Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Photoshop CC 2015

If you're like me and subscribe to Adobe Create Cloud applications, specifically Photoshop CC iterations, you will notice each time you upgrade to a new version Adobe removes the older versions of CC apps, not just for Photoshop but other common apps, eg. Illustrator, InDesign, etc.

If you want to keep the old copies you need to restore them from backups, but you also have to check for other folders associated with those apps, namely the /Library/Applications/Adobe folder, as the install program for the upgrade removes the content of the app's folder so the app won't open let alone work.

I learned this with Photoshop CC 2015.5 which removed CC 2015, which I restored but then it wouldn't open telling me to uninstall and reinstall the app. If you're like me, however, and have Time Machine, you can go back before the installation of PS CC 2015.5 and restore the app and libray folder contents for PS CC 2015.

Anyway, the story is that I have all three versions of Photoshop CC, 2014, 2015 and 2015.5, but I have to always remember to restore them after upgrading Photoshop CC. I also still have Photoshop CS versions going back to CS3 but then Adobe doesn't remove them since you own them.

I don't worry about the older versions of the other apps Adobe's upgrade removes because I only use the latest version. Adobe overwrites Lightroom CC updates but not version upgrades so you can keep Lightroom 2, 3, 4 and 5 if you want.

Why keep older versions? I like to use the different versions for different work, so rather than switching catalogs in one app, I can run multiple versions, even simultaneously, to focus on that specific work. I also do this with Dreamweaver for working on different groups of Web pages, and don't have to keep switching groups of files.

There is an advantage to have Apple's Time Machine, although I can't keep it working past 6 months to a year before it has problems and I have to erase the HD and start over. But that's often far enough to recover files.

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Lest We Forget

While the 2016 presidential campaign is focused on terrorism, and more so Islamic people, lest we forget one of the worst act of terrorism in the U.S. was committed with a truck bomb on April 19, 1995 by a white evangical christian conservative, Timothy McVeigh.

Let's remember those who died then and there, including children, at the hands of someone who wanted to attack American government and people. He was, and always will be, a terrorist, just as evil as any other terrorists regardless of their ethnicity, religion or political affliations.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Measuring Rivers

I won’t deny I have problems with heights, looking down gives me nausea, but one thing I love is being in a cablecar on a cableway strung across a river, the wider the better, high above the flowing water, the faster the flow the better. I loved streamggaging for the USGS, especially the big rivers with the high cableway, to spend and hour or more going across and measuring the width, depth and velocity to compute a discharge (flow), and sometimes take a moment in the middle to just sit and feel the quiet place. 
I was only worried once during my career, when measuring Blue Creek above Hills Creek Resevoir, Oregon during a flood when I could hear boulders the size of cars (seen in followup measurements) rolling along the bed, moved by the the high velocity, realizing even with a floatation jacket (safety requirement) I wouldn’t survive if I fell in the river. The cableway and towers were well above the river, but it occurred to me when I took that moment to watch and listen to the loud sounds of those boulders I couldn’t see due to the high sediment flow but had a reality check on the power of rivers, no matter how seemingly small.
And of all the hundreds of wading measurements I, some up to the top of my chest waders, I never lost my footing or fell in the creeks or rivers. But there was a time on Gray Creek in the Middle Fork of the Willametter River basin, I had the scare every streamgager has at least once, find yourself in the middle of the creek or river realizing you can move forward across it or go back the bank you started .You were stuck there and this time the during the high flow the rocks on the bed were moving under and around me and started to move me downstream while the flow pushed against the upstream side of my body nudging me down stream too.
After a few minutes I realized I had no choice but to go forward with two possibilities, one I’d lose it and become part fhe flow to extracate myself out safely, or two, I’d be ok and get across, and then come back to make the measurement. The latter prevailed as I realized I was in the deepest and swiftest part of it and still standing, meaning I could finish it, which I did, and without getting wet except for the rain.
It’s the conundrums each of us have and live with.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Seattle Mariners

At the All-Star break the Seattle Mariners are in third place in the Western Division, 45 wins and 44 losses. At one point they were 10 games above .500 but then kept getting swept in series to drop to just 1 game now.

To make the playoffs, currently behind 6 teams (top two play the Wildcard game), they have to return to the form they had when they were winning, and not getting swept in series. They've shown they can do that and have shown they can't.

They're 12th in hitting, 7th in the American League, far better than the last few years where they were consistently near the bottom. They're 10th in pitching, 4th in the American league, not as good as some recent years, but good enough if they had the consistently they haven't shown of late.

Where they have fallen down this year from recent years, ofen in the top 5, is defense, they're 22nd overall, 13th in the American League. This is where they have to improve in the second half, to cut the number of errors to reduce the number of extra outs errors gives opposing teams.

The Mariners went into this season with lots of potential to win the division, and were for a few days, but they've shown they have problems winning late games, something that's plagued them for a few years now. They have to close and win those games.

All that said, there's hope they'll be in the playoffs, but it will depend on how they play, and win, in July and August. Another possibility is that they could also find some trades to bolster the team, but their farm system isn't all that strong anymore to sacrifice too many young players.

It's clear it's in their ballpark now to win, something they can do. They have the team, now they have to do the job. The fans are there. It would be nice for the Mariners to be playing in October.

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Nothing there

Update II.-- Watching the news on the FBI report, something struck me that the FBI didn't prove, or say there's evidence, the case for Hillary Clinton. The FBI described the e-mail "chains", but not the specific e-mails Clinton sent.

Everyone knows you don't always include the entire chain of an email in a reply, and you don't always include attachments, meaning it's possible, and more likely, Clinton never recieved or sent the classified information, but only the summary or general information.

And it's very likely Clinton knew not to include or attach classified information in replies in the chain, knowng the recipents are fully aware of the entire discussion and have all the supporting information or documents. This is what the FBI did not say about her specific e-mails, just the chain.

Update.-- After reading more stories of the report, the FBI repors a few of the e-mails did have markings indictating classified, but nothing if the classification was appropriate or just proceedural as the source of the e-mail and/or their information was classified.

This doesn't change my assessment. Clinton made a bad decision using the e-mail server for work, and while it was unethical and a violation of State Department protocols, it doesn't pass the standard for criminal conduct. And the fact the FBI found no evidence the servers or the e-mail were compromised or information stolen.

This means her decision was wrong, but her actions as Secretary of State were not. She wanted to separate her personal e-mail from work, and it didn't work, something people around her and IT people should have spoken to her then.

So, while the Republicans and the campaign folks, especially Donald Trump, will make use of it, it will fade during the general election, as voters focus on far more important issues, such as the economy, jobs, healthcare, education, and so on down the list, the "pocketbook" issues people decide their vote.

As for trust and credibility issues, it's not hard to see Trump doesn't have any of either. His business deals alone prove the point he's bailed on negotiations cheated contractors and sued or been sued to follow the contracts. He's boasted about not cheating and not paying.

Anyway, the original idea stands. While important, it's history, and nothing to consider with the election campaign and voters choice of the next president.

Original Post.-- After hearing FBI Director Comey's press release on the Hillary Clinton e-mail servers operated out of her home in New York in her attempt to separate her work e-mail from her personal e-mail, using a nongovernment e-mail address and domain, I don't see anything out of the ordinary government work except the servers.

To begin with, the only real mistake was the use of the servers, which the Information Technology folks at the State Department should have refused to install and operate, and should have overridden her decision to have one. That's their mistake, only hers for the decision.

The problem was that she used her personal e-mail account to do government communications, something she should have known better not to do, but wanted a way to conduct and exchange with people outside of work. That's something everyone should have avoided, but it not uncommon in senior government service.

The FBI stated that 110 e-mails out of 30,000-plus e-mails had information deemed classified at the time, but none of that information was marked classified during the exchange. This is not new as classified information is often reviewed and classified shortly afterward, and not during unless the information was previously know to be classified.

Directory Comey didn't say of any of the information was known to be classified, but he did say, due to the nature of the subject, they should have known or treated it as classified, except in the heat of the exchanges, that often gets lost in the discussion, and left for later review.

The Director said there was nothing criminal, and while he used the "should" word a lot, that doesn't always mean people did, because sometimes it's an afterthought. The Director also said in handling the information Clinton didn't do anything that hadn't been done by her predecessors, meaning both democratic and republican administrations.

In short, the mistake was the servers, but really nothing else. She shouldn't have used them and should have known to separate work from personal through a different means at the time, but considering the nature of the discussions, she wanted something separate to open discussions, something predecessors have done before.

Anyway, just my thoughts that's while republicans, especially Trump, will make a lot of noise about it, as Gertrude Stein said and the Benghazi committee found, "There's no there there." She make a bad decision. No information, classified or otherwise, was compromised, and no harm was done.

In short, like the Benghazi committee and their report, it's old news and there's far more important things to be discussed during the campaign. As for the trust issue, Trump doesn't have a leg to stand on about that, he doesn't even know what it means.