Merging iPhoto Libraries: yet more techniques

macosxhints - Reunite iPhoto libraries with Rendezvous in iPhoto4

Update 1/05: I now have a much better discussion of this on my personal digital photography/iPhoto page.

Merging iPhoto Libraries, the easy way:

1. Make sure you have enough free space two times the size of your library to merge in on your hard drive.

2. Using DiskUtility (in OS X 10.3), create a disk image large enough to hold your library once. Name the opened volume 'iPhoto Library'.

3. Using TextEdit, create a file called IPHOTO.XML and place it inside the library. The file should contain this text:

(xml removed because it's invisible in blogger -- see original posting)

4. Copy your library to this disk image and name it 'iPhoto Libary'. If you're done, the folder structure should look like this:

iPhoto Library (Disk image)
\- IPHOTO.XML (Textfile)
- iPhoto Library (folder, containg all your iPhoto stuff:)
\- ThumbJPG.data
- Thumb32.data
- Thumb64.data
- Albums (folder, pretty empty)
- iPhoto.db
- AlbumData.xml
- Dir.data
- Library.iPhoto
- 2004 (folder, containing subfolder for each month day)
\- 05
\- 31
\- DSCF0001.JPG
- ... (many more pictures)
- Data (folder, containing files '1.attr' and '1')
- Thumbs (folder with Thumbnails)

5. Inside Disk Utility (in OS X 10.3), choose the menu 'Images > Convert...' to create a read-only copy of your disk image.

6. Mount that new image and iphoto is happy! drag-and-drop the CD onto your library to import your photos!

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This great thread described several techniques, this one resembles the iPhoto image technique I described some time ago. What's new here is the creation of the xml document!

Nikon is making my camera ... now

PhotographyBLOG -:- Home

I was hoping someone would make this camera -- next year. Nikon has really stolen a march on Canon with this one. It's not an SLR (I don't want an SLR), but it's a CMOS sensor and the camera incorporates vibration reduction. Too bad it's not JPEG2000!

This really raises the bar. Wow.

ManOpen for OS X

ExtraBITS: "
So, if you're like me, and occasionally need to refer to a man page but are annoyed by the user experience of working with man pages in a Terminal window, check out Carl Lindberg's ManOpen 2.4, which is a free Mac OS X application for viewing man pages in normal Macintosh windows. It's a simple program, but has a number of useful features, including:

http://www.clindberg.org/projects/ManOpen.html "

Photokina: toys for boys

Introduction: Photokina 2004 Show Report: Digital Photography Review

A bit odd -- this show is every 2 years -- not yearly. Manufacturers currently track it with their releases. So the next giant leap in digital photography will be Sept 2006.

Macintouch: DataViz MacLink Plus announcement

MacInTouch Home Page: "DataViz released MacLinkPlus Deluxe 15, the latest version of its file conversion software. This release adds text extraction from PDF files, a new graphics translator for Photoshop, improvements to other graphics translators (BMP, JPG, PICT, TIFF), conversion of word processing and PDF files to text and transport to an iPod or iPod mini, decompression support for StuffIt X, and updated translators for Word 2004 Mac, Excel 2004 Mac, and WordPerfect 12 for Windows. MacLinkPlus Deluxe 15 is $79.95 for Mac OS X 10.2 and up."

Enough storage to load most of Microsoft Office 2020 ....

Sun Microsystems - Feature Story - ZFS File System

Sun engineers wondered if the 64-bit capabilities of current file systems will continue to suffice over the next 10 to 20 years. Their answer was no. If Moore's Law holds, in 10 to 15 years people will need a 65th bit. As a 128-bit system, ZFS is designed to support more storage, more file systems, more snapshots, more directory entries, and more files than can possibly be created in the foreseeable future....

... To efficiently use all of this capacity, file systems grow and shrink automatically as users add or remove data. Administrators can set quotas to limit space consumption and reservations to guarantee future availability of space. ZFS also provides compression to reduce disk space and I/O bandwidth requirements.

Logically, the next question is if ZFS' 128 bits is enough. According to Bonwick, it has to be. 'Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn't fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans.'

When you need to think outside the trap

Normal For Us: The Miller Twins - About the Film . OPB

Ok, so these are not "average" parents. Maybe most of us can't rise to this level. On the other hand, when one feels trapped and doesn't want to "take it any more" ... here's inspiration.

If you can't win, then change the rules.