The sourdough starter that I
started yesterday developed much as I had expected, and of course it was much thinner, making
it easier to handle. Baked a loaf with it, as planned. The old method had 375 ml of water
in the starter, minus 80 g removed for the next starter, and 760 g in the last stage, for a
total of 1055 g. The new starter had 600 g of water, minus 128 g removed for the next
starter, so I needed an additional 535 g to make my 1055 g. The result was a dough with
exactly the same consistency as before.
But it rose so much more quickly and more vigorously:
Yesterday's comparisons of the output of enblend 4.1.4, 4.2 and 4.3 were revealing,
but they don't match the images I used last week. Followed that one up, and got (again, versions 4.1.4, 4.2 and
4.3) (once again, run the cursor over an image to compare it with its
neighbour):
This time the image from 4.3 was almost acceptable, but compared to 4.1.4 it still has
serious issues, in particular gradation and a black triangle to the left of the tripod
shadow.
Interesting offer in the mail today: “Completely FREE! Get Gemstone Photo Editor now, no
strings!”.
OK, if it's free, I'll take 2. I looked at ACDSee briefly ten years ago, and while I didn't find anything wrong with it, I didn't mention it
again.
OK, follow the link. “Please fill out this CAPTCHA”. Dammit, what is wrong with the
browser on hydra:0.2 that always wants CAPTCHAs to be filled out? Started
up despise, where it's supposed to go, and got the same result. Then a download
link, along with a popup asking whether I wanted to do something that I could resist. No
download!
Try again. “Our records show that you have already downloaded this software”. Dammit, is
this just an attempt to annoy me? Sent a message to their help line and moved on.
Oh. The “Submit” button appears to have been a request to send me an email message. It
didn't say anything, but I got the email message with a link to download it. Did that,
installed the package, and I was asked for a license key! OK, I get a 30 day trial, and in
that time they should have sorted things out.
But how do I access my files? Again one of these stupid toy file access windows which
didn't show my P: file system. It found old files there, but it took me a long
time to discover that the window was too small to show the file system. Ugh. But by that
time I had moved on to less frustrating things.
Only later did I notice that the email included a license key to type in. Did that, and it
worked. So maybe I am just being too easily frustrated.
And what isGemstone Photo Editor 12? I thought that it was not the latest version, but that
seems not to be the case: it's a component of their total package. It might be worth trying
out.
Yet another email from AAMI today, technically in response to my message of 29 April. They enclose a purported assessor's report that
is interesting for a number of reasons. In particular, it doesn't describe any damage! I
think that it's time to read “Brave New World” again. I recall something about Epsilons that
might be relevant today.
What does ACDSeeGemstone Photo Editor 12 do? What can I do with it? There are plenty of videos, of course, and today I took a
look at some.
I still don't know what it can do. The ones I looked at show navigating their menu system
and some of the normal things, like changing gradation. But they start in the middle! Yes,
I have established that I can start the thing and load (“import)” photos. And apart from the basics, what
can I do with them? Remove background seems to be standard now. Can I use it to get better
results with my kangaroo photos, or maybe the Christmas photo last year? Hard to say. It will require still more playing around
to find out. The good news is that the license is permanent, so I'm in no hurry.
This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have
a horror of reverse chronological documents, so
all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days,
but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in
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