2008
Tips, TWIP, and Tack
I enjoy taking photos, but I am nowhere near being a good amateur photographer. My biggest problem is not spending enough time developing my skills. When I took a few photography classes at the local junior college, I managed to scratch-the-itch to take photos in order to fulfill class assignments. Now without that pressure of producing I find it difficult to, well, produce any photos.
This is where a good podcast on photography can help. How? Well, nothing like a bunch of people talking about photography to whet your appetite.v
The first photography podcast I ever listened to was Chris Marquardt’s award winning Tips from the Top Floor. I remember listening to Marquardt’s podcast on my new second generation iPod several years ago. He is a very knowledgeable photographer with hundreds of podcast episodes under his belt. I listened to the first twenty episodes, taking all the tips he had to offer and trying some of the assignments he provided, before I started decent into nothingness. I haven’t listened to this podcast lately, but I’m sure it’s still top notch.
The assignment aspect of Marquardt’s podcast and website is very important. An assignment helps in thinking creatively and in producing photos you wouldn’t otherwise think about taking. If you are gutsy enough, you can post your photos on flickr for comment. I guess I shouldn’t say gutsy enough. I have only run into a few people on flickr who can be crude with their comments. Most people are encouraging and provide constructive criticism.
This Week in Photography (TWIP) just started at the beginning of this year. The podcast includes two podcasters I like listening to - Alex Lindsey and Scott Bourne. The podcast is full of photography information and interviews with professional photographers. It’s fascinating to get insight from professionals on their craft. They often answer listeners' questions which is nice. I must admit I often find this podcast to run a bit long - closing in at sixty minutes. I have found myself losing interest on the discussion at hand from time-to-time.
TWIP does have a photo assignment / contest. They also have a blog linking contest that runs ever three months I believe. The prize giveaways are very big, so you might find it worth entering. Who knows, you can win a big prize and hone your skills at the same time.
Tack Sharp is the latest photography podcast I’ve placed on my iPod. I read about Tack Sharp through one of my favorite blogs, Daring Fireball. The podcast is hosted by James Duncan Davidson and Dan Benjamin. James and Dan play well off each other in discussing various subjects in photography. Dan - the amateur photographer - is a nice contrast to James - the professional. It’s an easy listen and the podcasts are short, lasting about twenty minutes on average so far. There are only three published episodes so far, so you can get in on the ground floor if you subscribe now!
If you enjoy taking photos or want to learn more about photography, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of these podcasts. You can subscribe to their podcasts by clicking the iTunes links below. Also, you may want to visit their respective supporting websites, which contain an enormous amount of information and resources.
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Tack Sharp - Dan Benjamin and James Duncan Davidson (no longer available)
Pownce No Longer
I’m saddened by the demise of Pownce - in its current form. They were acquired by Six Apart earlier this week which means…I don’t know exactly what it means. I wasn’t a heavy user of Pownce, but I did use it to communicate with friends. I was able to privately share small files, photos, links, and messages with various friends. I’m not sure if Pownce will be integrated with one of Six Apart’s services such as Vox or Typepad, but it won’t be the same.
And this brings up a problem that I fear on the Internet - the loss of content you created / posted on the Internet.
Luckily Pownce provided a way to export your data and time to complete the export. But other services that have gone the way of the dodo, such as Digital Railroad, didn’t give their users this opportunity. Imagine losing all the photos you posted online? What if you didn’t have a backup?
I have over 9000 photos posted on flickr, another 24GB of photos posted on Smugmug. My blog has 473 entries, and there are only about 100 entries on my tumblr account. Most of this data - minus the tumblr posts - I have on hand a local backup. But some data cannot be copied, such as my Facebook and MySpace account. Plus any comments made on the photos above cannot be backed up - or at least I’m not aware of a way to do it at this point.
My greatest fear is that flickr or Smugmug goes under without notice. It was a fear I had with Vox which is why I moved my blog back to my personal site. (If Vox provided a means to export my blog posts it would make me feel more comfortable using it as my primary blog.) I’m sure this reality is far from possible at this point, but with this economy you never know. I have always hear that flickr is a losing proposition for Yahoo! This unconfirmed fact makes me more confident that Smugmug is a stronger choice to share my photo data online. But I enjoy flickr’s community so much.
And this is the other aspect that is lost with the demise of Pownce - the community. A solid community is difficult to build - let alone maintain. While Pownce may have not had a choice but to sell itself to Six Apart, it is a shame it wasn’t able to keep the community it had built together.
Oh Happy Day
However long you live, you will remember where you were when you heard that Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.
Did you get to watch his acceptance speech? If you haven’t, it’s worth listening to the whole speech.
The Bridge Benefit 2008
Farrah and I went to the Bridge School Benefit concert this past Sunday. The lineup for the concert on that day was:
- Cat Power
- Wilco
- Death Cab for Cutie
- Smashing Pumpkins
- Josh Groban
- Norah Jones
- Jack Johnson
- Neil Young (of course)
We chose to go on Sunday the day the Smashing Pumpkins were playing. We would have liked to have watched Sarah McLaughlin, who was only playing Saturday, but Farrah had never seen the Smashing Pumpkins in concert. They didn’t disappoint.
I wasn’t familiar with Cat Power’s or Wilco’s music but enjoyed their sets. Death Cab for Cutie had many fans in the audience, all enjoying their performance. I recognized three of their songs, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”, “Soul Meets Body”, and “I Will Possess Your Heart”. I walked away from their performance wanting to listen to more of their songs.
Smashing Pumpkins were up next. They came with two pianists, a trombone and trumpet player, a dual-violin player, and the regular core band. I didn’t recognize most of the songs, some of which I think was new. Josh Groban came out to sing “Disarm”. It was a good performance, though he did forget some lyrics.
The Josh Groban set was difficult to get into, though you can’t deny he has a strong voice. Norah Jones had her (somewhat) new short haircut. She put a country vibe to her standards, and also sang a couple of Johnny Cash songs. Jack Johnson’s set got the audience on their feet with ‘Bubble Toes’, “If I Had Eyes”, “Good People”, and “Banana Pancakes”. His set had the overall crowd more enthused than anyone else that performed before him. I can’t say how Neil Young’s set was since Farrah and I left right after Jack Johnson finished.
We did get to see Neil Young perform several times during the show. He came out to begin the whole shindig. He subsequently came out to perform with different artists at the end of their sets, most notably with Josh Groban, Norah Jones, then Jack Johnson.
Other things to note:
- Shoreline didn’t charge for parking. Does anyone know why they don’t charge? It seems like a money maker for them, but heck it saved me an expected $20.
- They charged $9 - $12 for a beer! Robbery.
Overall, the concert was a nice mellow affair. The concert began on a warm Sunday afternoon, which subsequently turned into a cold windy night (part of the reason we left early).
Losing Your Vision
The man speaks the truth - in 2000. He must have lost his vision (of the future) or his ability to articulate his stance on the issue. I’m guessing it’s both.
Cartman Eats His Shorts - A South Park Clip
NSFW due to language. Listen at your own risk.
I haven’t watched South Park for some time now. But it seems that they are still as funny as ever.
Clip no longer available
Presenting Vimeo Plus
I’ve been thinking of creating more and more video. I can post video onto my Smugmug account, but I like the controls and feel of Vimeo more.
I’ll need to consider this further. But first I need to edit and shoot more video!
My Bandwidth Results
I wrote in a previous post about having to track my bandwidth usage since Comcast was implementing bandwidth limits. Well, my results for September are in. According to my Tomato router I used 195.11 GB total bandwidth. 57.51 GB was used for downloading content and 137.60 GB was for uploading.
What does this mean?
Well, my upload number is high because of the online backup service I use, Mozy. The data I am backing up - music, photos, and documents - is about 200 GB total. I had hoped I could have uploaded it all before October, but I ran into the end of the month before completing that goal. I hope this doesn’t screw up my October numbers.
From the looks of things I am well within the 250 GB limit imposed by Comcast. I hope my numbers are correct. I would hate to lose my Internet service.
Rachael Yamagata @ Cafe Du Nord
The other night Farrah and I went to Cafe Du Nord to see Rachael Yamagata perform. We enjoyed her first album, Happenstance, which is a somber but strong debut album. We downloaded and listened to pre-released tracks from her new album, Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart . Some of her songs on the album go into a more uptempo direction.
Cafe Du Nord, in size, reminds me of the old Cactus Club in San Jose. Except Cafe Du Nord is much darker and has the vibe of Bimbo’s 365 Club. We had dinner reservations which gave us reserved seating. We could see the stage without obstruction, able to enjoy the show while sipping a nice cold beer.
Rachael started off with Be Be Your Love and Letter Read, the first two songs on her debut album and two of my favorite songs. Letter Read was actually the first song I heard from her, a song where she sounds like Fiona Apple. Anyway, after hearing those songs I knew the show could only get better and it did. Rachael moved from the keyboards to an acoustic guitar which she didn’t plug in at first. She then explained she was battling the flu with some Jack Daniel’s. She was a trooper through, continuing with her set and engaging the lively audience.
She played for about 90 minutes total, going through songs like
- Worn Me Down
- What If I Leave
- Would You Please
- Elephants
- Meet Me By The Water
- Faster
- Accident
- Would You Please
- The Reason Why
Part of her encore was Would You Please, a request from the audience. Rachael wasn’t sure she knew all the words but gave it a go, prefacing that she could not be criticized if she f’d up. She got through about 90% of the song. I really enjoyed her last song, The Reason Why.
I’d go back to Cafe Du Nord to see another show. The drink and food prices aren’t bad, but parking can be an issue. Well, it’s San Francisco, so parking is always an issue.
You can also find another review of this concert here.
Figuring Things Out with Tomato
Comcast made a lovely announcement last week that they were imposing bandwidth caps for their users. The limit is 250 GB a month. I have no idea how much bandwidth I use. Funny thing is Comcast is not giving users a way to determine how much bandwidth they actually use!
Comcast suggests using one of the “many online tools…to measure [your] consumption.” The problem I had was trying to find a tool that could measure all the devices in our household that access the Internet. You would think Internet access is limited to computers, but in this day and age there are many devices that access the Internet for information. We have two laptops, one desktop, two iPhones, an XBox 360 and a Nintendo Wii. I think that covers everything. So what tool would work for all these devices?
Luckily my searches stumbled upon a firmware alternative called Tomato. It did require me to purchase a Linksys WR54GL router, but I lucked out as it was on sale at Fry’s. The setup instructions were straightforward. I was up-and-running in less then twenty minutes. I am now set to track how much bandwidth I use.
I’ll let you know how it goes at the end of this month.
Erase and Rewind
The Matrix has been reloaded. Reason? No real reason, just sheer boredom.
Anyone who’s been reading these pages knows that I’ve been having a nasty habit lately of changing things around. I’m not sure why I am so scatterbrained about the blog the last couple of years, but I’ve learned to live with it.
So I’ve archived the old and started once again from scratch. I’ll post something worth reading some time soon.
My iPhone Contacts Disappeared!
My iPhone Contacts Disappeared!: While I was out and about today, my iPhone contacts disappeared. I noticed this when I received a text message from someone on my contact list, which showed their phone number instead of their name. I’m guessing my over-the-air sync with Mobile Me was the cause since I have seen this sync problem before but only with my iMac and dot Mac. But when I got online, my Mobile Me account and my iMac contacts were fine. At this point I don’t know what happened. It sucks to lose your contacts for no apparent reason when you’re out on errands. I wonder if this has happened to anyone else?
Handsfree
Beginning in July, California went ‘handsfree'. Now, I don’t talk on my cellphone often while driving but Farrah does. And so I did some research on a solution that would work for her.
The iPhone comes with a nice standard headset for listening to music and taking phone calls. It can be used in the car as long as you only use one earbud while driving. I do this often, but it can be uncomfortable, and I think Farrah finds this so as well. Farrah also finds Bluetooth headsets uncomfortable.
I heard Leo Laporte speak of the BlueAnt’s Supertooth Light Bluetooth Handsfree Speakerphone as a good solution, and so I ordered it from Amazon and let Farrah give it a try.
The unit charged quickly, with Farrah being able to try it the next day. The main unit attaches by magnets to a metal clip you can fit into your car’s visor. Having the clip allows you to easily move the unit from car to car, or simply detach it from the clip to hide the unit in your glovebox. To activate the unit, you extend the mic boom.
The sound quality is very good. I was able to hear Farrah very clearly while she was driving, and she was able to hear me without my yelling. The unit also comes with a built-in ringer so you won’t have to hear your cellphone ringing unless you have the BlueAnt turned off. The BlueAnt holds a very good charge. We’ve only had to charge it twice since having it, but people who talk often may have a different experience. The only negative experience we’ve had with the unit is when pairing it with two different phones. The unit appears to forget the first phone it was paired with, but works fine with the ethe second. If you are the only one using the BlueAnt, then this will not be a problem. Overall, Farrah finds the BlueAnt solid and reliable, as do I.
There is a newer unit available, the BlueAnt Supertooth 3. I think this unit has a voice-activated calling, but I have no personal experience with it. You may want to read the reviews on that unit, but it does cost about $30 more.