Adding Geo tags to photos

Good as my Sony NEX-7 camera is, it doesn't have GPS so my photos are not geotagged like they are on my Nexus 5 phone.

However, through a number of steps, and also referring to articles such as this one, it's relatively straightforward to add geo tagging to photos.

Firstly, install My Tracks from Play Store on phone. Then activate it while taking photos. Set the tracks files to be automatically saved to Google Drive.

Then take these steps to tag photos

1. Download My Tracks files from Google Drive as .kmz format

2. Go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/

3. Upload a GPS file - use the file just downloaded

4. Output is GPX

5. In Adobe Lightroom, import photos to be tagged.

5. Then, also in Lightroom, Choose Map > Tracklog

6. Import the GPX file. Note that some of them may have more than one track (it will say so in Lightroom) so you need to go through all of these.

7. Choose the photos to tag

8. Adjust time zone if necessary - even though the phone is on local time when anyway, it still seems to use UK!

9. Auto tag selected photos - there will be varying degrees of success here!

10. Select photos on tracklog

11. Export

12. In Metadata, ensure Remove Location Info is unticked

13. Replace original photos with these new, then remove from Lightroom.

Other links:

http://www.gpsies.com/upload.do?uploadMode=convert

http://gpx2kml.com/?results

Raspberry Pi setup

Having bought the boys Raspberry Pi's for Christmas, we decided to try our first project. This is what we discovered:

1. It's important to get a Wifi dongle before you start - you'll need connectivity! These ones work very nicely - Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter - and were only just over £7 each.

2. Also worth buying a powered USB hub - Amazon have the Raspberry Pi compatable (sic) Mains powered 7 Port USB Hub 2Amp(2000mA) with power cable for raspberry Pi Again, cheap at only £16

3. We referred frequently to Raspberry Pi for Kids

4. The actual Pi's we got were Model B's with a pre-loaded SD card.

5. Start up, install Raspbian

6. On reboot, attach the Wifi dongle

7. Choose Wifi Config, scan for network, and select (dynamic IP at present, may change later)

8. apt-get update

9. Install Chromium

10. Try Chromium and confirm connection to internet works!

11. Install Synaptic

12. Install tightvncserver

13. Attach the camera - we bought this one - Raspberry Pi Camera Module for just under £19

14. Try a sample shot - raspistill -o image.jpg

15. Try a sample video - raspivid -o video.h264 -t 10000

Both of these save in ~/home (not desktop)

16. How to play the video? Open with omxplayer and make this default

17. Next aim - to set up a remote record facility in line with this tutorial

18. We did have a problem though. We had two Pi's, both of which were working, and then suddenly one stopped. Well, it stopped in the sense of sending no signal to TV via HDMI. Trying various RCA cables brought no success, then - more to investigate possibilities than anything else, we swapped the SD card over. Vision restored. So the SD card was the issue.

19. We tried formatting the card using the details here but it kept insisting the card was locked (even when not).

20. Fortunately we had a spare SD card and were able to install NOOBS on it. Then repeated the steps above and now both are working fine.

Turning off annoying sounds in Mac

The pop pop pop sound when turning volume up or down:
System Preferences > Sound > Play feedback when volume is changed

The scrunch noise when emptying trash:
System Preferences > Sound > Play user interface sound effects

Fixing duplicate "Open with" entries in Mavericks

Terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain user;killall Finder;echo "Open With has been rebuilt, Finder will relaunch"

As seen on http://www.tuaw.com/2013/03/25/how-to-spring-clean-open-with-duplicates/

Recovering an Acer Aspire One from a black screen

After being left unplugged for a while, the AA1's battery was completely drained. Connecting it to a power supply showed the charging light coming on, and there were whirring sounds to suggest the disk was starting up, but there was no display on the screen at all.

Forums recommended running a recovery disk, but as the AA1 runs Ubuntu, and these are .exe files, it seemed to me this wouldn't work.

I was wrong! I followed the steps here and in no time the AA1 was giving me a display once more!

Nexus 7 repair

Dropping a Nexus 7 resulted in multiple cracks in the glass screen. So bad, in fact, that the unlock pattern could not be entered!

Much searching did not turn up anywhere that would repair it, so into a drawer it went until such time as a service became available.

Then, recently, I noticed screens and digitisers being offered on Amazon for around the £60 mark.

Having ordered screen and tape, I then turned to the guide on YouTube here which turned out to be an excellent step by step process.

Removing the back case was a little tricky at first, but getting to the stage of unscrewing the board from the screen and removing the various connections took at most 10 minutes.

Taking off the old bezel from the broken screen was much more troublesome. I didn't have a heat gun, and being winter there was no sun in which to warm the screen, so instead it sat on a radiator.

As I bent the glass, it shattered more, making the task more problematic. It's definitely true that the adhesive is extremely sticky!

Anyway, I got there in the end, and replacing with the new glass and then reversing all the earlier steps was straightforward too.

Phone restore steps

1. Password protect phone
2. Add Google account
3. Software updates
4. IP Manager
5. Set network prefs up for static IP
6. Download Astro
7. Download Dropbox
8 Set up Dropbox
9 Set up Dropsync
10 Access Play on Google Account on PC
11 Reinstall apps
12 Set backup directory on astro
13 backfill other apps from dropbox
14 backup again
15 Encrypt