Tag Archives: Photos

I’m Deleting Google Photos

popup dialog saying "Moving 3290 to bin..." with a progress meter

If you look at r/googlephotos on Reddit you’ll come across several posts from people who have had their accounts banned because of photos they have in their accounts. Most of the time it’s because of family photos of children. I have also seen posts from people who unwisely backed up their WhatsApp images folder, or backed up a drive without looking at what was on it first. Remember that researcher who lost their Google account because they had WWII Nazi documents in their Google Drive?

I have photos there going back to the year 2000, but I never regarded Google Photos as a backup service. It was a fabulous photo-sharing site, but I have barely used it since 2024 and now have my own self-hosted Immich server instead.

Last week I did a Google Takeout of everything, just in case, as it will also download any photos I saved from shared albums.

Today I went to the large photos and videos page and deleted almost every item off that page.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a “delete everything from Google Photos” button. You’ll have to visit photos.google.com and select an image and then scroll down, and down and down… and then with shift pressed, click on the last image to delete. It then may take some time for Google to mark the images as deleted.

Honestly, I expect that the automatic CSAM detection they’re using has already scanned every single photo I’ve uploaded so I’m not worried about that. I’m not uploading anything else there either, but I’ve been meaning to move off Google Photos entirely for a long time.

It is really difficult to do. In my head I know that I have a Takeout backup of everything. I know that all the original photos are on my computer at home, and they’re on Immich now, but selecting photos of familiar smiling faces, of birthday parties, of holidays and festivals, and then clicking DELETE is hard.

They’re my photos. It was nice knowing you Google Photos.

If you want an alternative, self-host Immich or use Pixel Union, a hosted version of Immich where you get 16GB free before you have to pay for more storage. It’s also hosted in the EU, which is even better! I have an account there. I uploaded a few recent photos in this album for you to see what it looks like.

Diego on a long walk

A four-panel Peanuts comic strip. Panel 1: Charlie Brown sits on a couch next to Snoopy and asks, "How would you like to go for a walk, Snoopy?" Panel 2: Snoopy excitedly jumps up and Charlie says, "Ha! I knew you would!" Panel 3: Charlie Brown and Snoopy stand outside as Charlie reflects, "All dogs like to go for walks..." while Snoopy dances excitedly. Panel 4: Charlie is pushing Snoopy along in a buggy as he says, "This isn't exactly what I had in mind..."

We have an 11-year-old chihuahua and while he enjoys going for walks, he’s happiest when it’s a short walk. Actually, he’s happiest when he’s cuddled up next to us in a blanket, but we all need exercise.

A black and white chihuahua with a grey muzzle sits in a buggy.
Diego in Dún Laoghaire

When it’s a longer walk, we bring his buggy and he sits in it, looking around, happy to be with us and king of all he observes from his high vantage point.

When our previous dog, Oscar, got too old to walk much we did the same for him, but he had to make do with a child’s stroller. We didn’t know you could get doggy buggies back then!

A shih tzu in a child's buggy on a steep country road.
Oscar on Cape Clear Island

In my own world

Dramatic action shot of goalkeeper in blue jersey diving horizontally through air with arms outstretched attempting to save shot during local football match, with player number 8 in white and black visible in foreground and crowd of spectators including children in red and white jerseys watching from behind goal net at community football pitch with yellow corrugated wall and wheelchair sign visible in background.

Sometimes I feel bad that I have no idea that Ireland are playing a match, or when I see all the threads on the Ireland Reddit and it’s the first I even hear we were playing Portugal.

But then I remember I have my own hobbies and obsessions they won’t know a thing about.

My wife was told by a friend that she’d never meet a man who wasn’t interested in sport. I guess she did.

Geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic

A gentleman in tan hat and plaid shirt standing at a busy car boot sale in Bantry with market stalls and shoppers browsing various items spread on tables, County Cork.

Geotagging your photos means adding location data to the image so they can be displayed on a map. Be aware that doing so might reveal sensitive information you’d rather keep secret like your home address.

You can of course remove location data when you export images, like I did with the images in this post.

Anyway, here is how I geotag my photos.

For photos I’ve already taken, I use Google Timeline and export it from my Google account using Google Takeout. You’ll get a rather large “Recent.json” file out of that. To convert that file into the GPX format usable by Lightroom Classic, use this Python script which I’ve already covered in this post.

When I go out with my camera now I use the Anrdoid app, OpenTracks. It’s a free app you can grab from f-droid, but there’s also a paid version on the Google Play Store if you want to support the developer. You can also use GPSLogger, a free app that has the advantage of being able to save your .gpx files to Dropbox or Google Drive.

On iOS, the myTracks app appears to do a similar job but I can’t test it. Please comment if you have tried it or know of decent alternatives.

To geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic, the Adobe documentation on the subject is excellent. Once you’ve opened the Map Module and done it once it’s easy to do again. When you geotag your photos, the Map Module will look like this.

A satellite view of Cork City with a blue line showing where I walked and orange squares showing how many photos I took at various locations.

There is also Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom that I’ve used for years but maybe it’s because of changes to LrC in recent years, it’s gotten really slow for me. I usually use the built in LrC functionality in the Maps module now.

Transfusion Art Gallery at the City Hall

TRANSFUSION TRANS JOY THROUGH ART @ Cork City Hall

I helped the kind folk at TENI set up a small art exhibit in Cork City Hall yesterday. This week is Cork LGBT+ Pride Festival and this is one part of that celebration.

Transfusion features art made by young trans people, including a pencil drawing by the late Jordan Howe. She was a 19 year-old transgender woman from Belfast who took her own life because of transphobic bullying in 2014.

Drop into the City Hall on Anglesea Street. You can’t miss it. The exhibition will be on until August 15th.

Organic cows suffer without medicine

TIL that “organic cows”in the US can’t be given antibiotics. If they are, they are never “organic”, ever again.

The image shows a cow and a calf lying on grass. Both animals are brown and have ear tags. The cow is looking to the side, while the calf is looking directly at the camera. They are in a grassy area with a blurred background, suggesting a farm or rural setting.

In the EU and Canada, farmers aren’t allowed to sell the milk until there’s no sign of antibiotics.

Personally, I’d prefer if an animal was correctly treated for any ailment they might be suffering from. And antibiotics might be the correct course of action. Feeding antibiotics to healthy animals in their feed is ridiculously irresponsible, however.

How do you microdose veganism? Try eating less meat and dairy products. Go meat free once or twice a week. There are plenty of delicious vegan meals to be made, and you won’t miss the meat.

In the follow-up podcast mentioned, they guide the listener through how someone who wants to reduce animal suffering (but also still eat animals) might think through their dinner menu. They recommended eating good quality beef, which surprised me, but given how prevalent battery hens are, it might be easier to discover if a cow was grass fed.

We’re spoiled in Ireland. Most cows are grass fed, and the EU has laws regarding how densely packed chickens can be. EU MPs voted in favour of banning caged farming by 2027 after intense lobbying by activists.

R.I.P. John Free

John Free was a very talented street photographer in Los Angelus, who I have admired for many years. I saw on Facebook that he passed away last night. If you’re at all interested in photography, have a look at his YouTube channel, where you will get a taste of his excitement, enthusiasm and energy for photography and people.

I forgot he posted a video from the Musée D’Orsay a few years ago, but I’m extra happy that I visited there last year, and as John suggested in the video, I was able to balance the subject with the art.

Final section of Macroom Bypass opens soon

The final section of the new road bypassing Macroom and other towns in Co Cork will be opening next month, hopefully. The existing sections make that drive a pleasure now, as we can bypass the bottleneck of Macroom, and avoid the twisting roads just west of Ballyvourney.

We drove to Killarney on Saturday morning to photograph the deer in Killarney National Park, and that road was lovely to drive. It’s disconcerting there’s no hard shoulder, but there are lay-bys at least. We passed through Ballyvourney around 7am, and saw a local shop was already open, but I wonder what effect the new road will have on local business?

On the way back, we stopped in The Mills, on the edge of that town, for lunch. It was well over a decade since I’d eaten there. The place was packed with diners, and even a Hen Party! The food was delicious and staff were friendly. Will it be so easy to get there next month, or will drivers have to drive through the entire town to visit?

The cheapest petrol in the county

Petrol in Ballinspittle is only €1.819/lt today. That’s the cheapest I’ve seen in a long time.

After listening to this Planet Money podcast about the cost of gasoline I wonder if we will have expensive petrol and diesel forever? Reason being, it’s unlikely that new oil refineries will ever be built again as demand for oil products plummet in the next decade. A guest on the show predicted that a barrel of oil will be $20-$30 in ten years time.

Electric cars are becoming a lot more attractive, but I won’t be looking to buy a new car for quite some time.

For you, my American reader, there are 3.78541 litres in a US gallon. That means the price of gasoline/petrol here is $6.89/gallon.

Aside from all this, the reduction in oil production will have a detrimental effect on sulphur production. It’s a by-product of that system and used by the metal and fertilizer industries. It’s cheap as chips now, but if there’s a shortage, the price of food will skyrocket.

Yikes. Any good news about the future?

Tetanus? I’m good for another ten years

Ah, Mommy Cat. We have two cats. They’ve lived with us for more than 13 years. Originally there were five but the three boys wandered too far and unfortunately were lost to cars on a nearby road.

Mommy Cat, the matriarch of all she sees, brought her kittens to us way back in 2009. The only girl of the litters she bore is Hoppy, so called because she’s missing a part of her back foot. It doesn’t slow her down though. When she wants to she can run like the wind, or hunt silently and bring us “gifts” to the back door.

Mommy Cat is still half wild. After all these years she will barely tolerate us touching her, and only while she’s eating cat treats. For many a year she would sit on the window sill, rain or shine, hail or snow, looking into the kitchen. She would never come in unless the back door was left wide open.

Until a few weeks ago that is. Much to our delight she came in and didn’t flinch (too much) when I slowly and quietly closed the door behind her. She ate some food. Looked around. Wandered through the legs of the kitchen table. Sniffed the legs of the chairs. She even went over to the dog’s bed, and lay down, watching us through lidded eyes.

We were amazed. At 15 or 16 years old she realised she didn’t have to run out the door when we approached. She realised it was nice and warm inside and she was safe inside. After a while she went out again into the night, and her bed outside in a kennel.

Things only got better and better. First thing in the morning she came in with her daughter, meowing in a croaky voice. Slightly unsteady on her elderly feet, but she still has an appetite.

Soon enough she was staying in the bed all day until I coaxed her out, but then she started staying in all night. She obviously has good bladder control as she had to be pushed out in the morning!

This continued for the last two weeks but she’s the worse for wear. Her fur is matted, her paws are yellowing. We could see she was doing better being inside in the warmth but one morning we smelled something nasty. Her matted fur was the source. Out she went again and my wife washed the dog’s bed, adding bleach to help get the smell out. We decided something had to be done.

Later that afternoon we acted. Mommy Cat needed to be brushed down and cleaned. I now wonder what the hell we were thinking we could do since she was half wild. Our attempts lasted all of about two minutes. Wearing kitchen gloves, I slowly crawled up to her, put my hand out to catch her. Quick as a flash, she twirled her head around and bit down hard on my finger!

Mommy Cat ran out the door and blood pumped out of my finger as I ran cold water over it into the sink. It slowly stopped but was very sore to the touch.

Of course I had to then get a tetanus shot. The last time I got one of those was in the mid-nineties. Thankfully this time it was in the arm. I have a dose of antibiotics to take for the next week, and my finger is all bandaged up. It’s still very sore but hopefully the infection won’t go anywhere.

On the way back from the doctor we stopped at the local vet to get a trap. It’s a small cage, about a metre long with a panel that slides open at one end to put the food in, and a door at the other end that swings up and is held up by a spring loaded catch. When the animal steps on a plate the door swings down behind them. Our vet knows how to handle cats. They’ll be able to clean her up and check her health.

Mommy Cat? Thankfully she didn’t take off. She came back later in the day looking for food. This morning we put out the trap. Hoppy had to be kept out of the garden because we knew she’d go into the trap without a thought for any food. Mommy Cat is smarter. She must have been starving but she never went into the trap, even though we put tuna and cat food in there. I think it’ll take a few days for her to become used to seeing it. We’ll leave the trap out for the next few days and hopefully we’ll be able to get her to the vet.

She’s in again tonight. It’s cold out. Best place for our elderly cat.

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