Why online help is great

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There’s been a lot written and shared in the last few weeks over the Facebook privacy story. Reading about the volume of information that was ‘shared’ from user accounts has been startling. As expected, there has been the media hype around it and the reflex reactions on social media, especially on Twitter.

I wonder how many people will truly delete their Facebook accounts. I reckon more people will deactivate rather than delete, mainly because it’s a ‘try before you buy’ scenario and I also reckon many people won’t know the difference between deactivation and deletion.

Mabel Kwong

While I have been thinking about my online ‘life’ this week, Mabel posted on the topic of ‘oversharing’. She expressed how she will not share certain aspects of her life on social media and explained how she can maintain her quite deep thoughts on her blog and separate out any information that may put her at risk of trolls or stalkers. As a blogger about multiculturalism life in Australia, her views are really very well balanced, but people who are unbalanced, do not always agree with Mabel’s perspective. It is disconcerting to know that someone like Mabel would receive negative feedback for her well-researched posts which are augmented by her personal experience growing up in three countries.

Politics, religion and sex

I pondered Mabel’s post and thought of the adage not to discuss politics, religion or sex in polite company, which in my mind translated to not discussing politics, religion or sex in public and these days, public includes social media.

I’ve modified my views on this adage over time. I have in the past commented on sex, mainly because of my professional interests and experiences in sexual health, microbiology and infectious diseases. While I’m careful, I have certainly shared online about sex.

Politics and religion though are not subjects I talk about much online or in person.

Zena O’Brien

This doesn’t mean, however, that I don’t read what others share on the subjects of politics and religion. Many of my social media friends espouse positions on both topics and I enjoy reading their opinions.

In terms of my non-social media friends, I think I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of friends who have an inkling of how I may think about religion and politics.

I mentioned Zena last week and how we’ve been sharing about low carb living. Zena has an interest in politics and religion and reading her Tweets has been really interesting. Her philosophy and approach to thinking through her interests is very thought provoking.

While all this is going on, other social media platforms continue to carry on.

Adobe Lightroom Classic CC version 7.3 update

I’ve read the opinions of so-called experts who claim the safest position is to get off social media and stop living a virtual existence. In the twenty-first century, it’s not practical nor convenient to live offline. The benefits of an online existence far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. Let me offer an example.

This week, Adobe pushed through some updates via the Creative Cloud on many of their software programs. This included both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom Classic CC.

Most updates are trouble-free and I enjoy the updated features and new features which appear. Occasionally, an update plays havoc with my system or workflow. A while back, one update ruined my automatic image importation workflow and I had to wait many months for a new update for the problem to be fixed. There were many unhappy customers on the online forums about that.

This week, I updated the program on my laptop and as soon as I started it up I could hear the cooling fans kick in and begin to whir constantly. I opened the activity monitor app and saw the CPU was being consumed by Lightroom.

I went to the Adobe Lightroom Forum and posted a description of the problem and within 24 hours, other users reported the same problem and at the same time, some very experienced users posted suggestions on resolving the problem.

I’m an avid watcher of YouTube videos on photography and all the channels were describing how wonderful this new update is (and it really is by the way) yet none of them mentioned any problems. In my mind that confirmed this problem, I was experiencing was not universally experienced, but something related probably to settings.

I went about reading and trying the suggestions more knowledgeable users posted and yes, I resolved the problem. It looks like it helped others resolve their problem too. It was simply a matter of unchecking a box for automatic face detection in the preferences.

Face detection is a wonderful thing and I use it in my photographic workflow to help generate collections and find photographs. It requires a lot of processor power though and I expect what happened, was in this new update because it made a change to every single file in my catalogue of photos, the face detection process had to be reapplied across the catalogue. Eventually, it would go through every file and settle down but that could take days. Simply unchecking the automatic face detection resolved the problem and I can manually apply that process to images I know contain faces. Given the vast majority of my photographs are food, it was a waste of processor power for the software to go through all those plates of salmon and steak and lime flavoured goodness.

So why am I rambling on about this? Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I’m still on Facebook, I’m still using all the social media platforms I like. While privacy is a concern for me, there are some realities we need to accept. I use Google and have a Gmail account. That means Google knows where I am and where I’ve been. I use Facebook and I know if I look up something, sure enough, an ad will pop up in Facebook based on my browser history. If you’re interested, my Facebook account gets lots of food and photography ads. Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook. I’d be foolish to not assume there are connections. While WhatsApp claims to use end to end encryption, I just assume if Facebook wants to, it could also scan my WhatsApp messages just as it scans my Facebook Messenger messages.

The bottom line is don’t do anything illegal online. While we all have some conversation with others we wouldn’t want public, the reality is so long as it’s not illegal, what are you really worried about?

YouTube love

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been sharing some link love.

This week, I wanted to share some of the YouTube channels I’m subscribed to.

Sous vide everything
Three blokes living in Florida, two from Brazil and one from Cuba, spend much of their office time eating amazing meats, mostly steaks and sharing how to do it.

T-Roy cooks
Troy lives in Texas and grills and smokes his way to happiness.

The Snap Chick
Leigh is a photographer and educator.

The Josh Elkin
Josh is a quirky cook with some interesting creations.

Photo Gear News
Up to date camera news.

QI: Quite interesting
If you don’t know about this, you should.

Greg’s Kitchen
Greg’s an Australian spending a lot of time in Singapore. He cooks and reviews fast food.

The Bite Shot
Joanie shares her food photography skills with the world.

Molly Schuyler
The most amazing competitive eater I’ve seen.

Matt Stonie
A phenomenal eater who makes great videos.

Star Trek: Discovery: Desperate Hours

Over the Easter break, I began listening to the book written by David Mack. It’s set years before the TV series Star Trek: Discovery at a time when Christopher Pike was Captain of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701.

I finished listening to the book this weekend.

While the official books are often not regarded as canonical, this book deals with the rise of Michael Burnham to the role of Acting First Officer aboard the USS Shenzhou NCC-1227 serving under Captain Philippa Georgiou and jumping over the Kelpien Saru. It also explains the relationship between Burnham and Spock who was serving as Pike’s second officer aboard the Enterprise. Both Spock and Burnham were raised on Vulcan by Sarek and Amanda.

This information, in my opinion, is important as fans eagerly await season two of DISCO knowing that contact with the USS Enterprise is imminent.

If you are a fan of Star Trek, I recommend this book for reading or listening to.

What I ate this week?

I didn’t shoot that many food photographs this week but don’t worry I still ate three meals every day.

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Final thoughts

How do you feel about the Facebook revelations?

Do you like listening to books or do you prefer to read them?

I’m going to be away for most of next week. You’ll find out where next week. Catch you then.

Tender and tasty breasts and thighs but no chocolate eggs this year

Frosty reflections