Hello Dears!

I saw this on Twitter recently:

If Photojunction was a human I’d punch it in the face!

Danny wrote back, Actually we are human – how can we help?

The nice man apologised – because he was a nice man, and because we don’t often abuse real people (unless they’re partying outside our bedroom window, that is, or cutting us off at the lights).

I’ve told my lovely boys and girls not to take this too personally…but if I could give you a wee bit of advice:

If you’re frustrated, getting twitchy on Twitter makes you feel better but it doesn’t solve the problem.

I bet you won’t believe me, but today I got the spinning wheel of death from both Excel and Safari. (Very annoying: I’m planning a Seniors outing to Waiheke Island and time’s getting short.)

All I could do was use a few bad words and hope no-one heard me. Because no-one believes that complaining to Apple or Microsoft will do any good.

But Queensberry isn’t a big corporate and they do offer personal support for Photojunction. So please use it.

I know time zones can be a problem and you might not be able to get an instant response, but you will be talking to people who call the developers by their first names – sometimes to someone who is a developer. They’re as good at diagnosis as my darling doctor – and if they can’t fix your problem they do know a specialist.

Wrap up well dears,
Nanny

PS Christine, one of our support people, says this:

“It’s always helpful if we’re able to know whereabouts in the program you were and what you were trying to do when the program had difficulties. Any error messages you see help us diagnose the problem and screenshots make things so much clearer. And if Photojunction asks you to send a bug report please do!

“Also, we do keep an eye out on Twitter and Facebook, but emailing info@photojunction.com is easily the best thing to do.”

Hello dears, I saw a couple of tweets about Photojunction having gotten slow.

I don’t know about you but at my age I don’t have enough time left to feel happy just twiddling my thumbs, so I asked the boys about it.

Until this release Photojunction was keeping the whole album loaded in memory, but now it’s just the current layout. That’s because, with Queensberry press books – which could have lots more images and layouts to worry about – you could have had out-of-memory problems as the operating system unpacks everything ready to use.
A bit like me having a senior moment

Albums actually open quicker than before, but now you’ll see a progress bar as you move between layouts.

I promise you that my darling Apple Laptop is older than whatever you’re designing on, but moving from layout to layout only takes a few seconds. A bit longer if I’ve got a pile of pictures on the page.

Do let Angelique and Christine know if your mileage varies, as you youngsters say. Maybe you’ve discovered a problem we don’t know about.

Wrap up well,
Nanny

Hello dears, if you’re like me you find the modern inter-web and computer thingamys a little overwhelming. in fact I had a conniption the first time my nephew plugged my Macintosh SE into a network and I’ve never been really comfortable since.

But I like what it lets me do, so I struggle along.

I did peek in my iTunes music folder once (looking for my old Tom Jones and Seekers’ records) but I thought, “Good grief, that looks complicated,” and I’ve never looked again.

I suspect that’s exactly what Apple want. They don’t even mention their “back end” (nasty expression) because you can really get in a mess if you play around with it.

Now dears, I mention this because Photojunction has a back-end too, and I suppose what I really want to suggest is, if you can, keep your hands off it.

Let me tell you what happened to one of our users recently. All jokes aside, if it had happened to me it would really have got my knitting in a knot, but there are lessons to learn, so let me explain what they did:

1. Went in and made copies of the Project folders (where Photojunction stores everything to do with a specific job).

2. Manually deleted content from the Project folders (which PJ put there for reasons I don’t really understand).

3. Saved extra stuff in the Project folders (which PJ won’t know about – especially if it’s in one of the duplicate Project folders they made, which PJ also won’t know about).

4. Renamed files (which means PJ won’t be able to find them).

5. Used illegal characters when renaming (which PJ, your operating system or lab might not be able to handle).

6. They also configured their Preferences to put the default saving folder inside the default project folder (this is “I’m my own Grandpa” territory and confusing for the software, and it certainly makes my own head spin).

Now I do know everyone has their reasons, and I’m the last person to criticise, but I hope you don’t mind me offering some suggestions:

Click on my Preferences and you’ll see I don’t even know where Photojunction is storing my bits and pieces. As with my iTunes, I’m happy to leave well alone. Some users need to change their Project Folder because they need to place the files on a different drive or central server, and it’s easy to do: I just don’t need to.

I haven’t even changed the default “saving folder” (where PJ stores my exports and upload bundles), so the files still go to my desktop.

But my main advice is not to mess around inside the folders.

If Photojunction puts things in these folders I assume it has its reasons, and who am I to disagree?

If I want to duplicate Projects, Events or Albums I do it in Photojunction, because if I do it that way PJ can keep track of everything, and everything keeps working.

Same if I want to edit, duplicate or delete my image files or the exported page layouts: I can do it in PJ, and if I do it that way everything works.

The developers, who are very nice young men, have spent a lot of time building all this into Photojunction so that they can help you avoid all this frustration.

Bless you all, and please cover up outdoors (it’s cold and wet here in New Zealand right now – not that I’m complaining).

PJ Nanny