Category Archives: Technology

Using MakeMKV to rip DVDs

I have a [stupidly] large collection of DVDs. I used to have them all on a bookcase, but now I have pulled them all onto a server and I use Plex so I can access my collection as if it were a streaming service. MakeMKV is the tool I use to rip DVDs, and this post explains how to use it.

Seriously, do not open that file!

I have many email addresses. It was up to seven for a while there, but now I’ve got it down to a more manageable four. With all these email addresses, I sort through an awful lot of spam, much of which is from scammers who want nothing more than for me to click a link or open an… Read More »

Comparing Five Note-taking Tools

In the mid 1990s, after years of carrying around a Daytimer, I entered all my notes into my Palm Pilot. A few years later I moved all my notes into OneNote, and in 2012 I moved everything into Evernote. I detailed this journey along with some Evernote pointers in my blog post, Evernote is Awesome. I spent many… Read More »

Image metadata standards

I’ve been on a quest for the perfect Digital Asset Manager — DAM. One of my requirements is that the program must write all of my added tags, captions, or descriptions to the file’s metadata, not to a separate file or into a database. My partner pointed out that this topic is a quagmire of competing standards, and… Read More »

Blog categories and tags

Most blogs contain posts which are discrete stories or articles that, while they might share common topics, are intended to be read on their own, not as part of a linear progression. For these blogs, unless you have set up some order, the posts are in an unstructured row that your users can either read linearly or search… Read More »

Spam, Petitions, and Facebook Shares

I try to be somewhat tolerant and kind in my life, but I flat-out hate spammers and boycott businesses that spam. I fight a monumental daily battle against spam and other unwanted emails — it wastes about 10-30 minutes of my day every day (depending on if I start messing with my email rules).   What about petitions… Read More »

1-minute Photo Improvement

Lately I’ve had a few projects that were dependent on photos that other people sent me. It has become pretty typical when I request photos that people send stuff that is, well, not so great.  You don’t have to be a pro or have a fancy camera to take a photo that can be used in print or… Read More »

Why I Facebook

I have some friends and family who don’t use Facebook, including a few who tend to look down their noses at those who do. This has led me into conversations in which I end up defending it. Now, I’m not talking about Facebook as a source for news: therein lies danger. If you learn about something on Facebook,… Read More »

Why Do You Blog?

I’ve heard recently from some friends who blog that they are discouraged that they don’t have much engagement with their readers. With no feedback or interaction, they are wondering why they should even bother. This started a conversation that focussed on answering just one simple question: Why do you blog?   Because I have something I want to… Read More »

Batch Processing with Affinity Photo

Batch processing of images in Affinity photo is really easy. A perfect use case for this is to change the size of an entire folder of images for use in your blog. You’ve just finished taking pictures of your products and now you want to post them to your blog. You have 50 wonderful, high-res JPG files, but you… Read More »

My Dropbox Woes

First, let me start by saying that I really love Dropbox and think it is indispensable. I have a Dropbox Pro account that my computer and mobile devices connect to, and then I synch pretty much *every* file on my computer to it.