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Posted

the Microcell and other miscellany

so we've had this AT&T 3G Microcell thing in the house for a few weeks now and yesterday, i decided to turn it off. handful of reasons...

when i bought it, presumably, we were under a "nationwide 3G outage." i thought perhaps it was time to shut it off and see how we fared purely with a normal signal.
i don't know what it is, whether it has to do with the fact its connected to our router and when data passes through this happens or its switching something, but frequently, the sound on the other end would get really, really choppy. like, borderline Max Headroom choppy. it got real annoying, real quick.
Apple released the 4.0.1 update, so i was curious as to how the corrected algorithm magic things affected in-home signal.

now, we bought it for a few reasons: our in-home 3G reception has always been crap; for some reason (perhaps the "outage"), neither Jac (on an iPhone 3GS) or i (iPhone 4) could make, receive, or keep calls from droppage; it seemed like a sensible solution, especially with the whole rebate thing.

but in the 24 hours since i unplugged it, we've had nary a problem. Jac conducted a 20 minute LAP phone call this morning from a notoriously bad spot in the house (another wedding booked, thankyouverymuch) with no problem and i made a couple of phone calls with no trouble. the final test was tonight when i called the landline phone, once from the iPhone 4 and once from the 3GS. i slowly walked throughout the house, giving the phones plenty of time to run into interference and drop the call like a bad habit.

perfection.

now, granted, i'm still looking at this...

but hey, we've both had lengthy phone calls inside the house and i've tested it out and it works fine (and obviously, away from the house we're good). soooo... back to the store with you, Microcell!

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we just knocked a whole load of needed gear off our "to buy" list, and we're pretty stoked about it: monopods, new 580EX II Speedlite, a slew of super-charged rechargeable batteries. we're gonna start experimenting with off-camera flash shooting techniques very soon; in fact, we started today (with mixed results). we're pretty stoked about how many new interpretations its gonna open up for us.

that in mind, i've had to really start digging into some research about flash photography. i'll be the first to admit it: i know squat. whenever i've tried, i just get garbage, but i've really started delving full-on into learning just about everything i can. there's a whole bunch to pick up on and i'm doing my best to not cram it all at once in my head (as i know i'll only forget it that much more quickly).

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ok, going back to the original topic... kinda'.

Apple had their little/big press conference this past week, and i have to say i'm generally pleased with how it turned it. i'm absolutely in the camp that believes this whole thing has just gotten way overblown and that there's some small nugget of truth (as smarmy as it may have sounded out of Steve's mouth) that after a string of unprecedented successes, the second any bit of negativity popped up, the media pounced on it like a lion on a steak.

also, much has been said about the comparisons to other handsets, mostly negative. what, did you expect them to not give video proof after they mentioned it in earlier press releases? you can see for yourself on the Apple website. what, you can't reproduce those same results on your exact same make & model of phone? guess what: i can't make my iPhone 4 do it either unless i am earnestly and sincerely trying to. the "Death Grip" is just that, a Death Grip. i have to squeeze to the point of "OMGAMIGONNABREAKMYPHONE" before i start losing bars. regular usage, i'm fine, just as most of you probably are.

but besides all that (and me sounding like the fanboy i know i am), i only have trouble at home, where a problem already existed. elsewhere, i'm golden. i just hope when that free case offer rolls around that InCase will be an option. i really like their stuff.

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and thats all i've got.

Posted

ah HA

now i understand why Aperture 3 exports projects as libraries. now it all makes so much more sense.

[you may now go find a pillow to fall asleep on]

if you ever wanted to archive an entire Project in previous iterations of Aperture, like an old wedding that you didn't need to keep for editing but obviously needed to archive you would export as just that: a Project. if you ever wanted to open it up again, you had to reimport the Project, and quite frankly, that was a pain the ass. i always, ALWAYS made sure at least twenty times before i archived something that we wouldn't need it again.

then, as everyone in my circle knows, Aperture 3 hit. gone was the option to export a Project as a Project. it was replaced by "Export as Library." i couldn't figure it out; what kind of weird sense did that make? now i'll have multiple libraries to store?

tonight, as i was prepping a slideshow for a bridal consult, it hit me: when you export as a Library, and need to open it later, its instantaneous. no file processing, no adding to your current working Library, no muss, no fuss. i've got 30+GB of archived wedding Projects i need to go through to pull out like 15 images, and it may well be a "let it work overnight" deal to let Aperture work through... for just 15 pictures. with Export as Library, i could be done with image selection and export in like... 20 minutes.

bully on you, Apple.

Tagged aperture 3 apple photography

Posted

aperture 3

was totally stoked about upgrading yesterday. now i'm kicking myself in the pants for doing it so quickly.

when i came home for lunch yesterday afternoon, i installed Aperture 3, typed in my Upgrade serial, and then allowed Aperture 3 to upgrade my old Aperture 2 library. obviously, this was gonna take awhile, so i left it running whilst i went back to the office. when i returned home, i discovered my MBP had actually frozen. ok, that was weird. i had to do a hard shut down (hold down power button) and then reboot.

everything comes back fine, i reopen A3, and its just processing "files." i let that go for about 15 minutes, come back, and the MBP has just sloooooowed to a crawl. i mean awful. it was like being at a concert: beach balls of death EVERYWHERE. i didn't want to, but i had to force quit A3 to do anything else. so i did that, did a normal Restart, and then reopened A3. still processing, same chain of events. i mean, it was terrible.

so finally, FINALLY, i get down to the last 12 "files" or "items" or whatever, and A3 seems to be really stuck on these last 12. it'll just sit there and churn away whilst eating up all system resources and giving me BBODs whenever i move the cursor around. i've tried repairing the database as outlined in the recently updated Aperture manual (to no real end; didn't fix anything), and my next step, i suppose, is rebuilding the database. i've seen lots of folks on the Apple discussion forums having fairly terrible times with the move, but nothing quite like this. i've a fairly large library (not really giant by any means).

its the most bizarre thing. i want to believe Apple really tested and restested over and over again because they knew Adobe was eating their lunch with the impending Lightroom3 release, but this seems to not be the case.

so in a last desperate attempt, i deleted the newly created A3 library and started over, but this time, i unchecked the little box at the initial import screen that allowed A3 to work its magic database updating, then let it run overnight.

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the joys of a (nearly) three-month old include getting up at 4.30am, allowing me to check on my reattempted library upgrade! hooray!

actually, this time, all went well. apparently the only reason you need to upgrade your library to A3 spec is if you actually plan on going back and editing your older photos with the new A3 tools (like the fancy brushes and such). otherwise, you don't HAVE to upgrade/update your entire library at once. if you come across an old project (or individual image) that you'd like to play with again, you can absolutely "reprocess" that image or project for use with the full set of new A3 tools.

all that said: i don't personally feel this should be case. i feel that it should just work from the get go and i shouldn't have to work around or not process my older images for A3 just because it makes my whole computer unstable. but this is the solution i have for now.

my official suggestion for anyone reading this who is thinking of upgrading to Aperture 3, whether from a prior version of Aperture or from iPhoto, is to wait until the kinks are worked out in the next update. the new tools and features are great (especially the brushes and pseudo-Photoshop actions), but thus far, are not worth the headaches that have come in tow. i can't even really give a review or good feel for the software yet as i'm still working out some odd issues.

Tagged aperture aperture 3 apple photography

Posted

newton!

Apple has a big event planned later this month, possibly for a tablet. here's a look back at what the predecessor looked like in advertising. and it could send faxes!

Tagged apple newton technology

Posted

proof of fairness

last week, i ranted about the incomprehensibility of trying to make Windows + VMWare Fusion "just work." desperately needing a final solution to my problem, i broke down and did something i thought i would never do: partitioned my hard drive, and installed Windows via Boot Camp.

for the uninitiated, Boot Camp is Apple's neat & clean solution for Mac users in the Intel age to install Windows inside its own little box, away from OS X.

VMWare left a pretty unsightly mess on my hard drive, so after a whole lotta' haranguing and a thorough 10-hour disk defrag (thanks also in part to the massive amount of video work i've done on my MBP), i was finally ready to get Boot Camp rolling.

install was pretty brain-dead simple: once BC properly partitioned my hard drive, i popped in my (legit) install disc of Windows 7 (64-bit) and let everything just run. after initial installation, i swapped out the Win disc for my Snow Leopard disc to finish installing appropriate drivers. its still quite impressive how fast Windows 7 flies on this machine, particularly when its not sharing resources when its installed in a virtual environment.

so today was the big test: we were gonna attempt to stream our office lunchtime Advent Devotional (the purpose for this entire experiment). first step: connecting to the wireless network. if you'll recall, this was probably the biggest headache from my last post. perhaps its a difference between XP and 7, but once i got past a small hiccup and let Windows "figure it out," i was on the network, full-on. next came the streaming, which required connecting the camera. this was the second biggest headache from my last experiment, so my hopes were low, but amazingly, everything connected just as it should have. and then when it came time to air, everything went surprisingly well. my only quibble was with the Adobe FME software: although it said it was producing an archive file of the taping in FLV format, the final product wound up being corrupt and unusable.

hrm.

anywho: there it is. i had a reasonably good experience within a full workload with Windows 7. a couple of problems:

trackpad sensitivity- WHOA. tracking is crazy and there's little to no room for error when navigating around. i can't seem to find the Control Panel to fix this.
battery life- this one i can't make sense of. my battery life goes down the toilet when i'm in Windows. odd, considering after about 10 minutes of yawning at the eye candy of Win7, i switched all of it off.

so there you go. i still would never trade the user experience of OS X for Windows 7 and booting back into OS X feels like i have breathing room again. but in a pinch, and when needed for the random MS Publisher file or Powerpoint 2007 creation, i think i'll be fairly comfortable.

Tagged 7 apple boot camp microsoft windows

Posted

indirect love letter

we've this seemingly simple video streaming we're trying to accomplish at work by Monday. it requires the use of Adobe's Flash Media Encoder. oddly enough, this software only exists for Windows. there's a private beta available for Mac (version 3.1), but you have to apply for inclusion in testing (which i did... still waiting to hear back).

[anywho]

so i pulled out my trusty copy of VMWare Fusion and fired up Windows XP. installed the FME; fine. connected camera (Canon GL2).

nothing. apparently there's something wonky when connecting FireWire 800 devices to Windows XP SP3, blah blah blah. i read through support documents for nearly an hour and never found a working solution. remember, i'm running in a virtualized environment, so things can get admittedly tricky. so i hunt around for a PC in the office with a standard 4-pin FireWire input. we have none. and since everyone is on laptops with docking stations, a cheapy FW upgrade card is out of the question.

well... crap.

so i call my dad and ask to borrow his ginormous 17" Dell laptop that has FW input. install FME on there, connect camera, BAM, everything's working... except for the network connection. the laptop found the wireless network, but it can't get an IP address. won't resolve. nothing.

call our IT guy. he's a great guy with a ton of know-how and is really, really nice. he's great to work with. but we start talking about how to resolve the connectivity issue and whoooooaaaaalolwhut? all sorts of of talk about getting a static IP address, resolving services, etc., etc. still, nothing works. i have a conference call with our video guys to walk me through the steps of setting up the live stream.

i panic a little, but remember i can create shared internet connection via my work MacPro. i connect the Dell to that, and i'm online... but at a pretty slow speed (meh).

its enough to get me through the video/phone conference call, but not enough to stream video, by a long shot.

so i decide to bite the bullet and purchase an upgrade to Windows 7. i've been using it for quite awhile now and was honestly surprised at how decent an OS it is. upgrade purchased, downloaded... multiple attempts at install FAIL. i go through the process of trying to use a USB drive as my install disc (per MS's instructions) and for some reason VMWare will only recognize an incredibly small portion for use, not nearly enough to install the upgrade disc on.

i phone a friend for a blank DVD to burn the upgrade on. disc burned, error message abound about everything. hour and a half later, i find the setting in VMWare to boot from an optical disc (slightly embarrassing, but there's nothing in the manual about it, nor was their online help any good to me). boot from disc, and...

Windows 7 upgrade can't find my hard drive. can't. find. the hard drive. this i blame on VMWare as their support documents only cover upgrading from within Windows XP and not directly from a bootable DVD. i've called Microsoft and cancelled/"returned" my Windows 7 upgrade order and now i'm back at square one.

for poops & giggles, i test out QuickTime streaming server with the camera. zero configuration, zero mess. also, from day one, my MacBook Pro has worked flawlessly on our office wireless network.

if you know me, you know i'm not the typical person you can shove into the "you only think Windows sucks because you're an idiot user" category. i was raised on Windows; its how i learned computers in the first place. i know what i'm doing and usually know how to worm my way around inside that environment. but this was just a flustercluck of epic proportions. blame goes to both Microsoft and VMWare for sucking (MS primarily for the incredulity regarding the wireless network and FW800 wonkiness, VMWare for lacking thorough support documentation).

dear Apple & MacBook Pro: i don't know what i would do without you. i still have to figure all this out and get it working by Monday, but i have never ever ever ever had problems of this scale with you.

Tagged apple fusion mac microsoft vmware windows xp