Category: facebook

When an iPhone gets filled up with videos, and you want to back them up somewhere, here’s my lifehack:

1) open a new box on Google, say your.email.videos@gmail.com, and get 15 GB of space

2) install Google Photos. In it, go to accounts and there click “add a new Google account” specifying the one we’ve created. Next, you need to turn off backup immediately. It will start dumping photos there upon the first launch.

3) unfortunately, you can’t select to sync videos only, and there’s no button “select a folder from the phone and upload only that.” So, the next part is somewhat complicated and nontrivial – search through the app for all videos. There’s a search function where you need to start selecting Videos; it will offer suggestions. Just by the word Videos, it finds all sorts of things. Then press the three dots and choose Select. Now you can select videos one click at a time for days with videos. Keep selecting until you are tired, but make sure not to exceed the 15GB limit (because then you’ll get a “don’t want to upload, you have no space left” window and have to uncheck some). After selecting, there’s no “upload to cloud” button. But there is a “add to album” button – a plus symbol. There you either pick an album or choose to create one. Afterward, an upload modal window will appear. On the computer at photo.google.com, you can watch as the videos appear. If 15 GB gets filled up, open a new box and repeat the procedure for the remaining videos, including those that didn’t upload due to lack of space on the first box. But generally, 15 GB is usually enough. Overall, if you check “optimize video,” a lot more can fit but with a loss of image quality. Then go on the phone and delete all videos since they’re already on Google.

As for photos, it’s convenient to sync them with Google Photos in the usual way. Because Google generally has a good photo search, it can group by faces, link photos to maps. This is quite valuable. But only for photos, it doesn’t work that way with videos. Therefore, in the Google Photos App, do not forget to disable video synchronization since we have a separate account for videos above. Yes, someday there won’t be enough space for photos on the main account, and in this case, I already pay Google for additional space. But with videos, it would have been used up significantly faster than without them. A second of normal home video in standard quality takes up 1-2 times more space than a single photo.

By the way, mass deleting from Google Photos isn’t that simple. There just isn’t such a function – clearly on purpose, so that you buy more space. There are external apps. I deleted using an API; had to write it in Python.

Additionally, you can download them to your computer. You can do it directly from the phone via a wire, running the Image Capture program on a Mac. There you can sort by file kind=MOV, and specify a folder on the laptop to dump the output.

Of course, there’s always the option to pay Apple for storage, but I’ve already gathered so many subscriptions for the family that I balk at adding one more. Especially if it’s not particularly necessary.

I am currently reading Virgil Elliot on painting. There’s a good chapter on portraits. I’m taking notes because what’s written is almost the most important thing for me in the book. It’s not hard for me to share them on Facebook, maybe it will be useful to someone. Photographers might find something useful too.

(…) One should completely avoid using photographs as references for drawing. A photographic image differs in many ways from the image in the human brain created from light hitting the eyes, then processed by the brain. It is the latter image that interests the artist.

An image of a head in sharp focus, with every wrinkle and hair in high resolution, looks implausible despite its neatness and precision. Among painters, this is considered a sign of a novice. It’s easy to fall into the trap of recording too much detail because when we draw something, we look at it and focus on it, and see it in sharp focus. But this does not correspond to visual reality, because we cannot see the entire scene in sharp focus in reality. The camera, having no brain, does not understand this principle and records details uniformly across its focal plane. A drawn portrait should convey the impression received by the brain when personally looking at a live subject, not the impression that arises when looking at a photograph.

The camera, having no brain, does not understand this principle, and records details uniformly across its focal plane. A drawn portrait should convey the impression received by the brain when personally looking at a live subject, not the impression that arises when looking at a photograph. These are two different impressions. Hence, the question is how to retain the likeness while at the same time omitting or suppressing the details of the subject’s features that we can only see in sharp focus when we look closely at them. The answer is that the likeness is often lost as soon as we add too many details.

Eti…

On the left is the dormitory where I lived for 5 years, from 1991 to 1995. On the right – windows through which Alexander Solzhenitsyn looked for just under 12 years, from 1956 to 1968, and wrote “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”. At that time, the house was pink.

There is a small courtyard with a garden by the house. In the far corner, near a solid fence, where an old apple tree forms a “gazebo”, Solzhenitsyn built a bench and a table.

“…I stand under a blossoming apple tree—and breathe. Not just the apple tree, but also the grass around it exudes sweetness after the rain—there’s no name for that sweet fragrance that saturates the air. I draw it deep into my lungs, sensing the aroma with all my chest, breathing, breathing, now with open eyes, now with closed—I don’t know which is better. Here, perhaps, is that freedom—the only, but most precious freedom—that prison deprives us of: to breathe like this, to breathe here. No food on earth, no wine, not even a woman’s kiss is sweeter to me than this air, this air, laden with bloom, dampness, freshness…,” described Solzhenitsyn about the joy of encountering this Ryazan garden after years of camps and exile. (“Tiny Bits” is a cycle of miniatures in prose by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Literary experts classify these works as a genre of “prose poetry”).

The apple tree—in the comments. Essentially, now this place only reminds of Solzhenitsyn by two memorial plaques – on the house and on the apple tree.

Programming and IT in general creates a certain skew in understanding English. For example, take the word “condition.” I always used to think it meant “requirement” and nothing more. Well, primarily a “requirement.” For example, “three conditions have to be met.” Actually, that’s just the third meaning. And the word “conditioning” sounded odd to me.

The Oxford Dictionary gives the first and second meanings of condition as a noun — “state” (“she was in a serious condition”) and “circumstances” (“the appalling conditions determined the style of play”). Additionally, there’s an interesting use of condition as a verb — “restricted by something or determined by something” (“choices are conditioned by the international political economy”).

But in the USA, I mostly hear this word in the sense of “prepare [someone for life or something for use]” (“train or accustom (someone or something) to behave in a certain way” and “bring (something) into the desired state for use.”).

For example, conditioning is the process or action aimed at bringing something into a certain state or accustoming to a certain behavior. For example, improving physical fitness or endurance through regular exercises. The process in which materials such as leather, hair, or textile are treated to modify their properties, improve their quality, or prepare them for use. For example, “leather conditioning” involves applying special treatments to preserve the softness and durability of the leather. Hence, hair conditioner.

Or take “content.” The verb content means “satisfy.” And the noun – a state of peaceful happiness.

Do you have any words that you have always thought from your experience in IT to mean one thing, but it turns out they mean something slightly different?

Our Traffic Rules: When a bus stops to pick up or drop off children, the retractable STOP sign and flashing red lights warn other drivers to stop and wait until the children have safely crossed the road. All vehicles, including those coming from the opposite direction, must stop if there is no dividing strip with a refuge or physical barrier.

In case of a violation, the bus camera will neatly record everything and forward it as needed for further analysis and classification.

Passing a stopped school bus with an extended STOP sign in Virginia is considered a form of reckless driving, a Class 1 misdemeanor. Such an offense can result in up to 12 months of imprisonment, a fine of up to $2,500, court costs, suspension of driving privileges for a period from 60 days to 6 months, and 6 DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) penalty points at the discretion of the court.

Near our house, there’s a spot with 17 training fields for soccer, lacrosse, baseball, and softball. By spring, there should be beautiful grass as usual, so all fields are covered with a “film”. It creates the impression of water instead of grass, especially against the sun. For the grass itself underneath, it’s not just an impression at all.

By the way, this grass cover is interesting in itself. The size of each piece is about a third of a soccer field, around 30×30 meters, so there are several on each field. Machinery is at work, deploying and securing them.

A little life hack for happy owners of energetic dogs and wireless headphones simultaneously. Every time I need to put airpods in my ears, I have to hold the case in one hand, and with two fingers of the other hand, I pull out the headphones one by one and insert them into my ears. And then, what’s left to hold the leash? Right, with the pinky finger. And the energetic dog, dashing towards the scents of nature, knocks the airpods out of my hands or at least makes me switch on my brain at that moment and prepare for the lunge. And I do not like to switch it on that early.

So here’s the hack – a pair of headphones can be extracted from the box with one hand in your pocket in just two seconds.

Our cat is a thinker

Just read up on how a dishwasher works. It was acting up yesterday, so I had to figure it out. I bet many haven’t even thought about the working algorithm. Well, hot water under pressure is poured onto the dishes, with the dirty water going into the sewage system. It seems straightforward, but there are many nuances.

First, water fills the inside, after which, if there’s a water heater (see below), it turns on. Hot water begins spraying through either rotating or stationary spray arms. Moreover, if they are rotating, there are no motors — they spin by the force of the water jets. The water drains down and flows into a container, from where it again travels up the spray arms to the dishes. So, the first point – the water is heated not somewhere inside but right in the dishwasher’s tub. Well okay, that was obvious. Moving on.

Then there’s a difference — in the USA, dishwashers are meant to be connected only to hot water, whereas in many parts of the world, cold water suffices, and the dishwasher heats the water itself. The latter category has a heat exchanger built into one of the walls. While the water heats up and sprays from the spray arms, new water is poured into the heat exchanger. Next, the temperature of the new batch of water gradually increases – while the ambient temperature in the chamber gradually decreases. The washing cycle ends when these temperatures align. Hence, the second discovery — the condition for stopping the dishwashing is dynamic, not just based on a timer.

This approach, incidentally, prevents thermal shock to the dishes when switching from dirty to clean water. Clean water in the next cycle comes from the heat exchanger, already warmed to the temperature of the draining dirty water. And ultimately, there are no sharp temperature shifts within the chamber.

This concerns many European dishwashers, where cold water enters and is heated. In my dishwasher, like most in the USA, connecting to cold water is technically possible, but highly unrecommended – it would significantly reduce the quality of the process. Thus, there’s no heat exchanger, and no thermal shock occurs because the water is already hot at the inlet.

It’s funny that Europe does a lot because of the Kyoto Protocol, which the USA did not support. For example, both water and air in my home are heated by gas. Thus, the dishwasher emits CO2 🙂 The second reason is that heating 10 liters of water with 110 volts is simply slow, and connecting the dishwasher to a separate outlet, like for a washing machine and dryer, is overkill.

Next – how drying works. After rinsing, cold water is poured into the heat exchanger. From the existing heat, it gradually warms up – meanwhile, all the moisture in the chamber will condensate on the side wall, on the heat exchanger. Naturally occurring air circulation in a closed space will cause it to move near the cold wall – where water will settle. As I understand, a heating element is also turned on to accelerate the process.

There’s a separate compartment for rinse aid. This agent reduces the surface tension of water, making it easier to evaporate, not gathering in droplets, thus leaving no streaks on dry dishes from the dishwasher with rinse aid.

The amount of resources consumed depends directly on the amount and dirtiness of the dishes: the more and dirtier they are, the longer the process will take and the more water will be needed. But how does the dishwasher know how much and how dirty the dishes are? This is also interesting.

Let’s start with the volume of dishes. The dishwasher knows how much water it has poured in, and how much has drained out. The difference — is what remains on the dishes. Essentially, this delta is proportional to the surface area of the dishes. Changes are detected by special sensors – if there’s a significant lack of water, more is drawn from the water supply.

How does the machine determine that the dishes are clean? By the water returning to the container: if it contains a lot of impurities and coloring agents, special optical sensors – turbidity sensors – detect this. Thus, the process continues until the required level of cleanliness in the water returning from the dishes is achieved.

The turbidity sensor consists of two main elements. On a board, shaped like the letter U, a LED and a phototransistor are placed opposite each other. The board is housed in a clear plastic case. After the main washing cycle and the first rinsing stage, the LED emits an infrared beam towards the phototransistor. The light must travel through the water to reach it. If the water is clean enough, i.e., contains only a small amount of detergent residues and food particles, the light reaches the phototransistor, which then sends a signal to the control module. The module adjusts the program trajectory, canceling an additional rinsing stage.

Additionally, many dishwashers (not mine) have a built-in water softener – a cation exchange resin. One part is filled with levatit resin granules. This substance softens the water. The dishwasher receives decalcified water. But levatit has the property of depletion. Ordinary salt regenerates the levatit. There’s a special container in the machine for the salt. Sodium ions from the salt solution replace the calcium and magnesium ions, restoring the ion-exchange properties of the resin and preparing it for a new water softening cycle. This regenerative quality is why dishwasher salt is called regenerating salt.

Then another interesting note, there are two compartments in the door for detergent – Pre-wash and wash. So, capsules only fit in the wash. This means that for the first 15 minutes, the dishwasher operates without any agent at all, just on water, if capsules are used. However, if you use powder, that first cycle will be much more effective. In other words, capsules – not so great. I should try buying powder.

I was very pleased with GE because inside the machine there’s a brochure with a plumbing scheme and details important for maintenance by a technician. How to enter service mode, how to run auto-tests, etc., electrical wiring. None of this is in the user manual. And on the website, you can download CAD files and order individual components. Absolutely fantastic!