bobmacliberty

That looks so much better with corn. Your previous pictures with peas might have well been raisins. Peas 🤢

Here you go:

Another great weather day here, so we decided to play golf on the Omni Resort’s par 3 course called Little Sandy. It’s a beautiful little course with very difficult greens. It’s a fun way to practice your short game and only takes about an hour. IMG_0493.mp4

I hadn't heard of that series. Sounds interesting. Will give it a watch.

"She turned me into a newt...I got better."

Beautiful day at the beach today. Temps in the upper 70s with a breeze, and not a cloud in the sky. We’re between spring break and summer vacation so almost no crowds. Perfect. IMG_0489.mp4

I use the second one...Lightroom Photo & Video Editor. Note that I have a monthly Adobe subscription that gives me Lightroom and Photoshop on my computer. Although LR is a free app, there may be some features that require a subscription, in case you run into that. Also, Adobe's version of a RAW format is called DNG. When you go into the camera part of LR Mobile, you'll see either DNG or JPG at the top. If you touch that, you can switch between the 2 formats. I always leave it on DNG. If I want to take a quick JPG picture without doing any editing, I use the built in iPhone camera app. You may see several apps that are presets for Lightroom. A preset is a predefined group of settings (exposure, contrast, color, etc.) that give a picture a certain "look". Rather than making all of those settings adjustments manually on multiple photos, you apply the preset to multiple photos at once (kind of like a macro). You can create presets yourself, or you can buy them from people who are professional photographers and can edit better than we can (at least in theory).

Short answer: I use Lightroom Mobile to take most pictures instead of the built in camera app. I then click on the LR auto adjust button before saving that picture to the phone's camera roll. That typically adds a little bit of vibrance to the colors, among other things. Long answer: Within Lightroom Mobile, I take all pictures in RAW format. RAW captures all of the data straight from the camera sensors so that you have the most flexibility to edit the photos later. Any camera app that saves files in a .jpg format will automatically do some adjustments to color, lighting, sharpness, etc. and then compress it to make it a smaller file. Each phone/camera company has their own "secret recipe" for how to turn the raw data from the sensor into a .jpg file. If you save a photo using the RAW format, none of those adjustments are made automatically and you need to make them yourself somehow (a RAW file itself looks pretty flat and boring). I will typically just click on the auto button within the editing portion of Lightroom Mobile and then save it as a .jpg file to the camera roll. If there's a photo that I really want to look good, I'll manually adjust various lighting, color, contrast, sharpening, etc. settings within LR before saving as a .jpg. This gives me more precise, creative control instead of just accepting what the auto button does. There were two exceptions to what I just said. For the long exposure waterfall shot, I used an app called Slow Shutter and saved the file as a .jpg from within that app. It looks like that app cranked up the color saturation when saving as a .jpg. For the flamingo picture, I used the iPhone's built in portrait setting, and the color is exactly what the iPhone saved. I'd call it a mid-sized zoo. Smaller in both size and number of animals than the Cincinnati Zoo, with which I'm most familiar. Much smaller than the San Diego Zoo, but I think that's true for every other zoo in the world. They've got all of the "big name" animals...elephants, rhinos, giraffes, lions, tigers, gorillas, baboons, etc. We've been twice and spent about 4 hours each time. They have a 4D theater and several different feedings/talks that are included if you pay $10 extra for a "total experience" ticket. That would probably add another couple of hours if you did several of those extra things.

A question for our English friends here. Micheline likes to watch an English Youtuber who cleans patios and roofs with a pressure washer. He greats people by saying, "you all right?". He says it quickly so it sounds like, "y'all right?". 😁 I've heard other British people use this greeting. I've also heard many Brits make a statement and follow that statement with, "isn't it?" Are these common expressions across the whole country or are they more a regional expression, like saying y'all is a southern thing in the US.

Wow. Just wow. You can't beat Hawaiian sunsets.

Does the control key also work as the command key? Whenever I watch any photo editing Youtubers, they're always saying, "Control on Windows, Command on a Mac..." since their audience uses both platforms. For Adobe products at least, the shortcuts are the same on both platforms, just using either command or control. Don't know if that's true more generally.

One other remote shutter trigger option...plug in old wired earbuds, the ones with a volume control in the wire that used to come free with the phone. Press the volume + button. I think this also works with Bluetooth Airpods pressing the play button.

I used a phone tripod stand so the phone stayed perfectly still. It comes with a little Bluetooth remote shutter so that you don't have to touch the shutter button on the phone, potentially shaking it a bit. My next experiment with by taking some night shots with it so I can capture light trails.

We decided that today would be a good day to go to the Jacksonville Zoo. Weather in the 70s with low humidity and middle of the week when kids are in school, right? We pulled into the parking lot and saw about 30 yellow school buses. I like kids...I used to be one. But small packs of kids hyped up on Dipping Dots and excitedly running from exhibit to exhibit, often pushing you out of the way, gets a little irritating. I can't wait until I have grandkids who will be absolutely perfect and never do anything wrong. 😜 The other reason for going was to try out the camera on my new phone. I'm impressed. I cropped in pretty tight on a couple of pictures, which are therefore slightly soft, but everything else looks great. I also tried an app called Slow Shutter which let's you take long exposure shots (longer than the couple of seconds that you get with the built in iPhone camera app). I took this waterfall shot with an 8 second exposure. I like the way it turned out.

Cool. My Logitech KB (K850) has both Alt and Cmd on the same key. I always assumed that key would work as the Cmd key if using the KB with a Mac. If that doesn't work for your KB, you may also be able to set several keys to a keyboard shortcut, e.g., the F1 key can be the home button when using a browser. I can also change the mouse wheel scroll direction on my Logitech mouse (M720) from standard to inverted, which I think would fix your problem. If you don't already have it, install the Logitech Options app.

They slowly cruise south along the Tongass Narrows to the waters around an island that is owned by one of the Alaska Native communities. The water for us was very calm...like cruising down a river. This allows them to do their demonstration fishing in native waters that aren't subject to US regulations. They periodically make donations to this community from their profits, so both parties benefit. They can't catch real King Crab in those waters so they have some fake crabs in the pot that they pull up. They'll often find real octopus in the pots that are trying to eat the crabs, hence my picture of the big octopus. They have real crabs on board for you to hold (see Jimbo's picture), and they catch fish with the other types of fishing techniques that they demonstrate. Overall, I found it very entertaining and informative, in addition to a nice little cruise with great scenery.

We did that excursion on our Alaska cruise last fall. It was one of our favorite parts of the cruise. It's hard to imagine anyone doing what they do in freezing cold weather with icy spray in your face and an iced over deck. It's no wonder that king crab is so expensive.

I use a USB cable between the phone and my Windows computer...backing up to iTunes. iTunes is a terrible app but it's the only way that I know to back up to a computer. The alternative is to pay $10 a month for enough iCloud storage space to backup everything to the cloud. My old phone had 256 GB of memory, of which I had used 203 GB...so a lot to back up. My new phone is now up a running with everything exactly like it was on my old phone. The process involved: 1. Upgrading my old phone to the newest OS version (took maybe 10 minutes) 2. Completely backup my old phone (took about an hour) 3. Set up the new phone as a brand new "blank" phone and activate my old phone number on the new phone (took maybe 5 minutes) 4. Upgrade the new phone to the newest OS version. You can't restore a backup from one phone to another phone unless they are running the same OS version. (took maybe 10 minutes) 5. Restore the backup on my computer from my old phone to the new phone (took about an hour) 6. Restart and set up the new phone again with all of the restored apps/data (took maybe 10 minutes) All told, it took about 2.5 hours. I've been through this process before (although it's been 2 years) and knew what was involved, so it was just a matter of waiting and occassionally pushing buttons. I'm very computer literate and it's still a bit confusing. The alternative to someone doing it at home is to spend a couple of hours at the phone store while someone there does it. I don't know if the long amount of time backing up is related to doing a complete backup of all 200+ GB, or if iPhones are just typically slower in backing up than a Samsung/Android.

I finally broke down and bought a new iPhone...the 14 Pro Max for its camera capabilities. I decided to do a full backup and restore from my old phone (12 Pro Max) to the new one. Backing up the old one is taking forever. I can't play games on my old phone while waiting, but I can at least hang out here.

Have a great time in Hawaii! Are you staying on Oahu or going to another island? I can't remember if you already talked about where you're going. I love Hawaii...my favorite place on earth. If any of you ever hack into one of my accounts and are faced with answering the security question, "What is your favorite vacation place", you'll have no problem getting into my account. 😁

Nice weather so we decided to walk across the street and have dinner (sushi) at the Ritz. We went to their pool bar with a view of the ocean for an after dinner drink. Since we’re facing East toward the ocean, we get a “reflected” sunset.

Uh oh. This is how they get you. You find a second (after playing music), relatively small but occasionally important use for Google Home (make my phone ring). Then maybe you're setting alarms/timers, asking it for a weather forecast, or possibly traffic conditions on the way to work. Before you know it, you're creating a morning routine like I had before retiring. I'd wake up on a work day and say "Alexa, good morning". She'd turn the kitchen lights on at 50% brightness and say, "Good morning Bob. The current weather is xx degrees with partly sunny skies. Today's forecast is for sunny weather with a high of xx degrees and a low of xx degrees. xx company stock (my company) closed yesterday at $xx. Traffic to work is normal with an expected time of xx minutes. You have xx days left before retirement. Have a great day". The weather forecast and traffic were useful, but the stock price, and especially the days left before retirement, were more for fun. 😁 I'm definitely stealing that.

Since a lot of people like to complain about an ER visit, here's a positive story. Micheline was drying a wine glass when it broke and cut her hand. Our neighbor nurse looked at it and said she should probably visit the ER in case there's any glass in the cut. This was a weekend evening. There was a fairly new (within 2 years) hospital near us so off we went. We'd never been there before. We were checked in immediate, waited less than 60 seconds before being called back to an examination room, and then waited no more than a couple of minutes before a nurse was taking her vitals. The doctor appeared before the nurse was done. All very impressive. The doctor's white lab coat had his name and also his title...CEO West Chester Hospital. I tactfully asked him why the hospital CEO was working in the ER on a weekend evening. He said that he takes a shift in the ER every few weeks to make sure he stays in touch. That also impressed me. We had a few other experiences with that hospital, including ER visits and outpatient procedures, and the staff there was always excellent. Like any business, good leadership makes a big difference.

I was surprised several years ago to learn that most broken bones are not considered an emergency, since they typically aren't life threatening. A visit to the ER for a broken bone using insurance that I had at the time would have an extra charge because it was not a legitimate ER visit, i.e. not a true emergency. Absolutely ridiculous.