Busy
2008-10-03
I’m spending more and more time with my MacBook and less and less with my iMac these days. Since RapidWeaver lives on my iMac, that means less blogging (it’s been almost a month!). I have a lot of data external to RapidWeaver in my blog and that makes it tricky to move to the laptop without breaking things.
Another reason for the lack of blogging is that I have been using Twitter more and more, as, it seems, many of the people who have blogs that I follow. Lost your favorite blogger? Look on Twitter. They are all there. Some, like Wil Shipley, take it to extremes. And do check out the many fake people, such as Fake Sarah Palin.
And suddenly my MacBook has developed a crack:
It started on the right and went leftwards until the sliver of plastic stuck up in the air and I had to remove it. A couple of calls to Apple, and they agree that it is covered by warranty, so I’ll get that fixed soon.
Another reason for the lack of blogging is that I have been using Twitter more and more, as, it seems, many of the people who have blogs that I follow. Lost your favorite blogger? Look on Twitter. They are all there. Some, like Wil Shipley, take it to extremes. And do check out the many fake people, such as Fake Sarah Palin.
And suddenly my MacBook has developed a crack:
It started on the right and went leftwards until the sliver of plastic stuck up in the air and I had to remove it. A couple of calls to Apple, and they agree that it is covered by warranty, so I’ll get that fixed soon.
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What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic
2008-09-07
Good grief. I thought I understood floating point math and its implementation on CPUs. The 32,800 words on this one web page say that I don’t. There’s more too, if you care to read Sun’s complete Numerical Computation Guide.
Halloween Jars
2008-09-05
I Make Projects.com has some unusual and interesting projects. I particularly like the Halloween Monstrosities. The labels are a work of art: “SHRINKING POTION TEST SUBJECT #13, MALE AGED 23 YEARS, SURVIVED 8 MIN 9 SEC”.
A Guitar Made From An IKEA Tabletop
2008-09-03
Zachary Guitars has one made from an IKEA tabletop. IKEA is apparently a very cheap source of pine for building guitars: three bodies from a single $15 unfinished end table.
Datapeak
2008-09-02
Datapeak has a large collection of all things computer -- even computer scientists. It’s interesting to see all the people who’s names appear in the subject literature. Other pages cover computer history, algorithms, and conferences. Everything is dated and has links to more information.
Someone Who Understands Latency
2008-08-29
In this presentation at the Northwest C++ User’s Group, Herb Sutter explains how your hardware and software jumps through perversely complicated hoops in order to prevent you, the programmer, having to deal with the chasm in performance between CPUs and memory. There are slides in PDF and a video.
The questions he asks are “what is the cost of this programming operation?” and “can I speed it up?”. The answers are much more complex that you think. He takes pains to explain the impact of memory latency on all aspects of programming.
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro
2008-08-23
Tabletop: 1/160s f/2.8 ISO1000 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Another lens I rented recently was a 100mm macro. I got this for two reasons. I wanted to get some macro photos, of course, but I also needed a reasonably fast longer lens than the 50mm that was lighter and less obtrusive than the 70-200mm f/2.8. The 100 fits that bill nicely. Having played with an 85mm f/1.8 at WWDC, I knew it would be useful as a walk-around lens. The other week, I took 739 photos with this lens out of 2474 in total, about half macro, and about half not.
Sunflower Bees: 1/200s f/8.0 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Sheets In The Wind: 1/1250s f/8.0 ISO500 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
It’s sharp and focusses quickly. The minimum focussing distance is just over a foot, giving about a 1:1 reproduction ratio if you can get close enough to the subject.
Daisy Spider: 1/250s f/10.0 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Here are a couple more macros:
Purple Flowers: 1/320s f/7.1 ISO400 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Drops On A Leaf: 1/500s f/8.0 ISO800 100mm, Canon 30D, Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Oktapodi
2008-08-18
Canon EF-S 10-22
2008-08-10
Porch: 1/20s f/8.0 ISO400 10mm 0ev, Canon 30D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm
A week and 2474 photos later, and I have some material to process. One of the lenses I rented was the Canon EF-S 10-22. It's an interesting lens, but takes some getting used to. You've got to have something to fill the expanse of space it can cram onto the sensor.
I used it for 288 of the 2474 photos I took, 146 at 10mm and 59 at 22mm. 196 were less than or equal to 17mm.
I rented from Borrow Lenses, taking advantage of pick up at a San Jose camera store.
Aperture: 2.1.1 Changes The Compare Key
2008-08-02
An odd change was included in Aperture 2.1.1. No longer does the Return key take you into Compare mode. Now it's Option O (that's letter O).
The Edit menu still says that it's Return. And once you're in Compare mode, Return does make the currently selected comparison the compared image. So I think this is a bug.
You can get the old behavior back by changing the mapping of the keys with Aperture > Commands > Customize...
The Edit menu still says that it's Return. And once you're in Compare mode, Return does make the currently selected comparison the compared image. So I think this is a bug.
You can get the old behavior back by changing the mapping of the keys with Aperture > Commands > Customize...
Photo Books
2008-07-30
I've been looking into the practicality of making photo books. There's no single winner as far as I have been able to make out, and I have not yet actually tested any of them. But here's what I believe the practical options are:
Lulu is optimized for text: books with words and some pictures. You send them a PDF and they print you a book. But not any PDF will work: in particular Pages PDFs are shunned. There are ways around this restriction but they cost money and/or are fiddly. Lulu's prices are OK.
Blurb is optimized for photos: books with photos and some words. Their prices are very good, and the quality is good. You have to use their tool, BookSmart, to create the book and upload it. It's template-driven and drag and drop. However, it's written in Java, is incredibly slow, and has enough interface and font quirks to drive a person batty. The templates are large in number, but ultimately limiting because they are it. These are not starting-points. Either the photos go exactly there, or they don't go. The good news is that it can only get better, but to date progress has been slow.
Aperture's and iPhoto's books are expensive and the tools limited, so I didn't seriously consider them.
Everyone else's solution is either aimed at a specific market. MyPublisher is extremely dumbed down and doesn't match what I want to do. But they have a great native Mac application called BookMaker.
I'll probably go for Blurb if I do make a book, but it will be on my terms. I'll design my book using Pages or something and then only as a last step put it all into BookSmart. Another option is to upload full-resolution JPEGs of pages designed outside of the application, so I may use that technique sparingly.
But first I need content.
Pigeon Impossible
2008-07-19
Lucas Martell shows how he made Pigeon Impossible, an animated short. You can see the making of on YouTube, the blog, or the web site. The videos on YouTube are great, and show just how much work even a short feature takes.
Gallery of Sawn In Half Cameras
2008-07-06
The Gallery of Sawn In Half Cameras also includes lenses. Now I know why my 70-200 f/2.8L IS is no darn heavy.
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