03.22.07
Busted!!
I really hate those car alarms that chirp and then start wailing while everyone ignores them. But, I have to say that having my iMac chirp and then start wailing as loud as possible when then the heavy handed cleaning crew starts moving everything on my desk was pretty cool. Even more so since it took a snapshot of the offending person with the iSight camera and now there is proof to show after the denials of “Our crews never touch the computers” BS..
The software is free but donations are accepted and you can find iAlertU at SlappingTurtle and all you need is a Mac with a remote. They only claim it works on a MBP but I tested mine on a Intel iMac 20 inch very successfully. GIven my speakers can play really loud, it was almost too successful till I remembered how to the the damn thing off 
In this screen shot, you can see the circle icon on the left, this is the iAlertU icon
To enable the tool, just hold down the menu button until you hear the chirp that says the alarm has been armed. Now stand back and watch the fun! I set up mine to use my iSight camera and all the triggers. You can use the camera or not and there are several choices of triggers such as mouse, keyboard, movement etc. When the alarm trips, your Mac will WAIL very loudly and take a picture.
Pretty unsavory character messing with my Mac, huh? And whats up with the X shirt? Some kind of Mac zealot? the worst kind of troublemaker 
03.19.07
Instruction, Tutorials and screencasts
I have started to help on a site called Macinstruct where there are free tutorials, screencasts, columns, articles and podcasts available on a wide variety of Mac subjects. In the spirt of this site, I spent a bit of time using the new Dashcode tool from Apple which will be part of Leopard when it’s released soon. It takes the process of building widgets and makes it much easier to get a basic widget together and running with a nice easy to use GUI interface.
You can see from these screen shots that the interface has been really improved over the tools in Tiger for creating widgets.
And finally, here is my own widget that I made for getting the RSS feed from Macinstruct. Download it here.
This widget took about 2 hours start to finish. I used the basic RSS template but I added an image of an Apple monitor, pushed the image back a few times to get the RSS feed to show on the monitor screen, added a link to the default “created using Dashcode” image and played with the colors and sizes. Some of this does require you to get into the code itself which if you know HTML and some XML, it is not a big deal.
03.11.07
Scanners
No, no the B movie from 1981 with no names as the actors and actresses. No offense but none have broke out of the B class based on this film. I am talking about scanners as in my new Epson 4990 USB/Firewire scanner. I have a Canon all in one with a flatbed scanner but I have been working with alot of old pictures and I needed (I wanted? the line blurs at times between “need” and “want”) a better scanner which could also handle film and slides. So after quite a bit of searching around, I decided on the Epson 4990 photoscanner. It is a compromise but a good one. A dedicated slide scanner like the Nikon 9000ED but at 400 US dollars vs. 2,000 for the Nikon, I decided I could live with the differences.
The scanner comes with Epson’s own software with digital ICE and a dedicated version of SilverFast which only works with this Epson. I bought VueScan to fill in the blanks between these two packages but I have to say that for out of the box, the Epson software is pretty nice given their lousy track record with Apple products. I guess that stands to reason since they saw fit to include a firewire port on this scanner along with the typical USB port. This can be very important as a single USB1 device on a USB2 hub will drag all USB links down to USB1 speed 
I h ad not known this until very recently. So my new scanner is running firewire and works perfectly on it.
I did some test scans with a picture that is about 2×3 inches and was taken in 1946 of a motor boat (yatch) that my dad worked on as a kid. I started with the default 300 dpi scan but went with 48 bit color depth to get as much detail as possible from such a small image. I then scanned at 400 dpi, 600 dpi, 800 dpi and 1200 dpi. The differences between the 300 and the 1200 scan were astounding. I could have gone higher but you hit a line where the file gets bigger but very little new detail shows up. For this test, the file started at 4meg in TIFF format and stopped at 70meg. The 1200 dpi scan printed very nicely at 8×10 given it started as a 2×3 print.
Here are two scans side by side to show the differences. The left side is 300dpi which is the typical home scanner. On the left side is the 1200 dpi scan which I have zoomed in a couple of steps to really see the lift preserver details. I matched the zoom with the 300 dpi scan and you can see how much the 300 dpi scan degrades compared to the 1200 dpi. For getting and preserving details, getting as much detail is the name of the game and this picture shows why very clearly. This test scan is a raw scan from the Epson without any correction or sharpening.
The scanner has a visible line down the top of the lid to see where the scanner is at during the scan which is a nice feature for me with the scanner sitting lower than the desk. It is also very quiet during the scan. The lid has it’s own scanner for scanning film which makes it a bit heavy and you need to remember not to slam it or let it drop. The scanner will handle slides and color film with plastic adapters. It has adapter for medium format film and up to 8×10 film. I have not yet tested any of my slides but based on what I see so far, I dont think it will be much of a disappointment. Most of the new Epson scanners have been rated very well by photographers.
So far the software and the scanner has been perfect, no errors, no crashed apps etc. I would highly recommend this scanner to anyone who has the need (or want) for a high quality scanner for high quality scans of images.
03.14.07
Nice Try for Photoshop Seminar
Posted in Commentary at 8:05 pm by hackamac
I went to a Photoshop seminar today, my first one to be exact. I am not sure what I had in mind but after finally getting to the convention center in LA which was a two hour drive in rush hour traffic, I was excited to see the number of people there, a number that I estimate at 1,500 since every single chair within sight was filled. The show, the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour, was sponsored by NAPP and my first impressions was that they had done before before. Things were well marked, easy to find and started at 10am promptly which in itself is a rarity for this type of event. Ben Wilmore was the presenter and while I had never met or heard him speak, I have used a few of his books and found them to very usable.
Things went downhill rapidly after the intro. We were warned that we might want a jacket and they were optimistic on the jacket. It was flipping COLD, like freezer cold and since I wear no hair on the head, I was getting a blast of ice cold wind down my head and neck and causing me to get a headache rapidly. I was not alone in muttering about this and I will get back to it shortly. The next issue was the lighting or the lack up. I was jazzed to see TWO large screen projectors up and running with good brightness and sharp enough to see from the back row which is my preference. They had provide a nice book which covered much of the same ground Ben was going to speak on and so I had my iPod recorder out, my pen out and my book ready to go just like virtually everyone else. Then the lights went out.. poof, too dark to see anything in front of you. A few tried to take notes but after 40 minutes, everyone had pretty much given up trying to take notes in the dark.
I decided at the first break that the unrelenting cold, the darkness and the way Ben delivers his presentation was too much for me. I packed it in and bought a couple of DVDs and left the show. The information Ben presents is good but I just dont care for his too polished style of presenting. As people say in the movies, it was like he was “phoning it in” and was not very engaged with the audience. Some people like that and some do not, I fall into the latter camp.
I will try one of these again but not with Ben as the speaker, no offense but he is just not my style of presenter. I will post a sample of the show that made with my iPod recorder in a few days. It was not bad considering everything. At least the DVDs and books were heavily discounted and definitely worth buying if you needed or wanted them. Sometimes shows dont give you very much of a break, this one was pleasantly different in that regard.
And food, or the lack of it. There is nothing around the convention center to go to for a snack and they did not open up anything for those of us who were early. They promised us they would open for lunch but the food there sucks and I didnt relish fighting with 1500 people for 45 minutes of a lunch. Yeach.. note to self, bring a bag lunch.
No place or support for those of us with laptops even though we were supposed to be using Photoshop. My geek cruise SPOILED me in that regard, 30 people with the instructor, internet and power strips. What a deal.
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