April 2006 Archives (25 posts)

Eiffel Tower

This looks incredible! Click here to see a new satellite image of the Eiffel Tower on Google Maps. You can now see individual people at the bottom of the tower.

I can’t imagine what the CIA version of Google Maps looks like. I don’t think I want to know.

Posted in Web at 1:45 PM | Comments (0)

Will Apple purchase Adobe?

Robert Cringely is at it again. This time he’s speculating on whether will purchase Adobe. Is this part of the reason why Apple laid-off most of the Aperture development team? Read on.

Posted in Apple at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004)

I watched Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) the other night and found it to be really interesting. It’s a documentary film about one of the first pay-tv stations in the US and its brilliant programming chief, Jeff Harvey.

Harvey had a knack for finding obscure films and breathing new life into lesser known films by some famous directors—Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah and Michael Cimino to name a few. Unfortunately for Z Channel, HBO and a other premium cable channels gave it a lot of competition.

Harvey suffered from depression and used to tell people that he was crazy. I suppose he was in the end because in the late 80s he killed his wife before committing suicide in LA. Shortly after that Z Channel also faded into obscurity.

One of the great things about this documentary is that it mentions a lot of obscure films that merit some attention. Here is a list of films that I hope to track down and watch at some point:

Overlord (1975) — directed by Stuart Cooper
Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
Silver Streak (1976)
Fingers (1978)
Bad Timing (1980)
The Passenger (1975)

Has anyone seen any of these films?

Posted in DVD Reviews at 11:36 AM | Comments (2)

Deal of the week

Walmart always has some decent DVDs in their discount bin. You have to sift through a lot of bad discs like Ford Fairlane and Hudson Hawk to find the good discs but sometimes its worth it.

For $6.88 I found a two disc special edition of The Osterman Weekend (1983). This was the last film that Sam Peckinpah directed and has a great cast. The movie is mediocre but it has a high definition film transfer and DTS sound. The second disc has a 78 minute documentary about the film.

The second disc that I found was The Gathering Storm (2002). It’s an HBO film that is a favourite of mine.

Posted in Movies at 7:25 PM | Comments (2)

Apple’s Aperture in trouble

The future of Aperture, Apple’s photo editing software is apparently a mess. Think Secret is reporting that Apple has axed most of the Aperture team and transferred the rest of the engineers to other projects inside Apple.

Apple rushed Aperture to market to compete with Adobe Lightroom. I’m glad I didn’t buy into the hype and purchase Aperture when it first came out.

The price for Aperture went from $499 to $299. Apple felt so bad for people that purchased their beta software that they’ve been giving them a $200 coupon for the Apple Store.

Lesson learned? You never buy a version 1.0 of anything no matter who makes it. The exception may be Adobe Lightroom 1.0. You can download and try the beta version of Lightroom for free. If you like the program and find it stable enough, you can decide whether or not it is worth paying for.

I’m leaning toward Lightroom when it comes out although Adobe Bridge that comes with Photoshop CS2 still seems like a great solution to me.

Posted in OS X Software at 9:18 AM | Comments (1)

I blame the wife

The wife, the lovely, the missus, left really early this morning to go on a shoot (she’s directing a new show). I was in charge of taking the 6-year-old, Daniel, to school. No problem.

I thought the wife left at 8 AM when it fact it was 7 AM.

I staggered into the bathroom to shave and shower. I ate a bowl of Captain Crunch. I read the paper. I told Daniel to get dressed and brush his teeth. Then I panicked. I thought the time was 8:45, the time when the school bell rings.

Daniel and I jumped into the car and I noticed that there weren’t any kids on the street. Oh crap, we were really late—all of the kids were already in class! We got down to the school and there was only one car parked in front. Oh man, I thought, the wife is going to kill me for sleeping in and making Daniel late.

I told Daniel to run for it and he bolted through the front doors of the school. When I got back to the house I noticed that the clock in my car said 7:50 AM. I took the car to a garage the day before and wondered why the mechanics put the clock back one hour. Why were they messing with my clock?

When I got to work the doors to my building were still locked. The lights were off. My newspaper was on the ground outside the front door. That’s weird, I thought to myself. I’m never the first one here.

After my computer started up the first thing I noticed was 8:05 AM in the menubar. Panic set it. Everything started to make sense. I was an hour early. Oh man, I am not a morning person. I guess I owe an apology to Daniel. I wonder how long it took him to realize that his father is a loon and can’t tell time?

Posted in Personal at 8:45 AM | Comments (2)

Idiot Cameras

A couple of nights ago I went down to the Cherry Street to shoot some photos of the Toronto skyline. There are always a handful of photographers there but one guy stood out.

He was shooting with a Nikon D70 and said he didn’t like the “idiot cameras” — cameras that are completely automatic and don’t have interchangeable lenses. He looked at my tripod and said he left his at home because he felt it was too windy. I’m not a professional photographer by any means but how can you shoot landscape photos without a tripod? Whatever.

While this guy was going on about Nikon cameras and their great battery-life he would fire off 5 ‘snapshots’ at a time. I think he liked the sound of the shutter because he would point the camera randomly and continue firing off shots. He boasted that he took 50,000 photos with another Nikon D70 before the shutter broke.

I looked at his camera and noticed that he didn’t have a filter on his lens to protect it. A few moments later, just as the light was getting interesting he left. He said it was too cold and windy to be out here shooting pictures.

50,000 photos! This guy was a little odd to say the least.

Posted in Photography at 2:27 PM | Comments (0)

Podcast Ads are coming

Advertising Age reported yesterday that iTunes will soon display ads when you are listening to podcast content. Full story here.

Posted in Apple at 4:37 PM | Comments (1)

Hair

Last night I went to see the musical Hair, with the lovely. She made asked me to go.

Dancing. Singing. Dancing. Singing…

I looked at my ticket and noticed that the dancing and singing cost $92.50 (per ticket). That’s a lot of DVD rentals, movie passes, a Leaf game in the nose bleed seats or a season’s pass to the Toronto Argonauts.

Dancing. Singing. Dancing. Singing…

She had a great time.

Posted in Observations at 8:19 PM | Comments (1)

More monitor, more productivity

I just came across a NYT article that discusses The Virtues of a Second Screen. My 23“ widescreen display is almost the same as having two monitors but takes up less space. The Times article indicates that the extra screen space will increase your productivity by 20 to 30 percent.

I find that I spend less time moving windows and palettes around in various applications. My display is 1,200 pixels high which means I spend less time scrolling through large documents or the layers palette in Photoshop.

If you’re a graphic designer/webdeveloper/photographer/video editor then do yourself a favour and ‘go wide’ with a widescreen display.

Posted in Technology at 9:41 PM | Comments (1)

Hot Docs 2006

Next week Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival begins. I’ll be attending 10 films around the city. Below are my picks:

Fri Apr 28

Walking to Werner / 7:30P / Bloor Cinema

Sat Apr 29

What Remains / 2:00P / Isabel Bader Theatre
Heavy Metal Jr. / 4:45P / ROM Theatre

Sun Apr 30

Runners High / 2:00P / Innis Town Hall
Glenn Gould Hereafter / 9:30P / Isabel Bader Theatre

Mon May 01

Thin / 11:00A / ROM Theatre
His Big White Self / 9:30P / ROM Theatre

Wed May 03

The Beach Boys / 4:15P / Isabel Bader Theatre

Thu May 04

The World According To Sesame Street / 6:45P / Bloor

Fri May 05

Fu*k / 9:15P / Bloor

Posted in Movies at 4:33 PM | Comments (0)

Naked (1993)

Naked (1993) is the third Mike Leigh film I’ve watched and I thought it was fanastic. It deals with isolation and homelessness among other things.

David Thewlis in the lead character is absolutely brilliant. His performance, and all of the actors really, convey a sense of realism that you don’t often see in films.

Thewlis’ conversation with the ‘Archie the Scotsman with a Tick’ is so funny that I found myself watching the same scene five times. Part of the scene was improvised and is very entertaining.

If you like director Mike Leigh’s films for their realism and interesting characters then the special edition of Naked from the Criterion Collection will make a great rental. I’m considering adding it to my collection. It comes with an extra disc of supplementary features.

Posted in DVD Reviews at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

Some bad apples

Apple makes innovative, stylish, expensive products that are often obsolete before their time.

Take for example, the 17-inch Apple Studio Display. It’s beautifully designed, only two years old and it won’t work with the new Mac Mini. It also won’t work with an older Power Mac G4 tower.

The Studio Display uses an ADC connection which Apple no longer supports. All of their new displays use standard DVI connectors.

For $129 (CDN) you can purchase a Apple DVI to ADC Display Adapter. This is the cost of using Apple’s sexy hardware.

Do you think any of the Apple dealers in downtown Toronto have these display adapters in stock? Of course not. They take two weeks to order in. I called the Apple Store at Yorkdale Mall and they have “lots of them”.

2.5 million people live in Toronto. If you include the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) the the population is 5 million. Apple has two stores in Toronto and neither one of them is downtown.

I drove up to the Apple Store at Yorkdale Mall and thought I would get my iPod repaired while I was there. The screen is cracked and needs to be replaced. I waited 25 minutest to talk to an ‘Apple Genius’ (salesperson).

This kid, I mean, Apple Genius tells me that the cracked screen can’t be repaired. I laughed and told him that you can buy replacement screens online for $120. Of course it can be repaired.

His response was that it would be really expensive to fix. Huh? It’s a 40 GB iPod. It was $400 new! Why would it cost $400 to fix if I went through Apple? I told him that his answer wasn’t acceptable. His genius solution was to buy a new iPod.

What a moron. Yeah, me for waiting 25 minutes and the sales guy for being so incredibly helpful. I felt like I had been transported to Future Shop.

Posted in Apple at 6:18 PM | Comments (2)

Incredible Climbing Video

Google Video has this incredible climbing video of a few Russian guys back-flipping, jumping off roofs and showing amazing spider-man-like abilities.

Posted in Web at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

Empire’s 50 Greatest Independent Films

If your ZipList or your Netflix list is getting low then Empire’s 50 Greatest Independent Films is a great way to discover some gems.

I’ve seen 27 of the 50 films and added Buffalo ‘66, Two Lane Blacktop, Drugstore Cowboy, The Descent and In the Company of Men to my ZipList.

Posted in Movies at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)

Recently screened films

You may have noticed that I finally updated the recently screened films in the sidebar.

I watch a lot of films on DVD but don’t always have the time to write a full review, in which case I’ll post a mini-review. I figure this will be a good way to keep a history of the films I watch.

Posted in Bombippy at 3:49 PM | Comments (0)

1,750 inch HD display

Dolphin Stadium has the world’s largest HD display — 137 feet wide, 50 feet high, 1,750 inches diagonal viewing, 720 lines progressive scanning. Now that is going to look cool. Too bad half the fans will be too drunk to notice (at least that has been my experience in Miami).

I just picked up a 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display and gorgeous doesn’t begin to describe how it looks. 1920 x 1200 pixels of viewing area.

I don’t know how I did any work in Photoshop before with a 17“ Studio Display. Being able to see your documents at 100% saves a lot of time — no more shuffling windows and palettes around. No more resizing documents. Improved workflow.

Posted in Apple and Technology at 10:21 AM | Comments (2)

Police vs Darth Vader - Round 1

I found Police vs Darth Vader - Round 1 via one digital life. It doesn’t matter that the video is in Japanese because it is quite funny and needs no translation.

Posted in Humour at 9:23 AM | Comments (1)

Only 1% of online households use podcasts

Forrester research did a study on podcasts and the results are a little surprising.

Although the idea of listening to podcasts appears to have strongly penetrated the consumer mindset, relatively few consumers appear to actively be taking advantage of them. The Forrester study revealed that about 25 percent of online users had an interest in podcasts, yet in North America, only about one percent of online households actually download and listen to them.

In the past I’ve subscribed to several podcasts but I never really listened to any of them. Video podcasts seem to have more appeal, especially if they are limited to a few minutes. I think the longer a podcast is, the less likely it is that someone will listen to it.

You can find more information here, and here.

Posted in Web at 1:14 PM | Comments (1)

Happy Birthday

Happy birthday my brother.

What? It’s only 11:31 PM. I didn’t forget.

Posted in Personal at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

Mitchell Hatt & Associates Inc.

Oh, oh. One of my clients seems to be a little jealous. On Monday, JAK MEDIA launched another website but I didn’t mention it here on Bombippy. Here is the email I received:

This week, JAK MEDIA launched Mitchell, Hatt & Associates Inc., a website for a dynamic engineering company. The site has been a work in progress for nearly two years but now that it’s launched I must say that I’m impressed. I’m really pleased with the design of the site and working with Gary was great!

I never knew there was so much to know about sewers and watermains. These guys really know their stuff. So if you happen to have some land in need of development or simply want to upgrade Highway 401 look no further: Mitchell, Hatt & Associates Inc..

Some of you may want to send me an email and ask why the Mitchell, Hatt & Associates Inc. website took so long to develop, that it doesn’t look as impressive as say, the Trind website. Let me clarify.

The Mitchell, Hatt site was designed and developed in 2003 but a few nagging copy changes needed to be completed. This delayed the highly anticipated launch of the site. Mitchell, Hatt is a very busy company and very much in demand. Regrettably, marketing wasn’t a priority back then.

Posted in JAK MEDIA at 10:53 PM | Comments (2)

Trind

Last week, JAK MEDIA launched Trind.ca, a hand and nail care website/online store. It took a lot of work to get this site launched in time but it was worth it. I’m really pleased with the design and and the ecommerce part of the site (thanks Ryan).

Almost everything is valid XHTML and CSS. PHP, MySQL and a few other goodies used to power the back-end. And now for the shameless plug… if you have terrible nails and you’ve tried everything then Trind has the solution for you.

Posted in JAK MEDIA at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

Japanese Bank Thinks Different

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Japan’s Aozora Bank is going to switch all of its PCs running Windows to Macs running OS X — 2,300 desktop computers. The bank says that Macs running OS X have become more “stable and functional” for business users. I wonder if this will be a new trend now that Macs are using Intel chips. Full story here.

Posted in Apple at 11:33 AM | Comments (1)

Home Theater Blog

I came across the Home Theater Blog this morning (via Digg) which I found really interesting. There is a good article on Bose speakers and why they aren’t necessarily the best speakers on the market.

The content on this site is updated frequently and full of useful information. If you’re a home theatre enthusiast then you’ll want to bookmark Home Theatre Blog.

Posted in Home Theatre at 11:24 AM | Comments (1)

More Daniel’s Doodles

It’s Saturday night and I’ve been kicked out of my house. My wife was going out to watch a movie with a friend. Her plans changed. Now she’s watching a movie in the home theatre and I’m not. So what’s a guy to do?

For the last couple of hours I’ve been updating Daniel’s Doodles — scanned in 11 new images, cleaned up a few old ones, improved the navigation and screamed at my flaky scanner.

It’s just after midnight. Maybe it’s safe to go home and watch the special edition DVD of Scarface (1983) now.

Posted in Web at 2:14 AM | Comments (3)