Library management software

I've always had a things for books, and photography has only increased my love of books. When it comes to photography, I love a physical print. And when it comes to physical prints, I love a luscious coffee table book full of them. Combine that love with my lifelong addiction to other non-fiction books and I've ended up with a lot of books. How many books? I don't know. And thus my recent desire to catalog my book collection. It's especially bad when I go to a used bookstore or the book sale at the library and see a book I'm interested in and sometimes I honestly can't remember if I have that book or not. I used to have this problem with CDs all the time. I would find a good deal on a CD I like, get excited about it and buy it, bring it home and then find I already owned it. I solved that problem by getting an iPod, so I have a good portion of my music collection with me at the store. I don't buy duplicate CDs anymore!

I want something similar for managing my books (photographic and other) and I've started too look at the options.  The first obvious option is Delicious Library from Wil Shipley.   I was a huge Omni Software fan in the 90's and on the surface it looks like he's come up with something cool for managing libraries.

Here's my list of desires:

1. Allows searching and sorting by title, author, keyword, etc.
2. Exports inventory of books I own to something I can carry on my iPhone.  (pdf, etc.)
3. Supports ordering by Dewey Decimal system as well as Library of Congress.  I'm getting to the point where I may actually start arranging my shelves by one of these systems.   I'm partial to LoC since it is not proprietary like the Dewey system and it catalogs (computer) science books better.

That's it for actual requirements.  But since this is 2011, most software is Internet aware so I'm open to some cool Internet-enabled features.  Also, there are a few other features I'd like to see, even though they're not deal-breaker requirements:

1. "If you like that then you might like this" functionality.  Like Amazon suggestions.
2. Some sort of functional iPhone/iPad client that lets me browse my collection on the go, without Internet connectivity.
3. Grabbing metadata from the Internet is cool so I don't have to type everything in.

I have something to say about that Internet thing.   The main benefit I see in adding networking functionality is to help me discover new books.  I can already go to Amazon for any given title and see what other books people like so this software should do more.  I'm talking full-on social networking here, but anonymously if I choose.  Two points here:

1. The algorithm for suggestions should get better the more books I enter.
2. The algorithm should get better as I share my list with more friends.

The first point is huge.   As I mentioned, Amazon can already tell me what other books I might be interested in based on one single book. But this software knows more than that, so the suggestions should be better.  I'm thinking of a use case where it says "Everyone in your friend group who owns these 4 books also owns this one other book."  The smarter the software, the better the suggestions should get as it has access to more data.

So I've downloaded Delicious Library and I'm trying it out.   I've hit a few snags already (no Library of Congress numbers, haven't figured out the best way to export for my iPhone, can display a virtual bookshelf with covers but not with spines, half of the help entries seem broken, not sure if there will ever be another update) but I'm persevering.  My main problem is that all my books are in boxes right now which makes it hard to build up my library and really test it, but these are the snags I've identified already.

Do you use Delicious or any other competing software?  Let me know in the comments.   I'm especially interested in what other alternatives are out there.

Adobe ACE exam: why do it?

I was reading John Nack's blog the other day and discovered the Adobe ACE program (Adobe Certified Expert) which is where you go to a testing center and take a multiple choice exam about a specific Adobe product.  If you pass you get to call yourself an "Adobe ACE" in that product, including using the Adobe name (and logo?) to promote yourself.  This theoretically shows people you know what you're talking about and gives you a little more credibility in dinner party arguments over software.  :-)   I immediately thought about taking the Lightroom exam, figuring I could probably pass it without too much trouble. I can see a certification like this being important for a lot of people trying to get entry level jobs in the content creation world.   Let's say you're graduating from school and you use Photoshop all the time and you want to get a job in the graphic arts industry.   For $150 you could take this test, put the Adobe name on your resume, and hope that makes you stand out above the crowd a little bit.   I don't know much about the graphic arts industry but that sounds plausible.   I assume that anyone with more experience would already have a portfolio or a reputation and this wouldn't be very useful though.

But I'm not looking for a job as a graphic designer.  The main reason I would want to do it would be to lend myself credibility for consulting/contract jobs as well as teaching/lecturing/training opportunities.   So I started looking into it, with the eye towards taking the test in the next week or two.

First off, the exam costs $150 and there's no refund if you don't pass, so there's some incentive to not just go into it cold.   You get to say you're an official "Adobe Certified Expert".  But then it's up to you.

What's really missing is some form of registry for Adobe ACEs.   I got really excited when I saw a link to the "Adobe Certified Expert Community".  I thought this would be the place to see the community of ACEs, find one in your area, look at profiles, figure out who to hire.  But no, that's not what it is.  It seems like Adobe would want to push this huge collection of people who are passionate about their products.  Having something like that would be good for both Adobe and the people who are free evangelists for their products.

So if Adobe is leaving the marketing to the ACEs themselves, let's see how that's working out.   If you google "Adobe Lightroom ACE" the first four hits are Adobe's own links to the test.   The next link is a blog entry from 2008 from a guy saying he passed.  The next links are for test prep materials.   What's missing is people advertising their services and mentioning their ACE certification.  A search for "Adobe Lightroom ACE near San Jose" turns up nobody advertising their services as an Adobe ACE.

So, where's the evidence that anyone has actually ever taken this exam?   Why isn't Adobe pushing this?  Has anyone ever tried to use this certification to get a job?

And most importantly,  should I pay $150 for this?

Suffer for my art

This weekend makes twice in the last year I've been painfully bitten by bugs while doing photography.

I was first bitten by a wasp last summer wile standing on a beach at Lake Tahoe at 11:00 pm. What kind of wasp bites people in the middle of the night? The resulting picture is here:

Then just this past Sunday while I was lying on my belly in a field I picked up a tick that burrowed into my torso. I was only on my belly for one photo so I'm pretty sure I know exactly which picture I was taking when I picked this guy up:

That picture was taken after expert extraction by my lovely wife.  Her comment was "are you going to pass out now?"  (I didn't)   I find it ironic that I was on a field trip for a class on shooting macro photography when I picked this up, giving me the perfect opportunity to take a picture of something very small!   The picture above is really just a snapshot taken quickly in the kitchen - not a lot of setup involved.   It's not exactly professional quality, but I wasn't really in my right frame of mind at the time.

The picture I was taking while lying on his home is here:

Also not really top-rate but I'm including it here for completeness' sake.   I guess this is all the more reason to spend $200 and pick up the Canon angle view finder attachment - because sometimes kneeing is way better than lying down on your belly...

Replaced the GPS

My friend Philip commented in the post I made about losing my GPS that I should just get another Garmin Legend HCx, since they have gotten more affordable.  I looked at the newer Oregon/Dakota models but I ended up taking Philip's advice and just getting another one of the exact same thing I had before. I went to a store and played with the newer Colorado and Dakota models and came to the conclusion that they weren't really improvements over the eTrex line.

The eTrex line is proven as a good tool.  Sure, they're not perfect but they're pretty good.   The only real complaints I have are the screen is dark without the backlight on and the joystick sticks up too far and keeps moving around when I put it in a pocket.   Other than that, it's pretty much fine.

The newer models show quite a bit of "improvement" from the "slickness" department.  The main change is the touch screen and the new "friendly" UI.   You know how there' Lego blocks, and then there's Duplo for the younger kids?  The eTrex User Interface is Lego and the Dakota is Duplo.   The touchscreen is very "eh...".   I have an iphone so I know what touchscreens are supposed to be like.   This is not responsive or accurate like that.  I have no idea what would happen if you were wearing gloves.

Then there's the new and improved larger, bulkier size.   And the crappier battery life.

Wait - It costs more too?

You see where I'm going with this...   I hope they never discontinue the eTrex.   You should buy one.  (as long as it accepts a micrSD card for recording tracks to.)

Attending Macro/Food/Close-up photo class this weekend

I'm looking forward to attending a photo workshop at Keeble and Shuchat this weekend about close-ups, macro, food, flowers, etc.   The workshop will be led by a guy named Dave Henry, who I haven't met before.   It's sponsored by Canon and there will be a lot of Canon gear there to borrow but I'm hoping the content will be mostly brand-agnostic. More info is available in this PDF here: http://www.kspphoto.com/files/macro_henry.pdf

You can see other classes that Keeble and Schuchat hosts here:  http://www.kspphoto.com/photo_classes.html

Anyone else planning to attend?

Transferring blog archives, and Dubai

Migrating archives from old blog

Things are moving along well with the blog here at Brian Johns Photography World Headquarters.   One month in and I'm pretty happy with the new Wordpress setup.  It beats the hell out of the old custom pile of code...

I'm making slow progress on transferring old blog entries from the old system into Wordpress though.   The old system was totally proprietary and all I have from it is a mysql dump file, so I'm entering the blog entries into Wordpress one at a time.   I'm taking the time to edit here and there, as well as add some pictures.   I'm transferring articles in some approximate priority order.  The articles I feel are most important have been moved.

I find the media library in Wordpress to be a bit slow to use.  I was embedding links to Flickr and Photoshelter in the past but I'm trying to get away from that and become more self-reliant.   That means exporting pictures from Lightroom to my hard drive, uploading to Wordpress, and then placing the picture in the posts.   I wonder if there's a Wordpress plugin for Lightroom...

Dubai

I was thinking of going to Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai this week to catch lectures by Joey Lawrence and a few other great photogs.  Unfortunately the cost of the conference has really gone up so I didn't end up making it.   There are various other plans for international photography brewing though, so stay tuned for more on that front.