Obscure PC Components.

One of the things for which I have very recently realized that I should be very thankful is my Lenovo ThinkPad R61i. It's not that I should be thankful for it in the way you are for Thanksgiving, or in the way you are for another person, or even a really meaningful gift.

Instead, I'm to be thankful that it's such a great computer, despite the fact that I bought it retail, with almost no prior research on the specific SKU, and with no knowledge of how Windows Vista was going to run on it. I am sure that had I bought either of the machines to the left or the right of the R61i on that display shelf, I wouldn't have gotten the experience I did.

The reason this is important is because of the reading and research I've been doing lately about Windows Vista, and the launch of Windows Vista. It turns out that if your PC has an older chipset, some things just never work properly. Unfortunately, I've met a lot of people to whom this has happened, and even today, I'm fairly certain low end notebooks are still available with 945 and (I wouldn't be surprised at least) 915 chipsets. The unfortunate thing about that is that Windows Vista has a poor experience on some of the machines based on older chipsets, mainly as a result, as per Intel, of Microsoft's lack of communication about the requirements for the WDDM driver model, which is a big part of how Vista provides the Aero/Glass user experience.

Luckily, the R61i uses the decidedly modern Intel 965 Express chipset, and has the Intel GMA X3100 graphics chip, with shared ram. Not that I knew that when I first got the machine, to me it was just "oh, ThinkPad, these are reputable machines, and I need to learn Vista anyway." Luckily, it's been great for more than just notetaking with OneNote 2007, and merely "learning Vista."

Unfortunately for the "average" PC buyer, this means that a lot of PC purchases will be made on the faith that the consumer is getting what they paid for. Unfortunately I think that that is the very problem right now, that consumers are getting what they pay for, and in many of today's sub-$600 computers, that means old technology. Typically I've found the budget PCs to be usable when you get some of the "bundled offers" removed from them, but with the transition to Vista, what I've noticed is that there haven't been enough improvements quickly enough to the lowest segment of the computer market. The lowest end desktop PCs today can't competently run Vista, more than a year after it's release, which I find to be disconcerting.

Unfortunately, I think that this part of the industry is behind. Not just in the "oh, but it's a $399 computer," way. I think it's further behind than it should be, and it's really disappointing that as a result of the vendors' inability to bring their lowest end computers up to reasonable Vista spec, Microsoft has to continue offering XP for sale to OEMs.

This is something I think people need to have more awareness of, even if it takes longer in a class to go over various chipsets, and how to look for what chipset a computer has. Not just chipsets either, I would be much happier with a basic computer class at both the university and the high school levels that went over all of the components in the system unit in detail, and helped students understand sale ads, researching systems to find a system that really does meet their requirements.

I think putting more focus on the "obscure PC components" would produce more truly computer-literate people, especially since most people already know a lot of the basics about computers, such as the fact that a keyboard can be used to enter text into the computer, and that once you've entered text into the computer, your monitor, which operates like a television, displays that text on the screen.

Yes, you really do need your ID.

Today, for the first time this semester, I actually turned people away for not having their university student ID with them when trying to get into the lab.l The official rule, as far as I'm aware, is that we are supposed to check for IDs on every student from the hours of 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. What I usually do is quite far from it.

Usually I tell people that they need to have their IDs, they tell me they forgot it and could I let them in anyway, then I do and tell them to bring it next time. Luckily most people either only ever come to the lab once, or just learn to come before 11 p.m. I know several users who make an effort to be here before the doors lock, often at about 10:45 p.m. for whatever reason. My guesses include a disliking of confrontation, not actually being an NAU student, or intents to stay here the whole night, with a possible trip to the couch for a nap.

I've got users of all three of those types. One person that comes here, I'm told, is actually just here so he doesn't have to be at home, and uses his cousin's UID. Another person is actually an NAU student, but he has a tendency to fall asleep on the couch for long periods of time, as though he were mainly here because he doesn't have anywhere else to go. Other people who sneak in right at 10:50 are usually here for honest, academic intentions. They need to use a program they don't have at home, or they need to work on a paper. Or at the very least, they're actual NAU students who do have somewhere else they could be, and aren't causing problems for anyone else.

At any rate, the real point of this post was to go ahead and say that today I did turn someone away on the basis that they lacked an NAU ID today. It was two people, both obviously NAU students, one having an ID and the other not. It wasn't overly unfriendly, I just had to repeat myself, "I'm sorry, I can't let you in unless you've got an NAU ID, and no, you can't use his." After another moment or two, the two said they were going to go ahead and go, and I wished them a good evening.

My closing thought is that I think we might need a sign on the door saying "Don't even bother to ring the doorbell if you don't have your own NAU student ID with you."

Switching to Bridge

This is "Part three of an unknown number of parts" in a series I'm calling "Cory talks about how he manages his images." In Part One, I described the history of the schemes I used to manage my photos, including some of the rationale behind each of my switches to a new management system. In Part Two, I ponder the affects of various systems which I could use for photo management. It's also worth noting that I sat on this draft for a very long time, so some of the time is messed up.

This is no giant shock, because it happened several months ago, but I've recently switched to a workflow featuring Adobe Bridge for organizing photos. One of the main features of this system is a heirarchy of folders and Adobe DNG files that consist of my master images, Photoshop PSD files that have files that have been changed at all, and images I've already prepared for output.

Adobe Bridge is what we'd like to call image browsing software. It's capable of interpreting Camera RAW data, building little previews of almost all types of files in any given folder, and things like assigning keywords, ratings and other metadata properties to files. It's somewhat less efficient in some of these processes (particularly rating and keywording) than a few other options available for the Mac, but on the PC, it works great. (More on that later, I'm sure.)

One great side-effect of this system is that I can actually access my files from any computer that doesn't have Bridge or Photoshop installed. Another cool aspect of Bridge is that it doesn't even require I be using a specific type of computer, or accessing my files in a particular way. Because there's less overhead involved in using the files, I can feel confident hooking them up to a network server, or leaving them on a FAT32 formatted drive and using them with my mobile Windows PC as well as my Macintosh at home.

After using the iMac to convert just over thirteen thousand images to DNG format, then split the files into the four gig buckets specified by my workflow, I started using it to give keywords to the images in the first bucket of images, from when I got my first digital camera several years ago.

One thing I noticed at this point was that while Bridge "worked" it definitely wasn't the smoothest possible solution on the Mac. it lagged when loading any significant number of images, and during the process of keywording, something that's specific to the Mac version prevented it from being able to actually add a keyword to an image unless you follow a strange set of keystrokes for each image.

But alas... as a result of PHO382, I was switched to Bridge permanently.

Well that's enough of Bridge for now, but stay tuned for the next article in this series about digital workflow management, or whatever it is I'm calling it as you read this.

Blogging as a Career.

Recently there was a very interesting article on ZDNet, talking about the high-stress world of blogging for pay. The focus of the article is on the instantness of the Internet as a publishing medium, and the stress that's caused by the fact that anybody can get to any given story, and he who gets to the story first gets the most clicks.

One of the main points of the article is how there have been two fairly recent and fairly well-documented cases of bloggers having health problems, potentially related to the stress of their profession. It's great that blogging is now considered to be a very legitimate form of journalism, but it's unfortunate that in order to be successful at all at it, you need to be awake all hours of the day so you can be the blog that has the information first.

This is one of the things that admittedly makes me quite happy that I'm not really blogging for pay, or for another website where I'm stuck to someone else's publishing schedule. Although I'll admit I've had a few moments where I wasn't really sure I'd be able to get a post up onto the blog on time (my main goal is one per day, I haven't been strict with exactly when that post shows up, and sometimes a post will show up a few hours early or late, but since spring break there has been one post that corresponds with each day.

One thing I wonder about this relates to my intent to become a professional photographer. If this is what it's like to do freelance writing on the Internet, do some of the same stresses apply to being an independent or freelance photographer? Or will I find some job where I've got a predictable, reasonable schedule for shooting and delivering?

Maybe I'll start or be a part of a successful photo-blog. That would be cool.

Yellow Bike Ride

Today on my way back home from German, I found and grabbed a yellow bike. It happened to be bike number 62, which was also formerly a cruiser. I'm not sure if it's one of the newest ones, or if they've recalled some of the old ones for some more refurbishment. I've also recently seen one of the old mountain-bike style Yellow Bikes, which looked like it was fairly well-refurbished.

It was weird, almost disconcerting at first, getting on the bike, which is a cruiser, and starting to pedal. Unlike my mountain bike, I can't push the pedal backward at all, in order to reposition the pedals to get the bike started easier. Once I got going, the feeling of riding the bike, somewhat rickety as it felt, was exhilarating. I sped by people on the ped-way, followed and rode by other bicyclists, and  I even charged Cardiac Hill, fast at first, slowing down gradually as I reached the steepest part of the hill, almost stopping at the peak of the hill, right before the upper road crossing.

Gliding, relieved from the apparent lack of effort involved in going forward on mostly flat ground, I rolled through the small parking lot in front of Gabaldon and dismounted the at the front entrance, leaving it propped up against the handrail, otherwise claiming "no bikes on handrail," mainly realizing that the bike would be gone within an hour anyway.

Afterward I was very tired, I'll admit I haven't excercised as with a bike ride in a very long time, especially what with nuclear winter having extended itself so very long. Maybe this summer I'll see if I can get my bike up here at the university.

Mountains of Homework.

It's my own fault really, but today I'm buried under a mountain of homework that's due either late tonight, or tomorrow.

Also, Megan is unhappy because she didn't get Friday off. It's been kind of a bad week. I'm looking forward to seeing Dad and Patrick on Saturday though.

Jack Dykinga / Wind on Campus

Jack Dykinga is basically the photographic hero of my PHO382 instructor, and today instead of class, we got to go hear him speak. On one hand, it was a pretty awesome way to spend some class-time, especially with the high amount of stressful stuff we've been doing in my other classes. I've still got an essay due Thursday, and I had an exam or two today.

Ah well, the blog must go through!

At the very least, it was a good revenge for the Wednesday night class, which had Ami Vitale the week before, and was already a week behind.

On another note, it's been very windy on campus today. It's almost that "right before a big storm" kind of windy that I experienced a lot last semester, where I knew something was coming, just not exactly when.

Awful Headache

I don't know why, but this school year I've been getting frequent, very painful headaches. Like, more than three times on an average week. The unfortunate thing about it is I spend much of my time either applying generous amounts of HeadOn (directly to the forehead!), or spending more time than I really should sleeping.

Today, I'm spending more time sleeping.

And to think, I originally wanted to write about now Nikon had received the D300. Long story short: It's a B2 repair, which means it's a moderate repair but they need to replace major parts. There was also a notice about how there's some parts they might need that they don't have too very many of. Also, it's all free under warranty. I can't wait for them to send it back!

Windows XP will never die.

Very recently, like in the past fifty minutes, I found  a very interesting article on the ArsTechnica website. Basically, in an interesting "turn of events" (read: the inevitable) it turns out that Microsoft is giving yet another extension to the life of Windows XP. They're extending production of it for budget laptops another two years. 2008 + 2 = 2010.

I've just go to say... "wow."

Microsoft is the only company on the planet to have this problem. On the day of the release of Mac OS X 10.5 last year, 10.4 was probably gone and destroyed from all Apple Store shelves, and the computers bundled with 10.4 were being equipped with the drop-in Leopard discs.

Not only is it a year and a quarter after the Vista launch date, but Microsoft has already extended the life of XP twice, and has now done so a third time.

I wonder what the implications of this for Windows XP Professional are. Currently both XP Home and Pro are up to SP2, and SP3 is in beta testing right now. Two more years is a long time though. Will there be another XP service pack? Will there be two more service packs? Since only sales of XP home are continuing, and only through OEM channels, will only XP Home receive XPSP4 treatment?

Another thought: Did you know that HP and Lenovo both sell mobile computers today that can have Windows 2000 installed. Lenovo puts the drivers right up on their website. And 2000 didn't even receive any special extensions. Imagine how far into the future we'll be able to get business-class computers and install XP onto them. Especially if it's still getting security updates.

Almost more importantly, what does this mean for organizations still embracing Windows XP? Especially those already having paid Microsoft for their site licenses. I may be wrong, but my impression is that NAU owns site licenses of Windows XP Professional, which is why many of the computers here in the lab have an XP Home COA on them, yet are running Pro. With it currently being so much less expensive to buy desktops shipping with open source software, will NAU's next wave of lab computers ship with Linux or FreeDOS installed on them, only to have ITS' XP Pro image applied to them?

Is there a certain point where businesses, and even home users simply will not need any more oomph from the OS? Can all additional functions that are needed be added to XP by third parties or with applications? Presumably if Dell decides to continue offering Windows XP drivers for their business computers, (whether or not they ship with XP preinstalled mind you) an organization like NAU could potentially stall on upgrading to the next version for a very long time. There will be another post about this before too long.

The last big question I want to ask in this post is what the benefit will be for the customers to have computers shipping with as many as five different versions of Windows. This is especially frustrating to me when one of them, the most affordable, will be a version nearly a decade old, potentially not supporting some important applications.

As a sidenote, this post is officially my 200th post to this weblog. Also, this post has had two or three different posts spun out of it. Cool, I'll have a few pre-written posts in the next few weeks, I think.

Color Accuracy

This is mostly just a note to let everyone know that my color calibrator arrived! It's an x-rite i1 display 2, which is a long somewhat confusing name, but I think overall the thing's a fairly solid middle of the road offering, and I'm really happy with it. Especially since bhphotovideo sells it for $250, and I got it for $175 from MAC-On-Campus.

I've just got to say, I'm really happy with it. It's not something that I can really use every day, but it really is something that's already made a difference. Looking at my photos is now a better experience, and I think I'll be able to get better output from RA-4 process wet labs that use machines like the Fuji Frontier. (and Target, which uses Kodak's competitor to the Frontier.)

Right now I've got my iMac, which is a bit over a year old, set to remind me to calibrate every two weeks, and my ThinkPad, which is just under six months old, to remind me every three weeks. So even though I can't use it daily, I intend to be using it biweekly at least for the next few years. I don't know if these things ever wear out, but if they don't, then I can't imagine myself really needing to replace it -- although if it does wear out I hope someone lets me know.

Yes, I have seen the rain on a sunny day.

Well, Spring has officially Sprung, so to speak, here at the university. Today marks the first day that I've seen and felt non-snow precipitation, and it seems fairly special in general also as a result of the fact that it's still really bright outside today. The light is pretty soft, it would probably make an excellent day for outdoor or environmental portraits.

This day is also very special for another reason, today Megan and I celebrate seven months together today. Also, Megan is turning in a portfolio she's going to be using for an art scholarship application, and today after her class she's going to head down to Tucson for the street fair, and to celebrate the birthday of her brother and mother, so I've got the weekend up here alone.

I think this weekend I'll end up cleaning the room a bit more, developing my NT4 domain and maybe I'll make progress on one of my bigger projects.

Sent in the D300

I'm sure I was supposed to post something else, but I'd like to let everyone know that I made the trip to the UPS store and sent in the D300. It cost a bit of money, but I think it was worth it.

The experience has made me acutely aware of the differences between Nikon's service and AppleCare, however. For example, to send the camera in, I had to take it to the UPS store because I'm terrified of packing it up and sending it in on my own. When my old G4 PowerBook was having problems, I called Apple up on the phone, told them what was going on, and they shipped out a box for me to send the computer in, with pre-paid return shipping, and my computer was back to me within a week.

Nikon hasn't even given me an estimate as to when they'll receive my camera into their system and get to working on it.

While I can understand that not every agency with tech support can be like AppleCare, it's just unfortunate to have to deal with anything other than AppleCare.

To be fair to the other PC vendors, I've heard Lenovo and Dell are really great at shipping out user-replaceable parts to business customers whose systems are under warranty.

Scanning Negatives

I had some other crazily awesome blog entry planned for today, I think. Although I've completely forgotten what it was, and although the draft for it is probably in my other computer, that's not where I am right now, and I'm feeling like I'm in a pretty good writing mood, so here I am, working on a post in Blogger's web mode.

Today I'm just hanging out here in the School of Communication open lab, preparing for my PHO382 midterm, and we're finally scanning files for Megan. I'm not sure exactly how much quality we need, so I've gone ahead and tried to give us as much extra quality as I possibly can. This way, even if we end up outputting 640px jpegs for the web, we'd have as much latitude and data to work with as posible, which is awesome. Only real problem is that it seems like the process of scanning these 300 megabyte TIFF files is very.. umm... well, intense. The computer hates me ow, basically. The protip of the day is that 300 megabyte TIFF files make computers very angry.

The open lab here at the school of communication consists of all Macintosh computers of various ages. I suspect some of the machines in this room, set up and able to be logged into on titan are nearly a decade old, such as the old PowerMac G4 systems with their 15" ADC displays. The very ones I remember Apple unveiling in 1999 or 2000. What workhorses. On the other hand, we've got a lot of pretty modern systems in here too, a bunch of the latest 20" iMacs, and G5s of various types (iMacs and PowerMacs.)

This iMac performed very well at first, and I bet that as a standalone machine, or a machine in an environment with a much faster network, this thing would rock so hard, it wouldn't be funny. Similar to those 2.0GHz/2GB Dell OptiPlex 755 systems in the College of Business Administration, except the iMacs here have bigger displays and webcams. Oh, and there's the whole thing about how the School of Comm only has one file server, but that's actually a post for another day.

The only thing I can really purport to not love about this iMac is the keyboard, at first Apple's newest keyboard is a little bit off-putting. It's so low on the desk, and it's somewhat difficult to get used to the idea of a laptop keyboard like this on the desk. It was also difficult for me to find an appropriate position for the keyboard, where I felt like I could start typing on it at full speed and not have it fly out from under my hands, or have my fingers start feeling weird as a result of the odd positioning and shape of the keyboard. After a few hours of typing this blog entry and chatting in Meebo and Mibbit however, I'm feeling much more confident with this keyboard. While I'm not going to run home and buy one tonight, I would feel confident in ordering and using one if both of my previous-generation Apple Keyboards died, or it came to be that I ordered a newer Mac and didn't have a different keyboard to use with it.

Agency

We've been learning a bit about the emerging study of history of various marginalized groups in HIS102, and one of the big key words is agency. Basically the idea is that "women's history" (and history of other marginalized groups) gives those groups agency. The idea of agency is that you can be an active part of history, causing changes upon other things, and playing a real part.

This thought occurred to me just recently when I was thinking of the best way to execute a web comic. One idea I have had was to get photos of my friends doing various things and put captions on them. Unfortunately, what I noticed is that there are a lot of situations I would want to put on this web comic that I'm also a part of. Other than using a tripod, or having someone else take the pictures, I couldn't think of a good way to do it with my camera.

That made me think about how in this school year, I've become a much more active player in my own life. In high school especially, I would've been able to assemble a great photo-web-comic based purely on images I'd taken of other people. Here at the university, I'm a pretty big part of most of the shenanigans my friends and I perform.

It's interesting to see that transition, and definitely an interesting realization ot make. Especially since it's even more difficult to document my life with photos, since I'm now a big part of it.

Also, I'm sorry this blog entry was late -- last night I had to do homework and spend time with Megan, and by the time she left and I was almost done, it was 11:30 and because of my weekend novel-reading spree, which didn't end until 3 a.m. on Monday, I was unable to actually stay awake by 11 last night.

Megan is awesome.

I'm here on the overnight, and Megan is with me, using the iMac (which I've color calibrated pretty well using the built-in utility) and I'm thinking about what to put in my blog. In addition to speaking over Google Talk with Kevin from Washington, and putting off reading my book for HIS102.

When I asked what to write for my blog, Megan suggested I write about how awesome she is. So, for a bit of a change of pace, this post is approximately 73% dedicated to how awesome Megan is. (If I were to include more sidenotes, insignificant details or exposition about the situation, the number would've been something like 67%.)

Basically, Megan is awesome. :)

That's pretty much it. I don't have screenshots or anything prepared like I did for my post about how Vista is awesome. "oops."

Return to Overnights

Well folks, it's finally happened. I'm working another overnight! It feels like it's been a month or so since I've worked one, and I've got to say, I've missed it tremendously. There's nothing quite like sitting here in the lab, half-asleep, playing Trainz 2006 on the iMac, then switching back to OS X to make a youtube video. (I'd put in a whole paragraph about how awesome I think it is I'm being paid for this, but I think my supervisors might see this. I'll probably give Eric the link to it when I send him my report e-mail.)

I've got to admit, not only did I play around in Trainz then iMovie, the overnight affords a really interesting cross between homework and play. I started reading the book for History 102, "This Earth of Mankind" which I intend to continue reading as this shift progresses, and finish reading tomorrow and on tomorrow's shift.

I'm bringing the iMac tomorrow too, or rather, I might just leave it here at the helpdesk. I hear a rumor that Megan is coming in tomorrow and we're working on the photos of her images using the iMac's almost-properly color calibrated screen.

On the note of color calibration, I did go ahead and order an X-Rite whatever it was called through the MAC On Campus pro deal thing for photo majors. My intent is to use it on the ThinkPad, the iMac, along with probably the helpdesk machines and Megan's laptop. I love color accuracy!

It's also worth noting that I went back and looked at one or two of my old videos. There's one from when I started working at the helpdesk that, when I look at it now, seems really hilarious. Basically, I can sum it up by saying that I was rather unhappy about Office 2007.

I'll make my close of this entry with an interesting observation. It's after spring break. Like, there's only a few more weeks left in the whole school year. And yet, there are still people forgetting their NAU ID cards when they come to the lab at 5 a.m. Not cool. I think I'm going to use Meaghan's "when you signed up to be an NAU student, you agreed to the terms in the student handbook, which say you can get in trouble if you aren't carrying your ID card at all times" speech on the next person.

Windows NT 4.0

I'm writing this post for my blog to inform my readers, who may or may not care, that I've got the ThinkPad A21m booting and running Windows NT 4.0. If you heard about the project for this Pentium III machine running at 700MHz a few weeks ago, you'll know that I almost completely gave up. The main struggle was that everything was running perfectly with the exception of the Ethernet in the machine.

I was able to get the ethernet driver installed using a little bit of a trick. I installed the driver for an NT4 supported card so as to get the networking stack running. I then installed the Lenovo ethernet driver, and from there, I removed the driver for the card I didn't have. I'd say that it was a fairly clever ploy and that it worked fairly well.

Right now I'm in the process of installing Internet Explorer updates, after which I'm going to go through and install all of the drivers, the power saving utilities, and the Lenovo documentation. I've also got Visual Basic 6, and I'm pretty excited to say that I want to get Office 97 rolling on here.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about the machine. This is going to be one of the highest end machines I've ever had running NT4, and it's going to be running it in the most complete way I've ever used NT4. Add to that, it's in a convenient foldable slab format that I can take with me to the helpdesk, or wherever else I want to have NT4 with me.

Another thing I'm (quite oddly) looking forward to is playing with Visual Basic 6 again. It's been a very long time (gee, it was like tenth or eleventh grade I last used VB6) since I've used Visual Basic and I'd like to see if I still remember anything at all about it. If I do, I might like to write a few little applications, and who knows, maybe I'll put them online for other people to take a look at.

Campus Wireless.

I'm not going to lie. In this school year, I have become increasingly more reliant on my mobile computer, be it the old-but-good-for-writing IBM ThinkPad 760cd, or the "old and busted but still works once I get a new power adapter for it PowerBook G3" or even my nearly brand new Lenovo ThinkPad R61i.

It doesn't really matter for what I'm doing during the day, just taking notes and doing the occasional pixel pushing with the ThinkPad in my spare time, not that I really have very much spare time while I'm walking around and in classes.

One thing I've noticed though is that finally the wireless in the Biology and Communication buildings finally work. Wireless was just installed by ITS in the Comm building right before spring break, and I've finally figured out how the new wireless system works. It's convenient for getting onto Vista or checking webmail, but it's not convenient for checking e-mail with thunderbird or chatting, which is what I've got a tendency to do during classes. It's also worth noting that the wireless works very well on my overnights, in the business building, and in the student union.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite places to be on the Internet is in the Gabaldon laundry room, and wireless still doesn't work very well in there. I think I'm simply going to reallocate that time to "photo tagging" so I can actually start powering through my photography keywording project.

It works better than it has before, and almost any time during the day I can be online writing my blog or wasting time in IRC. I'm almost chatting in IRC as often during classes as I am during work. "oops."

CIS120 Lab Aide?

Yesterday, I rocked the PowerPoint exam. I rocked it pretty hard, and when I was done after less than half an hour, my instructor made it a point to let me know that I was doing well in the class. He continued the conversation by letting me know that there would be nineteen or so sections of CIS120 next semester. He then asked me if I'd be interested in being a lab aide for CIS120 next semester.

I think it would definitely be an interesting thing to try out, I know no details of the opportunity yet, nor do I know whether or not I'll accept the offer. My main concern is pay and compensation, and exactly what's involved in the position. I'm also really considering how many hours I'd want to work at the CBA and how many hours I'd want at the helpdesk. I'm thinking that I don't want to make CIS120 lab aide my primary profession, but I would definitely like the opportunity to try it out, and spend a bit more time in the CBA.

New Yellow Bikes

As recently as Sunday evening, there are about fifty new yellow bikes on NAU's campus. They're all brand new, registered with the City of Flagstaff, and they've got some warning text on them explaining the program and providing a disclaimer. On Sunday evening and Monday morning, they were littered all over campus, but sure enough, I'm sure they're now all concentrated in one or two of the most popular destinations. The unfortunate thing is that there probably isn't some sort of committee whose job it might be to spread them back out.

It was cool today seeing people ride them around, although I've already seen a few with a few loose pieces, one with limp handlebars and one with a seat that wouldn't stay up. I wonder if there's some kind of team or group on campus whose job it will be to manage the fleet of yellow bikes. Pulling a few (the ones in worst condition) out at a time to give them some loving isn't a bad idea, and having everything maintained would boost morale and the reputation of the program I bet.

Reliability, Nikon D300

I write about reliability far too often. It's sad but true, for some reason, the products I use seem to be horribly horribly unreliable. The iMac since getting it in December 2006 has been in twice, once to have it's motherboard, optical drive and hard disc replace, and once to just have its hard disc replaced. Most recently, my new camera, the Nikon D300, which I purchased exactly one month ago today, has been having a weird little problem.

Specifically, when I make exposures under very specific conditions, the camera displays "ERR" in the viewfinder and on the top LCD. The particular conditions are "any ISO, any shutter speed, any F-number above the minimum for the lens." That might not mean anything to any of my readers, but I'll sum it up in a user-friendly way. "about 95% of all photographic situations."

So the other day I opened up a service ticket with Nikon's online knowledge base system. The response I got back earlier today was that I should try to charge the battery, and make sure I was using a supported memory card and lens. If those hints didn't help, that I was advised to go ahead and send in the camera.

So now I've printed out a repair form and shipping label, and all I need to do is find suitable packaging for the thing and send it in. With luck, that won't be too extraordinarily challenging, because I'm not actually too interested in sending the camera in, let alone finding my own packaging and paying my camera's way to Nikon's facility in El Segundo, CA.

Although, for the people who have told me about how the value of a repaired D300 outweighs the costs of getting it repaired (in my case, just the time without the D300 and the cost of shipping it) I'd like to mention that I've had the D50 nearly three full years without ever having a hiccup with it, and that the D50 was Nikon's cheap model a few years ago. So I don't think I should have to send my brand new camera into the manufacturer in order to be able to get use out of it.

Anyway, with luck and skill I'll have the D300 sent out by this time next week, hopefully to be able to get it back before going on my trip to Michigan this summer. It seems depressing to me that I should say something like "maybe in two months I'll have it back and it'll be useful" but I've never experienced Nikon's send-in service before, and from what I've read online in the past, there's a good chance that it's not as efficient and well-thought-out as AppleCare's send in service is. (in AppleCare, for a laptop, they mail you a box free, you put your product in and mail it back free, and they have your computer back to you in less than a week.)

And with that, this is the official opening of the Nikon category of my blog. Things pertaining specifically to Nikon, such as the rest of this saga, will be put into said category. It'll be epic.

Nature Sounds (video)

Today Jim and I heard some nature sounds from our room! I decided it would be cool to make a video about it.

Also Today I've been doing some of the bookkeeping and keeping up in general with my camera, that's been experiencing a weird problem at high F numbers like sixteen and twenty two. It worked fine last night when I only needed to go to F/4 once, (I was hanging out at 3.5 all night because it was, well, night.) So right now I"m charging the battery, which was one of Nikon's reccomended steps. I've alreayd done the two-button reset, and I'm afraid that if this continues even after I've fully recharged the battery, Nikon is going to have a quite unhappy Cory on their hands.

The iTunes/Safari Fiasco

Let me start this post by saying that my ThinkPad already has Safari installed anyway, so I really don't care if Apple pushes a Quicktime/iTunes/Safari update to my machine. In fact, I intend to go try out the new version of WinSafari pretty soon, because I really like it, save the fact that scrolling doesn't work with the TrackPoint.

So when I started hearing about how Apple is now "pushing" Safari on people who don't know not to uncheck the box, it gave me kind of a chuckle. A lot of people are saying it's wrong that Apple is distributing Safari like this, and that it borders on the practices of those distributing malware. Of course, I'll refrain from saying anything about the Windows Live applications that always want you to install more, more more, or the difficulty of installing any kind of Google product without getting Adobe Reader, RealPlayer and one or two other things with them.

The thing is that the apps affected by this updater on Windows are all actually part of the operating system on a Mac. Which is one of the reasons I suppose the updater is probably behaving that way. On the Mac, it's the default behavior to get you updates for apps that usually ship on the system or with the retail versions, even if you don't currently have them installed. I've seen iTunes come in on Software Update for a Mac that I chose not to install iTunes on. It's just one of the things Apple does.

In all reality, between typical Windows desktop clutter, and the fact that most people don't even know what's already on their computer, I doubt most normal people will notice this. All the people observant enough to know that there's a check box they can undo have already undone said check box.

It would be evil, however, if Apple were actually hijacking machines by setting Safari up as the default browser on people's machines, or changing Firefox/IE home pages to pages explaining about Safari.

Hanging out at work.

Meaghan and I did an awkward shift-trade thing today and I ended up with 7 hours from 2 to 9. Not too bad really, at least I didn't have to take the whole 9 hours with only 20 minutes notice.
I've been using the time to work on photo crap, and since all of my OS X install CDs are at the helpdesk for some reason, I took a moment to install iMovie '06 on my iMac.

So I made this video.



Enjoy!

Internet Cultural: Top 8 Musical

Hey faithful readers. I know this is a bit late in the day, but it still counts!

Anyway, today Meaghan alerted me to the presence of a musical about MySpace. It's called "Top 8: The MySpace Musical." I've got to admit, I am somewhat embarrassed to be so into it. It's about MySpace, after all. But it's got a really good sound, very modern, a lot of piano. Let's just say I can't wait for the FaceBook musical.

I leave you with this thought from my favorite song. "What's one more friend to you?"

Great day!

Megan had the day off yesterday, so I asked Meaghan to take my shift for me, and Megan and I spent the whole day together. Let's just say, it was great.

We started the day with a great breakfast at IHOP, getting my hair cut, and some kite flying, then went back to my room to watch some Avatar episodes and have some other fun time.

We also installed the 32 gig CF card into her iPod. It's a big reduction in capacity from her 80 gig hdd, but it won't break if she accidentally drops it.

Overall, the day was completely epic, and despite being filled with so many things, it was very well paced because neither of us had to worry about being at work or in classes.

Windows Vista

One of the things I encounter a lot at my job, and indeed, online, is a bit of a dislike for anything that isn't Windows XP. Many of the Freshman here at NAU who own computers that came with Windows Vista seem to have a fairly big aversion to it. I'm here to openly admit that not only does my main mobile computer run Windows Vista, but I really like Windows Vista.

Ouch. "like" and "Windows Vista" in the same sentence? Many, include some at the ACHD, will ask if it's true, and I'm here to say that basically, yes, it is possible.

Before anybody had the opportunity to try it for themselves, one of the biggest things people attacked was the hardware requirements Microsoft has put forth for Vista. I've included a handy little table showing Microsoft's minimum and recommended specs for XP and Vista.

	XP	Vista
Release Date	October 2001	January 2007
Minimum Processor	233MHz	800MHz
Recommended Proc	300MHz	1GHz
Minimum RAM	64MB	512MB
Recommended RAM	128MB	1GB
Minimum HDD	1.5GB	20GB, 15 free
Recommended HDD	"more"	40GB, 15 free

The main observation I've got is that both sets of requirements are very modest. Most people fault Vista for running somewhat poorly on an 800MHz Pentium III computer, when they themselves would never have considered running Windows XP on a computer with a Pentium 233MHz processor.

I'll also admit that we at the ACHD did actually run Vista on an 800MHz PIII, with 512mb of memory and a 20 gig hard disc. Such a machine would've been just fine for Windows XP, having exceeded the requirements by so far. But it ran, and aside from the complete lack of a video driver, it even booted some apps, and would probably have been a pretty useful computer.

The current ACHD Vista Box is a 3.2GHz PIV with 1 gig of ram and an 80 gigabyte HDD. It's actually a really fast machine, as far as Vista is concerned. It launches the Office 2007 apps really quickly, and while they're open, it's all very usable. I would go as far as to say that it's a nicer system to use sometimes than my ThinkPad. (Although I think that's just because so few people actually do anything on the ACHD Vista Box, and I'm running around on a daily basis thrashing about on this ThinkPad.)

Of course, what's an OS without good apps? Vista has a bunch of them built in, and almost better than the built-in apps, are some of the interesting things I've found on Microsoft's website for Vista. (Although, some of them may not be Vista-specific.

One of the tools I've been using in Vista has been Windows Calendar. I've been using it to keep track of what I post to my blog, and when I post it. When I was on the once-weekly schedule, I used it to plan what was coming up, and I kept track of what drafts I'd already written, and what drafts I needed to write.

I've gathered the icons to some of the cool things Vista includes. Yes, Windows Media Player is nothing new, but it's better than Ruckus player. Yes, Mac OS X has long included a Calendar, a contact manager, a photo app and of course, Mail.app, but it's worth noting that these things are now part of Vista, and their combined functionality is nearly as good as that of Outlook.

Although, most of the reason for including a screenshot of a bunch of icons is just to demonstrate just how good Microsoft has been getting lately about value. Microsoft has even been working in the past few years on getting development tools to people for free, thus the "Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition." I didn't feel like downloading or using any of the other development tools. I've also been using Microsoft's free blog management tool, Windows Live Writer.  It's been working well for me since December, although I've got to admit I'm unhappy with Blogger's inability to let articles be posted in the future.

Another thing I've noticed about Windows Vista is that it just brings a whole new level of refinement to the Windows platform. A great example of this is the new "My Computer" interface. It's overall just about the same as the old one, but I think the appearance of it is better. At the bottom of the window it shows basic information about your computer, including its name, the processor and how much memory it's got. On each local hard disc there's a capacity graph that lets you see at a glance the approximate status of your storage capacity, and a numeric output with details on exactly how much hard disc space you've got available. Such a thing, especially the color-coded graph, isn't available from the Mac OS X Desktop.

There are a lot of things about Windows Vista that I really like, and I use and enjoy on a regular basis. But quite honestly, I'm rather much too lazy to run around gather all of those screenshots. Maybe as I notice other things I've been using in Vista I'll gather more screenshots and post them.

Quiet Day

It's very quiet today at the helpdesk. I haven't gotten an actual call yet today (knock on wood) and a bit ago, the chatter of the full-time staff mysteriously stopped. I don't know whether it's relaxing, or creepy.

At any rate, I've just been here writing blog entries and working on some photography stuff. I'm getting some of the base adjustments on some of the additional images for my photo class, and finding other images I want to work on. I really should start working on rating and keywording some of the older images too. I can't wait to (whenever it finally happens) to just have that done.

So, I'm just hanging out here, writing blog posts and working on photography. I'll probably hang out here with Meaghan a bit when she comes for her shift later on. She's got some images on which to play Photoshop too.

Recognition of Encouragement

Recently, this blog received a comment. The comment was posted to an entry I wrote about trying to write a blog entry every day, and to which I attached a horrible horrible youtube video. I've got to admit I'm impressed that anyone would feel the need or desire to post a comment to such a post.

But the important bit is that somebody did. Laurel, one of my supervisors at the Academic Computing Helpdesk, posted a comment reading "Good luck!" to the awful entry including a youtube video.

So this is my official recognition of the first comment my blog has received in a very long time, and I'd just like ot say, "Thank you, Laurel!"

Also worth noting, I do not support or condone Office Terrorism.

Nuclear Winter Will Never End

Let me begin by saying that I really admire people who actually find time to write on their blogs every single day. Even if it’s something small. I tried yesterday, to write and post something, but once I got to Peter Piper to start writing my blog entry, and Megan and I had finished lunch, they decided to let Megan go early, thus cutting my writing time short. (Although I’m very appreciative of the time spent with Megan.)
At any rate, today’s blog entry is about what I’m calling Nuclear Winter. Basically, it started snowing in November or December of last year, and it hasn’t stopped since. It was definitely cool for the first month or so, and the first cumulative foot of snow, but after awhile it really prevented me being able to or wanting to go out and do anything other than that which I was required to, like classes and work. I even went through a period this semester where I was eating significantly less because I was never willing to take a trip to the store to just get some food.
Luckily, Megan and I went to the store yesterday and I stocked up for spring break, but the fact that it’s snowed worries me for other reasons. My dad was supposed to come up for a visit sometime over this break, and if I have to say to him “oh, it’s just snowed last weekend” then he is unlikely to want to come visit.
The other bummer is that I wanted to get out and take some photos with the D300, but I’m not super comfortable walking around outside with it in the snow. Plus, I’ve got a lot of other unattractive snow pictures. I really just can’t wait for it to be July or August again. Flagstaff looks amazing at that time of year.

Thoughts on Labs

You might know that my job involves sitting around here in the South Learning Assitance Center quite often.  In addition to the fact that I really like to sit around here at the lab, I really like analyzing the setup, and tracking changes. So when in the past few days I started getting weird opportunities to see other computer labs on campus, I was naturally very excited to see how other departments set up their labs.

I'll start off by explaining that I work in an NAU ITS lab, which is considered to be the standard of labs here on campus. Residence hall labs are also on the same standard image as the machines. The whole system is set up to authenticate and load profile settings directly from dana, which is the definitive student file/mail/web server on campus, and which also happens to be a Solaris 8 box. The problem with the ITS lab image is that it's slow. 2.0GHz Core2Duo machines like our OptiPlex 745 machines feel slow and unresponsive when logging in, and I really do think the organization of everything on the lab image is rather atrocious. The ITS-Labs Macintosh computers are even worse.

The first lab I had the opportunity to see last Thursday was a lab in the art building. It's apparently a very highly gaurded secret, so I will probably receive a talking-to from my girlfriend (an art major) about this blog post, but suffice it to say that from the quick peek I got, it looked clean and well-maintained. There were two labs next to each other, one with Windows and one with Mac OS. The Windows lab was closed though, and the Mac lab appeared to have all Music keyboards. I don't know whether or not this lab authenticated directly from dana, or if it was like the Babbitt LLC described below.

Another lab with which I've had the opportunity to become a bit more familiar is the Language Learning Center in the Babbitt Academic Annex. The lab was very clean, I'd go as far as to say it was imMaculate (horrible horrible pun), and it was filled completely with well-running G5 iMacs. The system authenticates against the same NAU LDAP setup as the rest of the labs do, but I think it does its actual authentication against a server that resides in the Babbitt building. I think home folders on that system may be on the MODL server. I noticed my login was very quick, and the environment was set up in a very very clean way. The dock was filled with only the apps that were really relevant, and my dana samba share was right there on the desktop.

Upon login at the LLC lab, Safari immediately opened and displayed this rather-helpful wiki page. It isn't actually the most helpful thing ever, but the concept is great, and with a bit of work it could become the definitive way to educate self-starting users about what's available in the lab, and how to go about doing things. Also, I really like the OS X Server 10.5 start page, and the built-in wiki/blog/calendaring functions look really cool. I've got to admit, I wish I had a Leopard server hanging around.

There are two departments on campus, just that I know of, that stray completely from the NAU-STUDENTS\ domain and use their own completely Mac or Windows based solutions, which is cool because they are typically much more efficient, having been implemented on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, it makes supporting users from the W.A. Franke College of Business Administration and the School of Communication rather difficult, because we're unable to help them with their passwords, login procedures, or even in the case of the SoC, the exact name of their login account.

The W.A. Franke College of Business Administration uses a windows domain with a really long esoteric name that's super difficult to type in when you're attempting to connect to it from home. On the other hand, what I found out is that it all pretty much "just works" when you're in the actual building. The Sun Ray thin clients are awful, slow little pieces of hardware, but their 2.0GHz Core2Duo OptiPlex 755 systems in the labs are really fast little computers, and they've got a lean and efficient set of software (mostly Office 2007 and VisStudio 2005) installed. The systems are also left in an attractive default Windows Classic scheme, in contrast to the ugly custom colors used on the ITS Labs image.

The School of Comm, whose principal server is called Titan, has a pretty interesting (one-server) setup. It's very similar to the network I set up at Kingman High School last summer, but bigger and with more users. Like the FCBA network, it's fairly efficient and you can usually be logged in and examining files fairly quickly, although they've taken less care to actually transfer all of their students uids over properly, and unlike the IT department in the FCBA, the School of Comm's network is managed only by one person. Also, their datacenter is less impressive, with only three racks, each with only one or two pieces of equipment. For shame. For shame. (Two xserves, an xserve raid, one or two powermac G4s, and the EditShare server.)

It's definitely interesting to see the differences between massive labs like the one here in the S-LAC that has a lot of computers that run slowly, and the smaller school-specific labs that, despite having fewer staff members, always seem to be cleaner and run better. I wonder if it's an effect of the fact that the S-LAC is open twenty four hours daily, or the fact that ITS labs have so many employees, whereas some of the smaller labs are either unmanned, but maintained by their full time staff, or if the size of the computer facility even has something to do with it.

My guess is that it's a weird combination of all of the above. The SLAC is a great lab, but from what I can see, the staff aren't all that well connected, the fact that the lab runs 24/7 means that there's often not enough time to do maintenance or things like shuffling computers around, and I've noticed that the whole arrangement of the lab just isn't as attractive as some of the other labs on campus. The feeling I get from the S-LAC is that it's primarily "a room with computers in it," whereas from some of the other labs on campus, I get the 'workspace' feeling.

It makes a huge difference to have a defined area for your work station, where you can shuffle through papers and everything, and I notice so many people who use the S-LAC tend to head toward a certain computer depending upon what they want to do. I've noticed that it's not that big of a problem for a younger person who only needs to check their MySpace or Facebook to use one of the "line computers" as I call them, which are on the east side of the lab, where there's nowhere to spread papers out. Whereas people who are always working on big projects prefer the computers that sit on their own midsized desks, or the computers that are alone on the long tables (there are one or two like that.)

I also think that the design of the S-LAC gives people a certain attitude about its use. Because they think of the S-LAC as merely a room with computers, it doesn't matter so much to them that they leave trash around, or draw on the desks, because it's not so much their responsibility to keep everything looking nice, as it is with users of labs in individual colleges. Either that, or in the smaller labs, staff are responsible for picking up after the users on a regular basis, which I can tell you based on my experience with the overnight shift, does not happen at all here at the S-LAC.

I really do think it's possible for the S-LAC to be an even more top-notch lab than it already is. We've got great equipment, and the building really is a pretty good design as far as labs go, but I'm going to end this rather long post here. I may elaborate a little bit in the future though, on what changes I would make to the SLAC to turn it into a better work environment for students.

Video Blog Entry

Eric J. from work has been posting blog entries daily, and has been including snippets of video with his blog. Actually, it's apparently rather common at the helpdesk to participate in such shenanigans. I've personally, as you know, been shooting for once per week, but maybe what I'll try to do is post short entries daily, and big significant  posts once or twice per week, depending really upon how often big signficant post worthy thoughts come up.

So, look out for blog posts on a much more regular basis!

Horrible Horrible Disillusionment

The good news is that my PowerBook G3 isn't actually dead. It's just that my power adapter has died. The bad news is that even though my G3 is now once-again alive, I'm coming to the end of a horrible horrible disillusionment about the state of the Mac as a computing platform.

In short, especially with Windows Vista, there's almost no advantage any more to owning and using a Macintosh computer. Even for photographers, web designers, and graphic artists.

This is where in previous blog entries, I would've tried to reassure you by telling you I'm not thinking about switching to Windows. But the truth of the matter here is that I've already got a great mobile Windows computer, that happens to run Adobe Bridge better than my desktop Mac computer.

To better explain the situation, I've got to ruin my next blog post and let the world know that I've officially taken my photography workflow to Adobe Bridge. It's probably a permanent move, and I'm overall quite happy with it. Even poorly behaved Bridge is fairly productive, and I've already got the first group of four gigs worth of DNG images keyworded, and I have been working on the second group. The workflow in question provides a clear path toward archiving things on DVDs, and it's a cross-platform solution.

In order to take advantage of the cross-platform nature of the Bridge workflow, I recently "acquired" Photoshop CS3, and installed it on my ThinkPad R61i. When I loaded some images into Bridge and started keywording a more recent set, I was surprised at just how fast everything goes. I don't wait for application of metadata, or for keywords to show up on images, I just work through the set, rather quickly actually, and all of the keywords are applied. The program doesn't start behaving oddly, and it can keep going for hours.

What a gyp! on my iMac, Bridge starts behaving very poorly after only about twenty minutes of keywording, and the whole program becomes unstable while it builds caches, applies metadata, and does anything other than sit idly. (Actually, I've also experienced extremely unreliable idle sitting Bridge. That was fun.) To use a trite expression, and to add insult to injury, the PC I'm running Bridge on is a low end business laptop with a slow processor and a slow connection to the external hard disc. It's got one gig more ram than my iMac, but the Macs at the School of Comm also have that extra gig, and they're just as bad at Bridge as my home iMac.

I've also noticed that I've got almost zero other Mac-only software. I like iChat and Mail, but Pidgin and Thunderbird have been doing a great job on my Windows machine. I browse the Web with Firefox, even on my Mac, and the other things in my dock are either not needed on Windows, or are available on Windows easily (like the whole Creative Suite group.)

So... while I'm not about to run out and replace my iMac this week, I'm really going to be looking at Windows desktop PCs and workstations when it's time to buy my next computer. I'm also going to be looking really hard at the Windows version of Adobe CS4, when that comes out, because as it stands, I can run Windows software very easily on my existing Mac hardware.

Such disappointment.

Dating Photography

Yes, I know it's not timely. Ohwell.

As per a thread on the 68kMLA Forum about the total cost of owning a computer, I'm currently merely dating photography. In order to extend our relationship to marriage, I need to go and meet photography's parents: the darkroom. Not only, of course, have I been in the darkroom for nearly three years now, but I'm fairly certain that photography just doesn't care if I meet her parents. Also, I'm apparently not fit to even be allowed to view the 68kMLA forum, because of my affinity with things like "getting my schoolwork done" which can't be done on something with a 68k processor. Well, let me just say, rude newbies. I'm not worthy, really. Luckily though, Photography and I have talked it out and we're fairly comfortable with our open relationship, I'm also dating German, Megan, CIS, and History.

Photo Management.

This is "Part two of an unknown number of parts" in a series I'm calling "Cory talks about how he manages his images." In Part One, I described the history of the schemes I used to manage my photos, including some of the rationale behind each of my switches to a new management system.

I struggle with managing my images constantly. It seems like the photos I come out of my camera are always either receiving really esoteric naming schemes, or are being put into some trendy new piece of photo management software. On the other hand, images I download from the Internet, or are sent to me by people are stored haphazardly in an ill-conceived folder structure that tries to separate "pictures of friends" from "pictures of trains" and "pictures that are random."

My main problem with my personal photo collection at this point in time is the fact that it's poorly organized. Even when I find a great piece of organization/management/processing software such as Aperture, which is where my images are right now, I have problems with the actual tasks of applying metadata, coming up with a naming scheme, and deciding where in my library to put each image. It looks organized, but because I've got images from two or three different eras of management, and even a bunch of images that simply don't have good naming applied to them, it's difficult to decide where an image goes, or to find an image once I've put it in its place.

The answer, quite simply, is that I need to beef up my use of metadata and keywords. The thing I need to decide really quickly here, as I continue working on gathering even more images, is whether or not I want to continue using Aperture for my images, or if I want to look into other Mac-only programs, or switch to Adobe Bridge.

Enter Photography 382. This class is pretty amazing so far, the instructor is very energetic about the subject, and does a great job of explaining thing, which is awesome.  The focus of PHO382 is preparing digital image files for output, and the beginning of this is setting up a good workflow for acquiring, storing, backing up, and organizing digital images. The main tool for the class so far is Adobe Bridge CS3. We've been learning about batch renaming, applying metadata templates, and adding keywords to images. I expect we're going to continue learning various things about Bridge and picking things up about it as the semester progresses. So now, I just need to decide if I want to switch to it for managing my images, and when I want to do that.

I'll admit that Aperture isn't the best solution for everything I do, especially when my photos are considered, because Aperture lacks an equivalent on the Windows platform. I can't just copy my library or my folder structure out to a file server or onto a FAT32 disk and open it on a Windows computer, like the ones at work, or even my mobile computer. In addition, it's more difficult than it needs to be when I copy images from my mobile computer to my Mac, because the images are still in an unprocessed form, I have to apply my naming convention and do my organization when I get back home.

Another advantage of finding some other system by which I can organize my images is that I am not necessarily tied to the Mac as a platform. I love my Mac dearly, but I'm simply not sure if I'll ever buy another mobile Mac again, and I may not even buy another desktop Mac, depending on what Apple ends up doing in the next few years. Chances are very high that I'll have a Mac as my next desktop, but just in case, I like the idea that my option to switch to Windows is open. (In fact, I once needed to do just that, during my first semester at NAU my G3 PowerBook was always on its last leg, so I moved my then-Bridge-based collection of photos onto the Dell OptiPlex machines I'd gotten from surplus sales. The transition was really quite easy. Oddly enough, that Pentium III/933 machine got better SETI@Home scores than my 1GHz PowerBook G4 ever did.)

The main problem with having that multi-platform solution for image management, of course, is that I have no large-capacity storage areas that work with both Macs and PCs. FAT32 would almost be acceptable, except I doubt that a 750 gig fat32 drive is going to work too well. Add to that, I don't have Photoshop CS3 for Windows anyway. I may need to do research on software that lets Mac OS use NTFS drives, or software that lets Windows use HFS+ drives, because sharing drives tends to be a general problem for me, not only a photo management problem.

A big disadvantage I can see of using Bridge for my photo management is that it's not the best app ever for actually searching for things I need. Even the PHO382 instructor I have mentioned that he uses a piece of image cataloguing software, instead of only using  Bridge. I'm going to investigate this more as an opportunity for how I use Bridge (and maybe Aperture!) because I like the idea of having Bridge for setting up a lot of the metadata, naming, etc, as well as having Aperture if I want to search/catalog and do some of the things at which Aperture is great.

So I haven't actually made my decision yet, but there's a good possibility that I'm going to be moving my photo operations back to Bridge. Stay Tuned however, for Part 3 of the first-ever Strapped to a Desk multi-part series, on "how Cory manages his photos."

Nikon D300

Well, I've gone and done it, I suppose. I've impulse-bought a new camera. It's not a half-bad camera either, I got the Nikon D300, and an "AF-S Nikkor 18-135mm 3.6-5.6G ED DX" lens for it, along with a filter for the lens, and a fast 2 gig CF card. I bought it at Ritz Camera after Megan and I had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. The images in this post should link up to full-resolution versions of the images that came out of the camera. I did minimal work on them using the included Nikon Capture NX software. Unfortunately though, my ThinkPad's display is not calibrated.

I decided to buy it at Ritz because the D300 is new enough that it costs just about the same amount of money everywhere, and because it was a situation where I could have it and start using it right away. And right away did I start. The very next morning after my shower, I unpacked the D300 and its lens. What an exciting feeling, that of unpacking a new piece of equipment and starting to use it. I carefully removed the D300 and the lens from their boxes, taking care to take a variety of hopefully-interesting photos with the D50.

So far, the difference is rather amazing, especially in the lens. The lens isn't that different from my old Quantaray 18-125mm lens, except for the fact that this one seems much sharper so far. I haven't used under all of the same types of conditions as the Quantaray, but I'm sure it'll be less than a year before I can tell whether or not I really think this lens is a better lens. I can tell you now though, I think this is a better lens.

The body is extremely well-built, its heftiness, speed and overall build quality show that it's a higher end camera than the D50, which in and of itself is an excellent piece of imaging technology, from a usability as well as a quality standpoint. The difference in the amount of pixels is readily apparent, especially on my mobile computer, which has been suffering performance problems as of late anyway. The other most apparent differences are in the speed of shooting, which is immense. I have always thought of my D50 as fast, but this thing can rapidly fire off nine or ten shots without even blinking. Said images will be properly focused too, because the AF system on this body is amazing. The other immediately noticeable difference is the review screen. The review screen on this camera is nothing short of amazing. It's significantly larger than that of the D50, which back in 2005 and 2006, I remember saying was very large and bright.

I took it out for a test drive after unpacking everything and getting used to controlling it. (Not to say that I'm very good at it yet, but I'm getting used to it.) My initial reaction to shooting with it is that I feel like I'm getting the shot I want, when I'm framing and shooting, even if I'm shooting something I didn't expect to be, or if I'm walking around and I happen to see some people I recognize, such as the image above of Tracy. The only bad thing I've got to say about the body is that when I was setting it up and hooking up the camera strap, I did so in a retarded way, and while walking around,

I took it to the overnight too, and although it's not necessarily as great a low-light performer as the D300, I'm sure that between the onboard flash and the Nikon SB600 I've got hanging around, I'll manage. I used the SB600 on the image of the D50 at the top of this post. Although even at relatively high ISOs, the D300 does still procure nice images. The image of the Dell OptiPlex in the SLAC was shot at ISO1000. (The D300 supports all of these weird ISO numbers I've only ever seen on Olympus cameras before.)

One of the things I think some people may now be thinking is "what about that non-full-frame sensor?" Unfortunately, that was one of my biggest desires for the camera upgrade, and it's the one thing I didn't get. I'm not too terribly sad at this point though. For one thing, getting a full-frame sensor requires either saving a few additional years to be able to afford the Nikon D3, or a switch to Canon.

I was seriously considering that switch to Canon too. However, the thing about that is that I've already got four different Nikon lenses, the Nikon flash, the off-camera Nikon flash sync cord, and in general, I'm pretty decent at using my Nikon stuff. The other thing is that the currently-available Canon full-frames are the 1Ds-Mark II, the 1Ds-Mark III and the 5D. None of which can be had new for less than $2000. BH has the 5D for $2100, compared to the D300's $1800, and the lens I wanted for the Canon was just shy of $1300. That's a pain in the wallet. And really, being that the 5D was released in 2005, it's out of date and due for a replacement. A replacement that will most likely cost significantly more than the 5D's current price anyway. Aside from the sensor thing, for the savings, the D300 is a significantly better camera in nearly every way.

Although, they say that what makes a great camera isn't necessarily the megapixels or the image processor or the brand or the size of the sensor. It's the ability that the camera has to let the photographer create an image. And while I think that one of my talents as a photographer is to be able to get the results I want out of nearly any piece of equipment. The D300 just happens to let me be even more sure of the images I'm making, and it lets me make them a little bit faster.

History of Management of Cory's Photos.

When I got my first digital camera (A Kodak EasyShare CX6220, for those of you who want to make fun of me for having owned a Kodak), I just imported my images into iPhoto. It worked well for the first thousand images, and I always thought of it as being fairly speedy. I painstakingly named and even added descriptions to many of the images, and some of my best, I posted to deviantArt. After awhile, and a trip to Michigan, iPhoto became unstable. Unstable enough that I actually lost what I think amounts to about two or three hundred  pictures I'd taken while I went to visit my grandmother in Michigan. I was, of course, unhappy, and to this day I still go on random searches for those images. They never turn up.

Then, in Fall 2005, I got my first taste of real photography, in Kate's Photo I class. I used dad's Canon AE-1 film camera for that class, and subsequently decided that I really needed to do more photography. I was, you could say, hooked on film. That Christmas, dad, knowing that I now intended to do more photography classes, and possibly even use it as a career for my real life, gave me the Nikon D50 I use to this day. It was a great camera, and it remains so, but it had something I didn't know anything about yet: Camera RAW, and more specifically, the Nikon Electronic Format.

A month or two earlier, Apple had released an exciting-looking new photo management application geared toward the needs of professionals, called Aperture. It looked like a super exciting program, with the ability to do most of the stuff I needed with my photos right in the interface of the program. I eagerly downloaded and watched tutorial videos, wanting to know more about its functionality. I decided it was the program I needed for my photos, since iPhoto had already failed me a few times, and I didn't have a modern enough version of Photoshop hanging around.

I downloaded Aperture, but realized I couldn't use it until I upgraded my computer to Mac OS X 10.4. This is an entirely separate debacle, but after getting and installing 10.4, twice, I finally got Aperture 1.0 working on my below-spec G4 PowerBook. It was an amazing program, I spent most of my time waiting for it, but it was amazing nonetheless.

Of course though, later on I decided that Mac OS X 10.4 and the speed of Aperture were unbearable, so I "found" a copy of Photoshop CS2, exported my photos out of Aperture, and installed 10.3 back on the PowerBook. At this point, I'd also acquired my first laser printer, and the solution seemed clear, I started right away creating my second photo organization scheme.

Using a MacBook Pro at the high school, I renamed and exported all of my images to one big folder. I then started using Adobe Bridge to rename the images a certain way. PIC_XXXXX.ext where XXXXX was a unique number I assigned to each image based on the date it was taken. Starting at folder zero and working my way through about two hundred folders' worth of images (at least that many) with thirty images per folder, I organized all of my images into neat little buckets of images, perfectly sized for printing contact sheets using Photoshop CS2. The idea was pretty good, I thought. I print out a bunch of contact sheets of my images, and it takes me less time to findt he image I want. Then, I pull the image out of my collection, do whatever to it, and save the derived file to a separate place. It turns out, I wasn't actually all too far off with this sytem.

Although soon, I was separated from my contact sheet binders, and since I'd gotten the much faster iMac in December, 2006 anyway, I decided I could safely move back to Aperture. And move I did, which was amazing because Aperture is very speedy on that iMac, I found myself tagging and naming and describing and sorting, until I stopped, which was cool, I guess.

Organizing photos is a difficult thing, and I'm currently not sure what exactly I am going to do in the future, with that. I'm currently in a class called PHO382, where one of the first things we're learning is all about managing images using Adobe Bridge CS3. At this point I haven't changed from Aperture, but in the next few weeks, I am going to try to decide whether or not I want to use Bridge or Aperture for my photos. This will be a permanent decision, and as I now have almost thirteen thousand images, it's a pretty important one. I'll keep the blog posted, so definitely consider this to be "part one, of an unknown number" in a series of "Cory talks about how he manages his images."

Ohh! So that's what I forgot to do!

Well, it's happened again. Monday, I was struck down by the gods of massive headaches, yesterday I ran errands with Meaghan, got pancakes with Megan, and then updated UTV62.com. And this morning... Well this morning, I'm finally addressing Monday morning's task of posting a blog entry.

I'm not going to lie, I do have others already written, but I feel like this is a good time to give a bit of a general update, instead of a canned blog post about photo management or whatever. So here it goes.

In the world of Megan and I, it's been sickness abound as Megan is currently battling the flu, and prior to that, with almost no break whatsoever, was battling "Something completely unrelated" (but almost as bad, it seems.) As a result of that, I was commanded to get the Flu shot, so Meaghan and I did that before her midterm yesterday.

Classes are going pretty well,I'm mildly depressed about my CIS120 because I keep forgetting to check WebCT Vista, therefore keep missing assignments. This weekend, I intend to power through all of the Word tutorials so I can rock the Word exam, just like I excelled at the Excel exam. Photography is going well, we've got a cool shooting assignment coming up in the studio, which I hope to work on this Friday. The shooting assignment is exciting because this'll be the first assignment where we actually start working on something destined for "delivery to a client" which will be JPEG files ready for the web. Other than that, German is going well, learning new stuff all the time is a pretty nice change, and the things that are review are definitely helpful, as reviews go.

In other news, I'm apparently merely dating photography, as per a thread on the 68kMLA forum about the total cost of owning a computer. I will expound upon this issue significantly in an upcoming blog post.

Work is going fairly well for me too. I come in, take calls, and when I am not completely struck down by an epic headache, I leave work quite happy. The two overnights haven't killed me yet, but it always seems like people want to come visit me from Kingman right before or after one or both of them.

So that's my two-days-late, and probably poorly written blog post!

Classes Canceled

Well aren't I just a happy clam right now. It's about eight in the morning on this fine bright Monday, and I'm just kind of hanging out in the room, listening to youtube videos, copying SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to the ThinkPad R61i to be burned to a DVD, and relaxing before my helpdesk shift at 1:30 later in the afternoon.

Classes are canceled today, which I've got to admit, almost never happens here at NAU. It snowed up a pretty awful storm yesterday and last night, and at about 5:45 this morning, an e-mail was sent by NAU's reporting system Inside NAU saying classes are canceled and that only essential employees are to report to work.

What makes an NAU employee essential? Well I'd like to think all NAU employees are essential, but as it turns out, those of us working at the Academic Computing Help Desk are considered to  be essential, so I'll be reporting to my shift later on today. I've got to admit, it's a nice little ego boost for the day to know that the ACHD is considered essential, and that if it's within my ability to remain alive while going to work today, I'm to do so. Luckily, I only live like 500 feet from the ACHD, so it's by no means a hardship for me.

New Helpdesk People!

Well, I can't say I actually expected it to happen, but over the past month, the helpdesk has hired almost ten new people. I won't name them individually, because that would be rude, but suffice it to say that I'm no longer exactly one of the "newbies" at the helpdesk. Not only am I no longer a newbie, but all three new phones staff so far have shadowed me on the phones, listened into some of my calls, or in general, received some sort of training or advice from me.

It's interesting to think about, especially since we had to hire so many people in the middle of the year, how many other new ACHD student workers I'll see while I work there, and I'm also, of course, interested in exactly how long I'll be working there myself. I suppose one thing I've got to admit is now that I work at the helpdesk, I can't really imagine myself working anywhere else on campus, and in fact, much as I hate to say it, I might not even mind working in a real call center.

I've read blogs of and spoken with people who work at various help centers, mainly a few from Apple and Dell. The biggest thing is that it sounds like a very satisfying job in terms of helping people, and it seems like the benefits and pay aren't the worst ever, but that in the phone support world, there is very little in terms of advancement. Becoming a product specialist, moving to another company, or finding a career are apparently the most frustrating parts of doing support professionally for a corporation.

That said, I'm fairly certain that I still want to do something in my life related to  photography. If at all possible, I would absolutely love to be a professional photographer, doing events and weddings, or commercial product shots, or anything of that nature. The biggest challenge of course, for that, is getting my degree and actually finding the work, which I think when it comes down to it, won't be as hard as I may think it is right now.

So, new helpdesk people, ponderations on the rest of my life... This looks like a blog post well-executed.

Mac World San Francisco, 2008.

Every blog and forum I read has had a commentary on MWSF 2008, universally considered the Christmas of the consumer Mac world. Having bought an iPhone just shy of five days before the keynote, I'll start off by saying I was somewhat worried that my shiny new device would already be out of date. Luckily, not only was the iPhone not replaced, but it received a nice software update. The most important feature is that which allows me to manually manage the music and videos on the device, just like my iPod.

The first thing Jobs revealed was Time Capsule. It's a relatively simple device, it's basically Apple's Airport Extreme base station hooked to a 500GB or 1TB "server grade" hard disc. The gist of the device is that you can easily set up Time Machine to automatically and wirelessly use the Time Capsule as its backup drive. You can use it with "all the Macs in your house." Simple enough, and I think it's a cool device, the only questions I've got so far involve whether or not you can add to the storage in your Time Capsule, or if it would be possible to own more than one Time Capsule, and concatenate the available amounts of storage.

Afterward, Jobs demonstrated some iPhone software updates. I installed the iPhone software update recently, and without a doubt, my favorite feature, the feature that might actually cause me to keep the iPhone, is the ability to manage my music and movies manually. It's how I use my 30-gig video iPod, and I'm glad it's available for the iPhone. The third major announcement of the keynote was new iTunes movie rentals. I'm really excited about that one because like Jobs says, I'm the kind of person who doesn't really watch movies more than once. In a way, it's a lot like a daily ticket on satellite TV, where I can watch the same movie several times in one day. It'll be like in December when I watched "Chuck & Larry" about five times.

Part of the iTunes update involved AppleTV. In this part, Jobs admits that they'd gotten the concept of AppleTV wrong, and provides updates on the software of AppleTV, including the new user interface and renting an HD movie. The whole experience looks really well designed, and I've got to admit that the AppleTV with its software update looks really nice. I don't really want one, but I also don't really have an appropriate television with which I'd be able to peruse the content.

By far, the most important part of the keynote, the one causing the most controversy online, is the MacBook Air. Let me start by saying that I think the MacBook Air is an awesome product, and it's something Apple hasn't had in awhile. Let me also say that it's not something I'm going to be buying any time soon. Even though I think it looks awesome, and would love to be able to bust one out during class, but the high price and the fact that I've already got three working IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads, all of which have reasonable battery life, and good capability as note taking machines.

The main problem with MacBook Air, of course, is the price. For $1800 (retail) you get a 1.6GHz Core2Duo, from the new Penryn platform, 2 gigabytes of memory, and an 80 gigabyte hard disc. You don't get much other than that, of course, because being so thin, Apple had to make compromises somewhere, and they did it in reasonable areas I think. The backlit keyboard is full size, and the LED-backlit display is a full 13.3" glossy display, similar to the MacBook's display.

Not included are an optical drive, and a few "essential" ports. What I've noticed is that the biggest grouching people have been doing is the result of the ports. The MacBook Air features only a MagSafe power port on the left side, and on the right side behind a little door, one USB port, one "Micro DVI" port, and one audio output port. The biggest things the MacBook Air is missing is apparently another four USB ports, audio input, an internal optical drive, and FireWire. What bugs me about that is that the inclusion of those things basically turns the MacBook Air into a MacBook Pro, plus a few extra USB ports.

The problem with this, of course, is that the entire point of the MacBook Air isn't the thing those people want. Those people want a $599 mobile machine, as fast as a full-sized MacBook, with discrete graphics, basically adding up to a 12" PowerBook G4.

My take is that the MacBook Air is really intended as a companion Mac to a powerful desktop computer. I can see a lot of Mac Pro owners, or people whose desktops are high end iMac systems wanting one of these to use as their mobile systems, especially if they, like myself, prefer doing as much computing as possible on their desktop systems when they're in their offices or homes. MacBook Air is great then, for people who need something they can use on a plane or train, and that they need to be as light as possible. When it comes down to it, there will be people who are willing to pay this price for such a mobile computer.

Maybe if I were more patient, and hadn't already bought the ThinkPad, I would've gotten one, although I'm really happy with the ThinkPad, and think I'll have it for quite some time to come as my mobile computer. Maybe my next mobile machine will be some kind of MacBook Air successor.

Return of the Pismo!

I know it's Sunday morning, not Monday morning, but I've got to admit that I'm really jazzed tonight by the fact that apparently my PowerBook G3 isn't completely dead. I was getting ready to harvest it for parts when I looked at the processor daughtercard, realizing that it was still in the system, but it was not secured too well. I pressed down on it, securing it once again in its slot.

Lo and behold, the pismo booted straight up, although it looks like it's developed a few more lines in the screen, but the fact that it's working at all still makes me quite happy. Basically, we all now know that Megan isn't a killer. I intend to keep its 10.3.9 and 9.2.2 loaded, although I may transfer some of my actual data from the Pismo to the R61i.

So yeah, that happened today and I thought it was worth posting off-schedule for that.

Beginning of School!

Well, I can't really say that it's the beginning of all school or anything, but Spring 2008 is officially in full swing. I even took out the garbage this morning. That's how committed I am to my schoolwork and the like.

I'll admit that I do really appreciate repeating events such as the beginning of semesters, because of their value for blog posts. I'm sure I've got something really special stowed away in the calendar of things about which I should be writing, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I will be writing about those things. Luckily, I do believe that it was a "kickoff of the semester" that my blog-writing calendar has called for. The exact calendar entry calls for "Well wishes to everybody for Spring 2008."

Well... Well Wishes for Spring 2008! I'm going to go ahead and use this post to give a few life-related updates as well, so go ahead and let me list those.

• I've reformatted the iMac. So there's a lot of photos that I'm sure everyone is expecting me to put up, but those things won't be put up until I reinstall Aperture.
• I'm waiting until tomorrow, which happens to be the SteveNote at MacWorld San Francisco, to decide whether or not to keep the new mobile phone I've got. I'm also waiting until this coming weekend to finalize my decision to install Aperture 1.5.6, or wait until a new major version ships.
• I bought an iPhone last week. More to come on this later. (Although I've discovered that I could write significantly more today if I want to.
• Jim and I have a new suitemate, who I haven't met yet. I know nothing about him other than his name, and that his mother cleaned the bathroom while he was moving in.
• On another note about the room in GabaLand, Jim and I are thinking of unbunking the beds. have just unbunked the beds. It'll be similar to how Jessica and Meaghan have their room, except our desks are staying where they are, and one of the beds will run parallel with the wall that has the windows. Not the worst arrangement idea ever, I've got to admit. We're not sure where the TV will go, but my guess is that we'll figure it out later today when he gets here.
• Actually, the main reason I made this list was I wanted to try out more of the formatting options in Windows Live Writer. I have always wanted to have a struck-through list item in a blog post.
• I work 30 hours this coming semester, including 18 overnight hours.

That's pretty much what I wanted to say. I'm sure there's some philosophical discussion about the iPhone or some awesome response to WWDC for next week. I'll probably write the epic blog post on one overnight, and edit it on the next.

Back At Work!

Well everyone. I'm back at work. It's been a "fun" day because of all the calls relating to the recent Cisco Clean Access appliance upgrade, overall not the worst day I've ever had though. Just a whole heck of a lot of escalations, and I'm going to have to go back through my calls to make sure all of them have a category and an OS.

I was planning on a longer, nicer blog entry, but was unable to deliver due to my own laziness. Even though I could've gotten up at 8 or 9, I slept until about 11 this morning, which I'll admit was pretty awesome.

Now if only Pine Ridge Village worked properly. I have almost ten escalations right now of people who live in Pine Ridge, hopefully that gets fixed soon.

Another Fire Alarm

Fire alarms happen at the best times. Today, I was in the laundry room, hanging out while my dirty clothes become clean, and then become dry. Then the fire alarm went off. I tossed the thinkPad into the backpack and started heading outside, not really worrying that both of my favorite sweaters and my awesome winter coat were in the dryer at the time. Hopefully the building didn't also lose power, but whatever.

After going outside, I stood underneath the ledge behind Birch wing, and when I saw Meaghan walking down the pedway toward the lab building, I had to take it upon myself to run across the field to catch up with her. In my sandals, shorts and a t-shirt. The trip to the lab was fairly nice, except for the whole bit about my feet feeling a little bit frozen.

Now Meaghan and I are in the walk-in area at the helpdesk chatting with Danielle, being warm. It's nice. As a sidenote, the phones people rock.

As another sidenote, I'm going to be posting another blog entry tomorrow, because Mondays are the scheduled day for blog entries.