The news no one wants

As much as a gut punch the news was, I would rather be informed than get blind sided.  Cancer fucking sucks.

It came back with a vengeance. My stepfather is in hospice, palliative care only.  He has made the decision of pain management only, no feeding tubes, no machines, no heroic measures.

I'm.. confused at how I feel.

Part of me is 'dad is dying', and it's a kick to the gut.  He was the ONLY one who comforted me when my sister died, at the wake.  If it hadn't been for him, I would have lost my eldest son to drowning, and not have 4 beautiful grandchildren.

The other part... angry that he's giving in, because my mother, although with a few creaking joints, is in good health, she needs him.  I know she is a tough old gal, but she needs him.

Yet another part is relieved because I know he's been fighting cancer for decades and he is TIRED.  So very tired. And he deserves to rest on his own terms.

Cancer fucking sucks.

Why do they have to make it so damned difficult?

Yes, I know that 123Cheese is gone, defunk, vanished into the bitstream.  That isn't the difficultly.

The difficulty is this: Photobookshop dot com dot au, Photobookclub dot com dot au, and The Designer all use the same program. Same layouts, same menus, same EVERYTHING... BUT, they can't read each other's finished products (and two of them are different branches of same freaking company!) due to encryption. Really, guys? Do you really think there is a black market in trading photobook formats?

So, how do I fix the problem of getting my 123Cheese photobook into any of the other.  The slow, tedious, repetitive open each of the pages in 123Cheese, screencap the windows, save as jpgs. THEN 'rebuild' the books in one of the other programs.

Doesn't that sound like fun?  (voice heavily dripping with sarcasm)

I got one 100 page book done, but need to take a break.

Short, SLOW, excursion out today

Just to the shops to pick up a few items, then off to the pet store to get some grain free food for Keito. Wing went to the fish monger to get supplies for tonight.

I pit-stopped in K-Mart to pick up some cheapish leggings to wear.  I have been wearing the hinged knee brace under my pants mostly to keep it out of sight, but the back of my leg itched like crazy.  Wearing the brace over the leggings stops the itching and, as a bonus, seems to make people a bit more tolerant/sympathetic as to why I am walking slowing. 

Knee still aches, but nothing like it did two days ago. That can be chalked up to 50mls of fluid drained, and pain killers.  Don't think the SYNVISC has started working in just two days.

Still feel very tired, though. I zonked out reclining in my chair.

Talked with Dr S yesterday

Not just about the knee and how to treat it, but what this whole thing is doing to me.

9 years ago a calcified disc between two vertebrae collapsed, needed surgery to fix it.  I adjusted to my limitations after the back surgery.  I didn't like the fact that dancing, both teaching and performing, was no longer possible. It hurt, as I loved it.  But I adjusted. I took up photography again, and could go out whenever and where ever.

But this. Even trying to type this out, I'm trying not to lose it again. I hate this.  The not being able to do even what i used to do. I can't even go for a walk in the park because it just hurts too much (bone on bone grinding leaves me gasping in pain sometimes). More than once, I have finished cooking dinner by resting my elbows on the counter to hold myself up.  I am so tired all the time. I also find myself crying, not just because the knee hurts, but from frustration, but because I feel I am a burden and a disappointment.

Dr S understood, was very compassionate, and told me that chronic pain/inability to do usual activities is very wearing on the body and spirit, and how I felt was normal. 

Here's hoping the 2nd round of SYNVISC will give me longer good result.

Keito, still going strong!

 

“Hey! Where’s my dinner!”   If it wasn’t for him having to have an insulin shot after his morning feed, and having three scheduled feeds through the rest of the day instead of just two feeds and letting him graze on kibble, and the way he chases after “The Red Bug” aka laser dot, you wouldn’t know he was a 14yr old moggie with diabetes.  Vets have said his heart/liver/kidney/lung functions are fine. No sign of arthritis, sight and hearing is fine, and even his teeth are good conditon.

This still irks me

RedFox AnyDVD HD - To me, this was a great shell game.

A year or so ago, ONE person left Slysoft, all the others stayed. 

Then Slysoft was 'shut down', then was reopened a nanosecond later as Redfox 'Project'. Exactly the same software, slightly different logo (they only put a black mask on the Fox, I kid you not, that was all that was done). They insist they're NEW company, but Slysoft forums still work, as does Slysoft software checking for updates. So yes, it was a name and possible location change, but they were no longer going to honor Slysoft license holders.

Here's the rub: I had gotten the life time updates option for Slysoft.  'Redfox Project' graciously offered a 20% discount for Slysoft lifetime license holders.

To me, this is like if the FORD company decided to rename to CORD, and every FORD owner was told their extended warranty, lemon laws, or contracts weren't going to be honored.

I did end up getting the lifetime license again, as I do NOT do subscription software if I can avoid it.  Here's hoping they don't pull another shell game.

The Babylon 5 Universe just got smaller.. again

Stephen Furst - "Vir Cotto" has died at age 63.

The Vivid Sydney 2017 Festival

 

#VividSydney, #VividCanon ,  #VividToronga

As much as I enjoyed Vivid Sydney

I'm in a funk about it. I had so looked forward to photowalks, climbing up to high spots to get long exposures, to put my Alpine PULSE to work for making timelapses.... *sigh* 

I've gone through the photos I managed to get...  but still disappointed that I was only able to do about 20% of what I had planned.

Maybe it's just me

But when I install a new version of a program over an older version, I always make sure I have the previous version, or versions, available just in case there is a problem with the latest.

Someone on a forum asked "How can I roll back to the previous version? (with the only other info is that the current one is bad, has problems and the problems haven't been fixed in the latest version)

I said he should be able to just reinstall the older version to overwrite the newer.

He left a snarky reply "If I had the older version, I doubt I would be on here to ask about rolling back."

So I left equally snarky reply "Your original post didn’t mention you didn’t save the previous version before overwriting with a new version. *shrug*"

Dear Charity caller

I know what charities I donate to, and I really don't appreciate whoever gave you/sold you the names of people who do donate. 

When you call my house, and I damned well know I have never donated to you, and even say to you "I've never contacted you." and you agree, I will hang up on you after I say "I donate to who I want to, and don't appreciate the dinner time call." 

*CLICK*

My timing can be diabolical

While Wing  and I were meandering back to the hotel after visiting the Sea Life Sydney Aquarium. He would stop to take some street shots, I would do the same but elsewhere. To save some wear and tear on my right knee, I walked to the elevator to take it up to stories to the boardwalk.

Wing walked up the stairs, and he must have done it after I had gotten on the elevator and didn't see what i had done.

The doors silently opened, and I step out, silently, saw he was tapping out a text message.  I knew it was a "Where B U?" to me.

Before he hit send, I said "I'm right here."

He said "OH JEEZUS!!" and jumped back.

Accidentally overdid it yesterday

And it well and truly wasn't my fault. Each leg of the trip the terminal was at the furthest end of the fekking airport! From Perth, to Melbourne and then to Sydney. And of course the baggage collection was at the furthest spot from where we disembarked.

Ok, then to the hotel/apartment.  Given slightly wrong directions as to which building was the hotel. So, turned around headed back to the right one.  Then, headed to Darling Harbor to catch ferry to Circular Quay. Was given wrong directions as to which dock we were supposed to be at, and was sent the opposite direction.  THEN we got correct directions and had to head waaaay the hell back the other way.

I broke out my google maps for pedestrians, and was able to find the Museum of Contemporary arts, and was only a little late. Photographer graciously allowed me to attend the 2nd session.  Came back to hotel after a light dinner. I was exhausted.  I fell asleep in strange place and didn't wake up until almost 8am.

The overdoing showed up today. Was able to visit the Sydney Aquarium. But dayam it was all I could do to NOT just plunk my ass down, with my leg stuck out.

Gonna take it easy for the rest of today. Process some photos, get dinner ready for Wing

100% Edited in On1Photo RAW 2017.5 Pre-release

This was an image that I knew had issues. Noisy, lighting all over the place because of cloudy skies during a rainy sunrise.

On1 develop the raw image. I made sure I had clipping visible, and reduced the white levels, but not entirely, as it is a sunrise image, so a small bright spot is to be expected.  I then went to Lens Correction. On1, like Adobe Camera Raw, picked the wrong lens. The lens used was the Tamron 24-70, but they both seem to want to choose the Sigma 24-70. Easy enough to manually select the Tamron. All distortion and chromatic aberrations gone without any need of extra adjusting.

Noise Reduction: I have to say I am finally satisfied with how On1 handles noise reduction.

Then I went into EFFECTS.  Used Dynamic Contrast, customized setting.  Used Local Settings, a brush, to boost the details in the center of the rocks, making a more detailed path to the ocean. Another brush, to darken the clouds just a slight amount to bring out some details. Last was a Local adjustment, gradient, on the rocks to give them a bit of warmth.

Exported high res jpg into Photoshop, resized and watermarked. Saved.

I am quite pleased with the results.

YES!

On1PhotoRaw 2017.5!  It's the pre-release version for owners of One1PhotoRaw, so expect bugs and hiccups. (I have latest full release, so if I have any issues, I will just reinstall it)

Some of the new features, one of which I had mentioned was missing from On1PhotoRaw.. LENS CORRECTION!  That was one of the things that was keeping me from using On1PhotoRaw exclusively as a camera raw editor.

Here is all the new key features:

Compare Mode - Select multiple photos and zoom and pan them at the same time. We feel we took the best features from compare and survey mode and combined them. Finally, you can zoom, pan, and pick the best shots in a series.

Lens Correction - The New Lens Correction pane in version 2017.5 automatically detects your lens and reduces distortion, chromatic aberration and peripheral fall-off. It automatically applies the correction when you browse to a photo. Further manual adjustments can also be made in Develop. If there isn't a built-in profile for your lens you can manually adjust it as well.

Stacking Presets - We are bringing back the Insert Preset command so you can stack presets in Effects.

Details Pane - The Sharpening and Noise Reduction panes in Develop are merged into a new Details pane focusing on global corrections for raw photos. The noise reduction is more powerful and gives you better tools for visualizing your adjustments. If you like the old Noise Reduction and Sharpening, you can still use them in Effects.

Lightroom Migration - We get requests everyday on the best way to move from Lightroom to ON1. (still twitchy in this pre-release.)

Improved Search - Search using a variety of metadata fields and decide if the search must match all or any of the search criteria. This is one that we hadn't planned on doing right away but there was so many requests in the ON1 Photo Project we decided to move it up.

Clone Stamp - The powerful clone stamp retouching tool from Layers is now inside of Develop and Effects as part of the non-destructive workflow.

Improved Preset Management - You can delete and rename preset categories as well as export categories for sharing and backup. More cameras added, more bug fixes, and more performance upgrades. We will have the details for this during the official launch.

And remember, when On1 installation says KEEP OLDER VERSIONS, it means what it has always meant from years ago; if you're installing an update v10 but still have v9, THAT is the older version it's asking if you to keep. NOT the v10 that is being updated,