Wasted Continuum

I have been using Lightroom 4 since the first day they released it in beta. One of the features I was excited about was the new Map module. I am fairly meticulous about organizing and tagging all my photos. This is a major reason why I love Lightroom. It excels at that. The thing that I have had to do manually (since both my Canon 5D2 and Canon S95 don’t have GPS logging) is geotag my photos when I upload them to Flickr. It is tedious and at times very difficult when I can’t remember the exact spot I was at when I shot the photo.

Since Lightroom 4 has made it easier to geotag your photos, I decided to give it a try. In order to make this work, I had to find a way to track and import my GPS data for my photos. I should note that Lightroom only supports GPX files. After trying a bunch of GPS tracking apps on my phone and testing a bunch of desktop that exported to GPX when it was necessary, I was disappointed that most of the software out there did not work well with Lightroom. The last app I tried was My Tracks by Google. I forgot that they made one. I wish I tried it first because it works perfectly with Lightroom.

I tested it out yesterday when I was shooting along the Mississippi River. There is only one thing to remember before you start using My Tracks. You should make sure your phone has an accurate reading from your GPS signal. Acquiring your location takes time if it’s a cold start. I turned on my GPS a few minutes before I got to my destination to give my phone plenty of time to lock onto my location. After My Tracks has a good read on you, just start recording and then begin taking photos. One last thing to be aware of, you should check to see if your camera’s time is set correctly. Lightroom syncs your photos to the GPS data with that time. You can correct this by setting a time offset after you imported everything, but you’ll save yourself a possible headache if you just check the time beforehand. After everything your GPS data and your photos are in Lightroom, it can sync them up with a few clicks. It saves the location data into your photos as metadata so when you upload them to Flickr, Flickr will recognize and map them for you. You can check out the photos that I tested it with on my Flickr.

If you have any questions about this whole process, leave a comment below or you can ask me at @JavaJunky.

I decided to create some higher resolution wallpapers of my Code Panda drawing since the old ones were a bit small for newer devices like the iPhone’s retina display, the iPad and the recent Android phones. I created one for each of those mentioned. I’m leaving the old ones available for download too.

• Android
• iPhone 4s
• iPad
• Android (low res)
• iPhone 3G (low res)

I have been drawing a lot on my new Wacom Intuos4. Last night I drew my usual panda character coding on his MacBook Pro. You can view the final painting on my Flickr. I also created iPhone and Android wallpapers out of it for myself since I have a G1 and a iPod Touch. I had people ask for them for their phones so I decide I will have them here to download.

Download for Android

Download for iPhone

I am considering doing more wallpapers if there is an interest. Let me know in the comments.

Update (Oct 14, 2011): I added higher resolution versions in a new post.

I finally received my T-Mobile G1 on Wednesday. I have been waiting to get a good smartphone for the longest time. I had my Motorola Razr for roughly four years. It finally broke down on me in January and I have been using an old Samsung slider to hold me over until now. I have used it for two full days now, but I haven’t fallen into a normal day with it yet. I still find myself playing with it on and off all day long which affects the battery life a lot. I will talk about that a little later.

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The day has finally come when Android will land for real. T-Mobile will hold a press conference to announce the first Android OS phone tomorrow morning at 9:30am central time. They have already launched a T-Mobile G1 site. Yes, you read that correctly. The phone we all thought would be named the HTC Dream, is apparently being named the G1. I think they should of stuck with Dream. Much catchier than G1. TmoNews just leaked some of the latest info on the G1. You can check out the rundown on the specs there. Not sure how accurate it is, but nowadays, I just don’t think these companies keep things under wrap to well anymore. Anyway, I’m psyched and I really just want to see this thing in person. If it is as good as some of the hype I’ve been hearing, I will likely get one for myself.

I finally had to go a get a new phone to replace my dying Razr. I’ve had that phone for four years now. I’ve been doing some phone research for a few weeks now and I don’t like anything I’ve seen so far. I want to wait for the Android-based phones to appear before I buy a new one. I tend to buy phones that are worth it and last many years. Since there aren’t any really cool phones out right now, I went to Target and picked up a T-Mobile Pay-As-You-Go phones for $29.99. It’s a Nokia 2610. I swapped in my SIM card and it was good to go. It’s a super slow phone with very little functions. The worst thing about it is that it has no T9 capability for texting. This sucks because I kept messing up when I was trying to twitter with it. I guess I’ll have to get used to it. The only cool phone I’ve seen so far is the HTC Touch Dual, but it’s not cool enough right now to warrant it hefty price tag.

I think right now I’m going to try to stick with my Razr and carry the Nokia with me as backup.