Here’s my first exhibition — titled Nature I. Some of these, like the macaw you’ve probably seen before. But there are quite a few fresh ones as well. Hopefully this’ll be successful and there will be a lot more to come.
This is basically just a collection of all my (recent) nature photos that I thought were pretty good. I didn’t know how far to go, I had a few decent ones from back in the day—about a year ago—but I didn’t really like any of them. So I’m starting from when I got my Mark III and onwards (thus the epic photo of its delivery).
I’m linking to larger versions for your viewing pleasure, and suggest you look at the large versions because in my opinion it makes a big difference. However, all the photos belong to me and can’t be used for any purposes, personal or commercial, without my permission. (Basically, don’t steal.) But feel free to ask. Also, feel free to use them for wallpapers. If you need a higher resolution let me know.
So without further ado:
This photo has a funny story to it. I noticed these leaves and figured the green trees behind it would blur real nicely. So I spent like a minute or two framing different shots and tweaking the focus point, exposure, etc. all in the viewfinder. Then I turn around and I see a bunch of people looking at me or into the trees, sort of confused. I guess they thought there was some sort of exotic animal or something there, but they were confused cause all they could see was dead leaves. Either that or they thought I was crazy.
I actually saw an orange dragonfly bounce off (or it got tangled for a second and then wiggled free) of this, and then it got my attention. I’d LOVED to have gotten that shot but I’ll settle for this one.
This picture has been shown before. I don’t know the details but these are some of the flowers that came from around the world to Raj Prasad’s funeral.
This one has some junk in the background but I love the extended claws.
In the crazy California heat recently, this looks particularly good. I like the water dripping from the beak and the bright blue on the duck.
This ones not as epic as the other one, I think because the sky provides a pretty dull background.
I’d love to hear your comments. It’d also be helpful if you’d rank them (ie. which one was the best, worst or should’ve been omitted, etc.) — of course this is a lot of personal preference but that’s why I want to know and see what the public trend is.
Many of you may know Mike — Michael Prasad from mediaStorm LA — who I mention once in a while and work with a lot. His father recently passed away and I had the unfortunate but rewarding experience of photographing and capturing the funeral.
I didn’t know his dad that well, but we talked every time I’d go over to Mike’s and he was very nice. I remember him commenting on my tripod and whenever a new lens or photo gear would come in, and getting his advice on cars. And going swimming in his pool, having no idea that it would be the last time I’d see him.
The service was held at SkyRose Chapel at Rose Hills Memorial Park & Mortuary in Whittier, CA. The chapel was very impressive and had stunning architecture.
Mike, his uncle and a friend from work gave their eulogies.
To a nearby spot on the grassy hill.
There were many beautiful flowers that were sent from around the world.
A few people shared their stories and experiences.. And then offered their roses.
Once that was done, it was time for the burial.
And the final moments…
Even though it was a very sad event, I was glad to be able to help Michael and the family in this way. There was so much emotion and sadness in the air, all I had to do was be there and capture it. I’d say these are some of my strongest pictures. Not artistically, but they have so much emotion and meaning in them.
On a technical note, this was one of my first real shoots with the 1D. I have to say I’m very glad I had it.
A) The silent shutter mode. My 20D sounded like a shotgun and though the 1D sounds sleeker, its shutter noise would be quite loud in the cavernous chapel during the service. This way, the mirror is raised slowly and then the shutter opens. You can still hear it but its about half as loud and a lot less intrusive than the normal rapid slap of the mirror. My shooting style was also very different there, since I could only take a select few shots rather than try out a bunch of ideas and make a big racket.
B) Highlight priority mode. I think both of these are designed primarily for the wedding photographer. It would’ve probably been more useful had everyone been wearing white, not black, but with all the white flowers and the brightly backlit windows in the background, etc., I think it helped keep the details instead of blowing.
C) The low-light performance. Of course I used no flash, so in the chapel the good high-ISO performance was really important. The pictures came out practically noiseless. The 20D was pretty good with this too, but this one is better than any other in this regards.
D) The 1.3x crop factor. Coming from the 1.6x of the 20D, when the 24-70 lens was decently long, I was afraid that without a good wide angle lens I’d be unable to capture all the architecture. I was surprised though, at how much I was able to capture at the wide end.
Yesterday, after returning from UCLA (long story, future post), Narek and I went to go see the new Simpsons Movie (no work on weekends).
It was pretty decent. Many good laughs, though of course the plot and storyline were pretty silly. I’d say it was like a slightly better version of the cartoon. The graphics, while definitely not a Pixar movie with its amazing 3D work, were pretty nice and the drawings were refreshingly different from everything else (except cartoons) on the big screen.
I give it a solid B. Not my favorite of all time, but no regrets.
On an even more interesting note, apparently there was some sort of promotion in which a few 7-11’s were turned into the fictional Quik E Mart’s from the cartoon. One of them was in Burbank so we went to go check it out.
In the store, there were a bunch of life-size characters. Here Narek poses with Marge..
They had a lot of merchandise that was previously pure fiction. There’s Buzz Cola (which tastes pretty much [because it is] just like any other cola), the special pink donuts with colored sprinkles, etc.
I’d say its great marketing (both for the movie and the store) and an insanely successful racket. The food was mildly expensive (donuts were a dollar I think) but the toys and stuff were pretty pricy, like 20 bucks for a little stuffed doll. We wondered if they’d be worth a lot on ebay in a few years.
These things were selling like mad. The line was out the door (literally, and around the block too). We had to actually wait about 20 minutes to get in the store. Which was actually good because being in the store with 100 other people would’ve been very frustrating.
They even had the uniforms and said ‘thank you, come again.’
There was also a bunch of sketches on the walls, that I thought were pretty cool. My favorite was Burns saying “Look at them, they’ll buy anything they see in a cartoon.” Funnily enough, it’s true.
Having already announced A Picture A Day, it’s time to make an another announcement. Or an introduction, rather.
Basically, I got a new camera body. Long story, they’re a bit rare at the moment and something came up… I had written a bit about it in April when it was released: the Canon 1D Mark III. 10MP, 10FPS. Anyways, I thought I’d present it with a short photo-essay. Which will be followed in a few weeks by a review once I’ve field-tested it…
As for the one photo a day, I’ve decided to do 7 a week rather than one a day. It works out the same but it’s just more managable to do it in chunks. I’ll still try to TAKE one good photo each day, but in some cases like this it’ll be nice to have a chain that tells a story. Anyways, withotu further ado:
Hi, I’m Mark.
So I’ve been using the iPhone for about a week and here are my thoughts:
Not “the Best iPod Ever”, but definitely a sweet phone. The title of “Best User Interface Ever” would be deserved, though.
Honestly, when I think of problems the biggest annoyance is the little headphone port. They might have had their reasons for making the weird recessed port, but to me it seems like they just wanted to sell their own headphones. And while I think Apple makes good hardware, their flimsy or overpriced and rebranded headphones just aren’t in that category. A step backwards from my iPod nano, with which I can use all of my headphones and enjoy music…
On the brighter side, listening to music with coverflow and flipping through album covers with your fingers is a great experience. The Nano or even iTunes has nothing to compare to it.
The interface is just gorgeous and real easy to use. No need to get a manual or anything, you can just start using it and everything is pretty intuitive. And looks gorgeous. Did I mention its gorgeous? I think I might have.
I haven’t actually made too many calls yet, but the audio and stuff seemed pretty clear. Sometimes it wasn’t loud enough but I think that might have been because of my settings. Sometimes I haven’t been able to hear what someone was saying but that might have been because of how I was holding the phone or becasue they were mumbling/on speaker. I’ll have to see how well it works in a crowded and loud environment. (Edit: it’s a little tough with loud stuff going on but that’s with any phone)
There’s no way you’ll see me using that included headset thing. The concept is cool but those things are just too uncomfortable and I hate them—same exact way I feel about the regular iPod headphones. If you’re a serious talker, it might be a good idea to get one of those headset things. Otherwise it works wonderfully for talking in a nice quiet environment, and it’ll get you by in a loud crowd. SMS works great though, for those kinds of situations.
Also sometimes its a bit too easy to call people, I’ve accidentally done it a few times while browsing through my contacts. Like, I think that clicking it will open up their info, etc. but instead it just calls em. Then I’m frantically tapping “end call end call.” This happens especially while trying to edit a number or something. I guess the confusion is caused because sometimes you click a name to open their info and sometimes you click a name to call it…
The glass screen is great. The glass screen rules. All hail the glass screen. Er, and the display. They both rock. The high resolution display (like 170 dpi or something) totally rocks. And the iPhone has proven to be totally sturdy and scratch/drop resistant (I haven’t put it to extreme torture but it is so far totally scratch free.) Good to know, so you won’t need to baby it and worry about nicking the screen. Which would be really bad since you’re constantly rubbing the thing. (Solid-state memory also rocks).
As far as I know there’s nothing like this out there, and honestly I think just this makes the whole thing worth it.
Speaking of which, it’s pretty important to keep the thing clean. It comes with a nice little microfiber piece, and I already had another similar one with my keyboard, so I wipe it down a lot. It can get kinda greasy pretty fast, but it’s no big deal. The biggest thing to be careful for is getting small particles on it. One because they’re annoying as you go over them with your fingers, and two that’s probably a great way to scratch and grind it up while you’re cleaning it.
A better headphone port. I’ve got two awesome headphones: Sony EX-51s (earbuds) and Sennheiser HD595’s (high end cans), as well as a headphone amplifier. None of them will fit (without some surgery, at least). This was extremely disappointing, and I end up using my nano a lot still to listen to music. This is probably my biggest complaint.
If they insisted on doing their recessed proprietary port thing, they should’ve at least included the adapter. Now I’ve got to go get the Belkin one for 10 bucks before I can actually listen to my music. Not something I would expect with “the best iPod ever.” The best iPod ever would let me use some good headphones. Natively.
And I saw the Belkin thing—it’s like 2 inches long! I tried to get one anyways, but when I went to the Apple store they said they couldn’t find any. (I ultimately ended up modding my EX-51’s to work with it. I’ll post a guide to do that later [I have to get another pair now first so I can do it again]) I’m still bummed that I can’t use it with my amp but I’ve been using it a lot with my EX-51’s now and it’s great.
Hybrid view in google maps. I absolutely love that feature and use it a lot when im broswing maps. The iPhone comes with map and satellite, so I’m real disappointed that it doesn’t include the hybrid view (which is there on google maps). It would also be cool if you could download the map so that you wouldn’t have to rely on EDGE while out in the field. I understand the whole package could be many gigs so it’d be cool to just sync up with like the Los Angeles area or something. Or wherever.
The ability to see your plan info in iTunes. Something like: minutes used, SMS used, etc. I checked on AT&T’s site and there’s a thing to see how many minutes I’ve used but it’s not working right now. And there isn’t even a thing for SMS, so I don’t know how I’ll know when I approach that 200. (Edit: it wasn’t working a few days ago but I guess now it is up. The info at att.com/mywireless has it all and is
pretty useful, but it would be nice to be able to access this info via A) the phone or B) iTunes.
Music plays in silent mode? That’s kind of odd to me, and could possibly get you into trouble.. if music starts playing when you expect the phone to be super stealthy. But I guess as long as the ringer doesn’t go off when you don’t expect it, things should be alright.
While I’m not worried about accidentally turning the phone on in the pocket (with the whole slider thing and I’ve got a passcode too), but I would be worried about inadvertently flipping the toggle back to loud mode. For those who don’t have one, there’s a small slider at the left that switches the phone from normal to silent mode. So while I think its very cool to have the silence via a hardware toggle, I wonder if it’s more foolproof than having it as an option inside the locked interface. However, if ‘Vibrate’ is on (and I strongly recommend it, if just for this feature), and you accidentally (or purposefully) toggle the switch from silent to normal (this actually happened in my pocket the other day and saved my life) then it vibrates, and hopefully you’ll feel it.
More: native horizontal interfaces. I think needing to have the phone vertical kind of limits the interface. It’d be nice if there was a horizontal version for all the sections. Could have a more roomy keyboard, etc. Youtube, Safari and iPod [coverflow] are horizontal, and some toggle between the two [Safari, iPod] but the rest are strictly vertical. And the biggest reason: it’s easier to hold.
Continuing with that, I like to put the iPhone down on a table when I type on it. Not because it’ll go faster but because while youre typing with both hands it’s pretty hard to get a good grip on its thin frame. Now I’m no pro on iPhone handholding techniques but when it’s in my right hand then my thumb goes all the way down, and it has to stay in a cramped sort of position to get to the right side of the keyboard.. It’s definitely not impossible, I walk around with it a bit. But it is a lot easier horizontally, when it can easily rest in your hands (think gameboy or PSP) and they’re not cramped together. I guess it’s an ergonomic thing.. Though I can see the problem with the usable part of the screen being very slim and wide once the keyboard is up…
Option to use iTunes playlists instead of ringtones — at least for the timers and alarms! Song ringtones never really worked for me, but there are a few ones that I can imagine that would be cool. But with the timer and alarm features, there should at least be an option to use an iTunes playlist. All of the OS X 3rd party alarm clock applications have it. If I want to use the iPhone as an alarm clock, I’d really like to be able to specify a playlist! Till then, those features are pretty much useless (to me) and are going to go unused.
Call logs! Even my 3 year old nokia phone had this. Showed a list of missed calls, dialed calls, minutes used, etc. With details. It’d be really good if the iPhone in its quest for simplicity doesn’t throw out basic functions and details. For example, I had just gotten off of a phone call and wanted to see how long I had talked for. On my old phone I could’ve just gone to my dialed numbers, and then checked call time, among other things.
Same thing for text messages. AT&T supposedly deletes them after 7 days (read that on the site somewhere, we’ll see) so they should be stored locally. I’m unable to access some of AT&T’s functions, like dialing *646# to see my minutes — it sends me a text message (which I hope isn’t counted in the 200 that they give) that says “Service Currently Unavailable” or something like that.. (Edit: I’ll have to try again sometime, it should work now)
Ability to make playlists in iTunes. I’ve set it to sync, but if I wanted to make a new playlist (lets say for going to the gym) using the songs on the iPod by creating one in iTunes (I do it on my nano all the time, but it’s not set to sync), I should be able to. I suppose I’ll try on-the-go playlists but it’d be so much easier to make one in iTunes.
The repeat/shuffle/timeline interface in iPod mode. It randomly comes and goes and I can’t figure out for the life of me how to activate it. Tapping or dragging just flips the cover so you see the songs. It’s just there sometimes when I want it and sometimes it’s not. Thats the little pane towards the top (in coverflow) that has pretty handy controls. I don’t always use them, but if I want to set a song to repeat or something, it’d be nice to be able to get it to come up with some sort of button (there’s none). If anyone knows, let me know.
Do I feel happy about this purchase? Yes, I think the iPhone is a great buy. Value-wise I’m not sure (y’know, if you don’t have the cash—because it can be pretty hard to cough up all that on a phone) but for what you’re getting it’s not a bad deal. Not a steal, but you’re not getting robbed by Apple either.
There haven’t been any big bugs or issues or anything, and all the complaints are just prety minor things. I’m sure Apple will release a new version in maybe a year or two but now’s a great time to get one.
I just can’t wait till Apple makes a 30” version of the iPhone’s screen.
So you’ve seen the unboxing. I’ve been using the machine beauty for almost a month now, so it’s time for the extended review.
The Mac Pro: Codename “Lotus” — Dual Quad Core, 5 GB RAM, Stock 250 GB hard drive + 3 Seagate 320 GB 7200.10’s
2x Dell 2407 FWP’s (24″ Monitors)
Logitech Z2300 (Speakers)
Logitech DiNovo Edge (Keyboard)
Apple Mighty Mouse (and MX610)
Sennheiser HD595’s (and Headroom Bithead amplifier) [Headphones]
So I caved. It was lying there in its box, begging for me to open it. Well, I lasted 36 hours. (This was a few days ago but I hadn’t had time to post the photos)
Anyhow, a picture’s a thousand words, so here’s a million:
First thing you see when you open the box:
Got it hooked up in a temporary setup. Lovely X welcome screen. My keyboards were all wireless so I had no idea what to do, just mousing around.
I was debating whether to use my Logitech Dinovo Edge and MX610 – which I had gotten a while earlier for this purpose. But I figured I’d give Apple a shot and try out the included wireless mouse and keyboard for the full experience.
For 5 grand, it was nice of someone to finally include batteries. Very stylishly wrapped and packaged, if I may add.
These little paper tabs are a cool feature that I’ve rarely seen, making it a breeze to pull out batteries. It’s reassuring to see all these small touches that make for a great polished product.
Here’s the initial setup, testing it before starting our operation.
Hands washed and ready for surgery. Our victims. 3 (320 GB 7200.10’s) hard drives and 2 gigs of RAM.
About to open the panel.
The aluminum in all its glory. Used 2 flashes for this one.
And the insides…
I wanted to take a minute to comment about the whole hardware integration and case design. Coming from a strong PC hardware enthusiast/overclocker background just a few years ago, I have a few comments.
First of all this case is really nice. I’ve seen and used many of the finest PC cases (Antec, Lian Li) but this one definitely takes the cake, in terms of design.
On the inside, it’s a lot different from your typical ATX or BTX case. For that very reason. Since it’s Apple’s and they don’t need to follow any standards, they can design something specifically for that configuration, rather than something looser that’ll work with everything.
The hard drive bays were really cool, I liked how there were no wires going around the place, but all going through the back and having their connectors. I’m quite compulsive and like having everything totally neat, matching and orderly, so this was nice.
But there were some small issues too. There was some sort of scratch or staining on the left panel. Very slight but I noticed it under some lighting. I tried to wipe it down with a wet paper towel but Im not sure it helped. It wasn’t really a big deal though so I left it alone and didn’t want to make it worse. The biggest thing (no pun intended) was an odd gap/misalignment at the back of the case. Probably within manufacturing tolerances and wouldn’t mess anything up, but was still kind of disconcerting to see. It’s like a 0.1mm difference between one side and the other, but its visually noticable.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=503503247&size=m&context=photostream
Adding the hard drives was a total breeze, and I’ve used some of the best mounting systems. However, acoustically Apple could’ve done some improvements and learned from other case manufacturers, namely Antec, which excels at vibration and sound control. Some silicone rubber grommets between the screws would have helped a lot, and I think I do hear hard drive and vibration noises sometimes.
Here’s the Radeon X1900 that it comes with. I haven’t tested it too much in 3D yet, but it’s supposed to be alright. Though I’ve heard some bad things about the cooler, with regards to noise and stuff. I might change it later, but for now it’ll stay.
Instructions for the RAM are nicely etched on the back of the panel. Quite convenient and intelligent, though I didn’t need them as I looked up some videos on how to change the ram and hard drives before I opened it up.
Here’s the RAM. Wintec I believe, with the official heatspreaders that apple wants and stuff.
Installation is straightforward. Everything worked pretty great.
I did run into a few big problems though, that night. All involving windows and bootcamp…
I had a complex partition structure planned, with Windows being on the 4th drive. I went through bootcamp and all, and then once I was in the windows installer it said I couldn’t do it there. Okay, so I’ll go back and create a partition on the first drive I guess… like it wanted me to. Well, no go. I exited the installer but it booted me right back into it. Holding alt just wouldn’t work (maybe I was doing it wrong at the time) — I was on a bluetooth keyboard.
Anyways, ultimately I got the CD out by holding down a mouse (3rd one I tried, cause I had bluetooth, RF and USB wacom) button on boot. Then I ran into a small issue in the dark in windows, accidentally putting in the drivers CD over the windows CD. Very bad loud sound, like a blender. It still works great though so no harm done.
Anyways, I didn’t take many pictures of the actual setup because my second screen hadn’t arrived yet. Will have that later.
By the way, call her Lotus :)
Two years ago, I got an SD300 for my birthday. That was my first camera. It was sweet. About a year ago I sold it to help finance my new 20D, which came exactly a year ago. And this year, I picked up an SD750 and traded in my 20D for a 30D. The 20D to 30D was a really minor upgrade, but the SD750 is what I’m really excited about.
This camera totally rocks. I wouldn’t use it for something serious (I’d use my 30D instead) but it’s great for carrying everywhere and small fun snapshots. It’s a bit like a toy. It works really well, does a great job and is totally solid — but is really fun. People like the 30D and lenses cause they’re so big and look cool, but the SD750 is just impressive and fun to use.
Like many low quality optics, it does well in sunshine but really starts to show its shortcomings in low light. That is where a DSLR and fast glass really shines.
7.1 Megapixels is cool. I’d take that value with a grain of salt. Consumers should know that megapixels are just one of the specifications, and not always the most important one, no matter what manufacturers and salespeople might try to convince of.
You could have a 16 megapixel sensor and image quality would still be half-decent (compared to a small 4mp sensor and a great lens) because it’s heavily sharpened, etc. and the lens is a tiny toy. So no matter how much and how fine of data you could record, you’re only getting light that is so sharp and focused and a lot of the details in those 7 million pixels are just being tossed in by the sharpening, etc. Same scenario as getting a high megapixel DSLR and then a lens that is really badly made. This is one thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize, it’s not a technology or computing issue, but mere optics. I don’t carry around giant lenses for nothing, and you can’t expect that kind of quality from glass the size of a marble. For this reason, I would suggest looking at other things like design, value, features, etc. before comparing megapixels. While there are some 10mp cameras out there (like the SD900), I would definitely rather have this.
And besides megapixels, a very important aspect of sensors is their noise. At higher ISO speeds, in less light, you’ll rack up a lot of noise and the pictures will look a bit weird.
That said, the quality is satisfactory even to me. In bright light it’s very great, and in the dark it gets the job done and the moment captured.
Depth of Field can be a bit of an issue. With these point and shoots with really small sensors, you don’t really need to worry as much bout focus since the focal length is so wide (like 5-17) that your depth of field is pretty huge. As a crash course: bokeh (background blur) is where you aren’t in focus. It can be good and bad. It’s great for portraits and is one of the big features of good lenses. It depends both on focal length (more on longer lenses), aperture (more on bigger apertures) and on distance (more when yo’re closer). On a DSLR, with focal lengths starting at around 24 and going up pretty high, they can be very very shallow (maybe a centimeter or less). With the point and shoot, even at a foot away, most of the shot was in good focus. While this means less missed focus, it will also mean that your shots will not pop as much. This is just something inherent in the type of camera, and not really for this specific model.
Sharpness I was actually impressed. It’s got a lot more resolving power than I was expecting it to.
From a design standpoint, it’s beautiful. I had previously had an SD300 (2 years ago) and after the SD3/400 I was very disappointed at where the ELPH line was heading. All of the cameras looked pretty odd, and I felt the design was getting worse. I think they finally fixed that with the SD750.
It comes in black and silver accents – I got the black one because it has sweet contrast, but I’m sure the silver would look nice too. I love the contours at the front and bottom – something I haven’t seen yet on a camera, though I’m sure it’ll be incorporated in many of the future models. Hopefully not, but I’m sure there will be a bunch of knockoffs.
It’s brand new – just came out – and has a bunch of sweet bells and whistles, along with all the basics. It’s a point and shoot, so don’t expect SLR quality results – but it does its job really well. Image quality is about as good as it should be for a camera of this type.
It’s got all the regular stuff: video capabilities, good image quality, flash, different ISO speeds, picture styles and presets, etc. that most cameras do. I won’t go over that, this is a review not a manual. Instead, I want to talk about the features that are really cool, new and impress everyone.
First off, face detection. A little gimicky, but it actually works. Pretty well. Last night it wasn’t so hot, because the lighting was pretty bad. But in sunlight or in a decently lit room, it works like a charm and can track up to 3 faces at a time. Why is this good? Well, since you aren’t specifying a focus point, it is up to it to pick one. And this way, you’ll always get the focus where it should be (on the eyes) in a portrait. not on the person’s hand, or the tree behind them. And it is so cool to see it lock on and track someone as their face moves around. Now if only it had the 1D’s Ai system to predict motion.
Next up: color accents. This looks real cool and leads to impressive, high quality pictures without having to play around in photoshop. Of course, it is all post processing – just done internally and on the fly rather than on the computer. But cool nevertheless. Basically, you select a color (by pointing to it and pressing a button) and then that is the only color that shows. The rest is greyscale.
Stemming from this, but slightly different, is color swapping. This is less reliable, and only really works well in certain circumstances, when the color really stands out from the scene (like against a green screen or something), otherwise you risk replacing more than you want. But basically you choose a color and then replace it with another color of your choice. And as with color accents, you can specify fuzziness to see how broad you want the selection to be. This can be used to change the color of someone’s shirts, or give them green skin, or change the color of a car. But it doesn’t always work perfectly, sometimes you pick up more or less than you’d want to. Still a very cool function, however – especially for the consumers who don’t want to bother doing post-processing later.
Price & value. It’s a pretty good deal, I’d say. All current-generation point and shoots are generally in the 300 range, and then previous and discontinued models fall from there. I don’t see price as too big of an issue here, because the price difference between this and about anything else would only be around 50 or 100, if any. It’s 350 at B&H, Amazon, etc. right now – might go down by around 50 over the next few months. The silver one (vs black) might be cheaper in some places.
Some issues: no RAW support. That I know of. This isn’t really a big issue, as if I wanted to do heavy post processing and extract the best quality from my photos I would be using a better camera. But I would’ve liked to be able to turn off all the extra sharpening and jpg compression to get an image without artifacts and noise.
No viewfinder. It feels weird not having one, but I guess it was taken out to fit in the giant screen. And point and shoot viewfinders are so small as to be useless, anyways – so not really a big issue.
I didn’t really do much research before I bought it. First off, there were no reviews out (I think this might be one of the first) since it pretty much just came out. I just chose the best looking Canon ELPH line. There might be something else that’s good by some other brand, but as far as I know and have seen, this is the best tiny Point & Shoot out there, in terms of design, quality and technology.
Recommended without reservations! See more sample pictures.
The early bird gets the worm.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise.
Whether or not these cheesy sayings mean anything: Waking up in the mornings is pretty important, especially if you have work or school to go to. It’s also often very unpleasant, and unlike almost any other thing in life, people can struggle with it even after years (pretty much all their life) of doing it.
This morning I woke up at around 8:30 AM [I started writing this article at SXSW], and called some people for about an hour to [try to] wake them up. It didn’t work and one of them woke up 5 hours late and missed all the day’s panels. The following is a brief guide to something very rudimentary: waking up. With modern technology, it shouldn’t be hard or inconvenient. This is almost a silly article, but many people were interested and hopefully it’ll help out some people.
Basically, I’m (and I think it’s a pretty old idea) harnessing the power of great music and its stimulation & inspiration, rather than the annoying drone of an alarm clock, easily ignored or deactivated. iTaf’s (one of the alarmclocks I recommend) volume Fade-in also incorporates the elements of fear and decency, since at a certain point it’s simply loud enough to wake me up, and soon after a while the building starts shaking so I have to turn it off or like everyone in the building will wake up (they should thank me) and then get really mad or annoyed (not so good).
This is vastly better than setting it to a fixed moderate volume – it should fade in and continue to fade in till it is loud enough to wake the dead. Hopefully you’ll wake up slightly before and have to get up and turn it down. If it’s just a medium volume, it’ll either be too loud or not loud enough to wake you up — and that will vary from day to day depending on how and when you slept, etc. Not to mention, you’ll have to jump right out of bed and turn off the extremely loud music (if you’re a heavy sleeper) and so you won’t get to enjoy it for a while.
Macbook pro (or could be a desktop) connected to great powerful speakers (Logitech Z3200).
Don’t close the lid (I just leave it slightly open) and use:
Preferences » energy saver » Schedule
to set it to startup/wake every morning at like 5:25. (or whenever you wake up – it’s 5:30 for me)
Your security settings, etc. play a small part here – if you have a password on login it won’t be able to turn on so youll have to put it to sleep logged in before you sleep or something. There might be better ways around this, and it works differently between a laptop and a desktop.
Then create a playlist in itunes of music that you want to play when you wake up. Here are some of my favorites, and I’d highly recommend you check them out:
I’d suggest something sort of soft, to start off with. No lyrics, sort of dreamy – something you’d want to lie in bed for 5 minutes listening to.
Then something to get you going. Something that makes you want to get up, out of bed and kicking ass. With or without lyrics. I usually use Auto Rock or a recent Song of the Week (SOTW).
One of the reasons why I think this works is that once the music is playing, your mind is engaged. With the alarm clock, just a flat drone, that doesn’t happen. For example, if I’m tired or just woke up and hop on the computer, all of a sudden I’m fully immersed and not tired. But if I’m just lying in bed I’ll fall back asleep again. Music can be used to invoke great emotions and feelings, one of them being the vitality and energy that one should feel in the morning.
Another distinction I wanted to make: waking up and actually being awake or fully conscious. If someone wakes me up, I’m often delirious or totally out of it for 10 minutes, unable to understand what’s going on or why I should get up or what school is. Logic is simply just not operating. This might have something to do with sleep cycles, something I don’t know much about.
Speaking of sleep cycles, the concept of powernaps (short 20 minute things) and timing your naps is very interesting. I’m not an expert on the science of sleep, but I think 9 hours is ideal. I often wake up and look at the clock and exactly 6 or 9 hours have passed since the time I slept. Since I usually try to wake up at 5:30, this would put my recommended bedtime at around 9:30 to 11:30.
An interesting phenomenon (or just a theory of mine): listening to these songs on a routine basis while waking up [or going to sleep] (and generally restricting it to those times) can possibly create an association and bind it to the time and action in your mind, to the point where it hearing something instantly wakes you up or puts you to sleep. ( A lot like that episode of Office, where Jim programs Dwight to ask for an altoid every time the Windows shutdown sound plays. ) Something like that would probably take a few years to develop but it would be pretty cool and efficient.
The previously outlined idea is great for routine, scheduled stuff. Like waking up every morning, since it should go off every morning without you having to remember to do something the night before.
But what if you just want to take a nap? Randomly. You could possibly turn on your computer and set an alarm and all – the alarm applications are robust enough to allow multiple and one-time alarms.
But if I’m not in the mood for all that setup, I also like to use a standard kitchen timer. This is nice because you can just set a time, say 1 hour, and then start it and go to sleep. Beats a regular alarm clock, where you can set the wrong time or not activate it right or something.
It’s not always loud enough to wake you up (has to be close enough) but if there are other people around they’ll probably come in (annoyed) and wake you up.
However, I like to keep it far enough away that you can’t just turn it off once you hear it. You have to actually stay awake for a minute, then get out of bed to reach it.
Ultimately, that is the power of a good alarm (those snooze things are useless). You have to actually get out of bed to turn it off; and once you’re finally out of the comfort of the blankets (at the right time, not with the frame of mind to just run out turn it off and return to warm blankets) — presto, you’re awake and conscious.
At SXSW I first tried to use an adaptation of this, but the macbook pro speakers, far away on a desk, were powerless against my stupor. I tried using a kitchen timer and the clocks in the hotel room, but I found that the regular room wakeup calls worked best because the phones are so damn loud.
The downside with this is that you can just pick up the phone and hang it up and go back to sleep (usually they’re that close). But being so close makes it also loud enough to awaken you when things more distant wouldn’t. Nevertheless, though it’ll get you up for a minute, the phone isn’t always good enough to keep you up, especially if you’re tired and not at 6 or 9 hours of sleep yet.
Ultimately, a combination of both works best. Set music to start playing, and then get a wakeup call once that starts. The sound of the music won’t pull you out of the sleep, but once the phone gets you up the music will keep you up.
All this stuff is for a Mac. If you have a PC, you’re on your own — but I’m sure there are plenty of applications out there that will do the same thing.
A few months ago I went through about every single [OS X] alarm clock application that I could find. Two of them were the best and did everything I needed: Awaken & iTaf.
Awaken has a nicer interface – I particularly like their icon – but they both have pretty much identical features and functionality. iTaf’s might be slightly more robust but I’m not sure.
I have a password on my account, and it asks for it on startup – and I have it ask for it when returning from the screensaver. So this messes with the standard alarm startup workflow a bit – it can’t just turn on the whole computer and start ringing. For this reason, I have to turn it on the night before.
However, I don’t have to start the actual program (i’ve been using iTaf lately but Awaken has it too) since it initializes itself once it’s time for the alarm. Something about daemons and scheduling..
Awaken goes a bit further and provides options to disable password prompting, etc. while the application is open. — that really defeats the purpose though so I’m not a big fan of that feature. All of this is probably not a big issue for most people with the standard security policies; it’s more of an issue with laptops that should always have passwords to get in or awake from screensaver.
http://itaf.sourceforge.net/
FREE! I’ve been using this for the last few months, as it does everything I needed.
http://embraceware.com/software/awaken/
$9. Nicer interface (graphics wise, it has the same buttons and controls). I might switch to this eventually – either one does a lot.
The second day of SXSW, Saturday, was pretty great. I woke up as usual, to the sound of music from my Macbook. After getting dressed and ready, I took a cab to the convention center, for the first panel at 10:00.
The panelists were top notch, from Apple, A List Apart, and some other big places.
The gist of the panel, I think, was to focus more on content than small issues like grammar and punctuation – stuff that I do anyways.
Have a ‘kitchen table converstion.’ It should be something interesting, a well told story, as you would at the dinner table.
It should have a ‘chillax feeling.’ He also mentioned not to let anyone or the fear of rejection deter you from writing – something I have to deal with sometimes.
He talked about basically learning from others. Finding your writing rockstars and learning from them. There are many great storytellers and many great writers in my field.
I love comedy and wit, and I think my writing used to be funnier in the past. In this department I really like some stuff by John Hargave, especially the old orginal articles.
For technical/design writing, there are many great authors. I love Jeremy Keith’s DOM Scripting book. And the articles by most people like Cameron Moll, Jason Santa Maria, ALA’ers, etc. are always good.
Brought up the interesting point of writing in gmail rather than a normal text editor. I suppose something like Google Docs would also be good, in terms of general portability and all. Psychologically, however, this could possibly be more of a conversational type of thing.
I’ll have to try it out.
All in all, it was very inspiring. To see writing as art, and be pushed to achieve that level.
I am hoping to see all this implemented as an improvement in this blog.
And the other big panel (that I took notes at) of the day:
This is the one I was looking most forward to. Why? Not because I needed to learn about inspiration; the whole conference was inspiring in itself. But rather, Cameron Moll, my inspiration, would ‘be there,’ along with other also cool people like Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert.
I kept looking around, asking myself “Where’s Moll?!” Perhaps he had slept in like Michael. Sadly to say, Jason announced that Cameron had the flu and was unable to make it. Very sad – get well soon buddy.
On the other hand, flat hicks was there and the panel was pretty great. Jason and Rob showed some of the stuff that they had done with branding and different sources of inspiration.
Turn off the Computer
One of the biggest points they touched on, and that I’ve found to be true for myself, is turning off the computer. Getting up to make some cocoa or comb your hair or talk to some friends or drive around or take a shower can be extremely helpful in thinking and solving problems. I personally (along with a few others I know) get a lot of ideas in the bathtub, where the mind is relaxed and free to ponder.
Another very important idea – one that I’m still picking up on and need to incorporate into my life and workflow – is recording. Basically, “if you’re just relying on your mind, you’re going to forget. This is especially true for me – I have a pretty bad memory for things like this. I’ll have an idea, or come to a realization or conclusion, or perhaps tell myself that I have to do something. And then later I’ll have totally forgotten about it. Writing things down on post-its (both on Dashboard and on my monitor) are real helpful here, as well as full blown to-do lists that I make on index cards.
Jason and Rob suggested sketchbooks. They showed a few things from their sketchbook and it was real amazing. I usually just use the sketchbook for small wireframes and logo concepts and stuff, but the stuff they had done on ink and paper was wonderful art.
Design Vigilante
Another concept was being a design vigilante, and going around fixing bad design. It’s a novel concept, and they had a great illustration for the concept, but I don’t know if it’s really feasible. In my case, I’m just so busy with client work that I am pressed for time on even personal projects, such as this site.
They talked about being receptive to the environment, and realizing and observing things differently. For example, they were with a crossword puzzle artist driving past a Dunkin’ Donuts when he said “If you take the D in dunkin and put it at the end, it becomes Unkind Donuts.” Interesting to know.
Ah, Constraints. Gotta love ‘em, gotta hate ‘em.
On one hand, they can make our job miserable – preventing us from doing it as good as we want to or can, trapping us in a corner. But on the other hand, generally, they serve as a focus, narrowing our possibilities to a select few
Jason & Rob’s point was that constraints are great. I’d have to agree – working with an existing idea or some predefined material really helps take the pressure off and channels the creativity. Just a blank piece of paper or canvas and no direction or idea where to start is pretty scary, and would usually end up in something bland or strange.
Find a muse.
In the end, I don’t think this’ll be that hard. There are a lot of them here. Many people who are good at what they do.
After those two panels, I went to a few others.
In the evening, Michael and I walked around 6th street trying to find a place to eat. We had mexican food (again) at a restaurant. It wasn’t as good as the Iron Cactus (at least their guacamole wasn’t) but it was good.
Next to the Frog Design party. It was pretty crowded, and pretty loud. I ran into Jeremy Keith – which was really cool. He’s a real nice guy, and his book (DOM Scripting) is top notch. I used it a lot for my senior research paper, actually. Some other people there were Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, and Cameron Adams from The Man in Blue.
And finally, we wandered down to where Ze Frank was going to have a party. We had seen him earlier on the street and said hi and he had invited us to come to his party. But then, they were carding and didn’t let us in so we just went on home. Later I heard it was pretty lame, anyways.
The highlight of the day is definitely the panels, though the parties are cool just because of all the amazing people you can meet.
Stay tuned for Day 3, and the night of the Web Awards & Bowling Extravaganza.
Today was pretty fun – a very long day.
We arrived in Austin early friday (around 12 AM) and then went over to a friend of Michael’s – Elisa. She was very nice and the apartment was very comfy. We stopped for dinner at around 2 AM at a small restaurant, Kerbey Lane. This place (Austin, that is) has a lot of mexican food, which is good because I like mexican food. Anyways, I had some enchiladas and rice/beans, and some apple pie. I noticed here they’re pretty big on black beans – in LA it’s usually pinto beans, but they’re both good so whatever.
Anyways, after hanging out and talking for a while we went to sleep and woke up at around 11 or 12 or so and got ready to go check in and pick up our badges and all. Around then, my friend Michael was just arriving at the airport. We went down to the Sheraton (a rather nice hotel – previously a Marriott till very recently), which is about 6 blocks from the Convention Center. I got all unpacked in my room on the 14th floor (if anyone wants to come over and hang out sometime, let me know).
By the time everyone was ready it was pretty late so I took a quick taxi down to the convention center to get my badge and all. The line was huge, but I attribute that to the fact that it was for film and music as well. After a few minutes, Michael found me and we hung out together. I picked up a goody bag which had a bunch of cool random stuff. Nothing to write home about but all in all it was interesting. The whole bag was pretty cool, with a big adobe logo on it. In it are a bunch of magazines, including HOW, Linux World, and some other stuff. A bunch of random ads, stickers, mini-sharpies, so on. Even some strange thing called Nicogel, which is I guess a nicotene gel. I threw that away but it was pretty funny.
We went to How to Rawk SXSW when it was about half done, but it wasn’t really as useful as we thought it’d be. Mostly just about partying and the music and stuff. We were going to eat with Mike and Alex but after waiting for about an hour we (Whalesalad and I) figured we should just go on our own.
We saw a few people we knew. Said hi to Tantek. I think I saw Cameron Adams but didn’t get a chance to say hi. Hopefully at the panels and events we’ll get a chance to actually meet people.
After spending quite a while trying to figure out where to eat (I’m vegetarian so the BBQ/Steak places are out), Bryan Veloso suggested the Iron Cactus. It was pretty good, though we had to wait for a while. Their guacamole was pretty cool, made right at the table. The Nacho Fajitas were also good, with refried beans/cheese on tortilla chips, and with some sour cream, etc. The main stuff was ok (I got enchiladas again, and Michael got a burrito) but very spicy. These Texans sure do like their spice. Anyways next time I go I’m going to ask for less spice; besides that small issue it was good stuff.
I guess I’ll also keep my eyes and ears open for good places to eat over the next few days. Any suggestions? Also if anyone wants to have lunch or dinner sometime, let me know :)
Anyways, after dinner (and lunch really, we were starving) we decided to go see the movie 300, which had just come out today. We took a taxi to the theater that the people at Iron Cactus suggested: Tinseltown. However, when we got there, we didn’t see 300 on the list of movies playing. Uh oh.
We had the taxi driver take us across the street to the Metropolitan. He looked up the showtimes and there was one at 10:25 and 10:45. It was around 10:20. Perfect. And that’s where our night’s operation went down.
We tried to get tickets at the little machines, but when we found out that they were sold out and the next available showing was in almost three hours, we were pretty disappointed. We’d come a long way (2 or 3 miles I think) and paid a bit for the cab. Now I had just been reading The Bourne Identity and was feeling a little dangerous, so using a mixture of social engineering and clever planning, we made our way into the showing.
Michael wanted to just get a ticket for another movie and go to the other one. But that was risky. For one, they could be in opposite directions. And if they check ticketes at the gate there’s nothing we can do. If something went wrong, our tickets would be useless. So instead, I told him to get tickets for Saturday at 10:45. It was risky – I had no idea if they might be color coded by day, or have the day and time displayed very prominently. But at least this way, if the operation failed we’d be able to just come the next day.
So in we went, and it worked without a hitch. The theater was packed (well, it was sold out) but we found two seats right at the front. Hard to really describe it, but getting in was probably funner than the movie.
The movie itself was interesting. A Sin City twist on The Last Samurai, practically. The plot was pretty shallow, though it did have some cool parts and intricacies. It was good enough for the purpose – any more and it’d have probably been too complicated. I guess I just didn’t like how the story turned out towards the end. Stylistically, it was pretty cool. The battle scenes were pretty unique, though a bit like Sin City. I particularly liked their use of strategy and battle styles rather than just brute force and unnatural strength. Very well stylized, and not boring and repetetive. I liked that ever battle was unique and they didn’t just keep using the same moves and tactics over and over again. I’d probably rate it a 9/10. 6 for storyline, 10 for battle scenes, special effects, etc. and 8 for small bits of humor.
Well, it’s late at night now and I’ve got a bunch of panels I want to attend tomorrow morning (10AM – Writing, Better; 11AM – Field guide to design inspiration [really looking forward to that one]).
Good night!
Many of you old timers may remember the original The Web Workflow article, written almost a year ago, where I talked about the basics of designing a site layout.
Now, almost a year later, some things have changed and I’ve learned a lot. So instead of continuing on to the long awaited part 2, I’m going to restart and cover the whole topic in much more detail. I know everything can’t be covered in one or two articles, so the series will be split up into a compilation of many small articles.
Basically: The Web Workflow is a technical series of articles, designed to streamline processes or provide new ideas for current developers or assist those who want to learn but don’t know where to begin.
The following is the roadmap, and hopefully each point will become a meaningful article one day – an entry point into the long road that is web design.
This page will be updated with new additions or links once articles are written. I am aiming for one feature a week, not necessarily in order.
Here’s a theory of mine that I’ve had for quite a while. It is really more of a pattern of observations than an actual theory, but here goes — my first foray into philosophy. Or whatever you’d call it.
I’ve seen this occur a lot in real life, and in movies, TV shows, etc. Even in literature, like those [horrible] tragedies where everyone seems to be screwed from the beginning.
So it starts off with some type of issue. On its own, it’s usually not that bad. Perhaps an annoyance or an embarassment – sometimes it’s pretty serious but nothing crazy. The point is you’ll live, and the situation hasnt yet gone to hell. But then there seems to be an easy way out, a coverup, that just might work and fix everything. It seems like everything can be salvaged and go back to how it was. Either that, or there is a small problem coming up, but you believe and hope that everything will just work out. Or sometimes it’s pretty bad, but…
However, it’s usually when trying to salvage things or patch up that everything usually goes wrong (or gets worse and goes to hell). Take Watergate for example. Now I think the reason things usually go wrong here is that people are either just stupid at assessing risks and think that nothing bad can ever happen to them (feeling of invincibility/luck), or their judgement is impaired in crises and people get sort of desperate and hopeful. Probably a combo of both.
It usually involves a lot of emotion rather than logic. For example, I was watching 24 (it’s a TV show) and like 50 good people die in a quest to save one guy’s family. Obviously there would be no TV show, but I don’t think that was quite worth it - it might have been better to just let them die (and one of the two did in the end, anyways).
Or Anakin Skywalker in Episode 3. He finds out that his wifes gonna die so he throws everything away and goes to the dark side, to try to salvage the situation and make things right. And of course, he just ends up making things worse and his fears come true anyways.
Some more examples:
In 24, some girls are hanging out with some shady guys and then one sort of has a bad feeling but doesn’t act on it and they just think/hope everything’s going to be alright — one of them dies.
This one’s more realistic: You get some stock and it goes down a bit. Sell it now and take a small loss or hang on and lose a lot more, hoping it might go back up and you’ll at least have all your money back, if not more? You can see which one would be the better course of action, and which would make it possible for things to royally screw up.
Come to think of it, this is a bit like Murphy’s law — if something can go wrong, it will. So be prepared for it to happen. And if in a course of actions one of the possibilities is everything going to hell, watch out.
Sure, you can gamble and take risks but … Quit while you’re only losing lightly and things still haven’t gone to hell.
—
Update: Some people have wondered why the hell I posted this or where it came from. Well, it is really an introduction to another post that will come later, a story or lesson if you will, and really illustrates this well.
This section probably doesn't even need any explanation. I tend to write articles about web and design, though I will sometimes write reviews, tutorials, post resources, etc.
For those who aren't too interested in me, this is probably the section you're going to want to check out. I hope to fill it with loads of helpful, inspirational and informational content.