The iPhoto conundrum

Like me many people have bought their first mac lately. Like me they've also been very happy with the whole package (hardware + OS + software). But here's the problem: if you have liked the iLife suite as much as I do you are probably running out of space in your MacBook Pro (MBP) even if you have a larger disk...

With iTunes at 16Gb and iPhoto at 17Gb I'm running out of space! What can I do?

In the hope that one of you may have found a solution here's a call for help! Help me figure out how to have the pictures I want with me all the time, but at the same time have the disk with enough space to install the dev tools from apple (which also take some more Gigs).

Here are some of the plan's I've hatched to solve this conundrum:

Plan A - The home-made solution

Summary: Store the iPhoto library on an external HD and carry in the laptop only the last few "rolls".

This is the first solution that came to mind. I would copy the whole library from iPhoto to an external RAID 1 HD (see how here), and the just have the latest "rolls" of photos with me in the laptop.

This is such a simple solution (for someone that understands the concept of iPhoto library, which may not be all of us) that I'm baffled by the lack of support for this in iPhoto out of the box! I mean, you do have to do a lot of work just to get this done. Apple, listen up!

Plan B - The web 2.0 solution

Summary: Copy all the photos to Flickr Pro account.

This idea just came to me while updating my Flickr library. I've updated to Pro account a few months back, and while thinking about the iPhoto problem it came to me that Flickr offers unlimited storage for the Pro account. And to be honest, Flickr is getting up to speed pretty fast. If it was not for the fact that you may not have Internet connection all the time I'd probably have started to use Flickr as my main photo library organizer.

The further downside of Flickr is that as you accumulate photos in the service it takes quite a while to download them back to your laptop if you want to have them offline.

How about you? Have you solved this problem? Leave your comments below.

Time is our most precious resource, use it sparingly

In the follow up of GTD (of which I'm a big fan) and the "Four hour week", or even "Zen to Done", here's a piece to make you think.

You and me are "knowledge workers", that means we "process information" into value added knowledge, processes, software, designs, you name it.

One thing that we are probably not so aware of is that time is limited and should not be used for work at all unless really needed. In fact, Time is the knowledge worker's inventory (in Lean terms), which means that if we use too much of it we are in effect hiding innefective ways of working, i.e. waste.

What do I mean with this? Simple, if you are working more than the 7,5 (in Finland) or 8 hours/day (elsewhere) required by law, then you must ask yourself: what could I do so that I could accomplish the same amount of valuable work without working more that the limit/day?

Chances are that what you do can be very much improved with simple tricks, but the important thing here is: if you find yourself using more that the 7,5/8 hours/day you have to stop, really stop, and use your precious time thinking how you can do the same in less hours. You owe it to yourself! Be Better!