Griff at 4.5 months.
Content © Gavan P.L. Watson, Some Rights Reserved.
Archive: March, 2009
March 21, 2009
Birding plates
I’m in the process of culling my photo collection and came across my collection of bird & birding vanity plates taken last year in the Point Pelee National Park parking lot.
March 20, 2009
Finding missing photos in Lightroom 2
The short.
Grayed-out and question-mark inflicted folders in Lightroom?
This solution works when your photographs’ Lightroom directory structure remains the same but parent directories have moved (due to, for example, installing a new OS).
Quick solution :
If no parent folder exists:
- In the Library module, under the Folders panel (ctrl+shift+2) right-click one folder and select “Add parent folder”
- Make sure that the old parent folder and the new parent folder share the same name, if not, change new parent folder to match old parent folder name (not in Lightroom, but in Windows Explorer).
Once parent folder exists:
- Selecting the parent folder, right click and select “Update folder location.”
- Point to parent folder.
- Lightroom should now find all you photos.
Good Luck!
The long.
I recently downgraded from Windows Vista to XP. In the process of doing this I had to format my hard drive and reinstall everything. While it’s nice to have “renovated the house”, there are always headaches to deal with with any OS re-install. My biggest was that the directory structure for XP and Vista are different so that, even after I saved my Lightroom catalogue to a second external hard drive (see my post on managing Lightroom catalogues for more information on that) and added it back to my fresh Lightroom install, Lightroom thought that all of my pictures were missing in action.
I was underwhelmed with Adobe’s suggestion, in part because my catalogue structure was without a parent folder and Adobe’s solution would have me selecting each folder and telling the program where it went. With over 100 folders, this menial task seemed like too much repetitive work. I was looking for a batch solution.
After farting around, I found a surprisingly easy solution: when you right click any folder (that is, any folder without a parent folder), you get an option to “add parent folder”. Simply click this and the parent folder should appear. For me, this made “Pictures” appear as the parent folder. This is the default file folder in Vista but in XP, it is “My Pictures”. I changed the file folder name in XP to “Pictures” so that they matched. With this done, there was enough continuity with old and new directory structure to tell Lightroom where to find the photos.
Right-clicking the parent Pictures directory in Lightroom, I selected the “Update folder location” option and, using the folder tree, pointed to the parent directory. Lightroom is smart enough that once it has found a parent directory to look for all the children folders. So, once you’ve pointed it in the right direction, the process becomes automated.
Thankfully, Lightroom found all my photographs.
(Truth be told, my process was a was a wee bit longer. Prior to figuring this out, I had pointed Lightroom to a few children folders. This, problematically created two parent folders called “Pictures”. When I figured out what I was doing and tried to “update folder location” for the missing Pictures folder (that held the majority of my folders), I got a message, to the effect that this folder was already added to my catalogue. Shit! The solution? In windows explorer, I created a dummy parent folder (which I called “Dummy”) and then moved the Pictures folder into it. Now, in Lightroom, all my photos went missing again. Selecting the Pictures parent directory with the most children folders, I updated to the new folder location. Now I had to manually change the folder location for the remaining folders, but this was a much shorter process. With all the folders back together, I closed Lightroom and moved the “Pictures” folder out of the dummy folder back to its original location. Reopening Lightroom caused the pictures to go missing again, but it was a matter of following the five steps above to get everything back in order.)
March 18, 2009
Collapsing space and freezing time in birding
The following post includes ruminations and ideas emerging as I analyze the data collected for my PhD dissertation focusing on the act of birding. It doesn’t represent a final thought or particular endpoint: these are ideas in progress. I would be interested in hearing your opinion of my ideas, too.
Many birding technologies appear to serve the function of augmenting the process of identification of observed birds. These ID technologies seem to serve two broad functions to augment limitations birders face: the first is the the distance between themselves and observed birds and the second is the ability to identify a bird during the (unpredictable) length of time they have watching it. Putting the second another way, it’s the speed with which a birder can make an identification that they think is correct.
Birders attempt to correct the first by using technologies that collapse space and seem to correct the second by using technologies that change the nature of time. Let me expand a bit because while I think collapsing space is easy to understand if you’ve birded, freezing time might be a bit more oblique.
March 5, 2009
Female Blue Tits use home-made potpourri in nests to to attract males and have healthier chicks
Blue Tit used under a creative commons lisence by Marko_K. Thanks Marko!
Blue Tits (Cyanistes caeruleus) nesting on the Medeteranian island of Corsica have been known to incorporate fresh sprigs of aromatic plants, like French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) into their nest cups. New research1 reports that there may be benefits beyond a nest that smells like potpourri: these aromatic plants offer benefits to larger broods of Blue Tit chicks.
The potpourri, interestingly, does not reduce the number of ectoparasites2 found on the birds in the nest. Rather, the researchers suggest that either the aromatic plants offer immune system benefits (mechanism still unknown) or, and I quite rather like this idea, the females that actively incorporate fresh sprigs of aromatic plants are indicating their fitness to males. In other words, the fresher, more aromatic the nests, the “better” the female is as a mate (and subsequently, the “better” the offspring).
Now that makes you think about that stale bowl of potpourri on the back of your great-aunt’s toilet tank differently…
- Aromatic plants in nests of blue tits: positive effects on nestlings by Adèle Mennerata, Philippe Perreta, Patrice Bourgaultc, Jacques Blondela, Olivier Gimeneza, Don W. Thomasc, Philipp Heebb and Marcel M. Lambrechtsa [↩]
- Corsican Blue Tits hold the distinction of having the highest known “loads” of blow fly larvae, for example [↩]
March 1, 2009
Four weeks of Griff
, originally uploaded by Gavatron.
The Griffaroo turned 14 weeks this Saturday and we’ve been living with him for the last four of those. When we brought him home, he was certainly very puppy-like and he continues to be: ankle-biting, mouthing and all that good puppy stuff.
Compared to Ollie, he certainly was (and is) much more assertive. The first two weeks on putting him on his back was always a struggle–he would squirm and bite as though he didn’t want to be there and couldn’t understand why I was doing this to him. Hallmarks of a dominant dog.
During those first weeks in new situations, such as meeting another dog or person, his reaction was to bark. And not a friendly “let’s play” bark but a puppy version of “eff-off…if you come any closer I’ll kill you”. It was worrisome. He would also growl at us in particular situations: once when I took a bull penis away (don’t worry, they’re dog treats) and also once when picking him up. Our reaction to this was to continue to do the actions and not accept a growl as an appropriate behaviour. Letting him know that we’re in charge and he does what we want him to do, we started to hand feed him and interrupt other acts of daily life to see what reaction we would get. 99.9% of the time, he’s fine with everything that’s going on.
We’ve worked hard on this growling and barking through socialization; with other dogs and people. He’s improving on both fronts, and we’re both feeling like he’s making progress toward a less fearful reaction when in threatening situations.
It doesn’t mean it’s all sunshine and lollipops at this point. Dad came to visit today and, with Griff in his lap, bent down to say hello. When he got close to Griff’s face, Griff growled and moved away. An improvement, but still growling in a situation like that is unacceptable. We got the treats out, and had Dad continue to be close to his face and feed him the treats. No more growling and even a few licks. Now, hopefully he’ll be less fearful when a stranger picks him up and gets close: good things happened the last time this happened to me.
All of this is challenging. We need Griff to be a well-balanced, predictable dog. Acting out of fear is not a reaction we can live with. And while it’s scary not to know what the future holds (will he get worse? Become that monster of a Terrier that you can’t trust with anyone?) he’s such a smart, sweet boy the majority of the time that we’re committed to making this work.
Last sighting
