Cocoa Crusty

I have been trying to take my photography to the next level, lately, and have been working with flashes, also called “strobes” in the photography realm. I have been doing some research on strobist.blogspot.com and by following their Flickr group, Strobist.com. I have been learning a lot but I definitely have a ways to go.

The above image is shot using two strobes. One is a Canon 430EX and the other is a Canon 580EX II. The 430EX was placed to the left of the camera and behind the model on a tripod. The 580EX was on-camera and used for fill light as well as to fire off the 430EX wirelessly.

I think the light scene is a bit artificial, as some of my Flickr friends agree, but the ending result of the shot is superb in my eyes. The scene has a bit of a studio lighting feel to it even in the middle of a forest atop a mountain in Hot Springs, AR. I really like the way this shot turned out and look forward to working with my flashes in the future…

Photography, just like any other hobby, sport, passion, etc., will take a lifetime of learning to get anywhere near goals you set. You’ll never know everything there is to know about photography or techniques used to create impressive captures. Especially when taking an artistic approach to photography, things will never be “complete” as each photo captures something different than the previous and requires a different processing approach to obtain the look, feel, mood, and atmosphere you want to achieve from each photograph.

Be on the lookout for more strobe testing as I am really enjoying this aspect of photography right now for creating interesting light scenes! Also, don’t forget to follow my Fruitful Studios blog at blog.fruitfulstudios.com. for more photo session updates.

Until next time…

I woke up yesterday to my Apple TV not working quite right with content that wasn’t stored on the Apple TV’s local hard drive. I had a bridal shoot to do for my Fruitful Studios gig so I didn’t really have much time to do any troubleshooting.

The shoot started at my house using my portable studio/backdrop. Before we headed downtown I decided to take a look at my MacBook to see what was going on. The laptop’s screen was gray… Hmmm… I held down the power button and the system shut down. I pressed the power button again and on the laptop came, taking forever to bring the Apple logo up and the process gear.

When the logo and gear did show up, it was on the screen forever. I repeated the nifty little power off, power on routine several times and had the same results. By this time, it was time for me to head out with the bride to be and do some more shooting. I left the laptop on while I was gone with the Apple logo and gear displayed and the gear was just a spinning…

When I got back from the shoot, my laptop screen had the lovely logon dialog box on it with my blue background! Praise God!!! w00t! And all that… But, when I tried to logon, the “beach ball” just spun and never did anything. At this point, I noticed the wonderful sound of metal on metal grinding… Any techie probably can guess what that meant…

I tried the whole power off and power on thing a few more times until I finally got a different image on the grey background instead of the Apple logo: it was a nifty folder icon with a question mark on it… Any Mac fans care to guess what this means? That’s right, kids. The system can’t find a bootable system partition… Great fun! My hard drive is trash!!!

That’s right. The Hitachi Travelstar™ (Model: HTS541616J9SA00) 160GB, 5400RPM hard drive I had in my MacBook bit it… hard! Thankfully, I backup all of my critical data, but one thing I don’t backup is my Applications folder… Crap!

I purchased a 320GB Western Digital (Part number goes here when I can find the box) drive from Best Buy, slapped it in, and started the rebuilding process… This could take a while… From now on, I will be using the Time Machine feature built-in to Leopard… Time Machine supposedly backups all data on your Mac, making it extremely simple to restore a machine easily and quickly…

Hopefully, I won’t have any more hard drive failures, but if I do, maybe Time Machine can save the day…

Until next time…

Well, well, well… I woke up bright and early this morning at 7:15AM and went to the good ole’ MacBook and had a message from a buddy of mine from Spain. He sent me a message about the iPhone being $399.00 USD. Well, I looked it up and here is the proof. How disgusting! I mean, like, 40-45 days ago I paid $200.00 USD more than that for the 8GB iPhone… Oh, well… I guess you have to pay to play…

While I was digging around on Apple’s Web site I noticed that they did unveil another iPod called the iPod Touch.. This is an iPhone without the iPhone. Nice! Great design though… I mean, if the iPhone is beautiful then this little device is beautiful… It just looks really bare without the additional icons that the iPhone has… Again… Oh, well….

$399.00?!?!?!?!?!???!!!?!??!!!!?!?!!!oneone

Until next time…

Guess what I got a week ago today?!

That’s right, kids, an Apple iPhone! I got an advance on an already existing technology loan at my place of employment (0% for 18 months?! You can’t beat that!) and purchased it last Tuesday evening after work. I wanted to have a good week of experience with the device before I made my announcement and shared my initial thoughts on the phone.

Well, I’ll go ahead and give you my final thoughts on the phone first. This is one impressive piece of hardware paired with an extremely intuitive and beautiful piece of software. The iPhone has met or exceeded every one of my expectations, and for the price, I am grateful! Thanks, Apple, for an impressive Web enabled phone!

The Good:

I’ll start off with the good of the phone, like any respectable reviewer would. Again, let me say that this device is beautiful and it all starts with the design of the hardware. In keeping with the beautiful design of the iPod, the Apple iPhone has a sleek, slim design that has super sexy curves. The phone is not too big to hold up to your dome and using it as a phone or as a “PDA“.

The touchscreen works flawlessly. The screens scroll so smoothly that it makes you want to cry. The soft-keyboard is extremely easy to type on once you realize you can’t use the side of your thumbs like you can on a physical QWERTY keyboard like most smartphones have. You have to use the tips of your thumbs to type, but with the visual response you get when pressing a key, it becomes a natural movement.

The version of OS X that runs on the phone has the same sexy look that you would expect from a Macintosh machine. The icons, backgrounds, menus, etc. all look very “Apple’ish” and are extremely easy to use and understand. The applications that are installed by default on the iPhone are impressive as well. The iPhone version of Google Maps is very nice. It allows you to interface your contacts locations with the map as well as get driving directions to and from locations. The other applications are impressive as well with their Dashboard Widgets look and feel.

And, the big kicker for me is the Safari Web browser that ships on the phone. A majority of the applications on the iPhone are powered by the Safari rendering engine using AJAX. They flow so smoothly and work the way you would expect a Web application to, except you use your finger to maneuver around instead of a mouse. The way you increase and decrease the browser window with two fingers is extremely cool. And, of course, all third-party applications for the iPhone use Safari and an Internet connection so you will spend a majority of your time in Safari when using the iPhone.

So, to wrap up “The Good” in one phrase, “It Flows”. From the main menu screen to the contacts, phone, settings, and basically every screen, the experience just flows seamlessly from one experience to another. Over all, this is the best cell phone I have every used and I am very happy that I finally made the purchase.

The Disappointing:

I wouldn’t say there is anything “bad” about the iPhone, but there are some disappointing aspects. First of all, there is no support or development kit for native third-party applications. This means that all third-party software has to be accessed via the Safari Web browser and the Internet. This in itself is not such a bad thing since the Web browser and Internet capabilities of the phone are better than other cell phones and smartphones on the market today. However, it would be nice to be able to compile and install some native applications on the iPhone, whatever they may be.

There isn’t support for Adobe Flash on the device, as a standalone application, or within Safari. This kind of limits your multimedia experience on the iPhone to movies from your iTunes library or the limited YouTube library available through a preinstalled application on the phone.

You can’t sync the phone with your machine/laptop via Bluetooth. All syncing of music, movies, photos, contacts, and calendar is done through the iTunes software installed on your PC or Mac. This is kind of frustrating because I don’t want to plug my phone up to my machine every time I want to sync. Also, this limits your ability to sync your phone via proximity detection like I used to do with my Nokia E61 (Yeah, she was a good phone…).

Another thing I would have liked to see on the iPhone is a terminal application for SSH’ing into remote *NIX servers or an RDP client for accessing into remote Windows machines or servers. I am sure there are a number of other applications I would like to see on the iPhone, but these two would really get the “I’m an administrator” parts off to a good start.

Conclusion:

I have done a lot of research on the iPhone. Everything in the “disappointing” category I knew about prior to buying the device. I could go on and on about the device, it’s capabilities and it’s limitations, but I feel this is a good stopping point for my public “I have an iPhone” announcement and review. I will be posting some more on this device in the days and weeks ahead, and hope to develop a Web application geared towards the iPhone in the coming months. I’ll keep you posted on my progress with the phone and any newsworthy items I find on the Internet related to the iPhone. Final words: I love my iPhone!

Until next time…

I have been doing a lot more design and development lately. It’s awesome working on my 13-inch MacBook along side my 24-inch Gateway LCD Display (model FPD2485W). This is an extremely nice setup and very comfortable, mostly due to the Apple Bluetooth® Mighty Mouse, Apple Wireless Keyboard, and my Griffin Elevator.

But, since I am doing more design these days, and I want all of my images and photos to have somewhat consistent color across multiple monitors, I decided that display calibration was in order. I looked around at some devices for performing display calibration and they all seemed a little more expensive than what I was willing to pay.

So, as I was walking through Office Depot a month or so ago, I spotted a little gadget over in the software section of the store. The device is called huey™ by Pantone® and retails for $89.99.

When I got my huey™ device home and started calibrating my laptop’s display, I was pumped. Then I wanted to calibrate my gateway display. Well, out of the box the huey™ will only calibrate one display. I did some research on the Pantone® web site and found out that they have a software upgrade that will allow you to calibrate multiple displays with the same huey™ device. The software, huey™ PRO is available as a download on the Pantone® web site for $39.99.

The device is cool in that it constantly monitors the room’s light and automatically adjusts the color settings of your displays to the appropriate levels to keep the colors where they need to be. It also prompts you to calibrate your displays periodically when it believes the previous calibration has expired. The calibration process is quick and easy and well worth the few minutes it takes to keep your colors looking fresh and your details popping!

With the upgraded software and the huey™ device I bought from Office Depot, I can now calibrate both of my displays and keep my colors consistent across both of my monitors. If you’re looking for an entry level calibration device for your monitors or displays, give huey/huey™ PRO a try and see what your colors are actually supposed to look like.

Until next time…