save and close and reopen the document. There must be a better way.


http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/word-help/spelling-or-grammar-checker-flags-text-i-don-t-want-or-expect-it-to-flag-HA010354285.aspx

Word

1. Select the text that you want the spelling and grammar checker to ignore.
2. On the Review tab, in the Language group, click Language, and then click Set Proofing Language.
3. Select the Do not check spelling or grammar check box.

You can also create a special style that is based on the selected text:

1. Right-click the selection, and then click Save Selection as a New Quick Style.
2. Give the style a name—for example, code—and then click OK.

Word 2010: How to enable Ink to use with mouse; no tablet

The follwing steps will allow you to ink in Word 2010 with the mouse:

• Open Word
• Click File
• Select Options
• Select Customize Ribbon
• Choose some Ribbon group on the right side and create a new Group
• Choose "All Commands" on the left side
• Select the command Start inking and all Pen ... and click add, i.e. should add all of these to the new custom group
• Click ok

Happy inking.

Word 2010: themes-in-word-is-grayed-out

http://www.word-2010.com/themes-in-word-is-grayed-out/

Ubuntu: password reset

• During boot hit ESC to get into the boot menu
• select from the boot menu recovery mode
• select drop to root shell
• // the next step is necessary because the root partition was mounted read-only and any passwd execution will fail with 
• // Authentication token manipulation error
• mount -rw -o remount /
• passwd
• sync
• reboot