Abby and Win’s Blog

Archive for April, 2008

After hearing Psystar’s (which might be a false company) release of a Mac clone (Open Computer), I was excited and highly considering a purchase. Then I find out that it’s a “Hackintosh” version of Leopard running on compatible Intel hardware. Now I’ve tried installing “Hackintosh” on a laptop at work and a desktop at home. It’s impressive how OS X is able to run outside Apple hardware. I was going to build one based on Lifehacker’s guide. But after $800, no software update support (at least it’s up to Apple – similar to hacked iPhones and iTouches), I figured I’d rather spend the extra money to get a real Apple computer. I only wanted a new one since my G5 at home doesn’t have an Intel processor. Other than that, my G5 still rocks! I’m running 2.5GB ram with a dual 2.0GHz processor. I’m just limited to running things that don’t require Intel to work.

Anyways, if you’re still interested, here’s a video of one running. Notice how loud the fans are . Still not sure if the company is legit but based on the video, someone got their order.

After weeks of arranging and uploading, I’ve finally finished all the pictures taken by our photographer during our wedding last month. Ariel Javelosa was the company who shot our prenup pics and the wedding pics. I was impressed by their professionalism and punctuality. Unfortunately, out of the 4 cameras used at least one had the date/time-stamp mis-configured. This made it hard to arrange the pictures in chronological order. I tried my best to remember the order of events. Here’s what I did using my Mac.

1. Import all of the pictures off the CDs and create an album in iPhoto.
2. Select View => Sort Photos => Manually. You can now drag the photos around and arrange them the way you want.
3. Select all the photos (Apple + A). Select Photos => Batch Change.
4. Set = Date. Then put the date and time you want the first photo to have. Then I added 10 seconds between each photo so that the order stays the same. Each photo’s time will be different by 10 seconds. I checked the Modify original files and clicked OK.
5. If the title isn’t displaying, you can display it by selecting View => Titles.
6. Select all the photos (Apple + A). Select Photos => Batch Change.
7. Set = Title, to = Date/Time. Select Include Date: and select Short. Select Include Time, 12-hour clock, and select Show Seconds. Click OK.
8. Make sure everything is still in order. Select View => Sort Photos => By Date. Make sure Ascending is checked.
9. Create a folder on you Desktop.
10. Select all of the photos in iPhoto then export. Select File => Export. Select the File Export tab. Select Current under Kind. Select Use title under File Name. Then click on Export.
11. Navigate to the folder you made on your Desktop.
12. Once finished open the folder and you will notice that the file names are now the date/time-stamp you changed it to using iPhoto and the order stayed the same (assuming that folder orders the files by filename).

That’s all in iPhoto. You can now use Automator to rename the files to whatever you want. It only takes 2 Actions in Automator.

1. Get Specified Finder Items. This is where you drag the files over.
2. Rename Finder Items. The first drop down select Make Sequential. Then new name: DSC_. Place number after name. Start number at 0001. Separated by nothing. Check the Make all numbers with the value of 4.
3. Run it and you’re done. The files should be renamed something like DSC_0001.jpg and it’s incremented by 1 for every file.

You can name it whatever you want. I then uploaded it onto my Phanfare account and 2 weeks later I’m done. Keep in mind that the Exif data wasn’t changed just the image property. Hope this helps anyone out there. It was an adventure trying to solve this problem – which could have been avoided if the camera date/time-stamp setting was configured properly.

You can see our pics at http://abbyandwin.phanfare.com. There’s 5 albums since I’m only able to have 500 pics each album.

Update: Phanfare has notified me that I can have more than 500 pictures in an album but am limited to 500 pictures in a section within an album. They were kind enough to email me a link on how to rearrange it. So now I have just 1 album broken down into 5 sections. Thanks Phanfare!

I just got my Raynox M-250 macro lens for my Canon PowerShot G9. I’ve been having fun taking pictures around the backyard and inside the house. I found this out from my brother-in-law Al who has been using it for a couple of weeks. He’s using it with his Canon S5. Check out his site here http://flickr.com/alpo430. He has great pictures there. What’s great about his camera is the 12x optical zoom. It really gets you up close and personal. My G9 only has 6x optical zoom but I’m still happy with the results. Here are some of the pictures I’ve taken so far.

I’ve been having so much fun with this camera. I just hope I can learn all of it’s features and capabilities.

With this lens I’m able to plug it on top of my UV filter too.