digiKam databases

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Well, this is nifty. According to the documentation, digiKam supports using MySQL/MariaDB as a backend as an alternative to local SQLite files. Plus it documents the constraints relevant for using digiKam across multiple computers with respect to databases and collections.

On the whole, I’ve found the documentation pretty good and comprehensive. Sometimes the English feels a little off once in a blue moon. But the docs are pretty solid. I guess between 17 years of active development and growing professional grade feature sets, I should have expected the docs to be worth more than five minutes.

Good on you, digiKam contributors!

Thoughts on photo management

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Along with taking the day for mental health and generally trying to be sane. I’ve been thinking about the future of how my photos are managed and how that needs to evolve.

The present system is pretty much this:

  1. Photos are cached to preferred cloud storage (+2 copies).
    • One is cleared periodically ‘en mass’ after draining.
    • One is cleared periodically during ‘archiving’.
  2. Photos are archived to my file server (+3 copies).
    • Master copies under my Plex media library.
    • Periodically backed up to another local location.
    • Entire file server is backed up locally.
  3. Photos are archived unfiltered to cloud storage (+1 copy).

Now, there’s a few problems with this scheme. Aside from getting off my butt closer to quarterly or yearly than monthly to drain cached images into the master. Over the years the definition of 3 has changed a bit. Another problem has been the evolution of format: I’ve generally migrated from classic JPEG to HEIC, as I’m seeing on the order of 50% disk savings. But of course Plex doesn’t speak HEIC, and therefore viewing outside of mounting the network drive hasn’t worked in years!

I don’t think there’s a good solution to how often I process photos through this pipeline, relative to any other habitual behavior.

There’s also the fact that whether I am draining the cache or actively looking for images, such as building my ‘Remembering Corky’ or ‘Photo Frame’ albums, that doing this at OS level kind of sucks. Explorer and Finder have actually gotten pretty good at dealing with photos since circa 2000, but aren’t exactly fun. More than once I’ve wished for something like Geeqie that my previous Unix machines had. In suffering the native tools, I found that building my Photo Frame album was really damn painful in finder’s gallery view, until I decided to just copy everything to a memory card and go through a process of deleting whatever I don’t want to move.

Actually, the general work flow and process has sucked enough that I’ve considered writing a bit of software to help compensate, or transitioning my master copy into something more cloudy and photo centric. Something that can offer better navigation / movement than a file-centric manager and a little bit more database goodness than my Photos/${YEAR}/${COLLECTION}/ approach to on disk storage.

Then in putzing around Steam Deck, taking its desktop mode for a test drive made me remember an old KDE application called digiKam. It has features for basically everything but pulling free disk storage out its digital back oriface.

In the old days, I never messed around with digiKam. Partly because it and KDE, were kind of heavy weight on my laptop back when I was a KDE user. Partly because by the time digital cameras and smartphones were part of my life, I had no KDE systems and an increasingly heterogeneous computing environment.

I’m thinking that digiKam may be a good solution to the solvable problems. It certainly should be able to handle my photos archive, which is over 40G and 14,000 image and video files. Actually, when the heck did this get so large? It feels like just a lustruum ago, I could fit everything on one Blu-ray layer 😆. Actually, maybe I should run WinDirStat or Grand Perspective over that. On the flip side, digiKam will probably offer much of the goodness I remember Google+ Photos having back when I used that. For me personally, being both cross platform and open source are huge pluses. It’s also helpful that it is one of the more cross platform KDE applications, as KDE off Linux/*BSD has become a thing.

As far as I can tell, there’s two problems to this plan.

Problem one is the file wrangling. My photos will remain on my file server with its redundant 8 TB of storage, and the SQLite databases of digiKam are best kept locally. This means that it will need its own backup management. A simple path is using my Mac and its Time Machine destination for that. How well sharing digiKam’s database files across different systems, I’m not sure, but in any case the trend has been for me to prefer one set of muscle-memory.

Problem two is transient image management. See, most of what I do with images fall under two categories: either my master repo, or some pipeline stage denoted above; or ‘a directory full of stuff I want to peruse’. I’m not sure that digiKam really handles that perusal factor. One of the things that I liked about running Debian and FreeBSD on my laptops, was being able to throw geeqie at that problem. Although, it might be viable to just create a staging area and export things.

In any case, it’s looking like digiKam is probably the best non-proprietary solution for the photo management hoopla that doesn’t involve me writing code to scratch itches.

Corky passed away today

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He had been refusing food, drinking little, been lethargic, breathing hard, for the past few days. We came back from the vet with meds targeting pneumonia when he didn’t improve, dropped him off. The vet decided to put him on an IV trying to hydrate him and get a stronger antibiotic into him.

When his heart stopped and trying to resuscitate him, they didn’t get a response. They certainly tried, he was in good care. In a lot of ways, Corky’s passing reminds me a lot of how my mother passed away but with complications from fluid in the lungs rather than kidney failure.

Last week was the 7th anniversary of Ma’s death which makes the comparison even closer. Much as Willow’s been by my side, Corky was by Ma’s side and had adopted me after her passing. I reckon he was about 14 +/- a year which is not young for a dog, but still the youngest of our tribe.

Miss you and love you Cork’a’bee. I hope that Momma and Coco were there waiting to guide you across the rainbow bridge. Thanks for being part of my family.

Tags and Categories

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Time to take advantage of the new site infrastructure’s ability to segregate between broad categories and refining tags. Apologies if anyone’s links break, but I doubt that’s a big problem :P.

Here’s the general plan / process:

  • Captain’s Log will remain a category, as that’s always been used like one.
  • computers will become a top level category
    • Linux, Android, etc will become tags.
  • games will become a top level category
    • Any category that was named for a game will become a tag.
    • E.g., “Ghost Recon” will become a tag.
  • programming will be added as a category
    • Any category that was named for a programming language will become a tag.
    • E.g., “C++” will become a tag.
  • Most other software related categories will become tags.
    • E.g., “Vim”, “GTK+” will likely become a tag
  • Most media related categories will either
    • remain categories for media types, e.g., “Books” and “Movies”.
    • become tags for specific cases, e.g., “Star Trek”.

And I’ll figure out the other stuff later :P.

MicroSD cards

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When I decided to grab a Steam Deck during the last sale, I opted to take advantage of the opportunity to get the 512 GB model rather than my default choice of the 256 GB. Overall this has worked out pretty well, since most of the games I’m more inclined to play laying in bed or sacrifice the power of 4 pounds of RTX for portability’s sake, on the whole tend to be on the smaller side. That is to say under 35 GB and often closer to under 10 GB.

On my Xbox One, aka Deathstar One, I’m used to the peasy 500 GB of storage being augmented by 3 to 4 TB of platter drives. Which made things a lot more roomy over the years as typical game sizes started to spring past 60 GB and toward 90 GB and beyond.

So much in the same way, the Steam Deck’s 512 GB of storage is rather small one you start loading larger games in the over 60 GB club. With about 200 GB of the 460-something GB capacity filled, I think this is a fair trade off between capacity and affordability. The 256 GB model, I suspect would feel pretty tight once you load modern “Big assed” video games on the device.

Effectively, I’m straddling the line between not having to care and needing to pay attention to what I install. For example a few more recent games the size of dual and quad layer Blu-ray discs, and I’d have cause to manage storage but for games measured in terms of CD-ROM or a few single or dual layer DVD, there’s enough capacity to be well stocked for a nice vacation.

I’ve been meaning to take a look at the cost of larger MicroSD cards since getting the ‘Deck. When I came across yet-another Best microSD Cards for Steam Deck article, I decided to take a gander since it would likely recommend larger cards. Then I realized a nice 512 GB microSD card cost about as much as the handful of 64 GB cards I bought a year or two ago, as a mixture of refitting vintage computers with non vintage SCSI/IDE drives and restocking my pool of memory cards for random Raspberries.

Racking up pretty nice results in Amorphous Disk Mark, I can’t help but think if SD slots weren’t as rare as they are, at these prices I’d start using the smaller sizes as modern floppy disks for those times I don’t feel like busting out my external NVMe to USB-C drive :D.

If wasps were thumpers

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Turning my head and almost ducking before I realized it was outside the car window, I couldn’t help but think the wasp was so avidly trying to fly through my window that it may as well have been saying, “Sir, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Stingula?” Or whatever wasps would name their deity of choice.

A long overdue overhaul

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For quite a while my technology has been migrating to USB-C, partly by the decision to favor this when replacing tech and partly by attrition. Didn’t really plan on my Kindle 10 dying but hey, replacing it meant one less odd ball.

Presently my Bluetooth headphones (MicroUSB-B) and my phone (Lightning) are the only things that remain in common use that lack USB-C/PD. Except for my security keys which are still type-A connectors there are dreadfully few important things still using the older port type. In recent years the last hold outs have either gained (Centauri->Rimuru) or gone pure (Stark->Shion) USB-C, and one of the reasons I keep USB-A connectivity around is my security keys.

Well, technically there is also a plant shaped lamp on my desk that charges its internal battery via MicroUSB. But honestly I bought that because I like the look of it, not because I use it as a desk lamp 🤪

At long last, I’ve decided on replacing my USB-A based security keys with new USB-C models. Again, one for keeping on my keychain and one for keeping in a safe location. For a while, I will likely retain the ‘A’ model on key ring along side its replacement. I expect that it will join its companion in a safe location soon enough.

Actually, as a side thought, perhaps I should retire them to a safe deposit box or a drill press once ‘fully’ retired from service.

Leaking meters and flying shower curtain rods

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Today was not as expected of the typical Monday, time change or no. It began with, well aside from getting up with the sunrise, lots of water. Turns out that the old unused water meter over the hot water heater decided to spew water everywhere. Today was mostly not fun in that regard.

For bonus points reaching that point where I tell the dogs, either I go take a shower and make some lunch or I’ll pass out and hit the floor, of course I end up hitting the floor ^_^. The tub was so wet from the cleaning up, and neutralizing a spider, that I ended up taking a nice slip.

Ejected from the shower screaming, “Aiieeeeeeee” and hit the floor on top of the shower curtain. On the upside putting the shower curtain rod back up was less of a pain in the arse than I remember, and my rear end is still harder than the bathroom floor.

On the positive side the dogs napped really well after everything was done.