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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Are you using assisted culling in Lightroom for culling? As yeah, thats just missing from Darktable and you would have to use another (opensource) tool to do that.

    However if you are still manual, I dont agree once you have learned the keyboard shortcuts, that’s as fast for me in both, or in my current tool of choice, photolab. Even just using 1 to 5 to do basic culling with auto advance is a game changer for manual review.

    Editing really depends on your workflow, if you have a lot of similar shots you can just copy and paste a working set across everything thats similar and then manually tweak. Even if the shots aren’t the same just applying the usual set of modules with some sensible defaults across photos is very helpful. I used to keep one back from my last set as a template.




  • Soldered RAM is just about impossible to upgrade/replace, you have to desolder it and do a bunch of other tasks. I have only ever seen one person do it on a modern laptop and it looked horrendous: https://gregdavill.com/posts/dell-xps13-ram-upgrade/

    I would just completely abandon any plans to upgrade a soldered RAM laptop unless you are extremely skilled.

    Unsoldered RAM is just push fit sockets that have a release clip you need to pull if the socket is already populated. The RAM can only go in one way, its super super easy. Just make sure you double check the spec of RAM you buying against the laptop specs to make sure you buy the right sort.


  • The object selection tools in lightroom are pretty amazing, being able to choose select subject on the menu and it just selects the ducks or people or whatever pretty much perfectly each time to make your mask is pretty bonkers. It saves so much time over trying to select an object in dark table.

    I really like dark table, I actually prefer the way it stacks modules vs. lightroom, and this is just for complex object selection, I can select the sky or background or whatever pretty simply in dark table.

    Oh and dark table does not support DNG files. My workflow using PureRAW outputs compressed DNG files and Darktable will not support them currently. Sure I can go other routes for my export but the smaller size of a compressed DNG is very attractive when I can be working with about 100 * 40megapixel images.

    PureRAW can sort of be duplicated by dark table, but again its not quite as good, doesnt quite have the same list of lens for correction/denoise capability. I shoot wildlife a lot and high ISO is a factor of life. Its not that dark table is bad at this its just PureRAW is very good at removing that noise and sharpening.

    So lightroom and PureRAW forces me to have either windows or macos, and a shitty subscription for the former.


  • I was diagnosed as dyslexic as a young child, I spent a lot of my childhood reading, and it definitely helped my ability to read. So much so I was ahead of my reading age by the time I hit secondary school.

    However it did next to nothing for my auditory processing or my ability to phonetically spell out words. I did have significant coaching around this during school age but nothing ever really stuck with it.

    I still cannot reliably phonetically spell out words today, many decades later. Pretty much every word I can spell I have had to brute force learn the hard way, letter by letter with a lot of repetition.

    I have had the same problem with handwriting, its completely illegible unless I take my time and draw my letters the same way that people draw pictures, fine for forms but way too slow for notes. Thankfully I can type everything like that now.



  • Ford serves two markets, the Americas, and everybody else, with an approx. 2/3rd vs. 1/3rd split respectively.

    Sure they sell some small amount of F150s and similar oversized cars/trucks outside of the Americas, but its measured in 1000s.

    European market is mostly much smaller cars. Ford has had the best selling car in the UK on and off with its Puma, a small SUV that is a mild hybrid.

    Outside of the Americas they are starting to move forward with EVs, and will even have their own Renault produced R5 clone with the new Fiesta, but its too little too late as its not due to 28.



  • Its not that bad if you go with mikrotik, but their configuration isn’t for everyone as its a long way from say Asus in terms of simplicity.

    Their budget 8x10gb is about £220, pretty reasonable for a fully managed switch. Sure its not going to let you max out all 8 ports at the same time with multiple vlans even with the hardware offload, but whose expecting that from a budget switch?

    I am never really going to benefit from it fully, not least in the short to medium term. What I will get is the fun from upgrading.


  • Future proofing, at some point I will go 2.5gb sync or higher on my Internet pipe, the connection I think can go 10gb sync with some upgrades to the local exchange.

    Also because I can, and almost everything else I own for my back haul already has 10gb ports and the bandwidth to support it including my router and all my switches.

    Do I need it? Absolutely not, its just fun to do and the only reason I haven’t done so yet is cost of suitable hardware.


  • Biggest issue with this stuff as almost always is that the average consumer finds this too complicated.

    The fact you have to have everything a modern and up to date wifi 7 setup, including all your devices, and make the right decisions over topology pushes it out of reach of anybody but an enthusiast or someone paying for a top tier install.

    Excluding people who cannot lay cable between their mesh points because they renting, a wired back haul is always going to be more reliable and consistent. Plus the average consumer gear loses one or more radios to do the back haul.

    Biggest thing wifi 7 offers is better coexistence between multiple heavy users on the same access point, assuming everything is wifi 7.

    The speed increases are irrelevant to 99% of the population as I can still max out a 1gb synchronous internet link on wifi 6. My current back haul is 2.5gb, if and when I go wifi 7 I am looking at going to 10gb otherwise what’s the point? How many enthusiast level aps come with 10gb back haul?


  • Distro is more an alignment of philosophy between you and the distro. Something slowly updated but really stable? Debian. Something cutting edge, but with lots of guides? Arch, etc. etc.

    Any of them can pretty much run any shell, DE or WM, and as that’s what you spend the most of the time interacting with, that’s a more personal touch point. The distro is really just the package manager that you regularly interact with, and thats easy enough to hide behind something like topgrade.

    I have only used Sway for a few years and anything else feels bloated and slow to use to me now. I spent a long time tweaking to get it how I wanted both in terms of add ons and config, then setting the keyboard shortcuts that work for me. I even have a bunch of them configured on my actual keyboard on layers to make them even easier to activate.

    Its worth the investment for me as its now transparent to my workflow. I run the same config across all my machines and its been a stable config for the longest time. Long term stability is the key for me.