The View From The Crow's Nest | 20-10-14

Welcome to Episode 131 of my podcast The view from the crow's nest It is Wednesday the 14th of October 2020 straighting day to day kick off the day with session with personal trainer Abdel, and it was good. Chest upper body and, you know, it was good I'm getting stronger It was challenging etc. But basically, by the time, same thing as Monday by the time, I'd done it and then waited that a shower, washed and blah blah blah. It was like midday so basically the whole morning is gone, which is just frustrating when there's so much that I'd like to do and be the needs doing. And those two things aren't necessarily the same. And so that was a bit annoying and then this afternoon I don't know it's just a very, very busy. Afternoon not really much fella normally much, much got done, despite the fact that I was working I mean after I guess. By the time it was midday and then it was lunchtime and then it was by the time I got to work it was kind of two o'clock or 230 or something like that. And really wasn't in my most dynamic frame. I did, I did do something very cool. I'm very excited about because this is my life right now, and I was working in Lightroom which is the Adobe programme for editing photos so I'm sorting out the calendar for my 2021 calendar. And it occurred to me that maybe there was a controller that might make working like room, more speed up the workflow. So controller with dials or knobs or something like that. And there'll be a lot quicker than having to use the mouse and find a little bit I want to adjust and then click and hold and drag and I find it very fafi Lightroom because the control is quite small, etc. And it turns out there are controllers and they're about 200. To 500 pounds and it occurred to me that that was ridiculous. And then it occurred to me that if they are controlling it by sending MIDI signals which is like, basically, sending binary ones and zeros. Over cables which has been around for about 40 years and as a user like music. Then I already have a MIDI controller and I might be able to use that. Long story short, I could have got a free programme which allows you very easily to map the controllers on your MIDI to whatever you want on line run so basically what that means is just plug in a MIDI controller, which is like a sliders and twisty knobs. And as you move a slider. The programme detects which slider you've moved. And then it says What do you want that to control and you say, Oh, I'd like to control the exposure or whatever. And that's it that's how you map it. Now, I cannot tell you how I mean it took me a while to map all the bits that I wanted but I cannot tell you how fast much faster. One, it makes the working, and to how much more creative and intuitive it is because when you're using the mouse you kind of got half an eye on what you're doing with the mouse so it's not so easy to see what you're doing on the screen, added to which the increments that the mouse moves are quite large. So if you could move up let's say one or down one with the mouse it's quite hard doing one or two or foot you end up doing like 12 or 15, up or down and it's not ideal. With this, the increments are you know one or two as you do it's much more tactile it's much more precise. So the combination of the two means that instead of looking at my mouse or faffing I've just got one hand on a lot and I'm looking at the screen and as soon as I'm turning the knob I can see what it's doing. I don't have to think, holding the mouse moving up and down. Anyways. Suffice it to say, it's very tough there's quite a breakthrough with workflows and amazingly of all the tutorials I've seen on Lightroom over the years I've never seen anybody talk about using a controller like that speed things up, and it's just brilliant. And the funny thing is this controller I bought like eight years ago, or 10 years ago. So, it's like an old controller that now you could pick up for probably 20 quid or something like that. Brilliant. I'm