Old orbiter. New code.

Atlantis poses for another closeup
Merritt Island, FL
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Never underestimate the power of software to influence our day-to-day lives. This is true for all of us, of course, but it seems to be especially so with creative folks.

Although the only time I'm ever going to be called an artist is in the middle of an insult-comedian's set, I treasure the apps I use to create stuff. Writing, photography, editing, shaping...mess with my software and you may as well mess with my life.

For years, I had been using Apple's Aperture to manage my photographic workflow. It was as comfortable as an old shoe, and it made it easy to rip through large volumes of raw photos and turn them into smaller sets of lovelier photos.

Then Apple decided to get out of the photo-editing business, and announced Aperture would be shutting down. Now, it's an app I paid for and downloaded, so in theory I should have been able to keep using it. But here's the thing: It was a 32-bit package, and Apple's newest operating system for Macs, Mojave, dropped all support for 32-bit code when it went live last September. The writing was on the wall: upgrade to Mojave and say goodbye to Aperture for good.

I pushed off updating my Mac for as long as I could, but eventually, I had no choice. In 2020, we don't run older OSs.

So I've switched over to Adobe Lightroom, and it's taken me a few weeks to get comfy with it. That old shoe and everything. Today was the first day where the tool finally felt right, and I've been busy ripping through my large backlog of pics.

Here's Atlantis's left OMS pod against the rear cargo bay as backdrop. More to come.

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