Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog

I recently upgraded to iPhoto 4, part of the new iLife 04 package, and I'm not impressed. It looks like others have been having problems too. If you are going to be trying out iPhoto 4, be sure to back up your old photo library folder before making the move, so you can downgrade if you have problems.

First, it seems to be confused about your old "albums", trying to recover the alias files that were in your albums folders, resulting in tons of "recovered" photos that are completely bogus. It looks like a workaround is to remove your "Albums" folder from your library before launching iPhoto 4 for the first time. This prevents iPhoto 4 from trying to process these files.

Second, it looks like a bunch of files never get their previews generated, so I see dozens or hundreds of the photo previews as blank squares. Something is not triggering iPhoto to generate the preview icons for these.

I'll be happy to report this as a bug to Apple, but if anybody has any insight on these problems, let me know first...

I started reading Jim Hightower's book Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back expecting this one of those typical humorous-but-informative "Ain't the Bush Administration Awful" books. But it turned out to be a lot more than I expected.

The book is not just about dissing the Republicans, but the Democrats as well, who have been locked up in their glass cages in Washington, D.C. and are so completely out of touch with what it's like to be living in any of these fifty United States. It's amazingly refreshing. He digs into the "wobblycrats" -- spineless Democrat congress-people who rolled over for Bush's agenda against our country, either by voting with the Republicans or just not showing up for the votes (Aside: not unlike like John Kerry). No wonder so many people don't bother voting with choices like this! (And no wonder Dean's message is resonating with so many people — Republican or Democrat — across the country.)

But then the book surprised me even more by turning out to be amazingly uplifting, telling small stories about local victories at the city, state, or regional level, where ordinary citizens have stood up against being steamrolled by them — like stopping a Wal-Mart from coming into town and destroying the local businesses, or the imminent shut-down of local libraries. It's truly inspiring.

I highly recommend this book! Get it from the traditional Amazon link here, or, better yet, at your local bookstore if you are lucky enough to have one (I don't!), or from your local library, if you are lucky enough to have one.