Bedrock

Archive for the ‘spain’ Category

Got up rather late this morning after a late night solving the world’s problems last night (well, solving neighbourhood problems anyway) by the pergola.

We headed off late morning to Huescar market for supplies and ended up in the square having kebabs for lunch before ending up in Orce pool for the afternoon.

They say the best things in life are free – well certainly it felt that way this afternoon up to our necks in refreshing cold water. With temperatures approaching 40c at times the pool was certainly the place to be today. By teatime we were back home and it was still 33c outside. By now it’s cooling off and the plan is to pop down to the village to see the boys and girls at the Galera Hotel.

I’m hoping I’ve managed to get some replacement LEDS on the way from the UK having damaged one of my test lighting units. We’re using normal LED strip for lighting outside but the nature of the separate lights (RGB) means that for example the white is not that good – the newer serial LEDS can produce excellent warm and cool white from the same chip but are awfully sensitive to heat and after a few glasses of wine last night I managed to damage my test board.

Hopefully that’ll all be sorted in a couple of weeks with bits from the UK and I can get on with the next stage in lighting up the pergola.

Later this week my jobs include improving the security cameras. Someone’s been syphoning off our wood in our absence and next time I plan to catch them. It seems no matter where you go, you can’t get away from petty crime. But for now, we’re just enjoying the weather.

A conversation the other night triggered me off – what to do with the many photos we take?

At one time the answer was simple – get them developed at Boots and shove them away in a cupboard for posterity or bore the pants off everyone with a large selection of holiday pics of varying quality.

Today all of that has changed, there are very few reasons to have poor pictures (or at least to keep them) and a myriad of ways to store and present them.

Getting photos from the camera to your PC or tablet:

So we’ve taken some photos – how do we get the photos OFF THE CAMERA? That depends a lot on the equipment. Often, you can either plug the camera into your PC with a USB lead at which point it becomes a “disk” from which you can just copy the photos… perhaps you may need an adaptor to copy the images from your camera’s SD disk to the computer, tablet or phone, there are many options depending on your camera and what kind of machine you want to copy the images to.

Apple products are the least flexible in this respect however it’s quite easy given an adaptor like this… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mammoth-XT-Reader-Connection-Adapter/dp/B00CL9FLTI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406559819&sr=8-1&keywords=apple+2+sd+adaptor

At under £3 this one isn’t going to drain the bank account – there are others and the prices vary – check out to ensure the device does what you need before getting the credit card out.

Similarly there are many usb-type adaptors for Android tablets – but often these days, cameras use Micro-SD which is the same as the tablet uses.  Further upmarket you can purchase a device that will talk to your tablet or phone wirelessly to transfer photos.

The same argument goes for a PC – there are many adaptors out there that will plug straight into a USB adaptor on the PC – indeed many PCs have their own SD and similar adaptors.

If your camera supports wireless (WIFI) operation then so much the better – no need for leads – but note that modern photos can be quite large and it is often the case that copying from an SD or similar card is the fastest way.

Personally, both my camera and phone support WIFI and Dropbox and hence I copy the images on the device straight to Dropbox – shortly thereafter, they appear on my PC or tablet.

Sharing photos:

So now you have your photos on the tablet or PC  – what if you want to share images with others? For single images, one options is again Dropbox, whether you want to share photos around your own devices or share with others, Dropbox will solve that one for you . It is free for a certain amount of storage – if you want more you pay for more. There are alternatives, Google have Google Drive and Microsoft have their own free storage – I find Dropbox to be the most convenient. Clearly for lots of photos or entire albums this is not ideal and another solution is suggested later on.

Then there is the matter of editing and storing somewhere. It’s never a good idea to store pictures on your PC – what happens if it breaks – and sure as eggs it WILL BREAK some day. One great option combining editing AND storage is Google’s free Picasa.  This is a tool that lets you edit pictures with ease and speed  (sadly not yet available on most tablets) you can then if you like save them in Dropbox OR you can automatically sync with Google’s own storage “Google Drive” – if you do that on a PC, you can also make these available on your phone – certainly, Android phones make this particularly easy. One online social tool that makes use of your Google storage is Google+ and that’s a great way to display your albums. Another online tool is Flickr –and the latter offers an obscene amount of online storage for free.

Editing photos:

In terms of editing, PCs have a WEALTH of editing tools – Mac users have fewer but still quality tools. Phones and tablets as yet still have very basic tools by comparison – and yet, I have to say that the likes of the Samsung phone makes HDR photography much easier than anything I’ve seen on a PC to date – and that includes the likes of the PC package PhotoMatrix which generates good HDR pics easily – but not as easily as the phone.  In terms of ease of use I won’t even start discussing Photoshop and Gimp in depth as they’re not trivial to use – though I use Gimp myself. For quick editing, Picasa on a PC is hard to beat. If you really want to get deeply into editing – take a look at Gimp – it’s free and powerful.

And finally – want to edit online without loading any tools? Take a look at PIXLR

What a day. From the most beautiful start – to thunderstorms in the course of a day.

This morning we headed off to BAZA, having been told that they sell HENRY vacuums up there. Having destroyed a few lesser units over the course of years we decided to do the job properly and get a vacuum with a BAG. Well, not unsurprisingly, Baza was WAY over the top pricing-wise at around 160 Euros for a Henry look-alike – sorry guys, we weren’t born yesterday, Amazon it is.

It was approaching lunchtime by now and our pal LEN had told us of a town called Gorafe, so we went to have a look. FREENAV is sat-nav software I’ve been using for some time now on my S4 phone but it’s looking more and more as if it’s destined for the bin – as it wanted to send us down a torturous route taking 2 hours from Baza to Gorafe – the place is that close you could almost SEE it were it not for the mountains in-between! Something like 45km. Anyway, we decided to take the obvious route – the A92 – and I recommend that to anyone nearby giving it a go…

The trip to Gorafe, once you get off the motorway marginally resembles a trip we did to Andorra with much of the journey winding around a mountain except this time the town is at the BOTTOM – so far down your ears start to notice.

The views are superb. Just off to one side of the town is a tiny white religious figure way up at the top of a hill, we took the opportunity to drive as far as we could and walk the rest right to the top – and the views, clearly were worth the effort.

Driving back into the town itself, by now it was perhaps 2pm or so – we stopped at a local bar for a coke and some lunch. The lady there did not understand a word we said but we sat outside in the sun, I’d say it had to be approaching 30c, she put up a Martini stand and fed us a superb salad starter (I just picked the peppers out – the olives looked gross) and a really pleasant meat dish with the obligatory chips – all very reasonably priced. The sun cover was most welcome as I could feel my skin starting to shrink from the powerful sunshine.

And then came the rain – we drove back up toward Baza in brilliant sunshine, a beautiful day and then within minutes the rain started and the temperature dropped to an amazing 12c – unbelievable but true. We rushed back to Galera to rescue the washing and my battery and controller which were sitting outside – and got there just in time – as I write this, there is lightning in the background. I don’t expect it will last for long.

Click on the images for larger versions. Definitely worth the trip for anyone in the area.

For our first trip out of the summer, we spent the day in and around Galera on an organised wine-tasting expedition. 10 of us (we knew each other already) got together and headed off to various wine production facilities in the area. What an eye-opener. Galera can seem very sleepy at times but not only around the area but IN the town is a very active wine-growing community.

We learned about and sampled everything from white, rose and red wines to some superb award winning sparkling wine, in the process learning about possible wine use by early settlers as far back as 4,000 years ago (they had wine cups, we’re just not 100% certain they put wine in them).

Of the places we visited and wines we tasted I found the sparkling white not only to be the best tasting but also the most interesting as we discovered how it is twice fermented and how they use freezing techniques to remove the products of fermentation of an award-winning product, all in the basement of the most beautiful home smack in the middle of town – you would never guess any kind of production was going on.

An absolutely marvellous day at the end of which we ended up in the bar (in my case for a coke) with weather warm enough to sunbathe – and then came home to an early night.

Today we’re off to the Sunday market in Baza. At 8am it was only 11c here but the sky is clear and it won’t take long to warm up. Looking for shelving, desks and chairs over the next few days for the cave and for my office. Photos are on Flickr here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/scargill/sets/72157644304918579/

I’ve updated this blog entry as it is getting near to summer and budding photographers will be wanting to make the best of the weather.

As if the digital photographer didn’t have enough in the way of superb tools with which to take and manipulate photos, Google some time ago released a product called PhotoSphere for it’s Nexus phones. This is not just a panorama tool but one that allows for full 360 images both horizontally and vertically – or anything in-between.

Of course you have to have one of their phones for this – until now. Here is a link to a page which offers you the .apk file for Photosphere for the Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. So now not only is it probably the best phone on the planet – but also has the best combination of photo tools. On my phone now I have the excellent Samsung versions of camera and gallery but ALSO the Nexus versions – giving me the best of both worlds.  Incidentally if installing that on your personal phone screws it up – don’t complain – I’m taking no responsibility. I do NOT recommend anyone with a corporate phone “tries this at home” – all I can say is that on my S4 with stock Android 4.22 – it works a treat.

Here’s my setup. On my PC using Windows 8, I’ve installed Google Picasa (actually I’ve used it for years – cracking product – the FSB uses it at our Conferences as we have hundreds of photos coming in that need quick editing). Once that’s installed and assuming you prefer desktop use of Windows 8 over the rather useless-on-a-laptop tablet version, you’ll need to view images – sadly as soon as you try – say, a bunch of images you have in Dropbox – you end up back in the new interface with a totally useless image viewer that Microsoft kindly supply.

So, in desktop mode, simply right-click every type of image you have (maybe .png or .jpg or both) and select the default viewer to be Picasa Viewer. It is FAST and really good – and also gives you a right-click option to edit in Picasa – which I maintain for general use is the best of the image editors (not for serious stuff but if you’re in a hurry it’s almost unbeatable – for anything serious I use Gimp).

On my S4 phone I now have both cameras, both galleries (you need to Google gallery to view Photospheres properly) and the absolutely stunning free SnapSeed App for editing – indeed I do more editing on the phone now than ever before.

Having just installed Photosphere this morning on the Samsung S4,  I’ve not had a chance to do much with it but here are some of shots I took on a brief trip to the market.

The photo above is a combination of perhaps 20 shots – showing a full 360 view of the square in Huescar this morning. My shadow is screwed up – so – learning exercise – make sure you take your own shadow first – smack in the middle of the screen because as you move around – the shadow shape changes and that confuses the camera. Note that there no-one else in the square? WRONG – the camera quite cleverly spotted people moving in different overlapping views – and got rid of them! I must be more careful not to rotate the camera when taking these shots – I can see some joins.

In the photo above, we popped into my favourite cafe in the centre of Huescar for coffee and churos – and I could not help experimenting in there – much to the amusement of the people inside who were no doubt wondering why I took something like 12 photos in a row!

In the Google Gallery app – these images are viewed properly and hence you don’t see the curves – you’re seeing that incidentally not so much because the image is distorted but because you don’t normally see anywhere near this much at once – zoomed in the images become more normal looking (incidentally, click on these images for larger versions)– and in the App you can swing around (top image is full 360 degrees both ways) left, right, up, down and see a perfectly normal image.

In the last image – you see pretty much a 360 view of our place complete with mountains in the back and the pergola. The close proximity makes the building look even more weird. As you can see it’s a stunning day, a tad cool at maybe 7c but with a nice fire or a woolly hat outside, inside it’s just like summer!

Of course you might well say “that’s fine but how are we supposed to show these properly on a PC?” That’s easy – images put into Google+ photo albums automatically handle Photoshere pics. Head on over here.

And so there are my first 3 attempts with Photosphere – enjoy and expect a LOT BETTER once I get fully to grips with it. More on Photoshere itself here.

If you’re more into video – but only have your android phone to work with – consider taking a look at Cinema-FV5 – this is a cracking piece of software, recently developed that lets you take off all of those amateur auto-controls to concentrate on making quality video with your phone – AND you can plug in an external microphone!

Well, lots going on right now – if you’re near our place in Spain you’ll know the new porch is coming along nicely – still looks like a bombsite at this point but the roof is on. Meanwhile I’ve been changing service providers for my blog – to a new UK company and my first experience of their tech support was first class. Hence I’ve successfully moved the entire site across to the new server – hopefully all you’ll have noticed was a short term blackout as I messed up the naming.

Finished the development of my new remote controllers so I’ll shortly bring across the new kit – and turn those random-colour floodlights into something a little more subtle (they power up in a default “disco” state instead of the last state you had them in – which is really stupid).

All coming along very nicely.