photo phrustration

Today pretty much confirmed that the cr-48 will not replace my desk top computer any time soon. Regardless where the problems lay, taking two hours to upload 15 photos is unacceptable. Add some quirky hassles thrown in by Picnik and it became annoyingly frustrating dealing with todays photos.

With no way to preview the photos on the SD card I was pretty much forced to upload files just to look at them. The cr-48 file system sees the SD card but refuses to open any sub folder where the photos are stored. At an average of 4 MB each it was an awful waste of bandwidth and time just to select the photos I wanted to save / use. Most of my photos hardly reach that level and I sure don't need to go through that run around to find out.

3 hours later and I have 6 photos I'm not really happy with. On the old desktop I could have done the same thing in a couple of minutes.  Since they're not quite good enough for my other blog I'll post them here from
my Picasa Web Gallery.

From here it's a piece of cake. Inserting images in Blogger post from a Picasa gallery is quick and easy. Add some text and Bingo - another post best forgotten.

The 'front yard'

Headed out back to the corn fields a boulder with a snow collar caught my attention.

Inserted images are easily sized while in Edit HTML. 

I only need to click the image to select the size I want it to display. 

Ice in a small brook that cuts through the corn field.

Turkey's in the corn stubble.

On the way back I spotted a Cedar 'growth'  Unfortunately Picnik is having a hard time dealing with this image even though it seemed to be save correctly and it displays in the gallery. For some reason I can't get it to either download to the computer or insert it in this post. 

...and that's a good enough reason to stop here.

No big letdown

I didn't expect the cr-48 to replace my desktop. After all it's a prototype with a Operating System that's still evolving. But I do believe the finished product is going to turn my old computer into a paperweight.

Take away my homegrown web site that just turned 13 years old and still designed and written in an old HTML text editor and I'd be an average user. While I'm still not satisfied with some of the image editors because I don't want to upload the original photos without resizing and reducing file sizes. The 'limited' amount of free storage space on them reinforces that inclination.  On the plus side, quick photo edits are easy and produce better results than I managed to get using my old image editor. On the negative side I've found I need to go to a couple of apps to do some of the things I did in my old program. (again I believe it will get better as the cloud adapts to users or my willingness to pay for something better)

Right now there is little or no means to manage photo files. Any Chrome based computer has to have some easy way to at least transfer files from the camera to another portable storage devise. I don't want to have to upload every photo I take (big waste of cloud space) and I want the security of having a back up I'll completely in control of. I'm not betting the farm on the cloud knowing how many times I've done something stupid and ended up losing things. Right now I can't transfer files to my portable hard drive so I have to go back to the desk top.

Except for my HTML text addiction and the preference to still edit my images off line I've turned to the web to do everything else I used to do. It was only a matter of changing habits or should I say the programs that acted like a middleman between me and the cloud. For example it's not as convenient as using Outlook to gather all my mail at once. Until I discover the app online that does the same thing I'll have to just go to each mail account one at a time.

OFF NOTEs:

No F Keys
I feel a lot smarter not seeing the F keys. I never knew what they were for except for one, it was used by my image editor to take a screenshot and bring it directly into the editor.  I won't miss them.

NO CAPS LOCK KEY!!!!!!!!
I spend a lot of time on different forums. I believe a chromebook is the perfect computer for those that annoy everyone else buy turning on their caps lock key.