Back at my desk.
I just returned yesterday from a month of travels. I came home to load of e-mails, and a lot of work that was obtained while I was gone. It’s All Good but a Little Overwhelming When I Haven’t Even Blogged Or Even Looked at Half My Images from over the month. One thing I did do while I was gone was purchased the new 
application called MacSpeech Dictate. Maybe you’ve tried dictation software before and found it as frustrating as I have. But with all the hoopla written about MacSpeech and it being really the only option for Macintosh users I thought I would give it a try. So far been very impressed with its accuracy. As long as you train it, which only took five minutes, and speak at a normal tone it seems to do quite well. In fact I don’t need to speak slow I can speak at a normal rate. I’m dictating this blog post right now. As you can see, up to this paragraph nothing has been corrected. Not bad, but not perfect either. I was debating whether or not to leave any mistakes in this blog entry for you to find. But, there are far too many. I’m still learning to use the software and still teaching it words. The question is, will this proof useful. It is way too early to tell.
In doing AAR of my last trip there several things I’ve learned. But the main thing is never scheduled two-week trips back to back, bad idea. I have two days between trips to spend with my family and to rest. This was not enough, and not only was it a physical trial traveling from Malaysia, to India, back to Malaysia, onto Las Vegas then to Phoenix and finally back to Malaysia all in essentially one trip, it was also an emotional trial. But now I’m home and all is well. Not quite all, my bag is still somewhere over Beijing.
Now, over the next few days I hope to release the latest Depth Of Field interview with David duChemin. I also hope to get some editing and post processing done of the images I took while in India. While on this last Lumen Dei, one of my external hard drives crashed and I lost a lot of my work. None of my images, just the processing done for three days and as such I became very behind in my post processing. This has been an ongoing problem with Lightroom for me. I spoke with Rob Sylvan, author of Lightroom for Dummies, while at Photoshop World, he gave me some ideas, most of which had to do with running your catalog on the same drive where you store all your images. I don’t do this.
I’m also proud to announce that Depth of Field has a new sponsor. Peachpit Press, the publishers of David duChemin, Joe McNally, Chris Orwig, and others, will now be sponsoring for a limited time the Depth of Field podcast. So be sure to click through to Peachpit press and visit their great line of books and authors.
This is just a short post, to let you know that I’m alive and well, and back in the blogosphere.
Good to have you back..Cant wait for the images..
Welcome back to Asia, Matt. Hope that bag catches up soon. Sounds like PPW was worthwhile but I can understand not enjoying the excessive travelling. Looking forward to DOF and seeing your PP’d images but hoping you can get plenty of family and relaxation time as well.
Yes, it is great to be home. slowly catching up. Just finished part 1 of the duChemin interview. One down, 99 more projects to go!
Happy to have you back… meaning by that, I will enjoy your new shots but specially your new DoF Podcast!
BTW… there was a time, long time ago, when I used to enjoy flying… not any more!
Nice to see you back, Matt. Looking forward to seeing you images. The one above is beautiful!
Congratulations on getting the Peachpit sponsorship!
That point about keeping the Lightroom catalog on the same drive as the images. I used to have it set that way but after recommendations from an Adobe beta tester and the guys at Lightroom Lab (I think, could be another group), I’ve moved the catalog to a scratch disk.
Thanks everyone. Well, it is really good to be back in the saddle again. I will be posting 5 or six images today on the blog. So be sure to check back and pass the word on.
Craig, The whole Lightroom thing is a bit of a wonder to me. I got word back from Dan Tull, the Adobe LR Guru and he looked at my file and saw that they had been “damaged in a critical part of the database metadata” due to:
– power outages or hard shutdowns
– external drive disconnections
– using Time Machine to backup or restore the catalog file
All of which I have done or had done to me. Lightroom is not designed for life in developing countries. Moral of the story, back up every other day!
Glad you are home safely! It was great meeting you! I’m glad you heard back from Dan, but sorry the news wasn’t better.