You have a card error? What now?

Imagine that you’ve filled your flash cards and brought them home, fired up Aperture and started the import. You come back a few minutes later to check the import — and you see the error message. Read errors on the card.

uh, oh. Now what?

I recently had that happen. To make life even more fun, I recently bought a couple of new cards (Kingston 55x 2Gig) to supplement the SanDisk Ultra II 2Gig cards I already had. One of the Sandisk cards was the one showing the error, and the first thing I did with one of the Kingston cards, of course, was leave it in my pocket so it got washed and dried with the laundry.

Do you assume the card’s bad? Or do you verify it? How?

Here’s what I did. your thoughts are more than welcome.

First thing I did was put the two cards, plus a third card (the new Kingston) in my card reader to see if they’d mount on the computer. They all did. I did this for a few reasons — but the main reason was that if there was something electrically funky about the card that got washed, I wanted it to short out the card reader, not one of the camera bodies. It’s a MUCH cheaper fix to replace a dead card reader, so any card you don’t trust, you should never put in your camera. Paranoia is a good thing sometimes.

Once all three cards passed the sniff test, I pulled them and put them in the camera and formatted them. I always format my cards in the camera I’m using them in, because I believe that minimizes possible compatibility issues. They all passed that test.

Now, one at a time, I put them back in the reader, and grabbed a hunk of files and copied them onto the card, so each would be ~90% or more full. The first card I tried, the sandisk, started failing.

The first reaction, I bet, is to think that the card is bad. But what if it’s the reader? This could be an expensive assumption.

So I took that third card, the one I HAD NOT done dumb things to yet, and put it in the reader, and started copying.

Yup. It failed. So now what?

As it so happens — because James had flogged the Lexar compactflash readers, as long as I was buying the new cards, I picked up readers for myself and Laurie. so I unplugged the old reader, unpacked the Lexar, and hooked it up, and retried the copy to the card.

Of course, all three handled the write fine, as well as erasing the files again. A stong indication that card reader is going bad. Good timing on buying that new one.

I wanted to go further to verify the cards, though.

I took each card and stuck them in the camera, and shot pictures of my office until the card was full. It then got stuffed in the reader, and I let Aperture import all of the images, and then erase and eject the card. I then made sure the images imported looked okay — no corruption or obvious problems. I then erased them all out of Aperture and deleted them from disk again.

About 40 minutes later, and 650 shots later, all three cards tested out, a full format-shoot-import-erase-format cycle. I formatted each card again, put the two Kingston cards in the Canon bodies, and put the SanDisk cards in the wallet.

I can now trust those cards in regular use. If you ask me, peace of mind is worth an hour or so of my time; I don’t want to be reaching for the wallet on a shoot to get a new card, and find myself thinking “is that the card that was throwing errors last week?” I’d rather retire the cards than carry them and not trust them. Any piece of equipment you’re not comfortable with is more of a hazard in the field than a help — so get to know your gear, learn how it works and how you want to use it, and don’t carry it unless you’re comfortable with it and trust it. that way, when shooting, you focus on the shooting, and not on issues like “will this work?”

the end result for me: one retired card reader (inexpensive), and three good cards (not so inexpensive). That’s good.

I think this backs up an important idea: for critical items, have a spare. Card readers are critical now. So are cards. you might not need to carry two readers in your bag in the field, but if you’re travelling? It probably makes sense (both don’t need to be expensive ones, they do need to be reliable).

Ditto cards. I use 2 gig cards these days. In my Canon bodies (D30 and Rebel XT), shooting raw, a 2 gig card holds roughly 200 shots. I feel it’s much better off to carry a pair of 2 gig cards instead of one four gig card. The risk of catastrophic failure of the card is much worse than the risk of losing a critical shot because you have to swap a card once or twice during a shoot. So to me, the only nice thing about the 4 and 8 gig cards is they drive down the price of the 2 gigs (always a good thing).

Every time I leave the house now, I carry five cards: two Kingston 55x 2G cards, one in each body, Two SanDisk Ultra II 2 gig cards, and a SanDisk Ultra II 1 Gig card in the wallet. That gives me close to 1000 shots before I have to get to a reader and import to make space. that may seem like a huge # of shots — but I have taken more than 600 shots in a single day, and I’d rather carry an extra card or three than run out of “film” at a critical time. Cards are much cheaper than missing a lifetime shot.

It also means that card failure doesn’t shut me down. Since I tend to believe failure happens at the most inopportune moment, I try to plan for how to minimize those disasters; it’s my way, if you want to look at it that way, of convincing Murphy to go annoy an easier target.

No film photographer would go out with a single roll of film in their camera — even though cards are much higher capacity, I think the same idea applies, though. To be honest, card failures happen, and if having a spare doesn’t convince you to carry two two’s instead of one four, then consider that carrying two two’s gives you a much better chance at salvaging some of the shoot if you lose a card in the middle. And finally, if a card fails, losing a two is a lot cheaper than losing a four.

All things considered, think about how many shots your camera can fit in a gigabyte of card, and how often you want to change them as you shoot, and buy the right size, but not too large. Don’t go too small, either. I won’t bother carrying less than a 1 gig card these days — 512m would be maybe 50 shots, and that’s just too few for me. I don’t want to be changing cards every ten minutes any more than I want to lose all of my shots on my only card. Cards in the 100-200 shot range seems “right” to me. Figure out what feels right for you, and buy to that size.

For what it’s worth: the Kingston 55x cards are MUCH faster than the Sandisk, both in accepting shots from the camera and in the import/erase process on the Mac. Very nice so far. And I noticed a huge (5x or so) difference in speed between my old reader and the Lexar. Using the Lexar AND the Kingston was faster than using either part with the slower alternative — so all of the pieces in the puzzle matter here. Something to consider as you’re buying these things — spending more on a top-notch reader is worth it in time saved, and faster cards also speed up the import process, and also reduce the number of times you’ll be waiting for the card during burst shots.

All things to consider. Sometimes a small investment ($20 more in a reader, $15 in a card) can significantly improve your workflow and cut the time you sit waiting for things to finish….

Kudos to Parallels and Ubuntu

One of the things I wanted to do this weekend was install Ubuntu on my Mac as a sandbox using Parallels as the virtual system. The install of windows XP last week was absolutely painless (amazing), so I figured it wouldn’t be difficult to do a Linux disto, either.

The last time I touched a Linux distribution, as opposed to Mac OS X’s Unix-y bits, was Yellowdog Linux for the PowerPC, back around release, oh, 1.2 or so, running it on an Apple Network Server (aka a maytag). it’s been (ahem) a while.

So, because I figured the worst thing that could happen was that it’d force me to sit down and read the damn documentation, I downloaded an Ubuntu ISO, fired up parallels, created a virtual machine, and told it to install Linux. Low and behold, it opened up teh ISO, fired up Linux, and tossed an installer screen that looked amazingly like an OS X installer. All I did was answer questions, and ten minutes later, I was up and playing Minesweeper.

I find this wonderfully amazing — Linux really has matured and grown up in any number of very positive ways. That I could do something like this without any documentation or prep work? wow.

Nice job to both the Parallel’s team (for a neat product), and Ubuntu (for a nice, friendly installer that actually works!).

backing up the modern house….

One of the things I’ve been trying to get a handle on are the home backups. I’ve been using Retrospect since, well, basically forever, most recently using it to back up the home machines to a firewire drive on my mini. I started out using two 100 gig drives in rotation, and when they filled up, added a pair of 200 gig (god bless digital photography). It’s to the point, though, where a full backup of the house (two laptops, two minis) is now > 200 gigs, and if you rotate your backup sets when the second disk fills up, you’re rotating them fairly often — and think about how long it takes to restart a backup with a full set.

You end up with too many windows of opportunity for things to go wrong, which made me increasingly uncomfortable. Add to that having all of the files stored in a proprietary format by Retrospect, and Retrospect’s long history of breaking every time a new release of Mac OS X coming out, with a delay before they fix it, and then a few patches to get it really right — not my idea of fun for a backup tool. And then there are various features of modern Mac OS X that retrospect simply punts on.

So retropect has increasingly been a tool I’ve been looking to retire.

At the same time, I’ve been working more and more with a tool called Superduper!, which is (to some degree) rsync with a GUI, although it’s not really quite that. It’s allowed me to set up backups of the laptops to portable (now power brick) firewire drives, so the laptops can be backed up even on the road, Just In Case). Superduper also will back up over a network, but does it to a spare disk image — which, of course, Retrospect won’t back up. Another reason to retire Retrospect.

None of this really handles the offsite backup problem to my satisfaction, either, not even close. At one point, I kept three sets of backups via retrospect, rotating one offsite, but as the size of the backup grew, I let that lapse. Shouldn’t have, but I did. Besides, is an offside backup that’s four months old REALLY useful?

So, what do I really want?

1) No more full backups.

2) full automation.

3) No special tools to access files.

4) bootable backups (or backups that can easily be turned into bootable disks again);

5) off-site storage.

6) off-site storage WITHOUT physically moving stuff off-site, or having to make special off-site disks.

7) failure resistance. A failed disk should at worst be inconvenient. Ditto failed backup media.

After spending time researching tools and what other people are doing, I came fairly close, and down the road, I’ll have it all (I think).

The first decision: stop creating new backup sets, and dump retrospect. Instead, use RAID 1 to create a redundant mirror of the data. That way, if any one drive fails, there’s a usable copy that can keep the backup going and you can clone it to rebuild the RAID. RAID 1 also allows you to, if you want, add and remove drives, which gives you the option to create copies to go offsite.

You can do this in a few ways:

1) dedicated network storage device, that hooks up to your network and acts like a file server. they’re called various things like “network hard drives”, and come from any number of companies including Lacie or Infrant.

2) add a RAID system to the mini, using swappable bays to allow you to replace drives as you want. This would make creating off-site copies easy, as well as failure recovery as simple as possible. Wiebetech is a company with a line of products that does this.

3) Software RAID on the mini, and firewire drives.

The third approach is the one I decided on. I did so for a few reasons. First, I didn’t want to add another computer to the house, dedicated or not, so that let out the network disks. I also moved away from the network disks because most of them don’t do RAID. Most of the RAID 1 options require SATA boards, not firewire, although a few connect w/ Firewire 800. Neither is an option on a mini. If you look carefully, you’ll see most of the Firewire 400 RAID units tend to be raid 0 (striping), not Raid 1 (mirror), so they don’t really solve my problem well. The ones that do, along with the RAID systems with removable bays, tend to be significantly more expensive, than the third option — ultimately, I decided that extra expense wasn’t worth it.

My choice: Other World Computing has their Mercury Elite line of firewire drives that support drive sizes up to 750G, and have either one or two drives in them. The two-drive units use Software raid (softraid) to implement the RAID 1, and are pre-configured for RAID 1, so it’s plug and play. They come bundled with Softraid, so you can do other things as you want to.

I ended up buying the OWC Mercury Elite 500×2 with RAID1, plus a 500X1 unit to use as my off-site storage. I installed Softraid onto the mini, set it up to share the drive, and I’m currently using SuperDuper to back up the laptop to a sparse disk image over the net. Once that’s done, I’ll automate updating it nightly, and do the same to the other machines here at home.

The cost of the 500X2 & %00X1 with bundled raid software: ~$900. To create an equivalent with Wiebetech’s RAID systems (with hot swap and etc) would have run closer to $1600. network appliances that would support a 500G network drive in RAID 1 with the ability to roll a third unit for offsite start about $1600 as well, and keep going up from there. That $700 would pay for more drives, if I wanted to keep rotating units offsite.

My long-term goal here, though, is to roll off-site backups over the net, to S3 or some other network storage service. The initial 400Gig upload might be painful (or very painful, or extremely painful), but after that, it wouldn’t necessarily be so bad; You’d want to mount it as a file partition and update the sparseimages via Superduper, not update the backed-up RAID drive. I’m just not sure the technology is quite ready for that, and I’m still investigating what the real costs are in terms of storage charges and network upload charges — but my chickenscratch numbers indicate hauling physical disks offsite wins as far as costs go, even though a bit less convenient.

But I expect that to change, and that’s another reason not to invest in hot-swap RAID bays and stuff; I’m not too far from where that dual drive firewire unit will be my backup drive, and only touched for restores, or to replace a failed drive.And with RAID 1, that’s merely annoying, not a serious problem.

And it’s a setup that’s very resistance to problems caused by, say, upgrading to Leopard. All I need do is hold off upgrading the mini until softraid is updated and stable — no worry about the retrospect client or server software compatibility.

Given the sheer amount of data in a house these days, the only practical backup is to another disk. The only practical way to back up a backup on disk is via RAID 1. And ultimately, the way to protect the entire house is to copy that backup somewhere else.

This new backup setup, once I have the machines configured to do nightly backups, does all of that but the offsite component. I expect to do that manually, but it’s firewire plugs and quick configurations via the softraid gui, so it’s simple and fast. So it’s more likely to actually BE DONE. and everything is stored in ways that can be accessed by Mac OS X without special programs or tools.

What’s lost by removing Retrospect from the mix? The only significant thing are snapshots over time: Laurie and I talked that over, and the answer to the question “when was the last time we actually had to go find a copy of that Word file from last tuesday?” was “I don’t remember”, so in reality, it’s a minor thing we can easily live without. So we will. That’s probably a job for Subversion, if you really care…

One other nice thing about this setup: it scales. If I fill up this 500g, I can add another. and another, and re-arrange what machines backup where without having to completely redo the backups. With the RAID bay units, network disks, you’re scaling options are more limited, and generally limited to “add another unit”, which given the costs, adds up over time.

All in all, I think I met most of my requirements pretty well — and more importantly, set things up to not need any significant work for a few years moving forward. I’m very satisfied with the design. Now we’ll see how it plays in real life….

Have your wine, and weight loss too – That’s Fit

Have your wine, and weight loss too – That’s Fit:

If wine with dinner has always been on your list of “guilty pleasures,” you’ve probably been happy with all the good press wine has been getting lately in regards to health benefits. A new book, The Wine Lover’s Healthy Weight Loss Plan by Dr. Tedd Goldfinger and Chef Lynn Nicholson, is focused on helping people get the benefits of wine as part of a healthy lifestyle.

Well, I was going for the tofu turkey, but if you insist….

Daring Fireball: Pinprick

Daring Fireball: Pinprick:

Here’s the Gruber Theory of Software Pricing, in a nutshell:

Don’t underprice your software in an attempt to appeal to cheapskates.

I realize I’m late to the discussion here, but I had to put in my two pennies:

Remember: Michael Spindler tried this. It was called the Performa. Remember how that turned out?

If you price things so they seem to have no value, people will treat them as if they had no value.

And most people who tell you they didn’t buy it because it was too expensive were lying: that’s an easy out. If you cut the price, most of them will STILL not buy it, and either find some other easy lie, or stop returning your emails instead of be honest.

Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: Socialtext Proposes Attribution Provision

Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: Socialtext Proposes Attribution Provision:

The decision to open is easier for vendors than it was just a few years ago because of the common practice of Mozilla Public License-based licenses by companies such as SugarCRM, Zimbra, Alfresco, Scalix and about 10 others. MPL is the most popular OSI license and it allows for extensions (MPL section 6.1 says “However, You may include an additional document offering the additional rights described in Section 3.5.” Section 3.5 ensure that the modifications must apply equally to every developer or contributor.).

Good thing too, because in my humble opinion no other licenses are a fit for commercial open source web applications.

For Socialtext, we made three modifications…

(interesting notes on licensing issues)

Mike Kruckenberg: MySQL Cluster Setup, in a Single Screenshot

Mike Kruckenberg: MySQL Cluster Setup, in a Single Screenshot:

Have been meaning to post about the cluster setup I’m using for *functional* testing (not appropriate for performance testing or production environments).

The gist is that I’m using Parallels on OS X, running 4 nodes (1 management, 2 & 3 storage, 4 SQL) on 4 virtual machines. Each machine has between 128Mb and 256Mb of allocated RAM which isn’t much for a cluster, but is as much as I can give from the 2Gb on the MacBook Pro. Each virtual machine has a version of MySQL 5.1.12 compiled from source. Actually, I built one VM with the compiled and installed source and then cloned that for the other 3 machines. The preferred flavor of Linux for these is Ubuntu server.

Idaho Zamboni drivers fired after trip to fast-food drive-thru

Idaho Zamboni drivers fired after trip to fast-food drive-thru:

Two employees have been fired from the city’s ice skating rink after making a midnight fast-food run – in a pair of Zambonis.

The ice-groomer jockeys, both temporary city employees whose names and ages weren’t released by Boise Parks and Recreation, had to negotiate at least one intersection with a traffic light on their late-night creep from Idaho Ice World.

An anonymous caller who alerted a telephone hot line set up by Boise Mayor Dave Bieter was gassing up his car at a nearby service station at about 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 10 when he saw the Zambonis roll through a Burger King drive-through, order food, and then return to the skating rink.

A big “what were you THINKING?” goes out to our newly unemployed fans in Boise….

(but who hasn’t fantasized…..)

Hockey thanks

It’s thanksgiving in the states, and this year, I especially feel there are many reasons to be thankful:

I am thankful that George Gund was willing to bring the NHL to San Jose, a choice that was a lot riskier in the eyes of many at the time than it turned out to be. And I’m thankful that Greg Jamison came on board, and steered this franchise forward towards both success on the ice and profitability.

I’m thankful that both the owners and the players finally sat down and got serious about fixing the financial problems in the league. And I’m even more thankful that, while not a perfect solution, it’s made things better and more stable.

I’m thankful that the league got serious about making this a league for talent and not violent pylons. And again, while it’s not perfect, it’s a damn bit better than it was.

I”m thankful that hockey in San Jose has given myself and Laurie something we could do together and enjoy together, something that more or less acts as glue to our relationship. I am VERY thankful to be able to enjoy sports without guilt, because I know my partner enjoys them at least as much as I do.

I”m thankful that hockey has allowed us to meet folks like Vickie, and Jeff and Alanah, who’ve made our lives more interesting and fun by being a part of it (and in the case of J&A, fed our addiction to things paper and inked)

This year I’m especially grateful for these things this year. You might have noticed that there’s been a relative shortage of postings from me recently, and an absolute lack of postings from Laurie despite this being a blog for both of us. We had to put Laurie on the Injured Reserve for a bit (to quote our favorite Darryl Sutter playoff-time injury report parody: he’s pregnant, and we’re listing him day to day). While she’s not quite ready for a regular shift yet, she has promised me she’ll start getting involved again and getting some of her hockey thoughts and photos posted (or I’ll hack into her Mac and post them for her). And the fact that we’ll have this thanksgiving together, and many more into the future, makes me most thankful of all.

Deflexion.com: Why I Do This

Deflexion.com: Why I Do This:

So why do I do this?

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“I don’t know how often readers thank you for your work, but you’re a tremendous resource for those of us who’d like to become more advanced in managing our information flow, and your posts concerning the future of ‘feeds’ have opened my eyes to the possibilities available now as well as what might emerge in the future.

“You’ve been well ahead of the curve in thinking about the future of information streams. I look forward to keeping up with developments through your site.”

So, thank you to everyone who has sent me thanks, to everyone who puts up with my very slow (sometimes infinitely slow) responses to email, and to everyone who participates in the world wide web of discussions.

PS: I agree with Meg Goodrich who said that “none of it was really for money.”

Nancy speaks for me here, also. Some of the details are different — the the message is very much what I was considering writing, only I wouldn’t have written it as well.

The Apple Post-Mortem series

When I left Apple, I started a series of articles as kind of a post-mortem and view on things that I really shouldn’t have gotten into when I was an employee. As those things go, I ran out of interest in writing it before I ran out of things to write.

Left unsaid are three more topics:

Part 6: Should Apple blog?

Part 7: The Marketshare “problem”, (aka, damn you, Mike spindler, or why Apple’s Marketshare only matters to analysts you shouldn’t listen to anyway)

Part 8: Where Apple fits into the big picture.

And at this point, I’m frankly more interested in looking forward instead of looking backward, so I felt it made sense to just close the loop and mark this series done (but not complete) and move on. If you disagree — well, let me know and convince me to carry on. Me, I’m looking into 2007 for the launch (finally) of the Outsider’s Guide, and spending more time on my hockey writing and my photography, and Apple is probably happier if I just stop digging up skeletons, no matter how minor and trivial.

And while we had a big mosh pit over my comments on Apple’s blogging policy (and lack of one), it just reinforced to me that so much of the blogosphere is a self-reinforcing echo chamber, with people not really interested in hearing or learning, but merely making sure everything that gets said gets interpreted to reinforce what they already feel like thinking, or gets ridiculed and ignored. In that way, Blogging has turned very much into USENET of old, only with CSS formatting and moving pictures; the technology changes, the human interactions don’t. Sometimes, it seems blogging isn’t so much the conversation pro-blogging advocates want to promote it as as it is a bunch of people lecturing, all in the same lecture room with microphones. Everyone talking, nobody listening.

Of course, that’s unfair. There’s also a strong group of folks who ARE actually interested in discussing and thinking — but sometimes, it’s hard to hear them through the noise of the “loudest blogger wins” group. If people care about those topics, I can be convinced.

The executive summary of part 6, though, is worth a couple of paragraphs:

Should Apple have a blogging policy? In my mind, definitely, even though I could never convince the folks who needed to agree of that. One reason is simple: a standardized blogging policy would put all employees on the same footing, and it’d be understood what was acceptable and what wasn’t. As it stands, this decision often is made by a direct manager, or perhaps one or two levels up, and different parts of the company create restrictions (some of them very strict) well beyond the intent of the existing policies, and in some areas, in ways that significantly poach into Apple employee’s personal lives and personal time, which I feel is inappropriate (many areas of Apple retail, the brick and mortar part, simply outlaw employee blogs in any way — not just talking company stuff, but talking about anything, including Aunt Jenny’s wedding. That, I think, is excessive, and the reason I felt a blogging policy was needed in the first place. At the same time, however, I think that blogging policy, while making personal blogs acceptable, should clearly put “shop talk” out of bounds, unless blogging about Apple is part of your formal job description. This would (more or less) keep Apple’s blogging reality to the status quo, while making it explicit that non-work blogging is okay — and that’s the balance I think is needed and appropriate at Apple. As it is, Apple employees that want to blog personally simply hide their affiliation, which I think is silly, but in the current environment, necessary.

And should Apple blog? Absolutely, but not in a way that Scoble would promote or consider acceptable. I certainly wouldn’t create blogs.apple.com and open it to all employees the way Sun has — the situations are different — but I’d want to have a blogging system that execs and product managers and people who ARE allowed to be company spokesbeasts in a formal way could use as a communication channel. this is the path I think Dave Hyatt was trying to blaze with his safari stuff, but I don’t think the Apple culture was really capable of embracing it, and Apple management just doesn’t seem to understand how this can be used to advantage — or if they do, didn’t make it any priority to get done.

ohwell. At this point, it’s probably opportunity lost for Apple. I’d still argue “better late than never”, but Apple is definitely missing out on some significant and substantial changes in how people communicate and how companies interact with their customers; here’s hoping they don’t guess wrong and open a market opportunity to a competitor by not doing this.

I will also, just to close this all out, talk about one time when I brought all this up — waiting for a meeting on some subject I don’t recall with some apple managers from various parts of the company, and a couple of Apple’s finest legal beagles, we were basically shooting the breeze waiting for a couple of others who live in the Apple “chronically late” time distortion field (the one in which, despite best of intentions and hard work, all meetings start at 10 after the hour, because everyone is so chronically over-scheduled that they simply can’t get from meeting to meeting in time, because every meeting ends up running the full hour and so many people are booked back to back to back) — and blogging came up as a discussion point.

And I suggested that we have Steve blog. Silence in the room, followed by a few muffled giggles.

But think about it. Is there one person in the universe, who, if they blogged, every person on the internet would read? Imagine the ability of Steve to create a buzz, push a product, set up a marketing program, create an agenda. He could, merely by saying “hello”, give half the internet the vapors, and the other half heartburn.

you’ve seen Steve with the keynote bully pulpit he uses a few times a year. Imagine Steve with the bully pulpit of “Steve’s blog”, available any time he felt like talking about something — Apple or no.

The folks I tossed it at agreed it was a powerful idea, but couldn’t decide if it was one of powerful genius or merely an insane one. The one thing everyone was unanimous about was that they’d die before suggesting it to him.

And they’re probably right — but man, I always felt that would have been such a fun hack. Steve unplugged. Or maybe Steve unfiltered. Is the world ready for it? (is Steve?)

but I guess we’ll never know. As the folks in that meeting who worked directly with Steve all agreed: “Never happen”. But they said so with that look on their faces that indicated they saw the possibilities too — and the risks.

one week in….

I’m one week in at work, and starting to settle in. So far, nobody’s figured out I’m a fraud….

Seriously, what’s to talk about? I spent the week starting to figure out XP (not a huge issue), going over product documentation, meeting and talking to people, and scoping out what makes sense to start getting involved in. I’ve started my first project, which may be the basis of a white paper down the road.

I’m happy to note that the positives that made me choose this position: the challenge, the people, the situation and opportunity, and the people, have all turned out to be what I thought they’d be. I’m also (not so) happy to note that the negatives I expected from the position are about what I expected — and the one that matters is the commute, since I’m now driving from Santa Clara to Redwood City every day instead of up Homestead to Cupertino. 101 is acceptable non-commute, but anyone sneezes and it falls apart, so I’ve pretty much decided to use 280, cut over on the 92, and back down to the Oracle towers (my new place is in the shadow of Oracle in Redwood Shores….); more mileage than direct up 101, but not only consistently faster, but pretty consistent.

The other negative are bay area drivers in the commute. I’ve made the commute six times now, and I’ve had to deal with 12 tons of gravel closing all but one lane, I’ve been in the delay caused by one major accident (three fire trucks, two two trucks and an ambulance when I drove by) — all for an accident in the opposite direction, where everyone else simply slowed down to gawk. Except for the four cars that didn’t; they were in lane 2 waiting for tow trucks.

That was one of two sets of read enders that I’ve seen this last week, each one at least three cars. Let’s add in the person driving at least 85 while weaving through traffic going up the 280 north — and reading the newspaper spread out across his steering wheel WHILE TALKING TO A PHONE HELD TO HIS EAR. The car from North Carolina that magically decided it wanted my lane while I happened to be in it, And I won’t even get into the red light runners and the right turn has the right of way people, and the “no turn on red doesn’t apply to me” folks. And just for fun, today, we had someone who got a bit confused on Marine parkway, and was coming west in the left lane of the eastbound lanes because they evidently didn’t realize the road had a planted center divider. or the person who almost nailed them because they weren’t paying attention.

Defensive driving is one thing, but… it looks like paranoid driving is needed. Or something. Because commutes make people stupid around here — and the worst trick is a really stupid one: when you hit a traffic slowdown, as soon as it breaks free, floor it and try to make up all that lost time. Which is one of the ways those rear-enders I’m constantly seeing happens (the other is not noticing the slowdown of folks waiting in line to look at the accident in the lanes in the opposite direction, probably because they’re too busy talking on the phone, eating, reading the newspaper, shaving, or putting on their makeup. Or maybe playing the flute….)

And we’re just heading into the rainy season where the traffic REALLY gets squirrely. ohboy… I’d slow down and put more space between me and the person in front of me, but I’ve learned that’s merely an invitation for some OTHER idiot to change lanes in front of me and eat the space up….

So far, so good.

Problems I think Apple should fix and challenges Apple faces (Apple Post-mortem, part 9 of some number…..)

Previous episodes:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Over here, I suggested that my “Apple post-mortem” series was going to be eight parts, and this is part 5.

But the more I thought about it, the more I came to the feeling that this part just isn’t something I want to pursue right now.

To be blunt: Apple is executing really well, and it’s product line and revenues and general financial heallth are close to perfect. To me, most kvetching about where Apple is screwed up would sound like, and probably be, sour grapes. There isn’t a lot to kvetch about.

And the issues I had originally thought to mention here I discussed with various management types before I left; and the more I think about it, the more I think it’s best to let them chew on it internally and hopefully make the changes and not give people who are ready to criticize Apple fodder they don’t really understand in a forum where I’d rather not go into detail.

So if you were waiting for a good catfight, sorry. Most of what I’d bring up is trivial and silly, and the few issues with substance are in the hands of people who agree with me about the issues and I trust to do what they can about them, and blogging them serves no useful purpose. So for once I’ll keep my mouth shut and let them work on it from the inside.

New toys!

I celebrated the new job (and not needing to live off the savings as long as I’d planned for) by buying some new toys — a Canon D30 body for myself, and one for Laurie (since she just celebrated a birthday). That gives us both two-body Canon setups, so I can use one on the 100-400, and the Rebel (usually) on the 17-85 EF IS. I also upgraded my tripod, but I plan on talking about that later.

I’ve only had a chance to take the new body out for a quick spin. A few photos are available here:

As usual, I decided to be cautious and so I went out with the 100-400 and a 1.4x tele, so I was doing a lot of photography at F/8 or worse and having to manually focus — and a number of the shots show a focus that’s not quite right, a softness I need to work on. On the other hand, I’m trying to take photos of small moving things a football field away using a monopod…. But I know I can do better.

My initial reaction: I always felt the Rebel XT was a solid, well-built body. The 30D on the other hand, seems, well, armored. It’s about half a pound heavier and sits slightly larger in the hand, but at the same point, is quite comfortable. It feels like you can throw it off a building — or at a grizzly — and pick it up and use it. Unless the grizzly swallows it (carry a washcloth, just in case). Looking through the viewfinder seems significantly brighter, which makes focusing easier in low light or with long, slow lenses (not that the above photos are great examples…). Fastest shutter moves from 1/4000 to 1/8000, which I’m sure makes all you hummingbird shooters happy. It has two fast-shot speeds, 3FPS and 5FPS. The 5FPS rate is almost scary — time to buy bigger compactflash cards. It also will take more shots in a row before filing the buffer, from five on the Rebel XT to 7 or 9 depending. It also comes with flash sync.

My initial feel is that exposure on the D30 is more accurate than the Rebel XT; I came to feel that my idea of proper exposure and the Rebel’s were off by about 3/4 of a stop (overexposed). To me, the D30 seems less contrasty (in a good way), but it’s way early to make any definitive statement — I haven’t made definitive tests yet. I’m shooting raw, and it’s also hard to tell hwo much of this is the camera and how much Aperture’s RAW converter differences between the two bodies; I’ll have to do some testing in JPEG, too. Overall, I’d say that what I’m seeing indicates a wider dynamic range, and a somewhat warmer rendition — both in a good way.

Overall, I’m really impressed. Still reading the manual (gasp. Yes, I do that) and figuring out how I want to set it up. Maybe I’ll get out for a walk tomorrow and take it through its paces.

Why the 30D? I seriously considered the 5D — but that was simply more money than I wanted to spend, and since I own some EF lenses, moving to a full-sized sensor would imply updating those, also. And for where I am and what I’m doing today, the 30d seemed to be the best value; buying a second Rebel body (XT+ or XTi) would have given me a second body, but wasn’t really an upgrade, and the cost was only a few hundred dollars.

So we shall see how it works out as I have time to put it through its paces. But my initial response is very positive.

Edge Sharpening All Images Technique – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog

Edge Sharpening All Images Technique – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog:

It’s true that I Edge Sharpen all my images (because I shoot RAW and all RAW files need sharpening), but I failed to go into detail as to how exactly I do it. Here are the steps to Edge Sharpening (or applying any adjustment/adjustments) to all images in an album.

1. Select the first thumbnail in the album

2. Apply the adjustment(s) to that image

3. Click the Lift-Stamp tool

4. Click the adjusted image to “lift” the adjustments

5. Click on the second thumbnail in the album to “stamp” the adjustment(s) to that image

6. Scroll all the way to the end of the album and Shift-Click the last thumbnail to apply (stamp) the adjustment(s) to that image and every image in between that one and the second one in the album.

More discussion on the Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams

Two for Elbowing: Off Wing Opinion: The Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams:

Saw the hit on TV. Painful to watch — and legal. Just as it’s painful to watch stevens on lindros.

After the game, we were watching TSN, and there was discussion about how the league needs to do something about injury causing hits.

you know what? NO THEY DON’T. Not unless you want to turn it into ringette.

There’s been ongoing talk about the Torres hit. A couple of postings I wanted to point people to to read…

Tom Benjamin has some useful detail on what Bob McKenzie and Bobby Orr have been saying. I even agree with his ultimate position:

Tom Benjamin’s NHL Weblog: More Caution, More Control:

I’d argue that it is the emotion and the recklessness that is a huge part of what makes the game compelling and exciting. It is the emotion and the recklessness that delivers up the game’s physicality.

More control? More caution? That is probably what is required to deal with this specific problem, but it is also the last thing this league now needs.

At the same time, Bobby Orr DOES have a point: touch a guy with your stick, take a penalty. Mash a guy with your shoulder pad, take a bow. There is a discrepancy here. The league has decided to get serious about head shots — except when it doesn’t.

Now, is this a problem that requires fixing? I’m not so sure. But I think it’s worthy of further discussion.

Christy has a really nice, deep piece on facial safety that deserves reading:

Behind the Jersey » Facial safety in the NHL:

The following post was a paper for my Argumentative Writing class. Paul at Kukla’s Korner posted it to his blog as a Guest Post, but I wanted to add it to Behind the Jersey for the archives.

On February 24, 2006, a deflected puck hit American Hockey League (AHL) defenseman Jordan Smith in the eye. Surgeons were unable to save the damaged eye, which was cut, ending the defenseman’s promising career and consequently Smith now wears a prosthetic (Higgins). In addition to the eye injury, Smith also suffered multiple orbital bone fractures (Wykes). This career ending injury resulted in the AHL requiring all of its players to wear a partial visor. The National Hockey League (NHL) is now the last of the professional or junior leagues in North American to offer its players a choice in regards to whether or not they wear a partial visor. The only proven way to lower the number of serious eye and facial injuries among NHL players would be through a league-wide mandate requiring players to wear at least partial visors.

Unfortunately, the league CAN’T mandate visors. Visors are safety equipment, and that requirement is negotiated as part of the CBA, and to date, the NHL Players Association has stonewalled any attempt at requiring visors. This is one circumstance where you can’t blame the league or Bettman, it’s the players doing it to themselves. On the other hand, the referees did away with the grandfather clause in the new CBA, so they’re all wearing helmets now, and after two injuries and a few more really close calls already this season, have been talking to the league about adding a visor requirement to NHLOA members.

Orr’s view basically, is that any hit to the head should be penalized. This has been implemented this year in the OHL, and league officials say it hasn’t reduced hits or hit intensity. My initial response was “I can live with that”, but when you stop to think about it, it has problems. First, the NHL already has some serious issues with diving and fakery to draw penalties, and they haven’t remotely gotten the problem under control. Now, add in a new rule where any time a player gets hit in the head, it’s two minutes (or more). There are easily a dozen players at serious risk of whiplash from their faking of headshots when they think the ref will only see the movement and not the entire play, trying to draw penalties. You also have the problem of size mismatch: what does a rule like this mean to Chris Pronger or Zdeno Chara? Doesn’t it put them at a disadvantage just for being the size they are?

So I can’t support any kind of “head is completely off-limits” penalty. It creates new problems and I’m not sure it solves the old ones.

Instead, I suggest that INTENTIONAL hits to the head be made a penalty. We’ve all seen guys come in elbows up, aiming for the earhole. That’s the kind of hit we need to stop; if we also start penalizing shots that slide off the shoulder, we’re just asking to scrwe up the physicality of the game. It’s a judgement call, and not always an easy one, but what I’d suggest is:

1) new penalty for hit to the head: two minutes to a player that hits another player in the head, and the referee feels the head was the target of the hit. If a hit starts on the shoulder and slides onto the head, that’s not a penalty, nor if a player ducks into the hit (similar to, at least in theory, hits from behind and boarding where a player turns his back on a hit to draw a penalty). For blatant versions, an “intent to injure” 5 minute major with game misconduct can be called.

2) this call is subject to post-game review by the league. When the league reviews a game, it can designate a hit as either a 2 minute or 5 minute hit to the head, even if the referee didnt’ call it. In the case of a penalty called after the game, it would be a fine, and an escalating suspension (1 game for the 2nd, 2 for the 3rd, etc); for a major, it’d be a fine and a suspension for the first, and escalating from there. All open to the league appeal process, by the way.

and honestly? I think the league should re-do its rules to allow for more post-game discipline. Right now, diving is handled with a fine that’s ignored, and a “letter of shame” that’s laughed at. Now that technology is there for the league office to tape and review all games — let them, and let them act as an “eye in the sky” for certain penalties that get missed by the referees. I suggest: hits to the head, high sticking, diving, any penalty that warrants a major penalty, and anything decided to be “intent to injure”. The penalty meted out for something called post-game would be the fine and the escalating suspension.

A lot of the dirty play that happened when there was only one referee has gone by the wayside, but not all. Taking it that next step, and meting out a penalty that will cause the COACH to “encourage” the player to cut it out is needed — and that means suspensions, not fines. And if it takes adding a Voice of God component to reffing to stop some of the stupid play that goes on, and put some teeth into fighting diving on the ice, I’m all for it. Better that than simply say “no hits to the head”, which won’t significantly make the game safer, but merely open it up to even more abuse by the divers and actors.

Fraser Speirs – The meaning of five stars

Fraser Speirs – The meaning of five stars:

I was thinking a bit about the five-star rating system that Apple provides in iPhoto and Aperture, and how the problem of image retrieval rather depends on your future self and former self agreeing about the quality of images. Over time, I’ve found myself being very inconsistent about rating images.

In the first case, I now consider myself to have been very generous in the past. I guess this is inevitable as one’s standards are raised. Images I’ve rated 5 in the past, I would now give 2 or 3 at most. However, I think there’s a better way to look at star ratings than just “this 4-star image is 80% of what I consider awesome”, and for this clarification in my thinking, I must credit James Duncan Davidson, on the O’Reilly Aperture Blog.

Award-winning Inuit artist lets viewers glimpse pain of her past

Award-winning Inuit artist lets viewers glimpse pain of her past:

An upcoming Art Gallery of Alberta show will feature a selection of cutting-edge contemporary drawing work by Inuit artist Annie Pootoogook, winner of the 2006 Sobey Prize.

Pootoogook, 37, is the third winner of the $50,000 biennial award, one of the richest cash prizes in the Canadian art world. It was awarded Wednesday in Montreal.

The Inuit artist is known for her raw and psychologically complex images, including drawings of herself being abused as a child.

Create Your Own White Balance Presets – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog

Create Your Own White Balance Presets – O’Reilly Digital Media Blog:

The process for building white balance presets in Aperture is quite simple. Start by entering a temperature/tint combination in the White Balance panel of the HUD – such as 5500K/10. Choose the “Save as Preset” from the pop-up menu and label it with the name you want, such as “Daylight.” Continue through your list of settings until you’ve entered all of your presets.

Nice hack. Be even nicer if Apple did this for users in the next update.

Off Wing Opinion: The Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams

Off Wing Opinion: The Raffi Torres Hit On Jason Williams:

Club spokesman John Hahn said later that Williams was “fine.” Hahn said X rays and a CAT scan showed no problems. He also said Williams might have lost consciousness briefly and suffered a cut on his forehead.

[....[

Williams may have suffered a concussion, but his main injury stemmed from his helmet taking the brunt of his impact on the ice. The pressure wave from a severe impact can cause the skin to basically peel apart at the juncture of helmet and forehead.

If he lost consciousness, he has a concussion, at least grade 1 — by definition. Now, is it serious? Not necessarily. Hopefully not, but losing consciousness is a basic symptom.

Saw the hit on TV. Painful to watch — and legal. Just as it’s painful to watch stevens on lindros.

After the game, we were watching TSN, and there was discussion about how the league needs to do something about injury causing hits.

you know what? NO THEY DON’T. Not unless you want to turn it into ringette. Hockey is a sport that is attractive for it’s combination of strength, speed, and finesse. It has a strong fan base who are attracted to the power and emotion of the game and its players. Some of the talking heads on TSN last night calling for the league to fix this are the same talking heads whining about how teh rule changes have taken the battle out of the slot and hamstrung defensemen’s ability to defend around the crease.

You can’t have it both ways. That an injury occurred doesn’t imply the hit was illegal or wrong. If you keep trying to make the game “safe”, you’ll simply drain the game of what makes it attractive to people. The players know, and we should realize, that injuries are part of the game. How players and teams react to them and compensate for them is a big aspect of the difference between a contender in October and a champion in April.

So you can’t keep this a fast, physical game AND take the injuries and big hits out of it. The league has to do what it can to make the game safe — but it can’t make the game safe, any more than Nascar can remove car crashes without destroying nascar. You have to do what you can to minimize them and their impact, while recognizing that they ARE part of the game. It’s a grey area, but life is grey, not black and white. The trick is finding the balance between “safe” and “boring”. You can kill the sport by moving too much in either direction.