Quick recommendation — ArtisanHD

This year for the holidays I decided to try something different with a couple of my gifts. Every year, I try to make christmas gifts for the family a little personal, and in the last few years, that’s meant something using my photos.

This year, rather than a standard framed print or a calendar, I had prints done via ArtisanHD on Plexiglas. It looked like an interesting, modern alternative to the standard matted print. These images in the 12×18 size (good for 11×14 prints) ran a bit over $50, and to be honest, I was blown away with how they looked.

If you’re looking for something different and memorable, with good quality, something that’s going to leave an impression — this is something you might want to consider. I liked the quality of the final product, I was very happy with the quality of the print, and in fact, I did one for myself, which is going up in my cube at work tomorrow, too. And I expect it’ll get people to come into the office and ask about it.

Definitely recommended.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

At November 21, 2011
By Chuq Von Rospach
In Living in Silicon Valley, Recommendations
2

I’ve finally finished Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs. Having worked at Apple through much of the time covered in the book, I was curious how my view of the time and events matched up with this — the official — version, and to try to get some perspective on the man behind all of this.

I’m happy (and a bit surprised) to say that I found nothing in the book that was demonstrably wrong compared to reality as I remembered it; this is no sanitized, “remember me fondly” hollywood bio; Steve seems to have played fair with Isaacson, and Isaacson played fair with Steve.

You get Steve unfiltered. The book brings clear a complex man; not easy to work with, but not evil. Just — insensitive. I can speak to many people who cursed having to deal with him at times; and after, loved him for having brought out the best in them along the way. The Steve in the book matches up well with the Steve I came to know through living in Silicon Valley and working at Apple. He was an exceptionally intelligent person, but more so, an exceptionally intuitive man who could make that jump directly from point A to the end point, and wasn’t afraid to take those leaps without endless masses of data to justify them. He was also right often enough that he was allowed to do this, even though this can be a scary way of operating to people who aren’t strongly intuitive.

And yet I found myself fighting to get through the book. Unlike some of Isaacson’s other works, this book feels flawed and somewhat lifeless.

I don’t think this is Isaacson’s fault. Unlike some of his other biographies (I especially loved his book on Franklin), the material here is new, it hasn’t been given the benefit of time to smooth off the raw edges or any chance at perspective and consideration that helps us understand what really matters in the essence of the man. I also get the feeling that since so many of the other people involved in this book are alive, Isaacson stepped carefully through various minefields; it feels like there are punches being pulled, that people are being careful — but may not even realize it’s happening. The frustration that Bill Gates showed at some of the comments Steve made is one place where this breaks through, but even there, I think both sides watch their words, knowing posterity was watching, and I think that “carefulness” invades many of the relationships in the book.

That’s inevitable in a book like this, and I’m not criticizing Isaacson for it. I do feel like he was still grappling with the material, still really trying to get his head around the material and Steve and how to write the book, and the end result is that parts of the book, especially later parts, are missing the perspective and analysis I expect from this author. This is a book that would have been better suited to a year of incubation, giving him more of a chance to ponder and polish.

It is, however, a massive and fascinating source of material about Steve, Apple, and Silicon Valley at a seminal time where the people and companies here changed society in so many ways.

My criticisms here are minor — give the book a B-, maybe (where I’d give the Franklin book an easy A-). If you’re at all interested in what has gone on behind the keynotes and product introductions, then this is a definite read for you. But there’s a bigger, better book on Silicon Valley and Steve to be writen, but one that is going to need five or ten years for us to understand Steve in the larger context and let time help us see him after time salves some of the raw emotions so many of us have felt in the last few months.

This is a good book, but not a great book. It is, I think, the best book Isaacson could have written right now, and it’s definitely worth your time (but also go grab the Franklin book, to see Isaacson at his best).

(addendum, added later, but before publication:

One thing that struck me in reading the book was Jobs saying he wanted the book to exist so his kids could read about him and learn who he was. In similar situations, very few of us would think to call up Walter Isaacson and tell him to write our biography. Steve did (and Walter did, because he’s Steve, and this is an important book about an important person). But it seems to me there’s a deeper meaning to this; while most of us would solve this problem by sitting down with our kids and talking, at some level, Steve realized he couldn’t, that he just wasn’t wired that way. I also get the impression that because he insisted on this book being honest, and his flaws weren’t hidden or glossed over, that at some level this book was in Steve’s way also a way of acknowledging he wasn’t the greatest father in the world, and in the kind of act only someone like Steve would do, apologizing to his kids for being what he was, in public. And I think that sums up the Steve we’re seeing in the book: a very complex person who both had flaws and recognized them — but couldn’t overcome them. He was who he was. And he couldn’t just sit down with his kids and explain himself or say I’m sorry. But he could stand up in a very public display and do that — which if you think about it, is a very powerful way to show that you really mean it when you say “i’m sorry” for being what he was to them.)

planning a shot list for the trip

One of the things I’ve been doing leading up to this trip is figure out what I want to accomplish while I’m on the road. Yosemite is one of those places you can just point the camera in random directions and press the shutter and end up with good images, but a little thought and planning can leverage that time and push forward other initiatives as well.

In previous trips I’ve focused more on the grand imagery of the park, classic shots and classic locations. This trip I want to try to spend more time looking at Yosemite on a smaller scale — the trees, not the forest, so to speak.

All of this is open to change based on weather and opportunity, but here’s my current thinking. I’m looking to spend three nights there, with a room in Mariposa. I could have gotten a room at Wawona (and I like that hotel) but I’d rather spend the money other ways, so I’ll drive a bit more and spend a lot less. Yosemite Lodge at the falls was full, as was Yosemite View Lodge at El Portal, and Cedar lodge had rooms but for a bit less money, it seemed to make sense to stay in Mariposa. Because the hotel situation looks opretty busy, I expect the park to be fairly busy, unlike my stays in February and March when most of the visitors are up at Badger Pass, but far from the crowds you get after Memorial Day.

Day 0 is driving in; I’m considering doing a birding trip through San Benito county to get into central valley, and arriving later in the day. It would be a good excuse to show up with a cold dinner and hang out at tunnel view, weather cooperating. Or down somewhere on the meadows looking for opportunities for classic landscapes.

Day 1 is the first full day. Expectation is to get up rather early and get out on the road to Hetch Hetchy, exploring the Mather and Foresta areas. An early start gives me a better shot at wildlife, get there before other folks are up and around, and that area should be quiet in any event, so the wildlife won’t be driven out of site by the crowds. That’s an area Ic an look for mountain quail and cassin’s finch and interesting woodpeckers, also good opportunities for mule deer and coyote. If I get lucky, maybe fox, maybe bobcat. we’ll see. but the trick is to get out there early for the mammals, explore hetch hetchy, slow trip back looking for birds, and be back on the valley floor for a late lunch. The afternoon and evening is for exploring the valley floor.

Day 2, I go out the other direction. don’t need to start as early, but I want to explore big trees. On the way back, I want to try to do some photography of the Wawona Inn and see what happens. When I’m done, again it’s on the valley floor.

Day 3, hopefully a pre-dawn start and onto the valley floor for early wildlife. I expect to spend most of the morning exploring Happy Isles area. I’m not sure my knee’s going to let me go out to Mirror Lake, but if I can, I will.

Things I specifically want to shoot include the chapel, the Ahwannee, Wawona Inn, and exploring around the Merced River. Instead of the iconic vista landscapes, I want to focus more on smaller, intimate ones, do more work with the macro lens, and work a lot more in the 70-120mm range. I’m hoping for blooming dogwood, but we’ll see what I have when I get there. I’ve got half a dozen birds on my list (the two above, white-faced woodpecker, pileated, mountain chickadee, and golden crowned kinglet) plus wahtever is in the area for spring. Bears are always on the list is opportunity safely arrives, but I’m hoping I can find a bobcat and I’m fairly confident I’ll find coyotes. Mule deer are a given…

I’ll be taking along both flashes and light stands and umbrellas, and my copy of Syl Arena’s Speedliter’s Handbook because I’ve been intending to start working on my flash technique, and if I don’t push myself to actually start, I never will. And this seems to tie in with my hopeful plan to work with my macro lens… Or maybe it’ll just sit in the trunk and mock me…

And of course, as soon as I get there, I’m sure this will change… And of course, it’s waterfall season there, and I’d be an idiot to ignore them. But I don’t want to just go take new versions of the images I’ve already taken…

Stuff You’ll Like

(I’m changing the format for Stuff You’ll Like; it was getting too long and I wasn’t really adding much value. Instead, I’m now making interesting “stuff” available via sharing in my Google news reader. You can subscribe to that feed via RSS, or you can follow it via Google Buzz through my Google Profile. I’ll post a few highlights from that feed, as well as some favorite photos from flickr and elsewhere and interesting web sites here so I can focus on a few things I think deserve the attention, and let Buzz and Google reader distribute the larger set of interesting things that I find. Hat tip to Mark Williamson for the hint I was looking for on how I wanted to manage this set of data…)

Here are some highlights of the things I’ve found this week I think you’ll find interesting.

Interesting links

Matt Hill: Balancing your marketing. What’s the best mix?
PetaPixel: Useful tool for looking up the EXIT data of online photographs
Tim O’Reilly: Putting Online Privacy in Perspective
The Online Photographer: Letter to George
ARS Technica: Apple opens iBookstore to self-publishers
Ethan Marcotte: Responsive Web Design
Trey Ratcliffe: Why I don’t use watermarks (I’m starting to lean more in this direction myself)
Cameron Moll: 7 things I wish I had known about jQuery
Christian Crumlish: Designing for Play slides from WebVisions 2010

Interesting photos