MacAddict’s lowtech product shot setup

Product Shot Setup 1

Product Shot Setup 1, originally uploaded by silverkeys.

Last month, I ran across a gorgeous whiteground product shot from Dave McNally and decided to duplicate his setup when I had an opportunity.

Caitlin has decided to sell her JVC JY-HD10U videocamera. The JY-HD10U was the first camera in what is now called the HDV video standard.1 The cool thing about this camera is that it records high definition video2 with standard DV tapes. At the time, it was very difficult to work with HDV, but now iMovie, Final Cut Pro and others support it natively. She used it for filming dance instructional tapes and weddings, but has recently purchased a Sony 3CCD HDV video camera and no longer needs it.

Caitlin selling off her camera would qualify as an opportunity.
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Posted on by tychay 2

Controlling what Plaxo sends you

I added a “Plaxo” category yesterday.

In the event I forget, this applies to everything in this category: The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of Terry Chay. Content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo.

I suppose when most people create a category related to their job it is to gripe—I’m only good at ranting and ranting is definitely frowned on in the company’s blog policy. Instead I thought it would be more fun to post interesting things I find while using Plaxo. In particular, restricting it to the limited things I can do from my Macintosh, since that is where my screen capture software resides.

Plaxo has a rather complete support website but I don’t operate this way. Instead I thought for some of you who are like me it would be more fun to present things as use-cases as I learn them myself.

Hopefully, I can continue to do this until I accidentally “blog about company secrets” and get fired.

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Posted on by tychay 1

A new Plaxo log-in

The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of Terry Chay. Content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo.

Today I signed into my Plaxo account and was met with a pleasant surprise:

Plaxo-AIM signin

Plaxo-AIM signin, originally uploaded by tychay.

The new thing that wasn’t here before is that you can theoretically use your AIM account to sign into Plaxo. (I say “theoretically” because you have to link your Plaxo account to your AIM account and this can’t be done yet.)

I know most of you are thinking, “Well he makes the damn website so of course he knew this,” but the reality is that I’m not involved with the Plaxo-AOL deal, have not coded this new log in screen, and had only given one suggestion for the log-in screen.

I bring this up because it is a really good page.

Update: The AOL/AIM binding/login stuff is now live to coincide with the beta 6 release of Triton. You can now bind your AIM account to your Plaxo one.

Also, Joseph and Huy have added more NLP madness in the Plaxo login. It’s now super smart.

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Posted on by tychay 3

Conference Gnomes

When I was generating the movies for my OSCON talk, I left in a little easter egg that was too hard to notice. Doing little things like this makes things a little fun when you are bored with the tedium of making hundreds of builds for your talk. I decided to get a screenshot in before all the task items get marked as overdue.

Conference Gnomes

Conference Gnomes, originally uploaded by tychay.

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Posted on by tychay 0

Karma catches up with Jack?

Trent is reporting that MacMice has shut down.

I’ve alluded to Jack Campbell’s abusiveness and deceptiveness before. One thing I never understood about the Mac world was their willingness to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. Granted, you shouldn’t hold a man’s criminal record against him, but it should bias your opinions. I mean how many time does the community need to be clocked on the head to realize that enough is enough? MacTable, MacWhispers “rumor site”, Griffin/DVForge, his verbal abusiveness and lying on multiple comment boards, Kensington/DVForge, and finally this marketing stunt.

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Posted on by tychay 1

Corporate tutorials

D70 Photography Kingdom

D70 Photography Kingdom, originally uploaded by silverkeys.

I noticed on Mark Goldstein’s excellent Photography blog. that Manfrotto launched some online tutorials in conjunction with Web Photo School.

Here are the tutorials.

Though I have been drooling over their monopods and Caitlin uses their tripods and heads, I’m currently a Gitzo/Really Right Stuff guy. On a quick skim it seems they are using Manfrotto products in the examples but parts of it are relevent to anyone with a halfway decent tripod.

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Posted on by tychay 3

Why I need an “abject stupidity” category

CNN:Police try to control the crowd rushing to get cheap iBooks.

So what sort of braintrust in Henrico thought up this clusterfuck?

Here is my favorite quote:

“It’s rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response for the purchase of a laptop computer—and laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes. But I think that people tend to get caught up in the excitement of the event—it almost has an entertainment value.”
—Paul Proto, director of general services for Henrico County, to CNN

“rather strange that we would have such a tremendous response” You knew it was going to be bad which is why you required proof of residency and changed the date.

“laptop computers that probably have less-than-desirable attributes…” STFU. You already had to issue a redaction because you said these iBooks were always broken and Apple wasn’t repairing them according to contract when the real reason you wanted to switch to Dell is because of MS Office (a totally valid reason).

“it almost has an entertainment value” Porquoi? What is so entertaining about your neighbors getting injured and peeing their pants?
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Posted on by tychay 2