Currently:
2002-07-16»
Raphael Photographers of San Jose, You Provoke Me To Great Wrath»
Oh, what do you do? I came back from an argument at a photographers today.
The Irish Times needed a headshot for a column I'm writing for them, so I just
popped around the corner to a place called Raphael Photographers, run by a guy
called Phil. The prints came back today. They are, to my unprofessional eye,
really bad. Like, patently bad. There's a water marking on the print. The
background is dotted, as though it was poorly developed. There were reflections
off my glasses that Phil's tried to clumsily retouch, which leaves my right
eye looking like I have a third pupil.
We got into a row. Phil there claims that reflections are "inevitable". In
a studio, with full control over lighting, and says that any professional
photographer would agree with him. He refuses to reshoot the picture, or give
me my money back. Quinn turns up. Quinn's dad was a photographer, so we find
ourselves trying to explain to Phil that you can avoid reflections,
that you can fix these things if you pay attention at the time. He denies this
vehemently. In the end, Quinn and I start getting the giggles. He seemed to be
making such bizarre claims about the nature of photography. I really needed
some pictures - and fast; but in the end both Quinn and I were both pulling
our punches. Essentially, Phil had more to gain from this argument. If we
lost, we lost $60 and some lousy photos. If we won, Phil would lose $60, have
to redo the shoot, and we'd have to make him admit that he was a bad
photographer.
If I was giving a review of Raphael - which I am, because I'm writing this
to get spotted by Google (hey, Mr Googlebot: that's Raphael Photographers of
the Alameda, San Jose, California) - I'd say he was a bad photographer. But
that's easy for me to say. What's it like for him? I'm not the world's
greatest writer. Often, I suck. But Phil doesn't seem to be able to admit when
he screws up. I don't know what to do in that situation: am I supposed to
convince him, grind him down, rub his nose in it? That doesn't seem what one
should do. He kept showing me other photographs, pointing out the reflections
in those, and saying "Look! Here!". And I kept biting my tongue from saying,
yeah, Phil - but that's because these completely suck too. You need to
find a better job!
But what if there are no better jobs? What if he doesn't know how to do
anything else? What if he's a bad photographer, but really good at selling his
photos? And why don't epinions ever end up
this wishy-washy and existential?
2002-07-15»
All Hail Harry Newton»
One of the best bits about living with people is you get to read all their
books. Gilbert is in my eternal gratitude list for showing me Harry Newton's Telecom
Dictionary. Any dictionary that includes definitions for Caller-ID message
format, Poisson distributions, meatware, Podiumware, RS233 and Harry himself
("According to Susan, his wife of over 21 years, he has become a sex symbol
for women who no longer care."), is a winner.
There's no topical reason
for writing this. I just thought people should know.
2002-07-12»
James and Marybeth»
Lisa's song about
the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel is so sad. I doubt the music
industry gives a toss about the world it's shutting down - but you'd think
that the preservers of a country's entire heritage would care. I hope so.
2002-07-10»
Apple almost had me.»
The iBook's power adaptor went on the blink earlier today. And me with only
ten minutes left to copy my work files over! No problem, I thought, with
neophyte MacAddict glee - I'll just pop over to the nearby swanky Apple Store and pick
up a new one.
The G3 iBook AC adapter costs $68. Unless you want one from an Apple Store,
the man at the "Genius Bar" said. In which case it costs $68 plus an $85
"service parts charge".
To be fair, he did tell me I'd be better off ordering online, and offered
to recharge my Mac there while I wandered around the Mall for a couple of
hours. Disappointed by this level of genius, I declined, went home, ordered
the part (two days delivery), and then hacked together a fix using a
leatherman and gaffer-taped. I so wanted
to be just a meek little consumer today, too.
Anyway, enough Jerry
Pournelle-style whining. Here's another Linux to MacOS X blog. Useful notes
on identifying which OS version you have from the terminal, remotely mounting
disk images, changing shells and the like. No permalinks though.
2002-07-09»
Who's your Mac daddy?»
Well, it's day four of messing around with Loaner - Cory's old 466 ibook he
lent me on Independence Day. I was keen to poke around with the development
side of MacOS X, so I bought me a copy of Garfinkel and Mahoney's Building Cocoa
Applications on Saturday, and got to work. Inconclusive conclusions so
far:
Things I like
- That the development tools and docs are gratis these days. Yay!
- The old Project
Builder/Interface Builder stuff is great, in a weird mid-nineties timewarp
kind of way. What all the NeXT addicts endlessly go on about is true: it's a
breeze to get up to speed. I managed to get my first dumb
application up and
running by Sunday afternoon, and that's with no knowledge of Objective C,
precious little remembrance of C, no clue about AppKit - and not too
much blind clicking on buttons. Gads, I'm almost looking forward to grokking
AppleScript.
- The built-in WebDAV
support (in Finder's "Connect to Server") is cool. I can already see some
applications for that.
- the fact I can run all this on a 466 256KB iBook without strain.
- Fink. Natch. What can I say? I'm a Debian boy at heart.
Things I'd do differently (given I'm such a darn free software wonk):
- I think there should be an officially supported "Source" folder in the app
bundle. Apple's talked about encouraging open source, and having this as an
option would make sharing source on the MacOS a breeze. You could stash the
code for GPL'd or BSD'd software inside, and still be able to hand people a
single application file. It'd turn app binaries into little Kinder Eggs of
source. And somebody could sell a shareware utility called
SuperAppCompressorDeluxe which deleted that directory from all your apps, and
charge $14.95 for it.
- It's a damn shame that the NIB format is a proprietary binary affair.
Having non-text bits of a development project is nasty - it makes archiving
and oversight much harder, ties you down to one development environment, and
scares the horses.
Things that, after all these years, remind me I'm back in Macland
- Dozens of open applications, before I remember command-Q
- Dreaming of a keyboard shortcut for "Hide Others"
- Took me five days, but I still found myself messing around with File and
Creator Types. Thank goodness Quick Change kept up
with the times.
And yes, you're right. This is a displacement activity :).
petit disclaimer:
My employer has enough opinions of its own, without having to have mine too.
