01.28.07
Take Two Libraries
It sneaks up on you, your iTunes library with its bloated files, overwhelming number of podcasts and all the music that you never thought you had to have at the ready before. Before you know it, the library is 40 gig and going up with each new movie studio deal signed by Apple and now, how the heck do you back it up or manage it? The short answer (one of a few) is use a tool like iTunes Library Manager which gives you the ability to have multiple iTunes libraries which can be customized by you for special needs or projects.
A simple but very useful tool for those of us who really USE our iTunes for more than stealing ( according to the music companies, thats all we do with iPods, steal music)
Another tool I have become enamored with is called iClip and no, it’s not a Apple version of the finally dead “Clippy, the talking paperclip”. It is a very cool way to keep a clip pad of data at the ready.
The bins are and the location is also. I use mine on the right side of the screen but you do not have to use it there. It could be on the bottom, left or top side. The default is to have history of 99 items “clipped” but you can get more creative than just that.
I have been using iClip for several months now after my purchase from MacZOT which is a very cool site with a daily software special that is addictive. I find the iClip to be indespensible when I am writing or roughing out some notes for a new article or missive. I can go nuts clipping things whether it be a short word, a paragraph, a picture or even an entire page. And I dont have to think, I just clip which makes it very painless to use. I use mine on the right side of the screen where it is out of site until I need it so it does not clutter up the deskspace which even with virtual desktops is cluttered. And this brings up a good point, iClip works great with “You Control:Desktops” which is my virtual desktop manager of choice. So no matter which desktop I have up, I always have the same clips handy.
01.12.07
Zealots, consumers and taking over the world
No, this is not a piece about Pinky and Brain taking over the world but the brains at Apple Inc (was Apple Computer) have announced how they intend to take over the world. Apple rolled out two new widgets for the masses to buy, use and drink the Koolade of Apple. The iTV or now called “AppleTV” and a cool cellphone which for now is called “iPhone”. I say for now because Cisco and Apple are now engaged in what promises to be a knock down fight over the name. AppleTV is one of the coolest gadgets of recent memory and falls short in just a few areas. You can not record TV shows so it’s not a PVR. It will play any content on your Mac so if the Mac can record(EyeTV etc), you are set. Just last night I was wishing for it here at the house to avoid yet again, having to hook up my video iPod to the TV so we all watch Dumbo for the 100th time in the last two days. I need to get a bigger battery for the poor iPod, it has been taking a real beating of late 
I have to laugh at the whiners that always complain after the Keynote about this that and the other and how it all sucks. Well, whine away, Steve and Apple are laughing all the way to the bank while you sit there and sputter about how better you could do if they would just listen. Get over it and get with the program. Just because you did not get the one feature you thought should have been in the widget doesnt it make it a flop and the rest of us are tired of your constant complaining. The last thread I read was some ripping at Apple for not offering 1080P resolution on the AppleTV completely forgetting that A: They probably dont even have the TV themselves, B: the 720 resolution keeps the DRM crap to a minimum (read how Vista handles 1080P content) so without too much fuss, Apple is able to bring a solid option to the market and upgrade later after all the dust settles. You really do need to look at the BIG picture and get out of your itty bitty pond at times.
At the show, Maxtor had two presentations that really amused me about backups and your data.
How many CDs can be lost on an iPod or Mac if the it is lost or the drive fails:
How many pictures can be lost on an iPod or Mac if it is lost or the drive fails:
That really drives home the point about needing reliable and constant back ups. “Constant Vigilance!! says Mad Eye Moody” You never know when a dark wizard will suck the soul out of your hard drive or your MBP ends up a pile of slag.
I have been using an application called “PDFpen” for marking up PDFs and editing them with comments. It works pretty well but I have learned that while I can highlight and bold my comments in the application, the bold for example, does not transfer to the saved PDF when viewed with Preview. Thats annoying to be nice about it. You can merge and add pages to an existing PDF which is always handy to have. I use it to review certain network documents and add comments for the non-technical SOX folks to review and to a password to the document. So aside from the few minor complaints, I have to say that it is very easy to use and relatively cheap to buy.
01.09.07
Happy Birthday to me!
I finally cracked, I could not stand the pressure.. I’m weak and I know it. I broke down and bought a new Nikon D80 10.2MP Digital SLR Camera Kit with 18-135mm AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor Lens
The camera does have a nice “heft” to it and the 18-135mm zoom lets the camera lay in your cupped hand just as it should for stead shooting. I did some test shots on full automatic and I was seriously impressed. Outstanding depth of field ( my 828 Sony has crap for DOF), a great “click clunk” when the shot is taken, very good color accuracy and even the built in flash works pretty well given it’s diminutive size. When I loaded the images into iPhoto, it tool much-less color correction (the Sony was always too red) and not as much sharpening. Most of this comes from the fact that the Sony chip is very small vs. the Nikon sensor chip. And Sony used a weird four color sensor unlike the more common three color sensor. They are not bad pictures but the Nikon’s is noticeable better out of the box. A bitch is that after spending 1200 bucks, Nikon could not include a small SD card. I wonder how many people get caught buying this and finding out that they cant use it right away because they didnt buy a stupid SD card with it. Bad idea Nikon.
I will post some pictures and also a short review on DxO Optics and using it with the new Nikon. It worked wonders on the Sony and so I have high hopes. Also coming will my notes on Page Sender FAX center , Desktastic and FotoMagico (the beta)
01.05.07
My iLife life
I use iLife all the time. There, I admit it even as I use Photoshop and lust after Final Cut Pro. For the daily grind of getting pictures out to the inlaws, family and friends, it is very hard to beat iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. But the love affair is cooling with iDVD after attempting to make an iDVD of our last cruise and Rome trip. I found several limits in iDVD like 99 images, one music track to a chapter, a difficult to edit theme and marginal DVD burn quality unless you know to click a button.
As the owner of a Procare card, which I highly recommended to anyone with an Mac and who needs advice now and then, I made an appointment for some one-on-one training on iDVD to work out the issues I had. What ended happening is that I got a crash course in Final Cut Pro for my slide show instead of iDVD. Something akin to hitting the fly with a machine gun but FCP really does look like a hot ticket for what I wanted. And there is not any way to import my current iDVD project into either FCP or DVD Studio (does not speak iDVD5). I have to say that I am unhappy with Apple that their flagship DVD Studio has not kept up with the home user iDVD software and so can not import from iDVD 5.0, only 4. Bah..
So while I am fooling around with my slide show with FCP etc, I am scoping things out for alternatives to iDVD to make a nice slide show. If anyone has suggestions, drop me a line with the info and I will take a look at it.
I use a Mac Intel Mini in the office and I also prefer to use Entourage due to the basic project management built-in to it and it will speak directly to our Exchange server. But it has never been what I would call “stable” and with the current Xwindows patch, things took a turn for the worse. It would crash constantly until MS released their last “security” patch and so now I’m back to the occasional lockup and crash if I have X up and running. Bummer because it forces me back to the MS RDP client whereas I really like TSClientX. But at least Entourage will stay running longer between crashes. The real pain with X running is the “crash” takes out Rosetta which requires a reboot but the reboot sequence wont work. Even from a terminal session with s shutdown command, it only gets part way and hangs till I hit the power. Such quality software from Microsoft.. doesn’t seem to matter what platform they write for, it is all crap.
A few new apps that I have learned about is DefaultFolderX which improves on the Open/Save options and Desktastic 3.0 which gives you the ability to mark up your screen which is awesome for training and presentations. You can save the screen and it supports the use of a tablet or your mouse. You can select to just write on the background or the entire desktop including open apps. Very handy!
My current favorite podcast, Macbreak, has a good show on GPG which is show number 6. Other links of interest is Digitalphotography at www.completedigitalphotography.com and some very cool Final Cut info at www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/compression_chapter_markers_stone.html
01.15.07
Taking a bite from the Apple
Posted in Commentary, OSX Software, OSX Technical at 9:17 pm by hackamac
I am weak, I’ve said before and I’ll say it again.. I’m weak. I see a shiny new widget with the Apple logo and I get weak in the knees, the lust factor kicks in and before I know it, I have to touch it, feel it and take it home. Yep, this time I didnt even touch and feel it but I have my order in for a new AppleTV. The N Extreme access point will have to wait till next month. I’ve done far enough damage this month with the AppleTV unit, a refurbed PowerMac Dual G5 and a refurbed 23 inch monitor.
Why you might ask would anyone in their right mind buy a dual G5 with the Xeons out and kicking ass all over town? Because dear reader, my eldest film school student got a nasty surprise with that Chapman College using AVID Media Composer in film school, not Final Cut Pro. And I am here to tell that AVID sucks on several levels, least of all with the antiquated hardware requirements. Their software will not run at all on the Intel platform and they JUST released their first beta for the Intel chips. They historically run late with their releases so I expect this will be no different which means by 08 we might see the software released. But anyways, in order to get a video editing station put together required a Dual G5 or a Windoze machine and not just any Windoze, it had to be a very specific configuration. So by the time I worked the numbers, the Mac was the better deal. Even a rental of a dual G5 was going to cost as much as buying the refurb so I bought and within 6 months it might be up for sale if the editing thing at school doesn’t pan out the way eldest daughter is thinking. The Avid software uses a USB key that has to be licensed before it will work. So I did that but hit a snag and found out that there is not any tech support after 5PM, before 9am M-F. So like most working stiffs trying to squeeze this sort of thing in on the weekend, you are pretty well screwed till Monday. In my case non of the docs (which are pretty poor to start with) mentioned that version 2.5 is not compatible with OSX 10.4.8. You have to download a 899Meg “patch” so it will work with 10.4.8 plus you have to uninstall the 2.5 first. My FCP took all of an hour to install, one serial number to key in and 10 minutes of patches.. bam.. good to go. Hopefully in a year or so, Chapman will see the light and move to FCP instead of this crap from Avid that is so damn temperamental and requires a stupid hardware dongle. My last dongle was on my Commodore 64 with PaperClip work processor. And that dongle I hacked a working copy from with my digital logic probe and my TTL chip guide book. So dongles are not the end all copy protection scheme. They are just one more thing to go wrong or to lose and both happen with regularity according to the bulletin boards at Avid.
Treasures that I found this week are SuperSync for synronizing iTune libraries between systems over the network, Synck Backup which has replaced SuperDuper as my favorite back up tool and Cha-Ching which is a replacement for Quicken to manage your finances. My other treasure is the beta code called “Dashcode” from Apple. This is a new feature tool with Leopard which makes the task of building widgets completely painless. It is a very visual based tool and integrates the graphics and the coding into a nice front end. If you are not part the dev team with Apple, join and be part of the dev effort so you too can play with some of these very cool toys coming down the pipeline.
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