People are Just Plain Nice All Over the World! Thank You Libby the Photographer! And Thank You iPhoto!
Last updated: 8/14/2002; 12:22:28 PM
 
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People are Just Plain Nice All Over the World! Thank You Libby the Photographer! And Thank You iPhoto!

It always astonishes me just how nice, how caring and how giving people can be.  This one really surprised me.  I recently got an email from a woman, Libby, asking for some php help on one of my PHP Beginner articles.  I know there are some mistakes in that article and I've been meaning to address them for some time.  In her emails she kept referring to CT so I thought she was a Connecticut (CT) resident and that's where I grew up.  We kept exchanging emails and I finally wrote two stories for her that I really haven't blogged at all (they aren't perfect either but they along with the first basically make it clear).  Here are those:

I ultimately got her to get an IM account to make my helping her easier and it turns out that she's from South Africa and to her CT = Cape Town.  Too funny.  No wonder there's such an odd time synchronicity (since my schedule is so odd lately, I'm quasi in sync with her).  We should be way, way out of sync.  Anyway….

It turns out that Libby is a professional web master and photographer.  She's also the creator of two neat, neat sites (links at the end; bear with me).  Libby is climbing the PHP learning curve and, like any missionary, I'm happy to help addict her to the happy, flavorful goodness that is PHP.  If, after saying that, you have an image of me hanging out on dim street corners, wearing a trench coat and offering free hits of PHP to potential users, you're not far off. 

So, anyway, as this goes on, I find out the website for her photography and, just plain Wow!  She seems to specialize in black and white images which are pretty much my favorite.  Here's a sample:

"Pensive"

Now, here's where the wonderful niceness from Libby comes in.  A friend of my family is a huge photo enthusiast; that's her passion.  And she really, really loves black and white images – I mean a lot.  She also is suffering from pretty bad cancer.  Hence this uncharacteristic blog essay back in July.  And, if you have ever dealt with cancer, you know that the patient keeping up a good mood and attitude is essential.  I knew that showing her photos will make her happy since it caters to her passion.   What I did when I got back from seeing Paolo in Italy was load our 200 odd digital pictures onto the iBook and then use iPhoto to make a slideshow.  She just loved it.

So what I did was send Libby an email asking if she could possibly let me have, for non commercial one time use, the high resolution versions of her photos.  I wanted to do the same thing but the low resolution images on the web site would just look grainy blown up on the iBooks nice screen.  And I knew that this time my friend would be even happier since she's seen me before but this is a) new b) black and white and c) from a cool place.  And, wouldn't you know, not only did Libby say yes, she did it promptly and even got me the captions for the images. 

My friend was just thrilled when she saw them last night.  So, while we see every day ethical collapses, stock manipulation, blatant greed, the stupidity of the RIAA, businesses cheating and lots of other just plain badness, remember this:

People are Just Plain Nice All Over the World !

Thank You Libby

And, I have to also thank Apple for the just plain brilliance of the iBook and iPhoto.  Here you have a notebook that's seems to be pretty much indestructible, a kick butt, stable operating system, a great screen, a 5 hour battery life and a brilliant photo application.  It's just plain a wonderful notebook computer.  This is what I recommend to friends as of late when they need a new computer.

NOTE: If you are wondering why I didn't just have my friend just go to Libby's web site, its really pretty simple.  Think about when you are sick.  How much do you feel like sitting in front of a terminal in a desk chair?  This way she could sit on the couch and just have the slide show in front of her.  It was a piece of a cake.  And I didn't even have to take the power charger with me – I have that much faith in the iBook's battery.

More About Libby:

Acknowledgements As always, thank you to my friendly, ever helpful, quasi compulsive editor, Guy K. Haas. 
 
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