A Lazy Saturday

As you will see, it's been a lazy Saturday so far today and it's not quite noon. I made a run to the local recycling center, walked around the yard, thought about washing the Z4, sat outside for a while and took all of these photos from my seat. The hounds were not interested in anything besides what you see. Their lunch was served early so they are content for the rest of the day.

Flickr was bought by SmugMug and I was happy to see that I will not lose my free account with Flickr. It's sunny in the mid-60's but still enough chill in the air to keep the windows closed and the sweatshirt on. Glancing outside just now to see that Sadie and Stella still have not come up for air in the field, with their noses to the ground.

Spring has arrived in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Google Photos vs Flickr

Well I had to do it. I couldn't leave it alone because what I thought I saw in the photos in Flickr was much different than what I saw in the photos I had uploaded into Google Photos. It kept bugging me, even as I add photos daily as a backup to Google Photos. It's a simple process now that everything is loaded, with some of it being an automated process.

Do I add photos to this post from my photos library or do I just write, like when I started this blog in 2011? Feels strange having a blog post without 15 or more photos. Hopefully I'll have an answer by the time I finished writing this.

Anyway, back to the differences between Google and Flickr.

The differences bothered me enough to really check it out. The trigger point last night after all the football games I watched, put me past 1am by the time I sat at the computer. Since I am now use to staying up all weird hours of the night, I was awake enough to check out my information.

I knew before I started Google Photos there might be a slight difference in picture quality between the two from what I had read. For the unlimited free account, photos would be compressed to a 16 mega pixel limit in Google Photos. It was said unless you were a professional photographer, you would not see the difference.

I'm NOT a professional photographer but I could see a difference and can today ... I double checked this morning after a cup of fresh coffee and a clear set of eyes. Yet, picture quality was not the only difference that made me curious. I had read something wrong about Flickr before starting to play with Google Photos. I thought I was going to have to pay to be able to continue to use my free Flickr account I started in 2014.

That was not the case for a manual upload ... only for automatic uploading. So Google Photos wins that area with free automatic uploading.

No, the 'trigger point' for me was all of those 70 plus albums I had manually set up in Google Photos. One for each hound, past or present. One for each old VW bus I had owned, or tour I had taken, one for friends or different trips I've taken ... you get the picture, so to speak.

In Google Photos ... pictures uploaded or moved into Albums were not sorted nor can they be sorted in anyway. Users are still complaining in forums after 7 months of nothing being done, with all of the "google expert" posters saying we should use Picasa in the first step because it will load all the folders without issue and in some sort of order into Google Photos. Tonight I found a way to sort photos within the albums on Google Photos.

I will not be doing that. I mean how many times can you upload the same 22.4Gb photo library? That's around 30,000 photos.

So I was curious enough last night or very early this morning to take a look at my Flickr account that has about 2,300 photos total with 800 or so available for the public to see. I have less than 20 folders in that account, but TWO BIG MAJOR DIFFERENCES ....

In Flickr you can "bulk edit" photos and albums AND you can sort pictures within those albums 4 different ways. To me those were huge differences. Then throw in the file that shows your photos in a larger mode and much more CLEAR AND SHARP than what Google Photos had done to mine by just a tiny bit of file compression ... I had sold myself that Flickr was the way to go.

There was that much difference in the way my photos looked. It was just as fast, possibly easier to upload photos and bulk editing or bulk sorting hundreds of photos at at time was fantastic. Flickr also uploads the photo after you have edited it in your own editing program --- Google photos uploads the original with an editing program built in.

I noticed that last point of editing on my iPhone photos yesterday after they were uploaded automatically to Google Photos as soon as I took the picture. It was also a big trigger point because the quality was not even close to the great quality of those same photos on my iPhone.

So besides just looking at what I had uploaded last winter into Flickr ... I did a small batch of 15 photos from my computer to Flickr. Within the same amount of time it takes me to upload and move to Albums in Google Photos I was able to upload, sort, write a title and description for all the photos at once in Flickr ... with a sharper, better quality image.

To keep my head straight in the future and help those of you that are curious or interested in using a 'cloud' photo storage program ... I'll list the advantages of each FREE account.

Google Photos

• Unlimited storage with a 16 mega pixel limit per photo.
• Photos can be loaded automatically from a computer, tablet or smart phone.
• Photos can be deleted after upload from smart phone, tablet or computer by clicking one link and freeing up hard drive space.
• All of your photos can be seen anywhere, on any device as long as you have an internet connection.
• Photos can be moved into albums
• Will automatically sort your photos into their albums labeled places, things, friends, and videos.
• Can make collages and will suggest photos that can be used to make albums or books.
• Groups photos automatically and shows them in a past of "one year ago" format, similar to what Facebook does.

Flickr

• 1 Terabyte of free storage with original size and quality of photos.
• Photos are sharp and clear, shown in a larger format.
• Bulk edit of title and description for each photo before uploading.
• Sort photos 4 different ways within an album.
• Can choose which photos are private or for public viewing.
• All of your photos can be seen anywhere, on any device as long as you have an internet connection.

I am sure there are more features than these listed for each program. I listed only what I have personally worked with. I admit I am hesitant to continue to use Google Photos for ALL of my photos as a backup. Picture quality and being able to have photos in a specific order are huge to me.

Because it makes the process simple to delete photos off of my iPhone and a laptop to free up hard drive space with just clicking a link I will use Google Photos for photos taken by my iPhone, although my total library of photos would not take a 1/3 of my current smart phone hard drive.

I am going to go back to using Flickr as my main 'cloud backup', only I'll work a little at at time uploading all the photos I have into Flickr or like the friend that suggested Flickr to me ... I'll load only my favorite photos into Flickr while backup my my total library on external hard drives.

In the meantime, the hounds and I are going to get out and enjoy the rest of the morning with a walk through the heavy wet dew before we continue our football marathon today on the professional side (NFL). It will not be shown live because tv stations have to break for commercials during the playing of the national anthem ... but today in particular will be interesting for those players that want to protest by sitting or kneeling during the playing of the national anthem. Who could ever forget September 11, 2001.

I'll leave you with this observation if you have made it this far ....

• Bloodhounds DEMAND more attention than basset hounds
• Stella has to have ALL the attention
• Sadie and Stella move between me and the other to get that attention
• They don't bother me when I am giving Heidi attention
• The Bloodhound Laws listed on the right sidebar still apply

No photos in this post this morning ... The hounds will have their photos posted this evening.

Another beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Hounds Stayed Cool Inside

I never did sleep last night. I tried but it wasn't going to happen. Even the hounds woke up earlier then normal when they heard me pouring their breakfast kibble into their stainless steel bowls.

I shut the computer off as planned at 5am with some confusion about Google Photos. I have yet to find the answer on their help forum, although I have learned a lot of good information from that help forum.

Today was one of those days where the winds are higher but they are blowing warm air, humidity was thicker than butter and the energy level for the hounds and I started out low for the month. Yes, I did finally sleep about 5 hours and feel great.

Earlier in the day and afternoon, with a few chances to take off on a walk, Sadie and Stella did not do much more than these two photos show and before they knew it, the day was almost over.

By 6pm the temps were about the same, wind the same but it felt cooler as we stepped outside. We headed out for a walk after all.

There was a lot of butterfly activity today and I'll scatter those photos and of the hounds out in my discussion of Google Photos.

The migration to Google Photos is moving right along but at times I have some real 'head scratching' questions ... just weird stuff. It was a few minutes after midnight when I started the upload of Sadie's folder the had 4, 775 photos. It finished in 2 hours and 40 minutes but that was when the confusion for the night started. The Google program cut out about 800 duplicates it recognized that were already in the system.

Normally after the upload is complete, it would ask whether I wanted to add the photos to a folder but since there were too many it just had an arrow on the small box to view all of the uploaded photos. When I clicked that arrow I arrived at a blank white screen with a spinning arrow telling me it was loading the photos.

With that many I knew it might take a while. After an hour ... no photos. As a test I did a small upload of 65 photos and it worked, they showed up and I moved them into their new album. Two hours later, no photos of the 4,000 that I had uploaded.

Yet, when I clicked a link in the uploader box "view uploaded photos" they were there and I was able to move them into Sadie's album. It didn't go that smooth though due to my lack of knowledge that each album has a limit of 2,000 photos. I guess that is why it kept telling me "trouble with adding photos to album" as I tried time and time again.

Google Search proved to be my best friend sometime around 4am, telling me ... nope ... you have hit the limit of 2,000 and need a new album.

The confusion didn't stop there. Over on my blog I had taken the "RVs" out of my blog title and noticed while reading some blogs on my list that my blog no longer showed up on their list. Strange. Did the blog title change do that ... it shouldn't.

Then I looked at my blog list and noticed something weird that is still there today .... a lot of the blogs I follow were moved to the very bottom of the list, without that little snippet telling us how long ago that blog's post was written. So I went back to the three blogs I looked at, scrolled to the bottom and there I was along with other blogs with current posts, no date of our last post anywhere. Even my WordPress blog was moved to the very bottom of my own blog list and I made a post just last night.

I continued to load smaller files into Google Photos. Those images showed up as they should and were moved into their own album. So I basically have all of those updated and set up the way I want. Stella's upload is tonight with over 6,000 photos and should take less than 4 hours.

You might be asking "what's the rush"???  There isn't one but I'm not wired like that. When I start a project my "workaholic" tendencies come out, along with some other crazy issues I don't know about ... and I work until it is finished. Almost in an obsessed state of mind.

I will say the Google Photo automatic update worked like magic today. I have found a pretty simple way of getting my daily photos from my camera card, through Apple Photos on my hard drive, exported to a folder on my desktop. As soon as 14 photos hit that folder on my computer desktop by my manual effort ... Google Photos updated those 14 photos to my saved data base "in the cloud".

It does not take that much time to move them to albums on Google Photos and is the same process I use on Apple Photos on the computer.

I confused someone and myself on using Flickr. I mentioned that I had read they were now requiring a paid membership to use their desktop uploader. What I failed to see when I read that info was the words "auto uploader". (I know the period needs to be inside the quotation but it looks better the way I do it ... lol)

So I could have used Flickr for all of this backup but that is not the main reason I started using Google Photos. It works with my iPhone and will with any smart phone, automatically uploading photos from your phone and then deleting them on the phone to free up hard drive space.

I have also noticed some processes are easier to do on Google Photos compared to Flickr.

I wonder how much cheaper my iPhone 6S would have been today if I had waited a week or so? With Apple releasing their new iPhone 7 today, I hate to see what the 6S is selling for and will not look. It was also announced today that the  6S model is the most popular smart phone in the world.

As I started to stepped inside the house after our walk, I thought I saw a little movement in the small nest in the corner of the carport. It looks like I am going to have to back the Z4 out of his parking space, shake my can of wasp killer and let'er rip.

A pretty enjoyable day today. I uploaded some photos, tested some stuff on Google Photos and saw more features as I played around. With over 10,000 photos loaded into my account, I did a search for "chevy", hoping to see photos of my 1994 and then I could move it into it's own album. The Google Photos search was so detailed that it pulled up every photo I had with a Chevy in it.

What was interesting, there were photos of my Toyota FJ show up but they were photos I had downloaded from the car dealer when I was thinking about buying it in 2014 ... but in the background were Chevy trucks parked on the car lot for sale.

How's that for a search?

Rain is predicted for the next three days here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Sunshine Returns

Like I said earlier this morning, the weather in Indiana can change in a split second, so the weather men/women have a tough job.

Consequently after going out a few times this afternoon and mostly under a real light rain, by 4:30 the skies were on the way to clearing up. Sun was trying to shine in the NW. The temps were nice, all of the water that I had surrounding the house this morning was gone. Everything is growing fast and is really green.

Checking out the wunderground site for my local weather, no rain is noted for the next 7 days ... so the rain moved out of the area about 6 hours early. One of our first trips out right after lunch, Stella and Sadie thought it was okay to go for a walk, as they stood there in a light sprinkle of rain. They like four things a LOT ... food - sleep - daily walks - rides in the FJ.

By 4:30pm they wanted to check out the ground for me, although I thought I heard their paws squishing in soft wet ground as they checked out their field. I could tell how wet it was by the way they tiptoed in certain spots.

Sadie wanted to ask me again for a walk but we never go when the ground is really saturated. Snow yes, rain no.

She is persistent ... this is the same look she gives Heidi when she finds her in the big chair in the living room. Sometimes Heidi ignores her, curls up and sleeps, other times Heidi feels the visual pressure to get off the chair and does, heads for the bedroom to sleep in there.

Stella wanted to give it one last chance to go on the walk ... giving me the okay sign. That look right there is one of her begging looks ... please, please, please.

They finally realized the walk was called for today. I expect it will be nice enough tomorrow to two different walks.

My friend in Chicago has kept me informed throughout today about the weather up there. We both want to see the Cubs/Reds game tonight in Chicago. Although she lives much closer to Wrigley field than I do ... we will both be watching the game on tv.

I've spent most of the day reading, reading and reading. The urge to return to an online sales business has been getting stronger and stronger. So I've had to read a lot of information to catch up on any changes in procedures, look at new sources and talk to my teacher from 2005 who has been in online sales since 1999. We have talked on a regular basis even when I was out of the business.

No decision has been made, just doing some research.

I was also looking around on Flickr today. I follow just 3 people but one feature on that program with any photo that is available for the public ... you can see what camera they used, click on that camera link and then see every public photo on Flickr taken with that specific camera. Pretty interesting to see the graph in the upper right hand corner showing how many photos were taken by that camera and uploaded into Flickr for the year.

I saw that the Nikon D3200 had a large decrease curve in the number of photos taken. I wonder if that is because other users were/have the same issues I've had with mine? Or is it because less photos were uploaded into the Flickr program?

It's been a good day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

The Tulip Train Trestle

This is one place I've been wanting to go see again for only my 2nd time in 18 years. Before I could finish my 2nd cup of coffee this morning and seeing that any rain was at least 12 hours away, I had the strong urge to find this Tulip Train Trestle or "the viaduct" as it is referred to locally.

I didn't bother to look it up on the map or get any directions. I knew the general vicinity and about the time deep in the hilly countryside I thought I might be lost, a sign around the next corner was pointing me in the right direction.

This train trestle was built in 1906 and is still active today.





After looking at the trestle I drove out the opposite direction and that proved to me just how more amazing it was and how hard it must have been for the construction company transporting all their equipment and materials needed to build it. All the terrain was steep hills with rarely a flat spot of land. The year 1906 would not have given them the option of heavy duty trucks.

For all the facts and specifications about this trestle you can click here.

In my younger days I would have been tempted to climb to the top and stand in the middle of the train tracks but I know my limits now. I can tell when I lose my balance at times just getting out of bed, it's probably not a good idea to climb to the top of those tracks just to give you a picture from a different angle. I guess my name will not be painted on the side right below the tracks.

I did take the trail up the side of the hill to almost the top of the train tracks and was able to descend back to the road without hurting myself or the camera. It was pretty steep at times.

I'm close to the top

Steel that was installed 109 years ago, in 1906.

To give you some idea how hilly this surrounding land is, this photo was taken without any zoom and I was still not to the top of the hill. That blue speck is my Toyota FJ.


















If you want to see all 60 photos I took while I was there today, then click here.

Besides the interesting information about this train trestle I found it amazing that it is one year shy of 110 years old. I find it even more interesting that even today in 2015 the railroad is still used and takes approximately 10 minutes for a train to get completely move across the trestle. That must be quite a view the conductor has from his seat close to 200' above ground and no railings on the side.

Of course it's almost impossible to keep the graffiti off the steel structure. I also found it somewhat ironic ... out in the quiet country, not a sound, and the sign shows I can follow them building the observation deck on Facebook.

Be sure to click the link above for all 60 photos taken of the Tulip Trestle (the Viaduct). Let me know if you have any problems viewing the 60 photos on the link to Flickr.