Camera, code, coffee

Ideally when you travel, you'd want to use a fresh card with your camera each day. This way, if you lose the card, or the data on it becomes corrupted, the damage would be limited to a single day. This strategy might not be feasible for longer travels (if you travel for a month and you use two cameras, you'd need 60 storage cards), but it can be practical for shorter trips.

Otto can now handle this particular scenario. Specify the -i parameter, and the script creates a directory with the current date as its name (for example, 2023-05-01) and backs up the content there. The script is clever enough to distinguish between cards coming from different cameras, thus keeping things tidy while avoiding inadvertently overwriting data coming from multiple sources. Here is how it works. Say, you use a Nikon D800, and you use the following command to back up data:

otto -i -d "/media/$USER/NIKON D800/DCIM/101ND800"

This command creates the 101ND800 directory first, followed by a subdirectory with the current name as its name. The data from the specified source is then backed up to the 101ND800/2023-05-01 subdirectory.

In addition to transferring and organizing JPEG and RAW files, Otto can now generate statistics by analyzing the EXIF metadata of files in a given directory. Say, you want to know what lenses you use most. Run the command below, and Otto generates a CSV-formatted text file containing all lenses used to take photos in the given directory along with the count for each lens.

otto -d "/path/to/dir/with/photos/" -s LensID

Want to know what focal length you use (most)? Here's the command to use:

otto -d "/path/to/dir/with/photos/" -s FocalLength

How about camera models? There's a command for that, too:

otto -d "/path/to/dir/with/photos/" -s Model

Each of these commands generates a .csv file that uses the EXIF tag as its name (LensID.csv, FocalLength.csv, Model.csv, etc) in your home directory. You can then import the file into a spreadsheet application like LibreOffice Calc and generate a graph. Or you can use web tools like cvs-graph to create a pie chart using the generated CSV file.

You'll find Otto in its own GitHub repository.

In which we eat trapizzini, take photos of Cinquecentos, enjoy the quaint charm of Orvieto, gawk at a skull with ears in Naples, and eat more trapizzini.

If only an iPad or an iPhone could run Linux tools like Rsync, ExifTool, ImageMagick, etc., you wouldn't have to schlep around a Linux notebook when traveling, especially if your photographic needs are limited to keeping your photos and RAW files safe.

Enter iSH, an app that bestows Linux powers on Apple devices. Once installed, iSH offers a Linux environment that gives you access to a plethora of Linux tools. More importantly, iSH can access the iPadOS and iOS file systems and external storage devices connected to the iPad or the iPhone. This means that you can run commands and scripts in iSH to back up data from a storage card connected to the Apple device. Better still, if you use a USB-C hub that features both a card reader and USB connectors, you can back up data directly from a card to an external USB storage device, bypassing the iPad's or iPhone's internal storage.

I'm always fashionably late to the party. So forgive me for being the last to get all excited about Restic. Encryption by default, snapshots, deduplication, support for various storage types—Restic checks all the boxes. Not only that, it is also a supremely easy to use backup tool.

While learning how to use Restic, I took notes for future reference. I'm sharing my trivial findings here on the off-chance that someone might find them useful. The notes cover a simple scenario, where Restic backs up data to an external USB storage device.