Adobe Lightroom deals with a lot of data -- sometimes thousands of images at a time, each one potentially huge by itself -- so it uses a lot of computer resources. When setting up a machine for Lightroom use, one wants to know what kinds of upgrades will be most effective, and along these lines I got an email from James Palik, a professional photographer who also teaches processing and workflow with Lightroom, asking specific questions about Lightroom resource management.

Sadly I'm not the right person to ask about this kind of stuff, but luckily I have a contact within [...]

I've discovered an issue with how an iPhone give location information to apps, an issue that can have a dramatic impact on the accuracy of location data. The impact is either really good or really bad, depending on what the app (and you) want to use the location information for.

The issue is that the iPhone can get into a mode where instead of providing apps with your location directly from its normal location-tracking methods (GPS/GLONASS, WiFi and cell-tower signal strength), it "snaps" the location to the center of the nearest road it knows about. I call this "snap to [...]

This xkcd comic came out today with perfect timing:

Last month I was contacted by GearBest and asked whether I'd like to do a review of a product from their cycling gear or LED lights categories; I'd get to keep the product in exchange for an unbiased review. Probably they'd seen my headphone review done under similar circumstances. I get this kind of message every so often and don't usually accept, but a bicycle light piqued my interest.

I chose to try out a small, $50 head-mounted light that I thought might be useful for nighttime riding:

The flashlight easily [...]

I built a "heatmap" showing all the places I've ridden my bicycle since getting into cycling earlier this year. I thought it might be interesting for visitors researching rides they might want to try.

It's here: "Heatmap of Jeffrey's Cycling in Kyoto".

At the moment it includes data on 76 rides, with areas of yellow and red being more-often visited roads.

Clicking anywhere I've ridden brings up a list of rides that passed the area...

In the example above, I'd ridden the clicked-on road three times. Clicking then on the most-recent ride name highlights the whole ride on the map, [...]

FYI, I've just updated the page for my Photoshop calendar-template-building script to include pre-built PSDs for 2016 (and 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020), in case you can't run the script but have Photoshop and want to make some custom calendars.