Krishen Greenwell

  • Kinda Sorta Fixing Broken Face Detection in iPhoto

    The other day I noticed iPhoto stopped properly detecting faces. I said, oh, that’s kind of odd, maybe it will start working again on its own.
    And I kind of forgot about it for a little while. A little while until I was using the excellent iPhoto Library Manager to split my iPhoto library in two. ILM doesn’t actually offer a “split” function, but you can create a new library and copy photos into it.
    Which is what I was doing when I ran into this:
    Screen shot 2011-06-20 at 9.31.42 PM.png
    Naturally this dialog was a little concerning. So I clicked “View Log” and ALL of the errors were like this:

    *** Error: An error occurred while copying face (null) for source photo IMG_8234.JPG (id 26650) to destination photo id 6029 (DB Error: 1 “no such table: detected_face_blob” for query SELECT * FROM detected_face_blob WHERE face_index=? AND image_key=?)

    After a while of The Google coming up empty, I finally ran across this post by Christian Kalmar: Fixing a broken Face Detection Database in iPhoto. Just in case that link goes bad, the essence is, quit iPhoto, make a backup of your photo library (lucky you if you’re using Time Machine!), then, in Terminal, cd into your iPhoto library folder and delete the files “face.db” and “face_blob.db” & boot up iPhoto again. iPhoto should then start recognizing your faces again.
    For what it’s worth, this doesn’t actually fix your broken database, but it does allow you to start it over. I figured since I just moved more than half of my library into storage, why not?
    I’ll be updating this post later with my success (or not).

  • The Wages of Fear; Dog Day Afternoon

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    The Wages of Fear is a black and white movie set in middle-of-nowhere 50s South America. From Col Needham on imdb:

    “In the South American jungle supplies of nitroglycerine are needed at a remote oil field. The oil company pays four men to deliver the supplies in two trucks. A tense rivalry develops between the two sets of drivers and on the rough remote roads the slightest jolt can result in death.”

    Needless to say it’s a thriller; the constant danger of death/moving vehicle premise reminded me of Speed from 1994. There are a few scenes at the beginning of the movie where the basically-useless female love interest is washing the restaurant floor on all fours without anything to useful say for what seems like minutes; turns out this was director Henri-Georges Clouzot‘s wife. Once the main characters get on the road with their explosive payload, however, the movie really starts, and from here it’s a perfect combination of suspense (will they blow up at any moment?) and philosophy (what’s really important?). I thought the movie’s 131 minute runtime was going to be a problem but it flew past without any trouble. French/Italian/English with subtitles. 7.5/10. Thanks to Bugsy Malone for the recommendation.

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    Dog Day Afternoon stars a young Al Pacino as “Sonny” in a movie about a bank-heist gone awry. “alfiehitchie” from imdb:

    Based upon a real-life story that happened in the early seventies in which the Chase Manhattan Bank in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was held siege by a gay bank robber determined to steal enough money for his male lover to undergo a sex change operation. On a hot summer afternoon, the First Savings Bank of Brooklyn is held up by Sonny and Sal, two down-and-out characters. Although the bank manager and female tellers agree not to interfere with the robbery, Sonny finds that there’s actually nothing much to steal, as most of the cash has been picked up for the day. Sonny then gets an unexpected phone call from Police Captain Moretti, who tells him the place is surrounded by the city’s entire police force. Having few options under the circumstances, Sonny nervously bargains with Moretti, demanding safe escort to the airport and a plane out of the country in return for the bank employees’ safety.

    Directed by Sidney Lumet of Network fame, the story hints at Mr. Lumet’s interest in the media; at one point Al Pacino’s character actually watches himself on live TV while holed up inside the bank. From my notes made during the movie: “Well-paced nuanced tension builder; textured character development; no music; Al Pacino is amazing.” I think that about covers it. 125 minutes. 8/10. Thanks to John Weston for the recommendation.

Krishen Greenwell