Reading this makes me want to fire up Processing [1] again. I remember spending hours and days with it in my early twenties. The immediacy of writing a few simple commands, hitting "Run" and seeing graphical output is still unsurpassed and created an almost addictive creative feedback loop that I haven't seen anywhere else yet.
I’d like to recommend vvvv. It’s a node-based version of C# that is always runtime. The edit-compile-run loop is eliminated so you can tweak both constants and behaviour instantly. For a processing-like drawing interface I’d recommend the built-in Skia library which I think processing is modelled after. VVVV overall is definitely a steeper learning curve, but it’s very powerful as you can use any .net libraries, 3D graphics, shaders and much more. Shaders in particular is a great tool that lends itself to a dataflow representation.
Touchdesigner is more popular and I suppose declarative, but vvvv is more general purpose and similar to the processing workflow. It’s a very weird tool I’ve used for everything between MIDI instruments, live installations, escape rooms, VJ rigs and, well, proc art.
digiKam[1] might be for you. I only tried it briefly, but I think it covers most of the requirements out outlined.
I personally landed on Peakto[2], since it has the unique ability to create a unified catalog across multiple CaptureOne sessions, but it's probably overkill for what you need.
I also use an extension to stop automatically playing a video when I open it and another to stop automatically opening the next recommended video when the current one ends.
Auto play should be configurable in the browser. In Firefox: Settings->Search "permissions". Autoplay is one of the options and can be controlled on a per-site basis (I have it disabled globally).
I have autoplay turned off in Safari, but the esteemed minds at YouTube have somehow found a way to circumvent that setting. Like the person you're replying to, I had to resort to an extension to get the site to stop auto playing videos.
we need a yt deshitter for (maybe one exists?): when mousing over the seek-bar, the time displayed goes from the time where im hovering over, to a huge-chunk of the bar displaying 'most replayed' in several areas (not just one, which "most" implies)
My YouTube does not auto-play, so not sure what you mean by that. Also the ability to "hide shorts" isn't a feature I'd expect from any other web platform out-of-the-box, so definitely didn't expect to get it with my Premium subscription.
Wrt auto-dubs, they can be turned off. To me this feels less deliberately hostile on YT's part and more tunnel vision where they assumed everyone would find this to be a helpful feature and didn't even think about adding a user-level preference to disable it.
But also I find user-level preferences kinda an anti-pattern anyway. Would be nice if you disable it for one video and it just remembers that preference for the next one (or vice versa).
By auto-play I mean in the feed, there’s an option to stop it from doing that, but after a while YouTube decides to turn it on again. It also has an option to hide Shorts, but same thing, they simply ignore it. About the dub thing, I get it could be tunnel vision coming from english-only speakers, it didn’t occurred to them that outside their circles is common for people to be bilingual or even multilingual, but that auto dub thing hasn’t been fixed for years there are tons of complains, the way I “fixed” it was setting my language to English, but from time to time I get my own language dubbed to English.
Auto play as in the video starts playing immediately when you load the page, not auto play as in automatically play the next video. Only the latter is configurable by the user. YT even circumvents the browser's own auto play configuration, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread.
Network effects are incredibly difficult to overcome. Bluesky is the only example that I can think of that came close in recent memory, but fell victim to an extreme userbase and now is experiencing degrowth. Similar things happened to all the (many) times someone tried to create reddit without the reddit.
I guess Kick is an example, but that's not exactly a model to follow unless you're also a questionably ethical casino with deep pockets who wants to be able to advertise to young men.
YouTube has to become truly awful for a new long-form video content platform to gain a lot of traction. Think of how long Windows has been enshittifying for and how slow the move from it has been.
When I built my little side project (B2C iPhone app, not a SaaS [1]), I documented the development process on LinkedIn with short "developer diary" videos. That has led to a good amount of engagement at launch, which briefly lifted the app into the top-paid section on the App Store for a short time. That was enough to reach the first 100 users within a few days.
Since it's a side project, I haven't worked on the app in a while, but recently picked up development again. So if you have any ideas or suggestions, they are very welcome.
I feel like there are actually more great options out there today than back in the pre-subscription days of Adobe. It all depends on what parts of Photoshop you're actually using, but between Affinity Photo, Pixelmator, Capture One and many others, there's a good chance that you can find something for your needs.
In the “just point at something and press the shutter” scenario, phones have been just as good (and in some cases better) than dedicated cameras for a while.
For me, the main reasons for using a dedicated camera are ergonomics and creative control. I rarely hold the device at eye level when taking a photo, since it makes for more interesting compositions. Somehow my fingers are always in the wrong position when I want to press the shutter button. And once you try to adjust some settings manually in a dedicated app like Halide, it gets extra fumbly and (to me) just takes all the fun out of it.
The big benefit of the phone is that it’s always with me of course. I’m contemplating the purchase of a Ricoh GR, which is a great camera that is just as pocketable as a phone but with much better ergonomics.
In contrast, I recently tried Halide on my older iPhone 13 Pro Max. Just taking some simple pictures here around the house of our cats, our furniture, my own feet, etc... and comparing those to pictures taken with the built-in iPhone camera app. Halide repeatedly gave me worse quality pictures with more noise, and also larger in size.
I'm really struggling to find the benefit of something like Halide. Can anyone recommend tutorials on how to make the best of a program like this, and actually demonstrate value over the built-in iPhone app? I've tried the company tutorials, and they didn't cover anything I didn't already know about photography.
iPhone has an impressive camera (set) for its size, and puts out nice images, yet it still fails to capture the dynamic range of an old DSLR in many cases.
The difference will be much more noticeable when compared to a latest generation full-frame sensors (Sony A7, Nikon Z, Canon R families), both in dynamic range, and color accuracy.
While I'll not be carrying a full frame mirrorless everywhere, it's evident that both devices will have its place.
To close, I'll be probably carrying a iPhone 15 or 16 in my pocket next. Knowing what I'm going to get is a nice plus.
Yes, there's stuff like this: https://shop.fjorden.co
No idea how well it works in practice, but it looks like it could alleviate some of the ergonomics issues.
I noticed that there's a huge difference between receiving criticism on something that is work in progress versus something I consider being "done".
When something is still a work in progress in my mind, it is much easier to have a positive attitude towards criticism and see it as something that helps me improve. There's something I can _do_ with the criticism in these cases.
However, when I consider something as done and it is criticized, I can get frustrated and defensive. It's a bigger mental leap that's necessary to make the criticism actionable.
The simple (though not easy) solution is to consider nothing as permanently done.
Your comment made me smile because I experienced the exact opposite just two days ago.
I usually get around either by bike or public transit, but I had to move some inconveniently shaped items (studio lights for photography), so I decided to rent a shared car. It took me almost 40 minutes for a trip that takes 10 minutes by bike and 15 minutes by public transit. It was also highly unpleasant, because the "weirdos" you mention also exist in car traffic. Only in this case, the "unpredictable idiots" are texting while driving and drifting out of lanes.
I'll need to transport the same things again next week and I'll either find a way to pack things more compactly so that I can take public transit, or I'll take a taxi (still takes longer, but at least I'm not the one dealing with traffic).
[1] https://processing.org