From the Computer History Museum comes 101 minutes with some of the pioneers of computer graphics: Brad Bird, Writer/Director, The Incredibles, Pixar Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, Co-Founder and President, Pixar Animation Studios, Alvy Ray Smith, Co-Founder of four centers of computer graphics excellence (Altamira, Pixar, Lucasfilm, New York Tech) and a Microsoft Fellow, Andrew Stanton, Writer/ Director, Finding Nemo, Pixar Animation Studios , and Michael Rubin, Moderator, Author of Droidmaker: George Lucas and the Digital Revolution.

Catmull and Smith were two of the pioneers of computer graphics algorithms and hardware, inventing many of the fundamental techniques that are at the root of everything done today. Lots of discussion about computer animation as a medium, not an end in itself, and the importance of story over technology.

Tags: CGI, Graphics, History, Pixar, Movies, Interesting Stuff, Animation, Anti-Aliasing

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie make up Fight of the Conchords, a kind of parody folk group from New Zealand. Click the image above to see them sing Business Time live on stage. "It's Wednesday, and Wednesday night is the night we make luuurve... Conditions are perfect; there's nothing on TV". They are clearly having a ton of fun.

I prefer their live performances over the music videos. Be sure to watch The Humans Are Dead, Jenny, Albi The Racist Dragon, Bowie Song, Something for the Ladies, Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, and Issues.

Tags: Interesting Stuff, Fun, Movies, Music

Wolf Rentzsch has posted the first video from the C4 conference that took place in Chicago last year. It's entitled Indie Ethos, and talks about the place of independent Cocoa developers in the world.

Here is the complete list. One will be posted each week.

• Wolf Rentzsch: Indie Ethos
• Wil Shipley: Monster Marketing
• Daniel Jalkut: Application Acquisition
• Shawn Morel: Virtualization Vivisection
• Bob Ippolito: Exploring Erlang
• Adam Engst: Hacking The Press
• Tim Burks: RubyObjC & Nu
• Cabel Sasser: Coda Confidential

If you are interested in what is happening at ground level in the Cocoa developer world, watch these.

Update: Will Shipley's talk about hype is up now.

Tags: C4, Fun, Interesting Stuff, Nerds, Movies, Cocoa

Make Magazine has a link to and discussion about Claude Paillard who makes his own vacuum tubes. Not only that, he makes the machines, tools, and equipment he needs to make the vacuum tubes. The site has a link to a 17 minute video (125MB) that shows the whole process. It's fascinating to watch.

If you happen to live in Hong Kong, then Sheung Wan is the place to go. There are stores like WiWi Tubes with thousands of square feet of them. The site has some information on and pictures of the manufacture of tubes, for instance the 300B.

To find out what a vacuum tube actually does, check Wikipedia's entry and links.

Tags: Vacuum Tubes, Interesting Stuff

I visited Macworld today. My immediate impression was that It was more crowded and larger than last year. Notably there were many companies selling storage solutions: clearly back up and media storage is now becoming mainstream in the Mac world.


This is a plastic missile launcher powered and controlled by USB. I was lucky enough to get the missile streaking out of the frame while the shutter was open.


Ever wanted to type with one hand? The FrogPad lets you do that. In the foreground are two pads, one for left-handed people and one for right-handed people. The common letters are on the keys and to get the less common letters you chord with another key. There is also a symbol and a shift lock key. It takes a little getting used to, but I was able to type a simple message without too much trouble.

These are relaxation pods. I didn't ask what went on inside them.


One use for an old iMac case: turn it into a trash can.


I got my hands on a MacBook Air after waiting in line for a while. It's very thin, very light, and it's a Mac. There's not much else to say about it. Performance seemed fine for the small amount of playing that I did with it. The case got warm, but definitely not hot. Since it is all aluminum and curved, it's much stiffer than you would think it would be. MacBook Pros look like huge ugly bricks next to this thing.

Apple was showing off very little this year. The only Macs apart from the MacBook Airs were Mac Pros with two big screens each. These were being used to show off some pro apps and also for general OS X demonstration to any interested parties. No sign of Aperture. No iMacs. No minis. There was a whole wall of Apple TVs and plenty of iPods and iPhones on display.


Eye-Fi was there with their orange wireless SD card. You plug it into your camera and it transmits your JPEG images via regular wifi to your computer. Their software then stores it or automatically uploads it to a photo sharing site.


I also saw people creating hideous creatures with Spore. The gaming area was small this year.


Need a cover for your laptop? I didn't think so.

Tags: Macworld, Fun, Apple TV, Apple, Dinosaurs, Interesting Stuff, iPhone, iPod

There is a Wikipedia for cameras: Camerapedia. One of the things they list is my first SLR: the Olympus OM-30. The on-off switch is on the right in this image: protruding part on the ring around the film rewind knob. This meant that it was really easy to turn the camera on as you were putting it back into its case, and so completely run down the five very expensive button cells that it needed to operate.

Tags: Photography, Canon, Nikon, DSLR, History, Museum, Interesting Stuff, Olympus

That is The Waiter. For The Cheater, The Zombie, and others, see this page on English Russia. Oh and there are also picked cell phones, bikes on top of cars, and more. Plenty of odd things and unusual photos if you dig around a little.

Tags: Russians, Fun, Photography, Interesting Stuff

Waffle is a blog that covers a multitude of geeky, webby, and Appley subjects. It's technical and meaty. But somehow never waffly.

Tags: Blogging, Cocoa, Apple, Interesting Stuff

This Hungarian web site maps and documents disasters world wide: everything from earthquakes and algal blooms to floods and power outages. But for smaller-scale and more personally-oriented disasters, Fark is still king.

Tags: Disasters, Interesting Stuff

It's a documentary about the Mac, and it's coming. That's about all the web site will say about it. There are two teasers posted.

Tags: Fun, Macs, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Pierre Chatelier has posted a PDF guide to Objective C for C++ programmers. It's very good and very complete. I recommend it for anyone who only knows straight C as well because it covers the lesser-know corners of the language that are easily forgotten.

Tags: Cocoa, Programming, Interesting Stuff

The Register talks to Bill Buxton (who has built several multitouch systems) about Microsoft's Surface:

In fact, according to Bill Buxton - ironically a Principal Researcher at Microsoft's own research centre - these kinds of multi-touch interfaces have been around for over twenty years. Perhaps the Surface Computing marketing guys at Microsoft should check out Bill's web site. Moreover, perhaps Microsoft and developers like Jeff Han at NYU, who are building these 'old-school' multi-touch interfaces out of cameras and projectors, should consider the fatal flaw in their 'innovations'. This being that all back-projection interfaces are enormous. Think about it - you've essentially got a small cinema in a box behind a screen. Forget mobility and portability. Is it even moveable?

I remember using The Wasp, a portable and very yellow synthesizer in the early 80s. The keyboard was touch-sensitive, not in the sensitive-to-velocity kind of way, but in the touch-a-picture-of-a-key-to-press-it kind of way. As the site says:

Its most distinguishing feature is the keyboard and its awful non-moving touch keys. That's right, the flat plastic keys are only sensitive to your touch and so they are difficult and unreliable to play.

Anything that uses a touch interface has this tactile/audio feedback problem. A touch-input display also has the problem of planarity: the display and the input are co-planar. There are very few interactive systems designed this way -- none that I can think of that are designed for more than infrequent, dedicated use. The bigger the device (and so at least on paper the more impressive the display) the worse the situation becomes. Go smaller and the interface becomes usable because the hands can be positioned independently of the surface. Go too small and the area becomes too small to be useful.

I am wondering if Apple actually designed the iPhone like this: starting by finding the most functional form factor, then getting the feel and weight right, then moving on to the display, functionality, and finally electronics.

Tags: Microsoft, Multitouch, History, iPhone, Interesting Stuff

One of the new Apple Airport Extreme base stations now has a home in my computer closet --I mean literally - it is a closet. It's freeing up space, replacing some very old hardware, giving me a way of wirelessly connecting old devices, providing a Mac OS X computer for the kids, increasing my wireless network range, and centralizing a printer. All for $180.

My previous wireless network was based on an Airport Express operating in bridge mode. The Airport Express had a somewhat limited range, but the Airport Extreme gives a much stronger signal and does better against the 2.4MHz interference and other networks around here. The Airport Express will be pressed into service as a way of networking an older computer that lacks a wireless card, or connecting to the Brother printer if I move it.

A now ancient Linksys router connected the network to the internet via a DSL modem, but that is no longer needed. That also saves a huge power brick.

The largest space saving is in the exit of a G3 iMac DV. That used to be a server, but I don't need one any more. The Brother laser printer has a print server built in, so out goes that function. I no longer host anything from home, so no need for those services. The iMac is now running games. All my shared storage needs are met with a USB drive attached to the Airport Extreme. On the network the partitions look like separate shared disks on a server. Mounting the disks can either be done through the Finder or by a utility that uses Bonjour to automatically mount the disk when it is available. I had hoped that the two partitions on my disk could be configured in such a way that one would be public and one local, but that is not the case: the sharing settings are global. Either all the disks and partitions are available to the internet or none are.

The disk shares the USB port with a printer via a passive 4 port hub. That centralizes my HP color printer.

Set up was easy, but not so obvious in places. Initial configuration with the Airport Utility is straight forward, but you have to know to select Manual set up when you want to change more parameters later. I initially typed in an IP address incorrectly and the base station spotted the error and took me to the page where I could correct it. That was a nice touch.

I did have a hang up that required a reboot. Something happened to the USB disk, and the result was a frozen router. It is also inconvenient that the Airport Extreme must be rebooted to store any parameter change, even if it has nothing to do with communication. So my entire network and file sharing goes down for 20 seconds at a stretch. I am finding that my work PC laptop is much happier with the Airport Extreme than it was with the Linksys router. DHCP actually seems to work now and the weird delays and timeouts have gone.

Tags: Airport, Networking, Server, iMac, Interesting Stuff

Realmac Software released RapidWeaver 3.6.0 today. RapidWeaver is just as it sounds: a quick way to make great web sites. I've been beta testing it for a while, and publishing this site with it for as long as it has been stable.

For a quick look at what it does and how it does it, see the intro video and quick-start guide on the tour page. The quick-start shows how to create a blog in five minutes. It really is that quick. Customization is possible both through the RapidWeaver interface and by adding and editing HTML, PHP, and CSS. But there is no need to get embroiled in the details if you don't want to. There are plenty of low-cost themes and plug-ins available.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Software, Interesting Stuff

It's shrink-wrapped and brand new. But how old is it? Is it worth anything? I cannot find any pictures of mouse pads exactly like this one anywhere on the web.

Tags: Apple, Mouse Pad, Mysteries, Interesting Stuff

This is really neat. John Hoogstrate has created a PHP-based system for browsing, filtering, and viewing Aperture libraries with a web browser called PHPture. It's open source and available at Source Forge . It uses SQLite to access the Aperture database and makes use of the high-resolution previews feature of Aperture 1.5 to display the images. It only ever reads the database so should be completely safe. Installation is not trivial since it needs PHP 5.

The design is very Aperture-like as you can see from the screen shot. An obvious application for this is when you have a number of people who need to be able to browse a library. Share it on the network or your machine and point PHPture at it. Multiple copies of Aperture are not needed.

It *does* need a new name though.

Tags: Aperture, Web Tools, Library, Interesting Stuff

Thirty-two Purple and Brown shorts in about 16 minutes. If the style reminds you of Aardman Studios, that's because it is Aardman Studios.

Tags: Fun, Video, Animation, Interesting Stuff

My main printer for the past decade or more has been an Apple Laserwriter Select 360. It's slow, heavy, and the paper tray is impossible to pull out, but it works. It talks Localtalk, so I was using an Appletalk bridge (an old ISDN router actually) to connect it to Ethernet. I think I paid about $1200 for the printer when I bought it new.

I actually have two of them. The first started to have printing problems and needed a good cleaning inside the optics to fix. But I found a secondhand one at Weird Stuff for $30 and it worked perfectly, only having ever printed 1200 pages. So I kept the first one for spares and carried on with the new one for another couple of years. Printer cartridges are available, but they are getting pricey, so recently when the toner started to run low I went searching for a replacement.

The result is that I now have a $100 laser printer that is a fraction of the weight, much, much faster, and takes cheap cartridges -- a Brother HL-2070N. It comes with a Mac driver and runs Ethernet or USB and has a print queue built in in case I ever need to talk to it with a PC.
It's not a Postscript printer like the Laserwriter, so the host does the RIPping. But that is OK. The host is much faster than the printer and the network is 100BaseT, so the result is that it beats the pants off the old one. The Mac driver installs and works just fine. The printer can be configured and monitored via a web browser. It isn't any good at printing photos. But again that's fine by me.

Any takers for two unwanted Apple Laserwriter Select 360s?

Tags: Printing, Apple, Brother, Networking, Interesting Stuff

Canon has announced the Powershot S5 IS and dpreview has the details. It uses the DIGIC III processor, has a hot shoe, and a bigger flip screen. Now 8 megapixels in the sensor.

I have the Canon S3 IS and am planning to replace it next spring. Do I get an S5 or go for an DSLR?

Tags: Canon, S3, S5, Photography, DSLR, Interesting Stuff

As seen on Daring Fireball, Philip Greenspun has a very clear and practical guide for anyone considering buying a digital SLR on his site photo.net. Lots of other useful material on the site to explore as well.

Tags: Photography, DSLR, Buying, Interesting Stuff

David Pogue talks (and sings) at TED about simplicity and its ability to sell. Will Shipley (articles 0, 1, 2, 3) and Thomas Dolby were there too (articles 1, 2).

Tags: Complexity, TED, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

Known then as "Arnold The Munching Monster", the Cookie Monster meets (and eats, of course), a talking machine. From an IBM training video, apparently.

Tags: Fun, Video, Interesting Stuff

From the Shiira project comes Aperture-like HUDs supplied in source as a framework.

Tags: Software, Cocoa, Aperture, Interesting Stuff

The application that I use to create and publish this site is called RapidWeaver, currently at 3.5.1; but there is a new version on the way. I have been testing a beta of RapidWeaver 3.6 and it is looking pretty good. It's stable enough that I use it to publish now. My site is large, and I am running into problems with the current version because of its wasteful use of memory during export. 3.6 fixes that, so my workflow is to create in 3.5.1, save, and then publish using the 3.6 beta.

I use RapidWeaver because it is just so darn easy to use. I only have to touch HTML and CSS if I want to. Site templates are plentiful and low cost and available from a number of third parties. And there is a developer SDK that lets third parties write plug-ins. The only problems I have are self-imposed: my site has 130 pages or so -- and those are actual pages, not the automatically-generated ones line the permalinks. My home page has more than 450 articles. There are at least 500 images in the Aperture section alone, so probably close to 1000 in total now.

But RapidWeaver is keeping up. Not bad for a piece of software that costs $40 and has had free updates for at least a year and a half. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 3.6. I know what is in it, but you'll have to wait to find out.

[Update: The Realmac Software blog page is now (2007-05-02) starting to reveal some of the new features]

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Interesting Stuff

Mike Franklin has been testing the quality of photo books created by a number of different suppliers: Blurb, Apple, Viovio, and MyPublisher.

Tags: Aperture, Books, Interesting Stuff

Originally broadcast by the BBC in 2002, this excellent two-part radio series about Pink Floyd features the band members, people who worked with them and knew them, and of course their music. It's about three hours in total, presented in Real Audio format in four parts (the last two are in the wrong order) so you'll either need the Real player, or VLC to listen to it.

Dave Gilmour hasn't done too badly out of the whole thing either, as a tour of his floating studio on the Thames shows in an episode of the BBC's Three Men In A Boat (Google Video, 5 mins). That link also has many other Pink Floyd clips.

Tags: Music, Pink Floyd, Interview, Interesting Stuff

Wired has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt, taken in 2005, but never published. It includes interesting observations about how they make decisions and deal with conflict:

There was one case in February (2005), which is a very, very difficult issue, and I'd rather not go into the specific product issue, but we were in violent disagreement, and for very good reasons. Actually, Larry and I were in agreement. Sergey was wrong, in my view. Sergey came in and he was just on a tear. He had convinced himself of this and he was absolutely sure. And I said, "Look, I can't take this, guys. You guys have got to sort this thing out. If the two of you can agree, I'll agree with you. But you have a deadline of tomorrow” Again here I am structuring it. "And you don't need to tell me the decision, you have to tell them the decision."

Tell who?

Tell the engineers. It's like 20 people who are completely demoralized because they're not getting clear direction. So what happens is the next night they get to the deadline -- and I remember it because this is an emotional issue -- and I called up Sergey, and I said, "What did you guys decide?" And he said, "I'm going there now to tell them," and he then described the solution, which was different than the three of us did -- and better.

So again the generic model is consensus building with dissent with a deadline. If you don't have dissent, stimulate the dissent, and inspect everything. That's sort of the default model, and then you manage the exceptions.

So the exceptions are when there really is a disagreement among the principles, and certainly I've encouraged people to say “I just don't agree,” and then every once in a while I've had to actually be a real CEO and mandate something and really force it and not listen to anyone else. Those are cases where it's legal or regulatory where I've just said, "Look, I'm just not going to participate in anything other than this outcome." And people know me well enough to know not to challenge me on it.

Tags: Google, Interview, Interesting Stuff

The 3D image on the right was constructed by a computer from the flat photo on the left (it's just a normal photo, but taken with mirrors). Computational photography does this and much more, as described in an article in Science News.

Tags: Photography, Interesting Stuff

Late Night Cocoa has just published a podcast featuring Frasier Spiers. He talks about the Aperture export plugin API.

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Podcast, Interview, Interesting Stuff

The OS stats for this site show that Vista is not yet as popular as Windows 2000. I find that quite surprising, but that's what it says:

The site looks fine in Explorer 7 (checked here). Maybe the search on Vista defaults in such a way that this site is not found. Or maybe it's impossible to use a camera with Vista and so nobody is.

The browser share tells a different story:

Netscape stalled at version 5. Explorer 7 is being adopted pretty quickly. Everyone uses Firefox. Tiger has taken over completely.

Tags: Microsoft, Statistics, Interesting Stuff

I currently have a Canon S3 that is a year old. Next year I expect to replace it with something else (no clue what yet), but if I were in the market right now, I would be looking at the Olympus SP-550 UZ. That's the ultra-zoom camera with the 18x zoom lens. Dpreview.com now has a full review of the Olympus. The only direct comparison to the S3 comes on page 17 where the resolution charts are shown.

High points for me are that the lens goes wider and longer than the S3 and it takes AA batteries. On the down side, there is no flip-out screen, and it's not all that fast a camera. You can't use sound in a movie if you want to zoom. It does RAW, but I don't believe is supported by Aperture.

Tags: Photography, Olympus, Interesting Stuff

Robert Scoble was blogging about Microsoft before he was part of Microsoft. Now he's no longer part of Microsoft, his blog is getting interesting. His recent posts and particularly the comments they foster and his responses are very telling. He gets it. He likes Apple TV. He doesn't believe that Microsoft is in it to win.

#127: this is the problem. Microsoft is actually something like 100 companies lashed together. The Xbox team might be doing something cool while the Internet team is totally sucking wind.

In this context we’re talking about the Internet team.

Oh, and cool?

How about Photosynth? http://scobleizer.com/2006/11/10/demo-of-the-year-photosynth/

That’s cool. But it can’t be turned into a product.

Why? Cause it takes nine hours to stitch together a few hundred photos. Unusable.

So, very cool, but not a business.

Most of what we’re talking about above is about being BOTH cool and a great business ON THE INTERNET.

Microsoft is lacking on both areas.

And the comparison to the Beattles is NOT out of place here. Demonstrates that you take a Microsoft approach here.

Comment by Robert Scoble — March 17, 2007 @ 12:03 pm

Tags: Microsoft, Apple TV, Apple, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

The folks over at Something Awful are hacking Apple TV. Since the ATV runs Mac OS X, this is almost trivial: pop the cover, take out the hard drive, mount it on a Mac via a Firewire case, and modify. They have it playing Xvid movies, running SSH, and more. The hard drive can be replaced with a larger one too.

I notice that it contains a ForceFeedback framework too. That means games. Only games (simulators) use force feedback.

It may seem odd that the box is as open as this. After all, the XBox and other equipment like it is locked down just as tight as the manufacturers can make it. Not that it stops anyone. But it is not odd at all when you consider that Apple is in the hardware business. An open box sells more boxes, and that is all that matters. This is really the lowest-cost Mac on the market now.

Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Hacking, Video Games, Interesting Stuff

I want one of those. It would go well with my grey cat. Many other hard-to-find items at Suck UK. I also like the egg timer and the pen holder.

Tags: Fun, Furniture, Interesting Stuff, Intimidation

Cognitive Daily shows how artists and non-artists look at images. Artists scan all over, while non-artists focus on the subject. They have been trained to look at all the details of the picture and overcome the natural tendency to fixate on salient features.

It would be interesting to do the same experiment with photographers.

Tags: Artists, Interesting Stuff

Apple's Knowledgebase article 305121 lists the benefits that Aperture gets from the Mac OS X 10.4.9 update:

• Adds support for the RAW image formats of these third-party cameras: Leaf Aptus 17, Leaf Aptus 22, Leaf Aptus 65, Leaf Aptus 75, Leaf Valeo 11, Leaf Valeo 17, Leaf Valeo 22, Leica Digilux 3, Nikon D40, Pentax K10D, Pentax K110D, Pentax K100D, Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1, Samsung GX-1L.

• Improved Spot & Patch results: The update contains changes to Core Image that improve the visual correctness of images using Spot & Patch adjustment.

• Reduces issues of temporary "black" Viewer: Mac OS X 10.4.9 addresses several issues that could cause the Viewer to temporarily turn black when displaying adjusted images.

• GPS metadata is preserved when image versions are exported.

• Incorporates all RAW file format compatibility and other imaging issues originally addressed in Digital Camera RAW Support Update 1.0.1. This update improved RAW file format compatibility for the Canon Digital Rebel XTi / 400D / Kiss X Digital, Nikon D80, and Pentax *ist DS. It also addressed the following issues: Handling of large Canon RAW files (.CRW); DNG compatibility on Intel-based Macs; Lines sometimes appearing in images exported from Aperture.

The full list of supported cameras is listed on Apple's site. I expect we will see an update to Aperture before very long. Joe Schorr has already posted such on Apple's Aperture forums recently.

Tags: Apple, Aperture, Updates, Interesting Stuff

The second Thursday of each month sees a meeting of Silicon Valley CocoaHeads, usually on Apple's campus at 1 Infinite Loop. This month the topics are Core Animation and Related Leopard APIs (starter), and Cocoa Binding Tips And Tricks (main course). I will be there, trying to get my head around bindings one more time.

Tags: Cocoa, CocoaHeads, Silicon Valley, Apple, Interesting Stuff

The movie Black Sheep looks like a cross between Tremors, Alien, Shaun Of The Dead, and A Close Shave. And since it's set in New Zealand, I'd expect Hobbits as well.

Tags: Sheep, Movies, Interesting Stuff

Makoto Nagano completes what must be the hardest obstacle course in the world. It's Japanese. About the only thing missing is sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads.

Tags: Movies, Obstacles, Interesting Stuff

That white thing is a dock divider: a small graphic created by Adam Betts that can be used to section off your dock items. They are little Applescripts that just quit. That way if you accidently launch one it will do nothing. They come in horizontal and vertical flavors.

Tags: Dock, Interesting Stuff

Canon shows how they make lenses from raw materials and then assemble them into finished products.

Tags: Canon, Glass, Video, Interesting Stuff, Photography

Surely not. The A square is darker, much darker! Most people would put money on it. But they'd lose. Open it in Photoshop and inspect the pixel values. Or on the Mac open up the DigitalColor Meter application and take a peek .

Edward H Adelson explains it all in great depth in his paper Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions. There are some great interactive illusions on the web site as well.

Tags: Optical Illusions, Interesting Stuff

Sensitive Light is the creation of Graham Jeffery. One of his subjects is smoke. How does he do it? Photocritic.org talks to him and finds out.

Tags: Photography, Smoke, Interesting Stuff

You be the decider. Ridiculous Fish challenges the reader to match the logo with the product type. Not as easy as it sounds. Ridiculous Fish also hosts Hex Fiend, a fiendishly good hex editor.

Tags: Hair Care, Digital Audio, Blogging, Interesting Stuff, Fun

Kevin Smith, Director of Dogma, wanted to know a little more about the rumored demonstration by 1500 people outside a theatre showing his movie. Here he tells the story of how he and a friend went along to join the crowd.

Tags: Video, Dogma, Interesting Stuff, Fun

Soyburger has a basement full of Macs and has posted photos on Flickr. There must be a hundred or so. All kinds, back to the original Apples, Mac, and the Lisa. Plus software, Newtons, PowerBooks, packaging, monitors, hard drives, iPods,..... There are many I don't think I have ever seen before.

Tags: Macs, Museum, Interesting Stuff

For developers, another WWDC 2006 presentation is available via iTunes: IT State Of The Union.

Tags: Apple, WWDC, iTunes, Interesting Stuff

DepicT is a short film competition. Short here means ninety seconds or less. Above is one of the entries from 2003: How To Tell When A Relationship Is Over. You have until Monday September 3rd to send in entries for the 2007 competition.

Tags: Fun, Video, Interesting Stuff

ApertureToGallery is an Aperture export plugin that takes images from Aperture and puts them into galleries created with Gallery. The latest version (0.98.4) is free and adds compatibility with the most recent release of Gallery2.

Tags: Aperture, Plug-ins, Interesting Stuff

Scott Stevenson has gone to great lengths to post an introductory article on learning Cocoa. He describes it thus:


Send Scott money if you like what you see and he will spend more time on this endeavor. The message of this tutorial is that Cocoa is a very powerful tool. I'm interested to see what is next.

Tags: Cocoa, Learning, Interesting Stuff

Regular (cheap, non-paying) ADC members like me can now download and watch one of the presentations given at WWDC last year. It's 500MB H.264, 1 hour 32 minutes. You'll need an ADC login to download it via iTunes.

Tags: WWDC, Interesting Stuff

Last night at about 8pm I thought I heard fire crackers outside. So I peered out of the window, and saw what looked like fireworks going up into the sky. When I went outside to investigate and looked over the neighbor's fence I saw flames coming out of the upstairs bedroom of a house two doors down at the back. After calling 911 I went back out, saw that the fire department was there and started talking pictures with my Canon S3. I added 18 pictures to the Canon S3 gallery (click forward to the fourth page). As far as I know the house was empty at the time.

Tags: Fire, Canon, S3, Interesting Stuff

An Atlas Of The Universe is just that. You can start at 14 billion light years radius and zoom in all the way to the stars that are closest to our own within "only" 12.5 light years (about 73 million million miles).

Tags: Universe, Atlas, Big, Interesting Stuff

EETimes has another great article that shows in detail why the home market is so important to Apple. Entitled The Top Ten Hang-ups in Home Networking, it catalogs the problems of interoperability, multiple standards, DRM, customer confusion, and leadership void that makes connecting anything to anything difficult or impossible. But the opportunity is huge:

A few data points provide a snapshot of the opportunities. Market watcher iSuppli Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.) predicts shipments of products with integrated wired home networking will rise by more than a factor of 10 in the next four years, to hit 223.8 million units in 2010. Parks Associates estimates the number of North American homes with networked digital-video recorders more than tripled from 400,000 in 2005 to 1.7 million by the end of 2006.

They state the problem very clearly:

But there are no easy pickings in this gold rush. Engineers face historic levels of complexity building the digital home for several reasons. An unprecedented number of players are competing for a piece of the action. Coordination between these would-be architects is minimal.

and give the consequences:

"The glue that holds all this together is home networking, and it stinks," said Van Baker, a consumer analyst with Gartner Dataquest, in an early 2006 story. "If home networking stays like it is, it will stall at 30 percent penetration," he said.

The home network is wide open for any player that can simplify, market, and deliver. Whoever achieves significant penetration will either drag the other players along, or push them to the side. Clearly iTV is part of this, but I expect there to be more.

Apple will start with the TV, get a toehold, and place themselves in a position to enable other players to do business through them, so creating an ecosystem. Think low-price downloadable games, YouTube videos, iChat, networked security cameras, and things like that. Make it compatible and it will just work on any Apple home system.

Tags: Apple, Apple TV, Networking, Interesting Stuff

Junko Yoshida, writing for EETimes is an interesting test case for HDTV. She is far from an average buyer:

I've been talking and writing about high-definition TV since I first saw Japan's HDTV demonstration--not in digital, but in analog--more than 20 years ago. My colleagues and I have chronicled for this newspaper all the trials and turbulence behind the development of U.S. digital HDTV technologies, including the advent of an underlying video compression technology that enabled the transmission of digital TV signals, the byzantine politics of TV spectrum and 1,080-interlaced vs. 720-progressive-scan resolution formats that pitted consumer electronics manufacturers against the PC industry. In short, I know this stuff inside out. Or so I thought.

Yet having bought all the equipment and hooked it up, it doesn't work correctly and nobody can fix it:

I ended up calling our retailer (Best Buy), which diverted me to the display manufacturer (Sharp), which called up a subdivision at a different location in order to find a repair guy in our neighborhood--where a high-tech glitch slowed things down. The repair shop's fax machine was broken. So I had to call the repair guy myself, and got to tell the whole story all over again. They said nobody could come until after Christmas.

Apple could have a huge hit in this space simply by making a system that works when you put it together.

[Update: I have added a lot of material in the comments in response to a reader]

Tags: HDTV, Pigs With Lipstick, Interesting Stuff

EETimes is reporting on the change in focus of the 801.11n wireless networking standard to home video. 802.11n is a high-speed, multi-channel version of the current WiFi standards, 802.11a, b, and g. All the current Macs have the hardware built in: it's just not enabled with drivers yet.

Broadcom Corp. and Atheros Communications Inc. raised eyebrows last January when they offered "draft" silicon for 802.11n, even though by year's end the IEEE working group had yet to finalize this standard. Almost as surprising as the early silicon for 802.11n was the fact that they emphasized consumer, rather than enterprise, applications on their Web sites.

No doubt driven by at least one huge customer knocking at their door: Apple with iTV and other products. Eventually Apple will set the standard protocol for wireless video delivery and then sell iTV to the display makers in an embedded form (how else will they differentiate themselves?). Like the connector on the iPod the wireless "connection" will be the key compatibility item that locks the competition out.

Tags: Video, Networking, Interesting Stuff

We made these delicious candy treats over the holiday: chocolate on a pretzel. Here is how to do it (original recipe from Family Fun magazine):

1. Get some bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels, Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug candies, and M&M's candies (Smarties for the Brits).

2. Heat the oven to 170ºF (75 C). Set a number of bite-size, waffle-shaped pretzels (one for each treat) in a single layer on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, then top each pretzel with an unwrapped Hershey's Kiss or Hershey's Hug.

3. Bake for 4 to 6 minutes (the white chocolate will melt more quickly), until the chocolates feel soft when touched with a wooden spoon. It is easy to overheat them, so go carefully with just a few until you can get it right. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and quickly (gently) press an M&M's candy into the center of each Kiss.

4. Allow the treats to cool for a few minutes, then place them in the refrigerator to set, about 10 minutes.

Tags: Food, Interesting Stuff, Chocolate

Getting Real is a book of advice about creating web-based applications. It also has a lot of good information for anyone creating any kind of product or any kind of business. It's the creation of 37signals, makers of several web-based utilities and applications including BaseCamp, Campfire, and Backpack.

It is available free as HTML, as a PDF for $19, or as a dead tree edition for $29.

Here is an example essay from the HTML version of the book:

Hire good writers
If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn't matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.

That's because being a good writer is about more than words. Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else's shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

Which is why blogging is so valuable to the blogger: it's great practice for the brain.

Tags: Books, Interesting Stuff

dbfletcher furniture design has some interesting circular tables. Through a rotation by 30 degrees, they expand to seat more people while remaining circular. Watch the videos for a demonstration. No mention of price. I think if you have to ask, you can't afford one.

Tags: Tables, Interesting Stuff

I have two 180G Firewire 800 drives that used to be my back up pair (back when everything would fit on that). Since the 24 inch iMac has one Firewire 800 port I thought it might be interesting to see if there is anything to be gained daisy-chaining them and setting them up as a striped RAID set.

I partitioned each drive into ten partitions. This let me pick the first and last partitions for testing: the first being the fastest (closest to the edge of the disk) and the last being the slowest (closest to the center). Then I ran three disk speed tests with XBench.

Single first and Single last tested just one partition on one drive. Striped first tested the first partition on each drive striped. Striped last tested the last partition on each drive striped. Mirrored first tested the first partition on each drive mirrored. Mirrored last tested the last partition on each drive mirrored. For comparison I also included the results from the internal 750G SATA drive and a single Firewire 400 drive. Here are the results in Mbytes per second for 256K transfers and a 32K RAID segment size.

With a 256K RAID segment size I tried a few more tests. I took three very large files totaling 9.89GB and copied them from the internal hard drive to the striped RAID pair, then copied them back to the internal hard drive, then duplicated them on the RAID.

I think this RAID set up will be useful if I need a scratch disk, particularly if the proces