HIGHLIGHTS: sitting quietly, being a responsible adult, super mega dream project and the Big Bad EXIF, small coloring projects to send to friends
Had some good sitting time again this morning. Was later than intended again, except it was just me, so maybe “we” just started later than anticipated. Reframing! I am in ridiculous love with the Muji “body-fit cushion,” which is basically what all decent beanbags dream of someday being someday. (Muji: Everything you never knew you wanted at Recurse Center, directly downstairs.) Except it exists now. Because Japan. It’s good for supported slouching, it’s good for meditation, it’s good for a half-body pillow, it’s…just lovely. It is the opposite of the (differently awesome) “dog bed for humans” style of beanbag (h/t to Liz for the name there).
Also doing some Stuff I Don’t Feel Like Doing, which is mostly Stuff I Want To Have Done like emailing cool people I met a few weeks ago, and also the insurance broker so I can get some health insurance again. Welp. ONWARD.
Emailed insurance broker (boring but responsible!). Emailed rad person from Dev Bootcamp that I met at Hack && Tell recently; she has Portland & biking & French connections and this is awesome. Emailed the two amazing women from Women You Should Know that I met at the JewelBots Kickstarter party even earlier; there are some women I think they should know about. EMAIL ALL THE WOMEN
EMAIL ALL THE EMAILS
Maybe there’ll even be code today. I’ve started worrying about jobs, which is an unpleasant feeling, but I’m going to channel it into Productive Conversations, and try to keep it out of my terminal for now.
Down, down, down the rabbit hole of reading image data from Python. Somehow, two and a half years ago, this was easier in Ruby than it is now. Or maybe I was missing something.
What am I learning?
I’m using ExifRead for now, because it came up high in the Googs, and also seems to be under active development. A+. This does, unfortunately, mean that I am learning how the EXIF sausage is made.
The GitHub page above makes reference to the difficult-to-google “IFD,” which appears to stand for “Image File Directory” (and not, say, International Floral Distributors).
Reminder to people who write about things with the intent of sharing knowledge: expand your acronyms the first time you use them. Just in case. It makes things so much easier for new people, and it takes very little effort! I’m now making an educated guess about a README. (Maybe I should file an issue.)
There appears to be a Canadian nerd who’s written a Perl library to handle/write EXIF data, and it turns out their description of EXIF tags generally, and GPS tags specifically, is about the most concise thing I’ve found so far [1].
(This all started because ExifRead returns a “ratio” rather than a decimal number for GPS coordinates. This is, apparently, the standard. Okay!)
There are some folks who’ve written about turning GPS ratios into decimals (like here), but that seems like a heck of a lot of work. I’m not even certain it’s what I need; it’s just what I’m (marginally) more familiar with. We also have two facilitators at RC who used to, uh, work at a photo-related company. It might be about time to talk to them.
After lunch, I headed back for Coloring Club (it’s my favorite thing that I have started in a long, long time), and worked on a couple postcards I’m going to send to friends. It’s fun! Postcards are a nice reasonable size for, say, a compliment.
Here is how to make a compliment postcard for your friends:
- Acquire blank postcards. If you are lucky, Muji is downstairs. you can also cut plain paper. Or get some from a paper or office supply store, I bet.
- Acquire stamp(s). In the US, it’s currently 49¢ for a US forever stamp (postcard stamps are cheaper), or $1.20 for a global forever stamp (those exist now!!).
- Write something nice (something you admire about someone, or some other compliment that is true about them) with the bubble letters you learned in junior high. They don’t have to look Good or Professional, because they’re an excuse for you to color something in.
- Color them in.
- Write on the back.
- Put it in the mail.
Easy, and real mail for your friends! Your friends will think you are a cool mix of old-fashioned and new-awesome, or at least you will.
The Summer Of Sad Times has made me think, quite often, about all the things that people are only brave enough to say after people are gone. In a nutshell, this makes me really sad, and I decided that I’m going to double down on telling my friends what I admire about them while they are alive. (Not with any expectation that any of them will die soon! I hope they will all be alive for a long, long time, and maybe sometimes they’ll think about the postcard and it will make them smile.)
I also talked to facilitator John about “oh god the EXIFs and the GPS and what is happening; am I the worst” and it turns out that it’s all just an awful mess of semi-standard rats’ nest. (Yes, the nest of many rats.) Apparently it’s Just A Beast, which is oddly encouraging. I’m not overwhelmed because I am clueless or unable; I am overwhelmed because I am Faced With A Beast.
The Beast, as it turns out, is an EXTRAORDINARY motivator for all the stuff I’ve spent all summer not-doing. Migrating my bonus (non-primary) photo album to an external hard drive? ALL OVER IT.
Somehow, this all took a whole day, and my parents just got into town, so I’m thinking it might be time to call it an evening.
Note 1: Also, welp, facilitator John tells me that Exiftool is pretty much industry standard, except a bunch of people have had such a sad time with it that they end up writing their OWN things. John is currently doing this.