Retinal burn

I suppose musings like this are very common among Apple haters. Basically the complaint boils down to:

“325dpi? Bah! Even a 1986-era laser printer does 300dpi and my newspaper does at least 600dpi. Until you get there, the print is smudgy and causes eye-strain.”

Apple - iPhone 4 - Learn about the high-resolution Retina display

The facts in the Apple’s advertising blurb are 100% correct. If you have a beef, don’t take the advertising head-on. The whole thing is essentially a misdirection in all but a few cases.

What a crock of shit.

Continue reading about eye acuity and displays after the jump.

Thoughts on “Thoughts”

Now that this site has been down for a month (Thank you, SARSxSW), I tried to see restart this blog with a deep thought.

I couldn’t come up with anything.

So instead, I’ll talk about the tech news. Recently a lot has been going on about Steve Jobs latest missive: “Thoughts on Flash” to which, Adobe’s CEO quickly responded to in the Wall Street Journal.

Instead of rushing to Apple’s defense here, I thought I’d provide some thoughts on these “thoughts.”

Continue reading about three thoughts after the jump.

MacJournal meets my Kindle

While going through the MacHeist nanoBundle 2 purchase, that one of the items was MacJournal. I already own it, so I gifted it. But it caused me to take a peek again at the application—the last time I used it was back when it was freeware and had a taco.

MacJournal still has the taco

…it still does.

It occurs to me that it might make a useful reading notebook to complement my Kindle (and my iPad next month). I haven’t been keeping track of the copious clippings and notes I take with it. Here is my first attempt:

reading notebook on MacJournal

Here is the process I am trying to use:

  1. Create a journal in MacJournal called “Reading Notebook.”
  2. Import all the Kindle Clippings I’ve not clipped up as entries
  3. Create an entry for a book I am reading, tag it with some search terms in the inspector.
  4. Search and cut the related Kindle Clippings out of the various notes, and paste it to the bottom of the book entry.
  5. organize, summarize, and delete as I go.
  6. Import kindle clippings often and delete often.

We’ll see how it goes. I made out some stubs for other ideas for journals.

  1. Organizing Journal – keep a record of my failed attempts at self-help.
  2. The Woodwork – I’ve stored unfinished drafts for blog posts in a myriad of places: Things, folders with the title, TextEdit RTF documents, and drafts on the blog. I plan to consolidate them here. Note that MacJournal has a “publish to WordPress” feature, but I don’t think it’s robust enough for me. I’ll continue to use the website, and maybe ecto, if I have the wherewithal.
  3. Things to Buy – Things is getting too cluttered with a lot of stuff that I don’t plan on buying for years. Delicious is in the same state. (I’ll still use TaskPaper for last-minute organizing before a major purchase and other maintenance purchases.)

For most notetaking, I’m still happy with opening an RTF, dropping it into a folder, and using Spotlight (via Leap) to find things. This just formalizes a fraction of it.

Purchase MacJournal with 6 other applications on MacHeist (2 days left!).

Camera manuals to go

Buried in a previous article, instead of carrying the paper manuals around, I mentioned that you should download your manufacturer’s camera manuals onto the iPhone for reference. But I didn’t explain how this could be done or why it is useful.

Here are three applications I’ve used that render PDFs:

Three apps: Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader

Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader

I’ll be talking about Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader. If you want to know the solution I use for camera manuals, skip to the section on GoodReader.

Continue reading about reading PDF manuals in Air Sharing, Dropbox, and GoodReader after the jump

Macbook stickers

A while ago, when I saw Mark Kater, he showed me the vinyl sticker he got for his Macbook Pro. The next time I stopped by, I remembered to photograph it.

Mac am Ironman

Mac am Ironman
Tagged, Financial District, San Francisco, California

Leica M8, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON 35mm F1.2 Aspherical
1/30sec, ISO160, 35mm (47mm)

The processing is pretty much the Toy Camera preset in Aperture. Pretty powerful huh?

He got it from some place on etsy. It turns out die-cut vinyl Macbook decals that incorporate the apple logo are hugely popular—there are literally hundreds of them.
Continue reading about Stickers and such after the jump

Minimal wallet

Since everyone is on a minimalism kick recently, I decided that my Costanza wallet had to go:

Hlaska Nominal Merge Wallet

Hlaska Nominal Merge Wallet
San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G and Nikkor 85mm f/1.4D, Canon 500D
8 exposures, 1/60sec @ ƒ5, ISO200, 50mm and 85mm

This was taken inside a light tent with my SB-800 flash pointed backwards and an LED light array underneath. No real setup, just some overzealous light bouncing around.

When we were in their flagship store on the Filmore, I had flackette pick out my wallet. When I got home I realized she picked out the same one that I bookmarked a year and a half ago. If you don’t live in the Bay Area, you can also purchase their goods online at various design stores.

I didn’t think to take any photos of the place while I was in the store. I should have since they do their cash register is an executive desk with an iMac 19″ embedded below the desk surface running a copy of Windows in order to do the point-of-sale software. It looked like a big old ergonomic mess, and I asked if it was as stylish-yet-unfunctional as it that seemed. Apparently, according to the clerks, my hunch was right. I guess someone saw Tron too many times.

The wallet has a magnetic money clip and could hold about 8 cards if you really try hard—I have four in there and it’s pretty tight. The animal skin is ostensibly from Italy, but it’s stitched in China. Since the stitching is done with a machine, the threads are pretty tight—not as nice as my Hirano camera case, but what is?

People always ask me about the metal thing is the center of my wallet—It’s a Wallet Pen. I highly recommend them, though I replace the ink with a Fisher universal multi-pen refill.

We’ll see how long I last without membership cards, change, and gum wrappers.

All hail the entry kit! [The entry kit dSLR Part 1]

Yesterday, a friend was interested in purchasing a dSLR at Costco and asked me which he should buy: a Nikon or a Canon. I get asked that a lot.

Costco dSLRs
Costco, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, Lumix G Vario HD 1:4.0-5.8/14-140 ASPH. Mega O.I.S.
1/60sec @ ƒ4, ISO250, 14mm (28mm)

From left to right: The Nikon D3000, the Nikon D5000, and the Canon 500D (called the Rebel T1i in the U.S.).

The higher pricing is because Costco usually sells supersets in order to be above the manufacturer minimum advertised price but still yield a decent value to the consumer. For instance, the Nikon D5000 kit contains not only the 18-55mm VR lens, but also the 55-200mm VR lens, a camera bag, two Nikon school DVDs, a book, and an SD card.

The Canon 500D is the most expensive of the trio because Canon and Nikon avoid competing head-to-head by interleaving price and features in models. The 500D sits between the Nikon D5000 and the enthusiast Nikon D90. The 1000D (a.k.a. Rebel XS) was introduced to compete between the Nikon D3000 and Nikon D5000 price points and wasn’t for sale the day I took this photo. (Update: Last time I was at Costco, the Canon 1000D, Nikon D5000, and Canon 500D were for sale. During the writing of this series, Canon introduced the 550D)

“Uhh, the Nikon D3000.”

“Well that’s because they stopped selling the other dSLRs there.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Why was that?”

“Partly because the Canon 1000D is old. Everyone expects it to be updated.”

“It’ll be updated?”

“Most likely if Canon wants to sell any cameras. It’s been a year and a half, which is a long time to have a camera in that category. The D3000 just came out.”

“You know what camera I really like? The Nikon D5000. In fact, I ordered one the other day. It’s arriving this evening.”

Nikon D5000 kit
South of Market, San Francisco, California

Olympus E-P2, M.ZUIKO Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
1/60sec @ ƒ3.5, iso 12500, 14mm (28mm)

Actually, this was purchased for Marie, not myself.

It sounds strange that someone who owns a Nikon D70IR, Nikon D200, and a Nikon D3 would purchase an entry level Nikon dSLR. Over the next week, I’ll explain why by going over the Why, What, How, Where and When of a good first dSLR purchase.

And don’t worry. While my experience is with Nikon, I won’t give the short shrift to the other brands.

Table of contents

  • Why dSLR?: Why a dSLR produces better images than a pocket digital
  • What dSLR?: Don’t buy a dSLR that is too much dSLR for you
  • What dSLR? (2): The Pentax, Sony, and Olympus dSLRs and about entry dSLRs compact size
  • How DSLR?: The Canon and Nikon dSLRs, a big spreadsheet, return policies, and what I bought
  • Where dSLR?: About first lenses and things to buy with your first dSLR purchase
  • When dSLR?: About books, videos, and classes

(Article continued in part 2)

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