Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Technology

I am a Flickr addict now…

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I’ve just uploaded some new photos on Flickr.

Since discovering Flickr (and since becoming a Pro member courtesy of Stéphane), I have become an addict. I spend hours everyday creating sets, changing the metadata of existing photos (especially the old ones i.e. those I did on my film camera) and viewing slideshows with awe. I’ve obviously joined some groups and I have started contributing photos and comments. I must be feeling like Christopher Columbus felt just after discovering America…

Flickr is fantastic! Try it!

By the way, I have adopted the following workflow:

  • Import all photos from my digital camera to a folder using Image Capture on my MacBook (I simulatenously rename all photos (from IMGxxxx.jpg to YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.jpg) using the free and absolutely great ExifRenamer application),
  • Import all the renamed photos to iPhoto and only use film rolls for organisation,
  • Delete all crap photos (have no mercy!),
  • Beautify what remain (crop, enhance, retouch…),
  • Tag the best ones with a specific keyword (I use Flickr),
  • Upload those ones using Flickr Uploadr (more precisely the latest beta version as the stable version has stopped working),
  • Create a new set or update existing sets on Flickr,
  • Announce to the world (my weblog and some family mailing list) that something fantastic has just happened ;-)

Phew!

Part of the Web is sloooooowwwwww today!

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An update: The problem we are all having is due to the earthquake that has occured near Taiwan this morning… I hope that the contestants from the two Taiwanese teams and their friendly coach who we met at the ACM-ICPC contest in Kanpur are OK…

A second update: Flickr, del.icio.us and Google are quick again! So either the routers have been (re)set or they have learnt to use better routes… IP rocks :-)

I don’t know about you but my Internet connection is (relatively) crap today. Some websites are as slow as molasses:

and some are perfectly normal (i.e I manage to transfer around 25KB/s on my 256Kbit/s ADSL line):

I don’t know what to deduce… It seems fishy that Flickr, del.icio.us and especially Google have technical problems at the same time right now. So I can only say that the problem is here in Mauritius (can someone from abroad check those sites?). Can be a faulty proxy server… Or is it the sign of a purposely faulty proxy server?

Is this (only) coincidence?

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While browsing today, I realised that my daughter Anya has the same name as Anya Major, the athlete and model who starred in Apple’s famous 1984 commercial…

I always thought we called our daughter Anya because we like the name (or, more precisely, we knew someone called Anja (pronounced Anya) and we liked the name)…

I must also tell you that there was once a Kyan Pascal released for the Apple ][. And I suppose you all know that our two-year old son is called Kyan…

Now, I don’t want to sound too esoteric but is this (only) coincidence?

;-)