December 2007 Archives (19 posts)
Printing black and white photos
I was watching an interview of photographer Clyde Butcher in one of The Luminous Landscape video journals that might be of interest to the photographers out there. Butcher, a black and white landscape photographer will spend a day or two burning and dodging an image in Photoshop and make up to 7 prints before he has a master print.
He brings up a good point when discussing his process for making prints from digital files. He says that problem for a lot of people making their own black and whites prints is that they
haven’t been 40 years in the darkroom. They don’t know what a good print looks like. If you don’t know what a good black and white looks like, you can’t do it with ink jet or silver. So it doesn’t matter what the media is if you don’t understand what you’re doing.
So how do you know what a good black and white print looks like? I think the simple answer is to visit a gallery. Find out what an Ansel Adams print looks like, up close. Last year I had a chance to see some of Adams’ photographs when an exhibition of his work came to the AGO in Toronto. The prints were spectacular and much different from the small reproductions in many books of his work.
Another way to see what great black and white photography looks like? Purchase the latest copy of LensWork magazine — some of the best black and white prints in your book store.
Aside from taking a course or a workshop, I think the best way to improve the quality of your black and white prints is to visit a gallery and see what a professional photographer’s work looks like.
Posted in Photography at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)
5 reasons why I love my Timex Ironman watch
When I was 18 I bought a Timex Ironman watch that worked for over 6 years. Since then I’ve had a number of wristwatches that never seemed to last for more than 2 years — Alfred Sung, Seiko, Fossil, Swatch and others. All of these watches were in the $100 - $200.
It may not be the most glamorous watch in the world but I love my Ironman for 5 reasons:
- it’s proven to actually work for more that 2 years
- water resistant to 100 metres
- Indiglo
- costs less than $100
- includes a stopwatch, alarm, timer and has dual timezones
I found a review that has a good tip for the dual time zone feature. Keep the time the same for the second time zone but switch to a 24-hour clock view. When you press the START button to view the second time zone you’ll get the 24-hour clock.
If you’re tired of designer wrist watches that only seem to last for two years then I suggest you try an Ironman for a change.
Posted in Observations and Technology at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)
Trying not to panic
I’m sitting in West Vancouver, working on my wife’s laptop computer. I should be enjoying my Christmas vacation but I’m a little panicked. I’ve had 3 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours and I have to finish designing a web page for Disney, create 53 French language coupons for Procter & Gamble and update a few other sites.
Instead of actually working I’m waiting for a 796 MB trial version of Photoshop CS3 to download. The version of Photoshop CS2 that I hoped to use doesn’t want to activate on this tired iBook G4. Silly me, I didn’t bring the installer discs and serial numbers to reinstall Photoshop. Trying. To. Remain. Calm.
452 MB remaining.
Lately I’ve been in a frenzied rush to finish one job after the other and I’m running out of energy. The endless stream of rush jobs and constant panics has to end. I think they call this type of decision-making a new year’s resolution.
326 MB remaining.
Did I mention that it is December 19th and I haven’t started my Christmas shopping yet? You know that time of year where you exchange money in the form of gift certificates because you can’t figure out what to purchase for people.
My excuse is that I’m a guy and I hate shopping. What do I really need for Christmas? Nothing. Okay maybe Photoshop CS2 running on this damn computer would be nice.
If I need something I’ll go to the store and purchase it. Christmas is for children. I’m not saying that adults shouldn’t exchange a small gifts at all but there is always this unnecessary pressure to buy something and spend a certain amount of money.
175 MB remaining.
I know a few people that decided they weren’t going to give in to Christmas consumer pressure. Their families don’t buy any gifts (for the adults). Instead, they donate it to a hospital or a charity. I would rather contribute to a cure for cancer than a gift that somebody won’t like and doesn’t really need.
Now I feel like a cross between Scrooge and Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes.
126 MB remaining.
I can barely keep my eyes open now. It’s 3 AM, Toronto time. Need sleep.
40 MB remaining.
Zzzzzz.
Posted in Observations and Personal at 2:16 AM | Comments (3)
John Gruber rips apart Adam L. Penenberg’s Fast Company cover story on Apple
This morning I picked up the latest copy of Fast Company to read on a flight to Vancouver. The cover story, All Eyes On Apple questions whether Steve Jobs and company can maintain the incredible growth and success of 2007.
Daring Fireball is one of the sites that makes the Internet such a great place. John Gruber wrote an excellent piece that rips apart Adam L. Penenberg’s feature for Fast Company. Gruber is one of the few people that takes the time to critically examine popular news stories about Apple and point out their inaccuracies.
Posted in Apple at 1:53 AM | Comments (0)
The Dark Knight Trailer
The new trailer for The Dark Knight (2008) looks pretty amazing. View/download the trailer from this teaser site.
If you’re fast, you may be able to see the 6 minute preview that is being shown in IMAX theatres here before Warner takes it down.
Bottom line, the next Batman movie looks like another winner.
Posted in Movies at 1:21 AM | Comments (0)
Getting things done with Tasks in Entourage
There is so much choice when it comes to Getting Things Done (GTD) applications and to-do list managers these days. Here is a sample of some of the better GTD apps that are out there:
- Things — Task management on the Mac
- Anxiety — Lightweight To-do Management
- Midnight Inbox
- Taskpaper
- iGTD
- Backpack
I just received an invite to try the alpha version of Things — a great looking app that runs only on Macintosh. I downloaded the alpha, installed it and stopped using the program after 5 minutes. I don’t have time to learn another piece of software right now. I don’t have time to create projects and prioritize lists, even if the software is a work of art.
I need a to-do list manager that is really simple and really fast. Tasks in Microsoft Entourage 2004 for Mac is something I’ve completely overlooked and does exactly what I need it to.
I use Entourage for email which means that Tasks is always available to me (Command-5). I don’t have to load up another app or fork out $20 - $50 to stay organized. The feature list in Tasks is weak compared to Things or Anxiety but the more time I spend playing around with features, the less time I spend getting things done.
I was using Backpack to stay on top of things. It’s web-based, simple and cheap. If you’re sharing your to-do list with others then this is a great solution. I was paying $5/month for a Basic account but found I wasn’t using it all of the time. I never travel in my job so I don’t need a mobile GTD solution. That’s $60/year that I can put back in my pocket or in Microsoft’s for the next Office upgrade.
If you’re looking for a fast, simple, no-frills to-do list manager then it might be right under your nose.
Posted in JAK MEDIA and OS X Software at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)
Firewire speed to quadruple
Yesterday the 1394 Trade Association announced that the speed of Firewire will quadruple to 3.2 gigabits per second or (400 MB/second). I like the fact that you won’t need new connectors or cables to take advantage of the faster Firewire drives.
Firewire 800 drives currently transfer data at speeds of 800 megabits (100 MB/second). According to a 1394 Trade Association press release, the new format will also be “fast enough to move even uncompressed HD signals over long distances at much lower cost than solutions such as HDMI.”
Posted in Technology at 1:56 PM | Comments (0)
Top 10 Google searches beginning with “who is”
Everyone is looking for answers. Google Zeitgeist 2007 gives us a glimpse of what people were searching for in the past year.
- who is god
- who is who
- who is lookup
- who is jesus
- who is it
- who is buckethead
- who is calling
- who is keppler
- who is this
- who is satan
I find it fascinating that God, Jesus and Satan are all in the top 10. A lot of people tend to think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket because of war, declining church attendance and Britney Spears. It seems that spiritual questions are very much on people’s minds these days.
Now why is who is keppler in the top 10?
Posted in Web at 7:24 PM | Comments (0)
Bill Murray’s whisper revealed
At the end of Lost in Translation, Bill Murray whispers something into Scarlett Johansson’s ear. The audience isn’t meant to hear what Murray says.
Four years later, somebody has done some audio analysis of the scene and solved the mystery. I liked the ending better when I didn’t know what Bill Murray was saying.
Posted in Movies at 10:35 PM | Comments (3)
Harold And Kumar 2 Red Band Trailer
The new trailer for Harold and Kumar was posted last week. I hope the movie is as funny as this trailer.
Posted in Movies at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)
Cinematical’s 25 Lamest of 2007
Cinematical posted an interesting list of the worst things in the film industry for 2007. I couldn’t be any happier that they singled out, Hollywood hack, Brett Ratner.
Lame because: Director Brett Ratner came to Hollywood to get laid, stayed to get laid … and in between decided to make a crappy movie or five. This year, however, he took his slimy, perverted game to a new low by pimping himself out on eBay.
80s remakes, the HD format wars and Steve Carell’s movie choices round out the list of what was lame in 2007.
Posted in Movies at 9:44 PM | Comments (0)
Mixx instead of Digg for fresh content
For the latest buzz on the web I start with popurls which aggregates content from Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and others.
Digg tends to have a lot of content about Apple which I tend to like. Del.icio.us has great web development and design techniques that keep me up to date on latest trends in my profession.
Mixx is the new kid on the block that provides different content from the usual popurls suspects. I like its tagging system. For example, Mixx has some great content on SEO that I’ve found incredibly useful and easy to find — content I normally wouldn’t see on the front page of Digg.
10 Reasons Not to Use Digg has some interesting insight into Digg and the comments for this entry show how competitive the Digg vs Mixx vs other content aggregators can be.
Posted in Web at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
Rogers reaches a new low
If your ISP in Canada is Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed, then you might have a browsing session interrupted or rather hijacked to tell you that you’re using the Internet too much! Cory Doctorow posted a screenshot of this at Boing Boing.
If you use close to 75 GB of bandwidth per month then Rogers may scold you when you least expect it, through your web browser. Pretty soon they’ll be jumping out of the closet or from behind a curtain to tell you that you’re not using Yahoo enough!
Use more than 75 GB in bandwidth per month you’ll be charged an extra $1.50/GB. This seems fair but the way in which Rogers is telling their customers is complete idiocy.
You’d have to be stealing a lot of music and Hollywood movies to reach 75 GB in a month and I know a few people that do but you could also be downloading television shows from the UK or other countries that the Canadian government (CRTC) doesn’t let us watch. Or, if you don’t have a Tivo/PVR you might be downloading shows that you missed, but 75 GB is a lot of viewing time.
Rogers is pathetic for how has chosen to deal with high bandwidth customers. I hope that somebody sues them for something related to privacy. The need to wake up.
Posted in Web at 4:41 PM | Comments (0)
1 in 4 Canadians on Facebook
According to the Toronto Star, almost 8 million Canadians have a Facebook page. Here are some more Facebook stats:
- 85% of Canadians signed up in the last year
- half of Canadian Facebook users are over the age of 30
- Toronto has 990, 000 Facebook users
You can view my Facebook page here. I’m not on there a lot. Who has time to play trivia games and take useless online quizzes? People without a blog to update is my guess!
Posted in Web at 1:44 PM | Comments (0)
Pixar Character Cameos
Jim Hill Media has a really interesting overview of Pixar characters that appear in Pixar films. For example, did you know that the Pizza Planet truck from Toy Story has appeared in every Pixar film to date?
I was surprised by how many cameos I never picked up on. An interesting list.
Posted in Movies at 1:47 AM | Comments (0)
New X-Files film out in July
The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that the new X-Files film will begin production in Vancouver this month for a July release! X-Files creator Chris Carter is directing again and he’s written a script with Frank Spotnitz.
There is a lot of secrecy surrounding the plot but stranger still are some of the supporting cast choices — Billy Connolly, Amanda Peet and rapper Xzibit. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are back as Mulder and Scully and I can’t wait.
Posted in Movies at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)
Free browser testing with IE NetRenderer
If you design and code websites for a living then you grow to loathe Internet Explorer 6 (IE6). I can code a site to have it work perfectly in Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, and Camino. Then along comes IE6 and everything breaks.
For the next couple of hours and sometimes days, I’ll use Google to search for a solution. I’ll modify my stylesheets, tweak my XHTML code and hope that I find a successful hack so that my web page renders properly in IE6.
I have IE7 on my Windows machine and can’t test a site in IE 6. It’s difficult to have two versions of Internet Explorer on a single machine. How do you beta test a website in the worst web browser used by 42% of web users?
Smashing Magazine has a great article on Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites that led me to IE NetRenderer — a fabulous and free browser compatibility testing service.
Just type in your problematic URL and you can view a screenshot (1016 x 741 pixels) as it would appear in IE5.5, IE6 or IE7. Brilliant! Another interesting option is to view an IE6 page overtop of an IE7 page so you can see how the rendering engines layout a page differently.
There are no limits to how many pages you can test with IE NetRenderer and it is absolutely free. If you like the service you can make a donation to IE NetRenderer.
Posted in Web Development at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
Unflattering Hillary Clinton Photos
The next US election is less than a year away which means things are about to get ugly. The Really Truly Hillary Gallery is a collection of very unflattering photos of Hillary Clinton that make her look like a crazy old lizard. Oh, and many of them are quite funny.
Posted in Humour and Photography at 1:47 AM | Comments (2)
Top 100 Albums of 2007
The year end lists have started. Paste Magazine has published their Top 100 Albums of 2007. Here are the top 10:
- The National - Boxer
- Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
- Bruce Springsteen - Magic
- The White Stripes - Icky Thump
- Feist - The Reminder
- M.I.A. - Kala
- Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
- Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
- Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
- Iron & Wine - The Shepherd’s Dog
I purchased 4 of the albums in the top 10 and have to say that Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky is my favourite of the year. Every track on the disc is solid — their best album to date.
Posted in Music at 8:04 PM | Comments (8)
