Half Moon Bay Kid: 1/2000s f/4.0 ISO200 200mm +1ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

One post a month is a little sparse, don’t you think? I’ve been very busy, but did get a chance to break a lens and get some great beach photos at Half Moon Bay.

I broke my 50mm f/1.8, aka the Nifty Fifty. It’s a cheap, plastic lens, at $70, but it’s the fastest I have and it takes great picures, so that’s a loss. I left it on a table top with my camera, picked up my camera, and knocked it to the floor with the strap. It landed on the lens cap and pushed it in a way. No obvious damage done, but it’s wrecked. At apertures wider than about f/5.6 there is a noticeable halo, and at f/1.8 the images are a ghastly smear. Something inside has been jarred and is no longer aligned. I took it apart, but the construction is such that there really isn’t anything to fix. Worth sending to Canon?


Half Moon Bay Surfer 6: 1/4000s f/3.5 ISO200 200mm +0.7ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

Half Moon Bay had surfers testing the waves. I really needed a longer lens (or a 1.4x teleconverter), but my 200 did pretty well. There was lots of light and I could take short exposures at low ISO. I particularly like the lack of aberrations taking photos with a lot of contrast, like the one below.


Half Moon Bay Surfer 1: 1/6400s f/4.0 ISO200 200mm +1ev, Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS

I took almost all the photos with +1ev, and in many cases simply went manual in order to prevent the reflections from causing the metering to change the exposure as I tracked across the bright reflections.

The lens I think I want to replace the 50 is the 85mm f/1.8. I borrowed one for WWDC this year and liked it very much. Light, much smaller and lighter than the 70-200, and great at wide apertures. But I need the economy to get a little better (or at least my economy) before I buy any new toys.

Tags: Blogging, Lenses, Canon, Broken

I’m doing some work for a small Silicon Valley start-up that’s in a very atypical Silicon Valley kind of business: franchising. Part of the work involves writing a company blog called “Hard Focus”.

The company is SightMind and they sell institutional networked video surveillance camera installation franchises. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but describes it well. If you buy a SightMind franchise, you get the right to use the name and business systems in your own business. Think of Jiffy Lube, or MacDonald’s. Those are both national franchises with independently run and operated locations, each using the name and systems of the franchisor. That’s mainly why you go there: you know the name and you know you’ll get what you expect for the price you expect.

IP video cameras are everywhere now -- you can add them to your home and hook them up to your PC at low cost -- but there is no national company installing them. Who you gonna call? Joe-Bob’s Alarm and Fire down the street? While there are plenty of small, local installers, there are none with a national brand, none that focus exclusively on digital networked cameras, and none that are selling solely to educational, industrial, and government customers. These customers have very specific needs, and as the world switches from analog CCTV to IP networked cameras, they are looking for a known, reliable company to understand them, do the installation, and maintain the system for many years. Hence the business.

The fist blog entry is “Six Sure Signs That The IP Video Surveillance Industry Is Still In Its Infancy”.

Tags: Video, Surveillance, SightMind, Blogging, Franchising, Security

I’m spending more and more time with my MacBook and less and less with my iMac these days. Since RapidWeaver lives on my iMac, that means less blogging (it’s been almost a month!). I have a lot of data external to RapidWeaver in my blog and that makes it tricky to move to the laptop without breaking things.

Another reason for the lack of blogging is that I have been using Twitter more and more, as, it seems, many of the people who have blogs that I follow. Lost your favorite blogger? Look on Twitter. They are all there. Some, like Wil Shipley, take it to extremes. And do check out the many fake people, such as Fake Sarah Palin.

And suddenly my MacBook has developed a crack:

It started on the right and went leftwards until the sliver of plastic stuck up in the air and I had to remove it. A couple of calls to Apple, and they agree that it is covered by warranty, so I’ll get that fixed soon.

Tags: MacBook, Twitter, Apple, Blogging, iMac, Bugs

Out of the Tunnel: 1/30s f/6.3 ISO400 17mm -0.3ev, Canon 30D, Canon 17-55 f/2.8 IS

I've been a bad blogger -- not blogging. It has something to do with working harder, commuting further, and earning less, but it's also also tied up with my head being in continual input mode right now.

My temporary spot tech writing has morphed a little and I have another writing client for whom I'm doing a developer guide for cell phone middleware, so I seem to have become a technical writer without really meaning to (talking to others, this is how it apparently happens). Not only that, I'm hiring and managing other tech writers. Plus I continue to plug away at my Cocoa application in my "spare" time.

Let's see, I'm learning:

• Ruby
• Rails
• XML
• XForms
• XPath
• How to hire and manage tech writers, set up a tech pubs department, etc.
• How enormous chips are designed
• Big chunks of Cocoa
• Object-oriented programming
• The practical application of MVC
• PDF document structure
• The math of Bezier curves

I am having fun though, and I get to take time off whenever I want because I am freelancing. This also means I am free to do Aperture training or other things in the SF Bay Area. So send me an email if you have writing opportunities or need Aperture help.

Tags: Learning, Blogging, Programming, Ruby, Rails, XPath, XML, MVC

I've added Bagelturf to MacCreative. MacCreative collects together sites and links to all things creative in the Mac World. You can vote for sites and write reviews if you like.

Tags: Blogging, Aperture, Site Focus

Waffle is a blog that covers a multitude of geeky, webby, and Appley subjects. It's technical and meaty. But somehow never waffly.

Tags: Blogging, Cocoa, Apple, Interesting Stuff

Cocoa Cheerleaders is brought to you by the team at PyrusMalus. It's a large collection of links to blogs, articles, books, code, and other information about Cocoa.

My interest piqued by the name, I discovered that PyrusMalus is the Latin name for the Domestic Apple tree. And there is a mystery application in the works looking for alpha testers called Atlantic.

Tags: Cocoa, Cheerleaders, Blogging, Programming, Books, Apple, Applications

I've added a mailing list to the blog called Bagelturf-News. It's a low-volume private list that I will use to deliver information about this site: new products, product updates, and changes to the blog. I expect to post about one message per month.

If you would like to be on the list, just click on the Mailing List icon in the sidebar and provide your name and email address.

Tags: Blogging, News, Mailing List

Jürgen Banda-Hansmann has written a short series of articles about Aperture that cover:

• Optimize Libraries
• Optimize your folder structure
• Personalize and structure your Keyword List
• Create your own Metadata Presets
• Autostacking

Tags: Aperture, Blogging, Metadata, Keywords, Folders, Stacks, Library, Speed, Presets

Adjusting photos from my trip is not what has been occupying my time: I can tweak three or four a minute and have been using the dark of the evenings to plow through them to the point of being about 80% done. What has been occupying my time is the recent arrival of a Canon 30D, two lenses, and the subsequent photographing of practically everything that reflects light.

Why the 30D? It's about to go obsolete isn't it? Yes it is. The 40D is coming and it almost certainly has more than I need. But the 30D is a very good price right now and it's been shown to be a great, dependable camera. I'm putting the majority of my money into lenses, opting for high quality, large aperture, and image stabilization. This new toy means that I am likely to have somewhat less time for blogging for the near future.

I've also been moving my Canon S3 galleries to SmugMug on my pages at http://bagelturf.smugmug.com/. I'll be posting more photos on SmugMug in my Canon 30D gallery as I get some good ones to share.

Tags: Photography, Blogging, Canon, 30D, SmugMug

RapidWeaver 3.6.2 released today includes support for Aperture. RapidWeaver's iMedia browser can access previews created in Aperture just like Apple's iLife applications are able to. An additional great feature is the ability to generate the sidebar with PHP: this makes for much short upload times on large sites like mine because fewer pages are affected by sidebar changes (in my case almost 900!).

Tags: Aperture, RapidWeaver, Blogging

Some of you have iPhones and are using them to read this site. Since I am using Google Analytics, I have only limited access to the access data. So how to create an iPhone visit report? It's actually quite easy. Select Visitors > Browser Capabilities and click on Screen Resolutions:

Find a line that claims 320x396 as the screen size and click on that:

Then add it to your dashboard:

Tags: iPhone, Blogging, Google

Screencasts Online have a nice overview of the new features available in RapidWeaver 3.6.

Tags: Video, RapidWeaver, Blogging

My Apple Menu is a simple site with a lot of timely Mac article links, many of which I don't see elsewhere. It is written by Heng-Cheong Leong in Singapore and has links to other news pages including Tomorrow, Reader, and Singapore.

Tags: Site Focus, Apple, Singapore, Blogging, News

Fake Steve Jobs is a hilarious blog that is being written at a furious pace by an unknown writer even as D: All Things Digital is still going on. He's obviously spent considerable time in the UK and has a good knowledge of journalism and Silicon Valley. My money is on John Paczkowski, as proposed by Valley Wag.

Tags: Blogging, Steve Jobs, Fun

Realmac Software released RapidWeaver 3.6.0 today. RapidWeaver is just as it sounds: a quick way to make great web sites. I've been beta testing it for a while, and publishing this site with it for as long as it has been stable.

For a quick look at what it does and how it does it, see the intro video and quick-start guide on the tour page. The quick-start shows how to create a blog in five minutes. It really is that quick. Customization is possible both through the RapidWeaver interface and by adding and editing HTML, PHP, and CSS. But there is no need to get embroiled in the details if you don't want to. There are plenty of low-cost themes and plug-ins available.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Software, Interesting Stuff

David Pogue talks (and sings) at TED about simplicity and its ability to sell. Will Shipley (articles 0, 1, 2, 3) and Thomas Dolby were there too (articles 1, 2).

Tags: Complexity, TED, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

The application that I use to create and publish this site is called RapidWeaver, currently at 3.5.1; but there is a new version on the way. I have been testing a beta of RapidWeaver 3.6 and it is looking pretty good. It's stable enough that I use it to publish now. My site is large, and I am running into problems with the current version because of its wasteful use of memory during export. 3.6 fixes that, so my workflow is to create in 3.5.1, save, and then publish using the 3.6 beta.

I use RapidWeaver because it is just so darn easy to use. I only have to touch HTML and CSS if I want to. Site templates are plentiful and low cost and available from a number of third parties. And there is a developer SDK that lets third parties write plug-ins. The only problems I have are self-imposed: my site has 130 pages or so -- and those are actual pages, not the automatically-generated ones line the permalinks. My home page has more than 450 articles. There are at least 500 images in the Aperture section alone, so probably close to 1000 in total now.

But RapidWeaver is keeping up. Not bad for a piece of software that costs $40 and has had free updates for at least a year and a half. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 3.6. I know what is in it, but you'll have to wait to find out.

[Update: The Realmac Software blog page is now (2007-05-02) starting to reveal some of the new features]

Tags: RapidWeaver, Blogging, Web Tools, Interesting Stuff

Robert Scoble was blogging about Microsoft before he was part of Microsoft. Now he's no longer part of Microsoft, his blog is getting interesting. His recent posts and particularly the comments they foster and his responses are very telling. He gets it. He likes Apple TV. He doesn't believe that Microsoft is in it to win.

#127: this is the problem. Microsoft is actually something like 100 companies lashed together. The Xbox team might be doing something cool while the Internet team is totally sucking wind.

In this context we’re talking about the Internet team.

Oh, and cool?

How about Photosynth? http://scobleizer.com/2006/11/10/demo-of-the-year-photosynth/

That’s cool. But it can’t be turned into a product.

Why? Cause it takes nine hours to stitch together a few hundred photos. Unusable.

So, very cool, but not a business.

Most of what we’re talking about above is about being BOTH cool and a great business ON THE INTERNET.

Microsoft is lacking on both areas.

And the comparison to the Beattles is NOT out of place here. Demonstrates that you take a Microsoft approach here.

Comment by Robert Scoble — March 17, 2007 @ 12:03 pm

Tags: Microsoft, Apple TV, Apple, Blogging, Interesting Stuff

You be the decider. Ridiculous Fish challenges the reader to match the logo with the product type. Not as easy as it sounds. Ridiculous Fish also hosts Hex Fiend, a fiendishly good hex editor.

Tags: Hair Care, Digital Audio, Blogging, Interesting Stuff, Fun

Aperture Plugged In is a new site dedicated to Aperture plugins. It lists all the Aperture plugins known to man, plus links, forums, resources, and news. Hopefully the site will grow and be a good source of information for struggling plugin authors.

Tags: Site Focus, Blogging, Aperture

This site just passed 200,000 page views since I started counting at the beginning of July 2006. I am currently measuring about 40,000 page views a month, so readership is increasing. There are some graphs on the About This Blog page that may be interesting.

Tags: Statistics, Blogging

I've been dusting off my Photoshop skills to create some badges for the site:

These have been posted, together with some HTML on the Link To This Blog page.

Tags: Blogging