What the Heck Is That?

I went out to the barn as usual yesterday, fed the horses and dogs, and went to the dog’s water bowl to top it off. There was a critter in there, something aquatic/amphibious. Since it was at the bottom of the bowl, I assumed it was dead. Nope. Lifting the bowl, it wiggled. I suspect is was a bit stiff since it was barely over freezing.

I took the bowl outside and emptied it onto the gravel drive. The critter was about five inches long, oddly spotted, and had a vertical tail. It’s head didn’t look like a lizard. On its own, it started to slowly crawl away. I picked it up by its tail and put it on the concrete barn floor. This called for pictures. While not fast, it moved away with its short legs. I moved it back into the center of the aisle and got one good picture. Then I put it outside to go on its merry way. The dogs could have cared less about it. Nothing here to bother or eat. They ignored it altogether.

So, what is this creature? How did it get here? This is the first of whatever this is I have ever seen. Where did it come from? How long did it take to get here? Is this part of a migration? Are there hordes of others like it ready to invade? With its short legs, how did it get into the dog bowl? Does it use its tail to help climb?

Later, when I was talking to Jeff, we both thought it was a pollywog in a stage right before it became a frog. However, when I showed him my picture, he identified it as a salamander. And, when I looked up images of salamanders, it confirmed the call.

iLfie 2009 - Preliminary Review

I rushed out to get iLife 09 and installed it on my MacBook. Of the packet, I don't use Garage Band at all (deleted it after installation). Ninety-nine percent of my uses are iPhoto and iWeb with occasional uses of the other programs.

iPhoto: There are some new bells and whistles. Face recognition is interesting. That's about all I can say. I think Marian will love this feature since you can see al the pictures in iPhoto that contain a certain person. With a large number of pictures, after you have gone through the task of identifying faces, it'll be a nice feature. Mind you, it'll take some real time to go through your zillion pictures and tag all the faces.

The new editing tools are not a big difference, but do have some nice tweaks. However, one feature that has changed is the ability to drag photos from the editing thumbnails above what you're working on right into an album. Doesn't happen, as far as I can figure out. You have to go to the Picture or Even level to drag stuff to albums. Don't like this. Slows things down for me.

Flickr uploading can now be done from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. However, what this does is to open a new set in Flickr that is handled sort of like how Web Gallery is handled. Nice thing is automatic updating of pix as you add them (like Web Gallery). But the Flickr uploader you can get from ConnectedFlow is still a much better interface. The iPhoto link to Flickr has fewer control, doesn't allow you to put things into a specific set that's already on Flickr, etc. So, I'm not using the uploader that's part of iPhoto and still using the one I got from ConnectedFlow (which works fine with the new version of iPhoto). Have not tried the Facebook link as yet.

So, overall, it's a "nice" update but does not include anything that is spectacular from how I use iPhoto.

iWeb: I went into iWeb to add a simple link to some Flickr pix. What I found out was that it needed to republish my entire iWeb site file. I had either some broadband issues (on a friend's wireless network) or some server issues at MobileMe. So, it took a couple of days and about a dozen tries before I was successful. I don't think it was a problem with iWeb itself. And, so far, I haven't found any bid-deal improvements in the program that excite me, but who knows what I will find in days ahead as I use it.

Summary: So, no real problems. Some interesting additions. Some stuff changed that is not as useful for me. On balance, not a key upgrade to buy unless you didn't have iLife 08.