Tag Archives: mac

Opinion

Nostalgia

I though I’d start the new year with an unusual, for me at least, positive message. The message: we’ve never had it so good technology-wise and often we forget that.

I started thinking about this when I realised what I was doing with my computer. Right now, for example, I am typing this into Emacs. In the back-ground I am scanning in some film and burning the previous scans onto CD. Only a few years ago any one of these activities would have been more than enough for a simple home computer. A joke at the time was that Emacs stood for “eight megabytes and continually swapping,” and now my iPod has thirty-two megs of memory as a convenience, basically to avoid letting the battery run down too quickly.

Even better, for the sake of clarity I’ve missed out the programs that I’m not actively using. Mail and Adium are happily keeping a look-out for new messages, iTunes is bashing out some good music. iCal is ready to tell me that I was supposed to be meeting a friend an hour ago, I left the Address Book open last time I looked up a phone number, I can’t even remember what I was editing in Word but that’s open too and Safari is primed, just in case.

But even that is a simplification. The disc image that’s being burned is on a different computer, they’re connected wirelessly and using a protocol that’s native to neither (Mac to Linux using SMB).

I don’t mention any of this to brag, or suggest that I’m doing anything odd or unusual here, quite the contrary. I just mean to point out that these are complex but every day activities that we expect not only to work, but to work seamlessly at the same time as lots of other stuff. And that, frankly, is absolutely amazing.

Travel

About the pictures

Introduction

So that you can believe what you see, I just wanted to talk you through the process I go through to get some beautiful parts of the world conveniently into your web browser.

It starts with a camera…

I have three cameras, two of them being traditional film-based models and the last one a digital.

The oldest images (pre-2001) were taken on a Canon Sureshot 70 Zoom. It has automatic-just-about-everything and a 35-70mm zoom lens. I have two SLR bodies which, with the exception of EF-S glass, I can use the same lenses on both machines. The first is a Canon EOS300, the second is a Digital Rebel, known in the UK as an EOS300D.

Both film camera use standard 35mm film. (APS is more expensive and lower quality; doesn’t sound like a winning formula to me.) All of the pictures taken on the Sureshot have been taken on Kodak Gold (ISO400) film and processed in a normal mini-lab. I’ve used a wider variety of film in the EOS and the type used is generally noted on the relevant page. Except for low-light shots, I always use ISO100 with the digital.

And then we go digital…

I have two scanners: a flat-bed and a film scanner.

I’ve had the flat-bed for a while and all the early content has been digitised using this machine. It was described by John Lewis as “end of the line” and not suitable for colour pictures, but I saw the price and figured that I had nothing to lose! It only scans reflective material, so I’ve had to scan prints, even when I’ve been using slide film. I scan at 300dpi in 24-bit colour (the scanner works at 30-bit). For 7.5×5 prints, this results in images around 2200×1400 pixels and, invariably, bad colours.

I got bored adjusting the colours eventually and finally decided on a Minolta Scan Dual II, a slide scanner. This one works at 2820dpi which results in images 3840×2514 pixels. But the main distinguishing feature is the much better colour.

Once I’ve scanned all the pictures in I tend to archive them all to CD. I save them in PNG format (losslessly compressed, unlike JPEG) and also a directory of smaller images and thumbnails. The smaller images are used on this website, too.

The last step is to create some captions for the images. I’ve been through a number of schemes, but the one I’ve settled on at the moment is Brendt Wohlberg’s PhotoML, an XML image description DTD. It’s very thorough (far more so than I require in fact) and comes highly recommended. Have a look here if you’re interested: PhotoML Website. I’ve been using Apple’s iPhoto for the pure digital pictures so far, but that might change once I’ve played around with it a bit longer.

You’ll notice that I don’t talk about image manipulation, and there is a good reason for that. The only Photoshop-style wizardry going on here is the adjustment of contrast, levels, orientation and the removal of scratches, dust or other imperfections on the film.

Opinion

Bored of constant tweaking?

Introduction

This page is just a rant, a way for me to vent my anger. Don’t expect it to be fully rational or for it to make perfect sense. It could, even, be my excuse for buying new hardware; I do like my gadgets.

In fact, this piece is going to be an anti-Linux rant. If you’ve seen the rest of my website this may surprise you. I have, after all, been using Linux since 1994 when I installed Slackware from a knee-high pile of 3.5 inch floppy-discs. I spent a year writing “The Penguin Says“, a collection of Linux application reviews, I have the Oracle 8i Installation HOWTO in the Linux Documentation Project. I’m no fly-by-night, recent Linux convert.

So my rant really starts when I moved house near the end of last year. My flats topography means that the phone point (and, hence, ADSL router) is at the opposite side of the place to my spare room and desktop PC. The choice was to try to stretch an Ethernet cable from one side of the flat to the other or to add a wireless card to my computer. How hard could it be?

Tricky

Very hard, it turns out.

I picked a cheap WiFi card, which may have been a mistake, but it did have Open Source drivers written by the manufacturer. That, I thought, was a good sign.

In practise it kind of work sometimes and it does stutter at times. No fun when you’re trying to listen to music. In some sense, if it didn’t work at all I’d be less annoyed. But it nearly works and you can’t count on it.

Installation

The driver comes in source format along with a utility to configure it. I’m running Fedora Core 1 which has a fairly heavily patched kernel, but luckily it still built with no errors. It picked the “standard” version of gcc rather than 3.2 (which you should use to build the kernel) but that was easily fixed. The configuration tool is also easily built if you have the Qt development libraries installed. It’s at this point that things go wrong.

On next boot, Fedora recognises the new network interface and generates a configuration file for eth1. Unfortunately the driver thinks of the device as ra0 so the OS just gets confused and fails to start the network.

Anyway, to cut a very long and boring story short(er), you need to define the WEP keys, network name and so-forth in the Qt GUI. It appears not to work anywhere else, even though Fedora comes with “standard” tools that should really do the job.

But even then the network doesn’t start when you boot. Instead you start the machine, let the initialisation fail, log into X, unload the device driver using the supplied script, load it in again and then start the Qt configuration tool. The network is now (usually) up and will work for two or three hours before causing a kernel panic.

Conclusion

I’m not really sure what I’m railing against here. It could be my new flat. It could be my old PC. It could be my cheap and cheerful WiFi card. Or its driver. Or the general standard of WiFi support in Linux. And perhaps it’s just because I’ve been spoiled with my iBook and its “just works” wireless networking.

I don’t have any solutions and I don’t really have the money for new kit, much as I’d like one of those G5’s!.

So I’m not sure if you got anything out of reading this, but I think I got something out of writing it! If you’re seeing the same frustrations — and if you have any solutions! — let me know on the discussion forums.

Opinion

SliMP3

Introduction

It took me over a year to decide to buy a SliMP3 player. I am not normally that indecisive but I just couldn’t figure out why it cost so much. I mean, what does it do? It streams MP3 music across an Ethernet network and connects to the phono sockets on your hi-fi system. How hard can that be? There must be something cheaper or better than the Slim Devices machine! It took me all that time to research the subject and come to the conclusion that there wasn’t. I still think it’s a lot of money for what it does, but I also still think that it’s pretty much unique.

Out of the box

The pictures show a small, black box with a bright florescent display on the front, but, still, it wasn’t exactly as I was expecting. It’s actually smaller than I thought it would be, not that this should be construed as a bad thing. Close up the smoked plastic front and the tiny box have an amateurish, home electronics project feel to them. It does look fine from a distance and the display is, as advertised, very bright, clear and a major selling point for the device as a whole.

SliMP3The package is rounded off by a fairly compact power adaptor and a decent remote control. The buttons are all big enough to press without having to be too careful and some of the important ones are colour coded. The cursor keys are laid out in a convenient and intuitive plus shape but some of the other buttons seem to be placed in the gaps rather than genuinely useful locations.

Setting it up was a doddle. The Perl-based software installed on my iBook with no trouble and on Linux with a well documented change (RedHat misses out an important Perl module in its default install). I have not tried the Windows installer, but the same, simple process apparently works.

With the server software installed, you fire up a web-browser, type in “http://localhost:9000” and point the server at your music collection. That’s pretty much it!

The hardware is, if anything, even simpler to set up. You plug the SliMP3 into a handy Ethernet port, add mains power and connect it to the phono ports on your stereo. When switched on it, by default, goes out to a DHCP server to get its IP address and then by some mysterious broadcast method (I’m guessing) finds your local music server.

That’s a long way of saying that I just plugged the hardware in and it worked first time.

In use

I’m no hi-fi expert. If you want to know whether the SliMP3 is the last word in digital audio I’m afraid I can’t help you. What I can say is that, to my ear, the sound is clear and sharp and any problems I’ve experienced have generally been because of the source MP3 rather than the hardware.

I have nearly 4000 songs encoded currently — a number that’s gradually increasing as I rip more and more of my CD’s — mostly converted using iTunes at 160bps. At this level the interface is still very usable, especially if you know what you’re looking for. For browsing you begin to see the beauty of the iPod’s scroll wheel, but the SliMP3 also has its web interface for when you’re feeling indecisive.

I have had a few problems with music skipping or stopping entirely, but this has almost always been when using my Linux box. That machine is not exactly state of the art any more and the wireless networking is still very flaky so I suspect that these problems are nothing to do with the SliMP3. However, I mention it here just to point out that you do need a reliable network and a reasonable machine for the job.

Conclusion

After using it quite heavily for a couple of months now, I think my initial impressions were not far off the mark. I think it’s a very impressive, easy to use and well thought out machine. It sounds good and the screen means its usable anywhere in the same room. Most of the competition force you to switch on your TV to edit playlists so I consider this to be very important.

On the other hand, I still think it’s expensive for what it is. The bottom level iPod costs just slightly more but that comes with a 15GB hard-disk!

Overall, I still believe that the SliMP3 is the best product of its type currently available. If you listen to a lot of MP3’s and are sick of headphone or small, powered speakers this is the machine for you.

Addendum: Since I wrote this article, in fact just months after buying the hardware, Slimdevices upgraded the SliMP3 and renamed it the Squeezebox. From what I can tell looking at the pictures, the main difference is a newer (more professional looking) case and wireless networking as well as Ethernet. Of course, all this is currently available at less than I paid for my old model! Such is progress with anything computer related…

Opinion

Minolta Dual Scan II

11 Comments

Introduction

Oddly, the main reason I’m writing this review is that I feel that the Minolta Dual Scan II has been harshly treated in the media. Most magazines seem to skip over this, the entry level, model and move on to the Scan Elite. On photo.net all are singing the praises of expensive Nikons and Canons, and complain about the lack of ICE on this model.

In a sense they are right, but everything is a compromise. Here’s why the Dual Scan II is a compromise that works for me.

What is the Dual Scan II?

Flat-bed scanners have plummeted in price over the last few years. Just seven years ago the only way most people could own a scanner was by getting one of those hand-held ones that you manually dragged across your document. They were quite neat, but getting a good scan was tricky. You needed a steady hand and lots of patience.

Fast forward to the present day and you can get good and cheap flat-beds for reasonable prices. You don’t need a steady hand, just the patience — much less than used to be the case too — and a computer capable of accepting large image files. Most of the pictures you can see on the site have come from a very cheap flat-bed, so why did I go and buy a new one?

I have only very occasionally scanned anything other than my own photos. At first glance, a flat-bed seems ideal for the task: simply place the print on the glass and scan away. What’s wrong with that?

Image quality. Each stage the image goes through loses information. By taking the picture rather than looking at it directly with your eyes, you lose information. Scanning it in loses more and printing it onto photographic paper does too. So scanning from a print loses more information than scanning directly from the slide or negative.

Many flat-beds have a transparency adaptor, but I’m not impressed. Most scanners operate at between 600 and 1200dpi, which is great (too much really) for prints, but slides and negatives are much smaller so you’ll need to enlarge them to print. And negatives come out a funny colour. Much better, I thought, to get a scanner dedicated to scanning the originals.

Hence the Scan Dual II. It scans at 2820dpi, which is nearly three times the resolution that I could expect on a reasonably prices flat-bed. It’s much better than a digital camera, too. That resolution is roughly equivalent to a ten mega-pixel digital. Don’t bother looking in the shops for one of those just yet.

It’s designed especially for the task I’m interested in, meaning that you can automate some of the process. I can do up to six negatives or four slides in one go. It’s smaller than any flat-bed and conveniently connects to my iBook’s USB port (many other scanners in this price range are SCSI, which is difficult with a laptop). And it comes with software for the Mac, albeit only MacOS 9, which is another major consideration!

I see what they mean

I spent so much time in image editing software trying to correct the colours of my scans that buying a new scanner was worth the effort. To my eyes, the colours produced by the Minolta are fantastic. It’s able to find details in the negatives and slides that you can’t see in the prints.

It’s kind of obvious in retrospect, but now I find that I’m still spending time in Photoshop (much less through). The problem now is dust. When the source is so small, even small motes of dust look huge. I guess this is why people are happy to pay another few hundred pounds getting a scanner with ICE software. I’ve still not found a 100% reliable way of cleaning my negatives yet, so please let me know if you know of one!

But, as I said, it’s all a compromise. I could have brought a pretty good flat-bed scanner for half the price of the Dual Scan, so I stretched myself getting it. Spending more for ICE just wasn’t an option.

The software that comes with the scanner seems to be quite powerful, but does stop some way short of real image editing software. They supply Adobe Photoshop LE for that purpose, which is getting on a bit. It’s a cut-down version of Photoshop 5. Since we’re now on version 7 it’s rather ancient, and, like the scanning software, is not OS X native.

Conclusion

Slide scanners are very expensive compared with flat-bed scanners. Not only are they tasked with scanning much smaller sources, but far less people buy them. This means that in the broader scanner market, the Dual Scan II is horrendously expensive.

But as far as slide scanners are concerned it’s great. There are cheaper scanners, but they work at much lower resolutions and are only able to work on a single exposure at a time. The more expensive models tend to have image enhancement software which, while useful, is not worth the extra for someone with my (lack of) artistic abilities.

The bottom line is that if you’re on a limited budget, or would rather spend more money on camera equipment rather than computer peripherals, then I consider the Dual Scan II to be a good buy. However, the ICE software on the next model up are quite possibly worth the money.

Note: Some time ago I emailed Minolta technical support to ask them about a MacOS X version of their software. I was surprised when they said that they were not going to produce one. I was, therefore, even more surprised when I recently found said scanner software in a native MacOS X flavour. Ed Hamrick’s Vuescan shareware application is still a viable option, especially if you want to scan negatives (on which it does a far better job out of the box) but I think I’ll be sticking with the “unavailable” Minolta software.

Opinion

Dreadful Conclusions

Introduction

I still can’t quite believe that I did it. I actually bought and Apple Macintosh, just like I said back in February. After years of using Windows and Unix is seems a little odd, but I think I like it.

There’s a lot to like about it, though. Here are some of my thoughts as a Windows and Unix user.

Hardware

It was the combination of the new, white iBook and Mac OS X that swayed me in the end. There’s no way that I’d buy one of the original iMacs and my budget didn’t stretch to a PowerBook no matter how much I wanted it to.

One thing that I really like is the hardware. Unlike most PC’s, it feels as though it’s been designed rather than just thrown together. Even compared to my old Dell laptop, this one feels well put together.

Having said that, it’s not perfect. I’m sure that it looks neat on all the design sketches, but I can’t imagine that having all the ports down one side of the machine is the most optimal way of doing things. For once, it probably works best for left handed people! The ports are all down the left side so the mouse cable goes in the correct side. Unfortunately I’m right handed…

Also, it’s deliberate that there are no flaps over the ports. The idea being that there’s nothing to snap or fall off over time. On the other hand, I’m sure that means that they’ll fill up with fluff and other random detritus.

Unlike most PC’s, Apple have completely parted with the past. There are no serial, parallel or PS/2 ports (not as though you’d ever expect PS/2 ports on a Mac). This has bothered me less than I imagined it would. The main down-side is printing to my parallel-ported Deskjet, but I managed it using my Linux box as an intermediary (and Postscript interpreter). Not the ease of use that Apple imagined!

The last thing I’m going to mention about the hardware is something that is an after-thought with most machines: the power-supply. Basically it’s tiny, only just bigger than ink cartidges for the aforementioned Deskjet. After using laptops with power-supplies near as big as the computer this came as a surprise.

Software

I didn’t buy the iBook for it’s hardware, though (although that was important!). I got it for Mac OS X. As I mentioned before, Mac OS X is a rather neat combination of a BSD Unix kernel and a Mac-like user interface. On paper it looked fantastic. It has all the things that the original Macintosh operating system lacked, such as a real networking stack, multi-threading, pre-emptive multi-tasking and the ability to use more than one mouse button. (Okay, I’m joking about the last one.)

The incredible thing, after all the disappointments I’ve had comparing marketing literature with the real thing, is that it does deliver.

In the previous section I mentioned that I now print using my Linux box as a server. It’s not pandering to any Macintosh oddities. Mac OS X is sending print jobs directly to the Linux print spooler, just as another Linux or Solaris machine would. Very neat.

Another thing you can’t really see from screen shots in magazines is how good it all looks. Semi-translucent windows, drop-shadows instead of borders, the way loading programs bounce up and down in the dock, the way that progress bars and the default button in dialogs pulsate… They’re all completely unnecessary, but totally cool. It makes working with the machine that much more fun.

Fun. Now there’s a word you don’t hear in connection with Windows very often. Linus Torvalds wrote Linux “Just For Fun” (his book), whereas Windows was written purely for money. I guess they’ve both succeeded in their own goals. I hope Apple can profit from their combination of both.

Annoyances

There are only a few things that I really dislike, and some of them are rather petty.

Firstly, Apple are still not too confident with it. When you get a new machine it defaults to starting Mac OS 9. If you’re used to dual-booting your PC between Windows and Linux you’d probably expect a menu when the machine starts up asking which operating system to start (that’s what I was thinking). But no. You have to find the Startup Disk control panel, change some settings and restart the machine. Not difficult when you know but not in keeping with the well known Macintosh user-friendliness. (Apple have just announced that they’re making OS X the default OS. This has not been well received by many, who are waiting until Quark and Photoshop are native OS X applications before switching.)

The other things are really niggles. For example, in the Finder although you can search for NFS and (presumably) Apple shares, you can’t browse Windows shares. (Of course my Linux box only had SMB shares at the time…) In fact, I’ve not been able to connect to any SMB shares on my server yet. However this “problem” has not been widely reported so I think that we can assume that it’s my local configuration.

And this is the churlish complaint: they’re updating it too often! Within days of getting hold of the machine there have been many megabytes of fixes. Which is kind of good, but the upgrade to 10.1.2 is 30Mb, rather a lot over a dial-up line especially when dropping the line means you have to restart the download from scratch.

Conclusions

Stepping away from what used to be called IBM Compatibles seemed such a big step. At this stage I half expected to be annoyed with myself, and cursing spending all that money on something I didn’t fully understand how to use.

The key has to be its value. I want to be able to access the Internet, edit MS Word compatible documents and write software. The iBook can do all that using free or preinstalled software, comes in a very neat package with some unique features

It is still kind of odd having to think about how to do some things that are “obvious” to me in Windows and Linux, but I’m still of the opinion that it’s worth the hassle.