Getting Spotify to work for me !!!

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SpotifyCreating a shared Spotify Playlist that I can blog about has taken me much longer than I ever expected or hoped it would. I’ve had to learn a fair bit about sharing music, which I didn’t know anything about, and even more about what you can do with Spotify and how it can be made to work with iTunes. A certain sense of satisfaction at having got it to work, but I’d be the first to say that “there must be a better way” and if anyone can suggest it, I’d be grateful.

You start off with the service that does just what you want it to – create a Playlist and then Share it with whosoever you want to share it with, be it Public, or Limited. That’s fine … there’s a bit of a setback when you realise there’s not an easy way of importing the actual Playlist into a blog, so you have to go back to iTunes (where you created it, before importing the track list into Spotify) and saving that Playlist as a text file. This you then have to edit substantially to get any text for the Blogpost.

Then, the major setback, you find that not all the tracks on the playlist are recognised by Spotify; they are played because Spotify plays them as Local Files, but to get the best experience you then have to go through the ones that don’t have a Spotify existence and find the track manually on Spotify itself. This may be because it’s just got a slightly different name to the track on your Playlist. Bother! That will still leave some that don’t appear on Spotify at all – my opera tracks are a good example. As I said before, they play because they play as Local Files, but that won’t do if you want to create a Blogpost that references ALL the tracks on the Playlist.

So you have to create a Shared Folder that you point your readership to and ask them to download the tracks into their own Local Files folder in Spotify – which they will have have had to install on their local machine; would they bother, I think not.

Having done all of that – which is a lot of work to just read a Blogpost – it does work; but it’s not worth the effort for the Writer or the potential Reader, I’m afraid. The best solution is to “forget” about the missing files, just put it down to “c’est la vie”, share the Playlist on tumblr and enjoy the music. Perhaps reading the Blogpost alongside the tumblr stream playing in the background :-)

Revisiting #hospitweet Resolutions!

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It being 1st January 2013, it seemed right, if not a little rash, to revisit the last piece I wrote on The #hospitweet Blog. This blog (regular readers will recall … Hee!Hee!) detailed my reflections on coming to terms with having to undergo heart surgery. It helped me a lot to blog about it, my feelings and my aspirations for the future.

The final post set out some Resolutions, and so, nearly three years on from that post I’m going to review what I stated then as my intentions and review, refine and reset my objectives. I suspect this is going to be a painful exercise as I haven’t even re-read the post yet! Am I brave, foolish or do I just know I have to get “back on track”!

So here we go …

“I hope I’ll be disciplined enough to go to the gym twice a week (Resolution One) and to augment this with walking to work (Resolution Two) – once the weather improves.”

Well the first one didn’t last, and I haven’t seen the inside of the gym in the whole of 2012, and I suspect 2011. I have been meaning, honest, to go back but the motivation just doesn’t seem to be there. I guess this will be the easiest of my 2013 resolutions to make, but the hardest to keep – but I’ll try. I know I have to, because my fitness levels have dropped a lot from the heady days of my first year of retirement in 2011 when I was walking so much. So the second one I stuck with right through to retirement and through most of 2011 until September when I was suddenly unable to feel I could do a couple of walks … physical or mental, who knows? Since then, although I’ve walked a bit, it’s not been to the same degree as I did in 2011.

So, for 2013 and beyond, couple the two together into one as 2013 Resolution One – “Get fit and walk more”.

“Firstly, I’ve learnt how much I need to feel in control of myself: not in control, but in control of myself – there is a difference. When I’m not, I get anxious. I really had never recognised that and would not have described myself as an anxious person, now I do and that’s scary and the most important thing that faces me now is to find ways of reducing that anxiety state (Resolution Three).”

This was a revelation to me – I’m not “a control freak”, I just need to be in control of myself. When I had all that time to think and the opportunity to reflect and think about myself, as a person, how I work (or don’t as the case often turns out to be), I began to realise how difficult it must have been to be around me at times. I think I’ve made some significant progress to mitigate my anxiety levels. Just knowing what’s happening to me has on many occasions allowed me to control my reaction, but further progress hopefully will, and needs to, be made.

I think for 2013 this will be best achieved by 2013 Resolution Two – “Work on your patience levels, not everyone is like you!!!”. We then turn to a success story …

“Then there’s reflection and recording. I’d already discovered amazingly after 40+ years of zero-reflection that this was something I should work on; and this, and my other blogs are therapeutic in that sense. They are also practically very supportive as a means of capturing ideas, feelings and observations that previously had been soon forgotten. Reflective thought takes a lot of practice; I’m just at the beginning of the journey – but I have taken the first steps and I must continue on that journey (Resolution Four).”

I’ve kept going, and I know I’m far better at reflective thought than I ever was, but I also know that I’ve a way to go before I could truly say it was embedded in my behaviour. If that happens, perhaps I’ll also be at peace with myself and my anxiety levels will have dropped to more “normal” levels. I think perhaps the challenge here for me is to continue to be reflective, but perhaps not so public about it all. That will be really difficult because I really enjoy blogging. Along with my photography, it’s the most creative thing I do, so perhaps that’s the answer – put more effort into photography and reflecting on the process and output. Perhaps “Moments like these …” will be the major focus of my efforts this year.

Yes let’s make that 2013 Resolution Three – “Really work on your photography and write about the experience”. Now we turn to “the dark side”.

“Thirdly, there’s depression and stress. I would never have thought that I was someone who got depressed, or who got stressed, but I do both … and I believe (for me) that they’re inter-related and are usually the result of me not recognising one state or the other. So I must listen to my mind (as well as my body) and behave accordingly. As another very close friend and colleague has just said to me, I must “focus on the fun things” – that I intend to do (Resolution Five).”

So true … “focus on the fun things” … but I’m beginning to think that as well as fitness, my diet has a lot to answer for as well, or rather my poor diet!! I’m not going to go into details here, just go straight to the resolution.

2013 Resolution Four – “Drink less alcohol, eat less sugar be kinder to my body.” Full-stop.

” … So, I suppose Resolution Six is to slow down a bit, try and relax …”

I’ve truncated this one, you’ll have to go back to the original to get the context and the shocking truth :-) . They say you can’t teach an old dog, new tricks … perhaps they’re right. I always seem to need to be doing something. I’ve still got piles of “stuff” around me, to sort, read, process, DO! Will that ever change? I hope so, but to get there I need to clear the decks first.

So, for 2013 Resolution Five – “Get that loft sorted … now!”. Excuse me, must get upstairs and on with de-cluttering my life, or at least our loft!

Photography and technology – an update

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It’s less than a month since I wrote a post on roughly the same subject – but how fast technology moves, and how you can be challenged to re-think the way you do things … if you have the time! For me, the penny just dropped this morning on how I could use Apple’s iCloud on Perseus (the Windows beast in the loft)! Up ’till now I’ve been using iCloud to synchronise Photostreams between the iPad and iPhone and #MBP (my MacBookPro laptop). I hadn’t thought of using it on the PC at all, indeed, I didn’t want any further confusion in the complex synchronisation world I already inhabit – Dropbox, Oxygen and GoogleDrive.

Suddenly, however a missing “use case” came to me, one that I’d completely overlooked – how do I make photos uploaded into Lightroom (on the PC) easily accessible for social media posts (Instagram, blipfoto, Google+) from the iPhone/iPad. The solution was obvious, but I’d overlooked it! I would make my imports folder on the PC (where I create a back-up copy of pictures uploaded into the main Lightroom filestore) the iCloud folder I synchronise for My Photostream. Voila! I have a new workflow and one that is implemented in the background without me having to do anything at all. Once the photographs have been backed-up again – to an external hard-disk – the imports folder is wiped and the iCloud storage (Photostream) is cleared also. Don’t you just love technology!

So here below is the new, revised, updated, edited version of the earlier post.

I’ve been meaning to write this down for a long-time. Now seems as good a time as any to have a first-shot at documenting what I do.

I use three cameras. The main one is the Sony Alpha 700 – it uses Compact Flash cards but I usually transfer pictures off it using the USB cable. The everyday camera (used on walks as well) is my Panasonic Lumix TZ10 – it uses SD cards, but again I tend to use the cable for transfer pictures. I use it also for short video clips. It has an inbuilt GPS capability which I have switched-on. It’s worth noting that I have several Compact Flash and SD cards. I try NOT to delete any pictures from a card whilst away from the desktop machine, even if I’ve downloaded pictures to either the Mac Book Pro, or the iPad.

[Incidentally, the iPad with the Camera Connector kit works really well and is a good travelling companion with these two cameras. To transfer photos from the iPad (or iPhone) to your computer read this article from Apple]

Finally I use my iPhone 4s for both pictures and video clips. I transfer them using Import Pictures and Videos from Windows to the PC They are uploaded to a My Photostream folder on the PC using iCloud. They are also uploaded to Google+ Photos by Instant Upload. I don’t sync photos with iTunes. Albums of “post-processed/finished” pictures are uploaded to Picasaweb (Google+ Photos), 500px, or Flickr or synchronised by specific folder using iTunes.

Pictures from the first two cameras are always imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (v.4) into a Folder for the Year, Sub-folder for the date residing in the My Pictures folder (which happens to be on my Removable Hard Disk (E) drive in Perseus (my dual-boot WinPC) – I plan to move this to my faster and larger User Space (F) drive at some time as this will be my main work area). The import is controlled by a Pre-set in Lightroom, and a Backup Copy of the pictures is made at the same time automatically to a folder on a different drive (currently F:\My backups\Lightroom\Imports\). This folder is cleared-out periodically after other backups have taken place. [NB This is the folder I'm using as the iClouds upload folder.]

Pictures from the iPhone are Imported into a separate iPhone Pictures the My Photostream folder in the My Pictures folder and stored by date. Only rarely will photos from this folder be imported into Lightroom.Photos from this folder will occasionally be imported into Lightroom.

After processing in Lightroom, which includes tagging them and adding them to Collections, they will be exported to Picasaweb using a Lightroom Plugin (or 500px, or Flickr, or …) for sharing in Google+. They might also be exported as a final picture into a JPG (all other work with the Sony pictures is done on the RAW {.ARW} format files) because Lightroom does not store changed pictures, it stores the changes you’ve made to an original – so you can always go back to the original) – and to do this I save at the highest possible quality and size.

Photography capture workflow

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I’ve been meaning to write this down for a long-time. Now seems as good a time as any to have a first-shot at documenting what I do.

I use three cameras. The main one is the Sony Alpha 700 – it uses Compact Flash cards but I usually transfer pictures off it using the USB cable. The everyday camera (used on walks as well) is my Panasonic Lumix TZ10 – it uses SD cards, but again I tend to use the cable for transfer pictures. I use it also for short video clips. It has an inbuilt GPS capability which I have switched-on. It’s worth noting that I have several Compact Flash and SD cards. I try NOT to delete any pictures from a card whilst away from the desktop machine, even if I’ve downloaded pictures to either the Mac Book Pro, or the iPad.

[Incidentally, the iPad with the Camera Connector kit works really well and is a good travelling companion with these two cameras.]

Finally I use my iPhone 4s for both pictures and video clips. I transfer them using Import Pictures and Videos from Windows to the PC. They are also uploaded to Google+ Photos by Instant Upload. I don’t sync photos with iTunes.

Pictures from the first two cameras are always imported into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (v.4) into a Folder for the Year, Sub-folder for the date residing in the My Pictures folder (which happens to be on my Removable Hard Disk (E) drive in Perseus (my dual-boot WinPC) – I plan to move this to my faster and larger User Space (F) drive at some time as this will be my main work area). The import is controlled by a Pre-set in Lightroom, and a Backup Copy of the pictures is made at the same time automatically to a folder on a different drive (currently F:\My backups\Lightroom\Imports\). This folder is cleared-out periodically after other backups have taken place.

Pictures from the iPhone are Imported into a separate iPhone Pictures folder in the My Pictures folder and stored by date. Only rarely will photos from this folder be imported into Lightroom.

After processing in Lightroom, which includes tagging them and adding them to Collections, they will be exported to Picasaweb using a Lightroom Plugin (or 500px, or Flickr, or …) for sharing in Google+. They might also be exported as a final picture into a JPG (all other work with the Sony pictures is done on the RAW {.ARW} format files) because Lightroom does not store changed pictures, it stores the changes you’ve made to an original – so you can always go back to the original) – and to do this I save at the highest possible quality and size.

Sharing Videos with Google+ Circles (Restricted Posting)

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[This post was updated 8th June, 2012 to reflect my better understanding of how Blogger/blogspot can work with Google+]

It’s not immediately apparent what the best way of sharing videos with a restricted set of people is. Probably the easiest way of doing this was Posterous, but it’s future must be now in doubt following it’s acquisition by Twitter, so for  sharing family videos it’s worth examining alternatives. You can of course host them on a service such as Vimeo or YouTube, or embed them in a blog post, and there are advantages and disadvantages of whatever approach you take. However, with Google+ you have the ability to define a Circle of the people you wish to see a video and then share that video with just them, either as a link to the clip hosted on YouTube or Vimeo, or from the video you’ve uploaded to Google+ Photos.

Before I discuss how you do this, it’s worth just mentioning my experience of using both of the two main blogging platforms – WordPress and Blogger – with embedded video. Until recently I thought there was really only one workable solution – WordPress but that’s all changed for me now.

With Blogger and its Private Blogs I thought you needed to add by invite, named people, but now I’ve realised and tested a Private Blog with Anyone able to read it. Your blog and its posts are not listed on Blogger and cannot be searched by name, post or content by any search engine – just what you want for a Private blog. Moreover when you go to Publish a post a Google+ Share box pops up which allows you to publish the post (with a separate commentary in Google+) to whoever you chose. Just what you want especially as YouTube videos and Vimeo videos can be embedded easily in Blogger posts as long as you list your blogspot domain in the list of permitted domains for embedding (see next para).

WordPress allows Password Protected posts which means that you can host a video on Vimeo (I have a subscription to Vimeo Plus) and restrict it’s visibility to being embedded on a defined set of domains as well as making it unavailable for viewing on Vimeo itself. You can then Password Protect the blog post where you’ve embedded the video clip and only people who know the password can see the post. In many ways this is similar to the result achieved with Posterous.

Of course you can also use Vimeo as the vehicle for sharing and Password Protect the videos there and achieve the same result, but I prefer to use Vimeo as a hosting platform only, not as another social network. Unfortunately YouTube doesn’t provide Password Protection of videos, but does provide the Unlisted option (a bit like the way Blogger does it) which does make sharing on Google+ such a good option and that is why I discuss that option, and using it with Google+, below.

It is worth mentioning that if you do want to make absolutely sure that your video is only visible to the people you share it with then you should Lock the Post, so do remember to do that for guaranteed restricted viewing!

Firstly, I will describe the process of sharing videos from an iPhone, and will then turn to how I do the same using a Flip Ultra HD and a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10. The process is probably similar for any smartphone, camcorder and digital camera with video capabilities.

Posting an iPhone video to Google+ for restricted viewing

This is the easiest and most straightforward workflow, it’s only real disadvantage is that it is not designed to allow the video to be subsequently shared in any other way than through Google+. There are two ways of doing it – the second is the easiest, but probably most people would use the first option.

Option1: Upload to Google+ Photos from Photos > Camera Roll on the iPhone

i) open Google+, select Post;

ii) choose Photos > Camera Roll and the video you want to share;

iii) select Circle or people you want to share the video with, and provide text for Post and press Post.

Option 2: Post directly to Google+ from camera

i) open Google+, select Camera;

ii) take video, select Use to use this video in your Post;

iii) select Circle or people you want to share the video with, and provide text for Post and press Post.

Posting an iPhone video to YouTube for restricted viewing on Google+

This use case requires that you use either a desktop browser with YouTube (the iOS YouTube app does not allow sharing on Google+ … yet), or access YouTube from the iPhone’s Safari!! I tend to use the first option, but if you don’t have access to another system you’ll need to use the rather convoluted method described in the second option.

Option 1: Using a desktop browser with YouTube

i) take video and then from Photos > Albums > Camera Roll select video clip from Album;

ii) select Send to YouTube, complete all parts of Publish Video screen, including selecting Standard or High Definition, and most importantly selecting Unlisted so that anyone who has the link to the video can see it, but it is not searchable, or findable on YouTube;

iii) press Publish button and after it’s been published to YouTube – press Close button;

iv) open Google+ on desktop, start a new post and Add your video clip from “Your YouTube videos” option;

v) complete Status Update text and choose Circle(s) or People you want to share the video with and Share the post.

Option 2: Using iPhone’s Safari with YouTube to post to Google+

i) take video and then from Photos > Albums > Camera Roll select video clip from Album;

ii) select Send to YouTube, complete all parts of Publish Video screen, including selecting Standard or High Definition, and most importantly selecting Unlisted so that anyone who has the link to the video can see it, but it is not searchable, or findable on YouTube;

iii) press Publish button and after it’s been published to YouTube – press Close button;

iv) open your YouTube account in Safari on the iPhone, select video and press < button to show options;

v) press Share and then select Google+ from “Share this Video” options.

Some other thoughts. You might wish to do a little bit of editing before posting. The iMovie app could help you there because it allows publishing to YouTube and Vimeo as well from the app. It costs £2.99 from the App Store and integrates well with iMovie on the Mac.

If you can’t be bothered to do an upload of your video, you can switch on Instant Upload in Google+ which will upload videos and photos taken on your iPhone to a Private Google+ folder. This can be set to only upload when connected to WiFi, or over the Mobile Network as well. It takes place when Google+ is active and for a short time afterwards. You can then access the videos by going to Photos within the Google+ app, and selecting them … “From your phone” and sharing them.