Category: arts and letters

LX1 and Aperture

In order to get the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1 (or Leica DIGILUX-2) to work in Aperture you first have to convert it to DNG using Adobe DNG Converter. Then you follow these directions which a commenter provides the trick.

  1. Open “/System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/
    Versions/A/Frameworks/ImageIO.framework/Versions/
    A/Resources/Raw.plist” as an administrator.
  2. Search “DMC-LC1” and copy the chunk of XML in there
  3. Replace the “DMC-LX1” with “DMC-LC1” and the “C-LUX 1” with “DIGILUX 2”
  4. Save file

Now you can import the DNGs into Aperture or iPhoto and the previews will now work.
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Posted on by tychay 1

Taking your Aperture keywords with you

Here is a small Aperture tip I forgot to mention.

I work on Aperture on two machines, my Powerbook G4 and my girlfriend’s PowerMac G5 when I can sneak in some time. One problem I ran into was finding that the keywords (and also various export settings) I have set up in Aperture are not carried with the Aperture Library.

The trick is realizing that they are stored in your home directory in: “~/Library/Application Support/Aperture”
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Posted on by tychay 1

Considering an entry level camera

I received an e-mail today about a new camera purchase. Here is an excerpt:

About the camera stuff, I am in the market for a “prosumer” digital camera and considering the Canon Rebel XT (350D). I think it’s quite a bit lower level than the D70 but do you have any thoughts on the camera or Canon’s SLR in general? Any recommendations you have for a different model/brand in the 800-1000 range would be appreciated as well.

What follows is my relevant response.
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Posted on by tychay 22

Forbes Field Forever

Today, I saw a poster next to Michael Rowley’s desk and I asked if any of the baseball fanatics at Plaxo knew which stadium it was of.

Nobody did.

forbes19

I mentioned that I thought that it looked like Forbes Field to me. Given what I remember of the remains of it (the right field wall and home plate), it looks like the Cathedral of Learning would have afforded exactly this sort of view.

(When I was a kid, I used to point at the Cathedral of Learning, “the tallest schoolhouse in the West” and say “my mommy works there” (she actually worked nearby). My mom said that when I was younger I thought it was the Washington Monument: “Whenever we passed it, your eyes would get wide and you’d say reverently, ‘Washington!’”)

It turns out that stopping following baseball after the 1994 strike and being a die-hard Pirates fan had its advantages—it is a view of Forbes Field from the Cathedral of Learning.Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 12

Aperture 1.1 out

Aperture 1.1 was released as a free update today. If you own Aperture, see Software Update. (My comments about it are here.)

In my original review of Aperture, the only real complaint I had was the price, which was too close to PhaseOne CaptureOne. I felt that Apple should undercut them like Final Cut Pro did to Avid. Well, if you own Aperture 1.0 like I do, you can get a $200 coupon good for future Apple Store purchases (Academic users get a $100 one).

By the way, this also means a $200 price drop to Aperture to $300 from $500.

Now how is that for service?Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2

Picturewall

I recently purchased a picturewall in order to add some accents to my otherwise boring apartment. It’s been on my to do list forever and now that I own a couch, hanging up some “fotografs,” as Caitlin puts it, was my next priority.

A quick run to Costco today allowed me to add a few photos.

Picturewall (detail)

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Posted on by tychay 3

DX smackdown

Someone on flickr decided to engage in a smackdown of the APS-C format.

The problem with these is that they often parrot experts who don’t really remember their history. I’m sure when these experts were young pups, they defended their 35mm film cameras against the old codgers doing medium or full-frame photography. They miss the reality that they’ve become the old codgers themselves.

I’m not claiming that they don’t have a valid argument. I’m just claiming they’re a guilty of hypocrisy: They diss another format as being the “one true format” implicitly exposing own bias in their own format as the “one true format.”Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 7

Big Trouble in Little OSCON

It turns out two of my talks have been accepted at OSCON this year.

OSCON 2k6 speakers

They are “0 to 60 in 45 minutes: A Down and Dirty Ajax Design Patterns firedrill” in the new AJAX track and “The Underpants Gnomes Strategy Guide: An Ecards Case Study” in the PHP track.

Given my penchant for working on my talk during the conference, I figure I am royally screwed this time. How am I supposed to cram two talks worth of slides during OSCON week? Does this mean I’ll actually have to prepare my talk beforehand? *shudder*

I knew I should have submitted my MAMP talk (Mac Apache MySQL PHP). That one has been rejected for six different conferences in a row.Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 3

A good idea gone wrong

Flickr a few months ago created a good idea: they inject a div into the landing page of login that allows them to send arbitrary messages to you that you can dismiss. I definitely think more websites should do that.

Imagine my surprise when I found this notification today:

Flickr account expired

Umm, guys according to your records and mine, my Pro account won’t expire until June 6th. It’s March 22. This isn’t exactly a good thing to be sending to your paying customers. A two word change would do wonders: “…your Pro account has expired” to “…your Pro account will be expiring soon.” As it is, it appears your messaging system clearly has the wrong Type II type error in it (erring to your advantage instead of mine).

What sort of impression does that give me of Flickr’s priorities?

Posted on by tychay 2