Organizing My Photos on Google Photos...

Trying to Organize My Photos

As I mentioned in a previous post here on my blog, I am trying to make a push to write posts on the remaining hikes I that I have YETto write about.

The whole process of organizing my photos into collections on Google Photos is A LOT like herding cats. I have 2,182 photos on my phone that I have taken myself. While I am sure that other people may have more photos on their phone, to me, it's A LOT.

Herding Cats (Source: https://www.taggg.com/blog/a-cat-herders-guide-to-booking-remote-meetings)

Fortunately, it's just a matter of creating a collection title and then assigning photos to that specific collection.

With so many photos to go through, a lot of scanning is involved. Yes, I am using the Month and Year slider on the right margin of Google Photos to easily scroll through all of my photos.

What surprised me was that I have large amounts of photos on my Google Photos page that are STILL waiting to be organized into collections. For example, I was recently surprised that I didn't have the photos that I took at this year's Polish Festival assigned to a collection. That was easily remedied.

As a result, I am going to have to improve my workflows IOT make it easier to write posts about hiking, for example.

Here are some ideas:

• Buy a new camera. This is a no-brainer, really. My LG Stylo 6 cell phone needs to be replaced. There are now numerous cracks on the viewing surface of my phone. The only thing that keeps the glass in place is the protective sticky plastic cover I put on it when I bought the phone. Since I started working at events at the Arizona Financial Theatre and at State Farm Stadium, my cell phone has been accidentally dropped numerous times. Additionally, the cell phone battery no longer holds a full charge like it used to. Plus, there is a time lag of several seconds when opening certain apps, such as the camera app. Most importantly, a couple of years ago, LG announced that they were no longer manufacturing consumer cell phones. It came as a great shock. It's only a matter of time before LG stops supporting the cell phones that are currently in use. I believe that LG will stop sending out software updates for their cell phones sometime in 2025.
• Create a new collection in Google Photos either before or shortly after going hiking. This one says it all. When organizing, it really helps to be pro-active.
• Upload photos that I have taken with my cell phone to Google Photos shortly after my hike. Preferably the same day as the hike. The sooner the better.
• Put new photos into assigned collection in Google Photos as soon as possible. Again, the sooner the better.
• Transfer photos from my phone to my portable hard drive for archiving. This will free up storage on my cell phone. Since the photos would be uploaded to Google Photos, the photos could be deleted. However, I do have hoarding tendencies, so I probably wouldn't do that.
• Create a new, empty post on my blog for my completed hike. Again, I will be trying to work ahead.
• Download anything else I would need for my new post, such as a map from the AllTrails website.
• Assign a date to work on the actual post. I am absolutely horrible at doing this. For whatever reason, I hate being constrained. Not too sure why, but that's how I am. That has to change.
• Come up with a plan or structure for the post. This can be difficult as I have to play around with all of the elements of a post to figure out what it is I want to do. Still, it helps to have a basic idea on how the finished post will look like and what areas I want to explore. It is really easy to go on a tangent when writing a blog post.
• Work on post until it is complete. That's self-explanatory. Once I have all of the cats herded together, I can usually churn out a blog post rather quickly.

Those are just some ideas that I have at the moment. I am sure that if I really thought about it, I could come up with others.

Anyway, I think that I have all of my hiking photos organized into collections in Google Photos.

It's time to start cranking out some blog posts.

It's also time to start hiking again. There is a lot to explore.

Future Posts About Hiking...

Future Posts About Hiking

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been trying to organize all of the photos that I took while hiking at various locations throughout Maricopa County.

Some hiking trips have more photos than others, while some hiking trips barely have any photos.

Anyway, like most things that I write about on my blog, my initial ideas for a post, or series of posts, radically changes after I begin work on it.

In addition, real life always seems to find a way to intrude on what I am trying to do.

It's all too easy to get sidetracked.

As a result, I have a couple more hiking posts that I would like to add to my blog, so that people can see the photos that I have taken.

After organizing my photos into collections in Google Photos, I need to make sure that I have all of the maps and other graphics for each remaining post.

It's just a simple matter of grabbing some screenshots of maps from somewhere on the internet.

Once all of that is done, I can then start writing the remaining posts.

I figure I can complete a new post about hiking probably once per day.

Then, if I really wanted to be ambitious, I could go back and make some improvements on the hiking posts that I have already published to the internet.

Just some ideas that I have.

Once interesting bit of criticism that I have received was the amount of time that I have spent on my blog, especially on a couple rather lengthy posts.

I don't mind. I actually like working on my blog. I also enjoy trying to figure out how to use HTML.

Stay tuned for more future posts about hiking.

Lack of Activity on My Blog...

Explaining the Lack of Activity

There has been a significant lack of activity here on my blog.

As per usual, I have been really busy with all kinds of activity.

Here is a list of things that I have been working on:

• I have been working concerts at the Arizona Financial Theatre in downtown Phoenix, AZ.
• I have been working at football games at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, AZ.
• I have started riding my bike again.
• I have been focusing a lot of time and energy working on the Network Support and Security online class from Cisco Networking Academy.
• I have been working out at the gym quite a bit.
• I have been organizing my photos into collections over on Google Photos.
• I have been trying to come up with a list of blogging post ideas to write about.
• I even flirted with the idea of moving my blog here at Blogger on to another platform.

I even fell into the bottomless pit that is Twitter/X.

I spent a lot of energy on two very long posts. Moreover, I was underwhelmed by the reaction I got to those two posts. Disappointment aside, I am writing this blog for myself. If other people are interested, then that's great.

Lack of interest in my blog isn't going to deter me. It just means that my blog has yet to find an audience. That will come as I write more posts.

Update About My Blog...

Lack of New Posts

Yes, there has been a lack of new posts here on my blog.

I realize that. It needs to be changed.

I spent A LOT of TIME and EFFORT on two specific posts. You can read them here and here.

I also wrote a couple of lengthy posts about my new Sea Sucker Talon bike rack that I bought from REI. You can read those posts here and here.

Yes, there are a couple of recent posts that are INCOMPLETE. I need to circle-back and finish those posts.

For example, I started a post about my recent experience with a pig butchering scam. I am anticipating that the post will be quite lengthy.

I also got distracted with trying to create more elaborate tables on my blog here at Blogger. That opened a whole new can of worms as I tried new techniques for creating tables.

Going through my Bullet Journal, I have all kinds of ideas for future posts here on my blog.

I also need to complete my series about recently completed hikes here in Maricopa County.

As a result, I started creating new albums in my account over on Google Photos.

Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in a day.

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