Ok so it's only been a few days, I really do need to give it longer.. But I attached my phone to my computer tonight to check out the date modified stamps on the files that are there.  Only one has been modified since I turned off all application access to my photos.  But that's one more than none.

So I looked into ways of preserving the timestamps when copying.  Robocopy does it.

BUT.

This is where Apple sux even more.

You can't connect to the phone with a drive letter or UNC path.  Seems they present the files to the computer as "Picture Transfer Protocol" which doesn't support it.  Although PTPDrive might be an option.

HATE APPLE. HATE. HATE.

Maybe I shoulda gotten an Android and be done with it.

When Neil and I saw there was a Ryan McNaught Lego exhibition coming to Canberra, we bought tickets as soon as they became available.

This was a hint at the mall:

On the day we'd booked our tickets, our breaker box caught fire.  This caused me no end of stress.  But it all worked out in the end and we got to go see it.

Pro tip:  book tickets for a school day - no annoying kids!!  And no crowds!!!

Notice the ring-in above?

Father and son off to the opera.  With Jabba.

I saw a couple of these little green guys around.  Turns out there was a competition to see how many there were.  I counted something like 25 in my photos.  I think.  I forget.

Neil and I had a great time, all the more awesome with no kids or crowds.

I was stressing about all the modified dates on my iPhone XS files.  Thanks to the little brother I can easily set the date modified to be the date taken in the exif data of photos, but PNGs are still hopelessly wrong.  Just look at this crap.  This is a view of the files on the phone itself.  As you can see, the Modified date is totally different to the Created date on a lot of the files.  Which means when I download them and rename them to the modified date, they're all out of order.

I've turned off access to the photos from all other applications, and will try it out for a week or so to see if it makes a difference.  Maybe one of the other dodgy apps I use is playing funny buggers with my files.

Otherwise it'll simply be a case of APPLE SUX!!!

And I've just wasted an hour of my life that I don't have time to waste right now.

Hate Apple. Hate. Hate.

Yeah so the other day I was complaining about Apple iPhones screwing up the Date modified field on their photos.  Thanks to a pro tip from the little brother, I can use FastStone to change the Date modified field to be the Date taken from the EXIF data.  Look! That first file is correct now!!  (and all the other photos are too)

However.

Hi.

That doesn't work with the PNG files (screenshots).  5884 was taking early morning on 6 November, and 5885 was taking mid morning on 6 November.  But their modified dates are screwed up.  5884 is noted as being modified two days later, and 5885 several hours earlier.  So the script I have to rename the files got 5884 wrong, so I had to manually rename it.

Fricken hate Apple.

Still haven't really had much of a chance to play with my new camera phone. 

I have noticed that it seems to quite well with backlighting - doing a decent job of HDR by default.  My old phone would have struggled with this lighting.

Annoyingly, the bug iPhones have recording date/time is still there in this phone/iOS.  These are the first photos taken.  Even the very first photo is wrong.  It was taken at 22:06 on 5/11, but the Date modified field is 01:51 on 7/11, when I was in bed asleep!  Fricken hate Apple.

I knew later phones/OSes had little video clips attached to photos, so when you play them on the phone you see the second or two before the photo was taken as a little animation.  I thought was some internal function on the phone.  I didn't realise it actually saves little .mov files for each one!  It's kinda cool, but I'm not entirely convinced - it takes at least twice as much space per photo, and it will make sorting/filing photos that much harder...

The face recognition is pretty cool.  Haven't tried it to see if anyone else can hack into it with their face.  

The lack of a home button is taking some getting used to.  It's mostly ok, but sometimes need a couple of swipes to get it.

The size and weight of it is majorly painful.  I feel like I'm going to drop it on my face when I'm playing with it in bed.  I got a case for it today and with that on the corner of it sticks out of my pocket because it simply doesn't fit.  Le sigh.  Fricken hate Apple.

Friday David and Kat came to stay which was nice.  We couldn't decide what to have for dinner, so went to the shop for inspiration.  While staring at the fridge some random came in so David asked "what's for dinner?", to which she said, pasta with chicken, cream, sundried tomatoes, and D&K were like "can we come to your place?" haha.  Did pick up some stuff and made creamy bacony porky pasta.  After dinner we finished the jigsaw I'd been working on for the week (all that was left was sky that took a third of the jigsaw).  And we put on Flying High because Kat needed to see it.  Except she wouldn't watch it.  Oh well.

Saturday morning we started a new jigsaw before they wandered off.  Didn't have a particularly efficient day.  Did some food shopping but that was about all.  Thought we'd have a nice quiet evening.  Watched Wall-E (because we don't have Ratatouille).  After the movie I tried to use David's G7X in stars mode, but I couldn't get it to focus.  I completely lost it.  My brother can get the most amazing photos out of that camera, but I can't even operate it in point and shoot mode.  Such a failure at life.  Which was sad because the sweetie had come out to sit with my while I was doing stuff, which was really nice, but I couldn't deal and went to bed.  And then woke up at about 1:45am and stayed awake for the next three or four hours.  Hurrah.

Sunday I was pretty much a zombie, so again, nothing got done.  Such a waste of a weekend.  I shoulda gone petanquing.  

David and Kat came back in the afternoon, complete with broken ankle.  Kat had rolled it on uneven ground on Saturday night.  They got it treated at Goulburn Base Hospital on Sunday on the way back here.  We finished the jigsaw we started on Saturday and watched some Good Place and had roast pork for dinner, and I slept a whole lot better.

Monday evening I think I managed to achieve more in an hour than I did all weekend.  Silly really.

Tuesday evening was hurty, which was remedied with wine and pizza, and a drink with Kit and Pete, one of our last ever at their place.  Sad times.

Turned on the cooler tonight for the first time this season.  I think it's going to be a hot one....

These things have been accumulating all year.

Last night got eight hours of decent sleep, so was still tired this morning but felt a lot better.

And tonight I finished labelling our East Asia photos.  Really want to get photos into the blog by the end of the year.. see how I go...

Or in this case, no electricity.

There's a reason they used asbestos in electrical cabinets...

So 6:50 on Friday morning the power went out.  Usually this is an old fish tank heater that's getting faulty.  Except the RCD was still switched on.  I flicked it off.  But then couldn't get it to flick on again.  I turned off everything I could in the house but no change.  Several messages and photos back and forth back and forth to David before I noticed the melted plastic...

At that point we knew it was serious and we'd have to get the professionals in.

Fortunately, FORTUNATELY, we were able to get it looked at the same day.  I shudder to think of going three days without power.  Would have needed to find friends with fridge and freezer space...  The fish would have probably been ok this time as it's a lot warmer than it was in April.

Someone let the smoke out..

Upshot of all of this is now each of the two power circuits has its own RCD, so if a fish tank trips it'll only take out half the house...

So Saturday I did actually have a pretty good day.  The morning was mostly house worky type stuff, and the afternoon was mostly photo sorting type stuff, So Much Photo Sorting.  The idea being to group the majority of my "friends" photos together so that I can just burn dvds for people all at once.  I got through about two different sets of friends.  Partly. 

Just before 17:00 the little brother type person arrived and I was like, right, let's go shopping (the sweetie had only just gotten home and didn't feel like shopping).  So did food shopping for the evening and the week.  So much quicker with David than Stu haha!

In the evening went over to R&F's with the extended N-Gang for some lovely curries.  Was quite a pleasant evening and late, but not stoopidly late.

Sunday the sweetie went to work *again*, so David and I spent the entire day doing a 1500 piece jigsaw which was completely unproductive but pretty cool.  We finished it over dinner (of roast chicken).  I considered going to take fountain photos during the day but by the time I checked its running times it was too late.  Oh well.  Kit and Pete also came up for a while over dinner.

Last night the sweetie and I both slept terribly.  Even though we went to bed early, him not getting to sleep and me waking up and staying awake for hours took its toll.  Stu couldn't concentrate and ended up going home after lunch.  I would have gone too but had too many things to do, so struggled through the afternoon and took a bus home. 

Tonight ended up being a washing, beer and pizza kind of a night.  Way too early in the week for that sort of thing, but I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate on photo labelling.  So at 19:45 I declare it bed time.

Also I was playing Candy Crush on the bus this arvo and hit the "five extra moves" button by accident.  There went another 10 of my gold, reducing me to 1 gold left.  I think I've used the gold I've collected on Candy Crush about twice deliberately, the rest of the gold has been wasted by phone upgrades or just ridiculousness like that.  I rage quit it and don't know that I'll go back any time soon.