Bike ride to Lim Chu Kang and back

I headed out at 6.30am but discovered the bike ride to Lim Chu Kang/Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve was not a pleasant one *cough, choke, splutter* I already added some tags to my bikely Mid Western Loop: Holland Village to Kranji Reservoir and I will edit the route to improve it.

I included “unsafe” and “intermediate”! I will also amend it to head out via the Ulu Pandan park connector. What was I thinking, riding through Clementi and Jurong *shake head*?!

Further on at Lim Chu Kang, the granite reservoir in meant lots of more lorries hurtling up and down that narrow road. The heavy vehicle parking along Sungei Kadut meant we shared plenty of single lanes with heavy vehicles thundering by. But be sure to note I am not complaining about any of the drivers, they were all great. It was simply the poor air quality.

The happiest stretches were along Jalan Bahar and Lim Chu Kang where there was sufficient vegetation to filter out noise, dust and heat. We were hit by heavenly cool, fresh air! From previous experiences, I know the smaller buffer vegetation of the Ulu Pandan park connector will provide similar, scaled down effect. Pity they are stripping away parts near Ghim Moh.

Eventually I remembered that I usually only ride this route at night or on some Sunday bike ride. This was Saturday morning and a very different state of affairs. I was wishing I had Chu Wa’s mask on me. I’ll remember to bring it along when I return next to Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve.

I had a fun break in between the ride – one at Lim Chu Kang mangroves with the young mudskipper lady during which I was up to my knees in anoxic mud (I brought booties) and later on at the reserve where I met up with two of my former faculty-mates/KEVII-ians; their kids are interested in nature and survived route one. And saw otters which was very nice. They already know to call me Otterman!

Meanwhile, I was just reminded that Toddycat Marcus is in a glass room in Bugis Junction!

Imagewell for cropping and uploading images

I have probably been using Graphic Converter since OS8.6 (about a decade ago) or when MacDraw was no longer available. But probably only significantly since 2000, when the lab first got a digital camera. I use it mainly to manage folders of images and for marginal image preparation for blog or emails. The functions I use it for:

• open in folder (browser) view,
• replace the in-built, camera generated, low-res thumbnails,
• view individual image (full size or screen fit) or slideshow
• batch rename
• move or copy out a selection
• rotate, delete,
• select area, crop,
• adjust brightness, contrast, saturation; sometimes independent hue adjustment
• merge (or cut and paste into new pallete)
• fill gaps with colour
• change size and quality (to fit and for faster downloads

The processed images are uploaded to Flickr by Flickr Uploadr or are FTP-ed to my server via a drag and drop onto an Interarchy or Transmit droplet. This is all accomplished reasonably quickly so I am quite content.

Time has passed and Mac’s OS X Tiger and Leopard’s Finder and Preview can probably do some of these by now. Old habits die hard and old dogs have problems with new tricks, so perhaps I shall examine Preview when I finally get the MacBook Pro on Leopard.

This week, however, I received an email about Interarchy’s image editor, Iris and it spurred lunch kakis Kenneth, Laurence and I to discuss image editors. They mentioned Pixelmator and Acorn respectively. We sort of all shrugged – if it ain’t broke… My parting shot was an alert that TUAW blogger Dave Caolo has sworn by Imagewell repeatedly in the past year or so for its helpfulness to blogging in particular.

I have tried Imagewell on and off over the past five years but never took to it. Now that most of my blogging is done with MarsEdit, I decided to re-examine Imagewell. First, I thought about the steps that an image takes to reach the web for a blog post, after a field trip:

1. Download to Mac (I still drag and drop in Finder).
2. Review, delete blurs and extras; batch rename.
3. Label for potential blog use.
4. Crop, adjust, resize selection.
5. Rename and save.
6. Upload.

Steps 1 – 3 are usually done immediately with Graphic Converter. Often an album is then set aside for back up and not used until a blogging session or forwarding. For steps 3-5, I use Graphic Converter and FTP via Transmit or Interarchy. What happens if I use Imagewell instead?

• Imagewell fired up very quickly,
• copies html-coded URL to clipboard (great for pasting into MarsEdit),
• single-click to upload to server and more elegant performance than ftp droplets,
• multiple server uploads,
• abort option for file upload,
• drag and drop to desktop or email application,
• includes selection or screen grab,
• has an “open recent” history with thumbnails of images (nice!)
• And it has a lovely manual, complete with quick reference image and screencast – you gotta love that!

It did require marginally more mouse-clicking in edit-mode and an edit window crowded my image view which was really bad, but I suspect I can adjust that. However, it was a good experience overall and I’m adding it to my arsenal. Coincidentally, I opened MacZot’s latest email offer after my field trip, and it was for Imagewell – on sale for $9.95!

Mudskippers @ Lim Chu Kang mangroves today

90 minutes to get there by bicycle. It was lovely, as always!

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