TOP: Get and use a Leica

leicaOver at The Online Photographer blog there’s been a bit of a ruckus over their suggestion to spend a year using a Leica to develop photo skills. I think their suggestion is valid, and mostly a reasonable (if somewhat inconvenient) thing to do.

You can find the initial and follow-up posts here:

I do own all the equipment necessary to run this experiment, and I might go ahead and try to. But even for others there is a lot to be said for trying out this tactic for a year to improve one’s skills. I was surprised to find that when I shoot with a Leica there’s a visible difference in the style and quality of the photos I make. Also my M4-2 is a pretty simple camera (no built-in metering), so I’m in total control (and have complete responsibility) for the images I produce. It doesn’t take long to realize that all of the buttons, switches, and menus only serve to make using the modern digital camera tedious to use. There’s also a serious advantage to shooting film, you become more cognizant of the costs of taking shots. You learn patience and the need to “get” the shot instead of just pulling the trigger at random. Then at a later time, you get to review your work and consider how to change your shooting style to improve. If I were a working photojournalist I’d go digital to guarantee the photo, but for a hobbyist film serves as a mechanism to instill distance between the shot and self-critique. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, a Leica allows you to focus on the event around you. There’s no chimping, no fiddling with small switches, or other things to steal your attention.

Overall I agree with the TOP recommendation, and suggest if you have the means, you give it a try as well. Either way, if you’d like to go take some photos, let me know in the comments — I’d be happy to have the company.

Trailing-Edge Geekdom

bellrossAs snolan pointed out in a recent comment, I’m a geek. Specifically, I’m a technology geek. but I don’t insist that only the latest and greatest tech is always the best (or most interesting).

I love bicycles, photography, and even horology. In fact I have a decent retro-bent going these days. I ride an old, steel, lugged touring bike. I’ve toyed with the idea of grabbing a fun ld-school film camera (well I have a Rolleiflex already) like a Polaroid SX-70 or Holga toy camera. I also tend to love analog watches.

The watchmaker Bell&Ross is helping me out by taking my obvious computer geekdom (and love of my iPhone) and mixing in a healthy dose of watch geekery with a dash of airplane cachet. Specifically, they’ve released an iPhone app that simulates their most popular line of watches (BR 01-92’s). I’m guessing having an real one on your wrist is somewhat nicer, but you can’t beat the price of the iPhone app. Also this is likely to be the closest I ever come to owning one.

TeX and Me

TeXI just wanted to document how I installed TeX on my MacBook Air.

I grabbed and installed BasicTeX-2008 from the MacTeX folks.

TeX binaries were installed in: /usr/local/texlive/2008basic/bin/universal-darwin.

So I added that directory to my path.

Next I updated the installed packages:

tlmgr update bin-texlive texlive.infra
tlmgr update --all

Since the ACM style file seems to need to more fonts, I installed the recommened font set:
tlmgr install collection-fontsrecommended

Also we’re apparently still using (the deprecated) subfigure.sty, so I installed that:
tlmgr install subfigure.

At this point I can build our most recent paper on the Air.

It looks like I need to use Skim and one of the visual editors to get source/PDF sync’ing working (using the installed synctex package). I’ll probably setup Textmate and Skim next.

Sandro’s Freshwater Aquarium

It started innocently enough, I wanted a 36 gallon bow front tank, and Kim wanted to find me another nice christmas gift (we got each other a couple things each). She got a great deal on craigslist (on x-mas eve no less). A 36 gallon bow-front with stand for $100.

Of course a month later as I started working on filling it, we discover we actually had a 46 gallon tank. Huzzah!

Lesson learned: craigslist will get you cheap fish tanks, but make sure you know what you’re getting.

Love is a Warm Scanner

scansnap-510mI have too much paper. Between various old documents, bills, statements, and magazines there’s reams of paper cluttering up my life. While I’ve been shifting as much as possible to paperless solutions where possible, the paper still accumulates.

That’s why I love my Fujitsu ScanSnap. It’s a little scanner that tames the paper piles. While I’m using the previous generation I can recommend it whole heartedly. The ScanSnap scans 18 full-color double-sided pages a minute; it’s currently whirring away storing a magazine I want to hang on to. The beauty of the device, is that I no longer have to weight the utility of a piece of paper versus the space it takes up. It all just gets scanned and recycled.

The newer models have a feature that I envy, they run optical character recognition (OCR) on the documents as they scan them. The result is a virtual version of your documents that are also searchable. The older model I have just scans, so I can read or print the works, but they aren’t indexed and searchable by my computer. The new versions have the best of both worlds.

I only have two complaints. First, the ScanSnap isn’t really good at scanning receipts (if they’ve fixed this, let me know because I’d buy a new one immediately). Second, Fujitsu markets the scanners separately for Windows and the Mac, so I can’t just use one for both platforms, but then again, I don’t use Windows much…

Let me know if you have a solution for tackling clutter (especially paper) that might improve my life (or at least my home office).

Magically Multiplying Fish Tanks

Kim received a “free” fish tank from my buddy Rob last fall. In the past 5 months that single tank has magically expanded into 4 separate fish tanks:

  1. Kim’s 29 gallon Freshwater Hex
  2. My 3 gallon Freshwater Eclipse
  3. My 46 gallon (Empty) Bow-Front
  4. Kim’s 29 gallon Saltwater Reef BioCube

Here’s a new page of pictures I made of Kim’s new Saltwater Tank. I’ll try to get pictures of the others online as they become available.

Several hundreds of dollars later, the moral of the story is TANSTAAFFT (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Fish Tank).

UPDATE: Any help identifying the the inhabitants of Kim’s tank would be greatly appreciated.

Stripped Screw Solution

grabitFor years I’ve been looking for a good screw extractor. So far I’ve had the most success with these: Grabit Screw Removers. While working with several stripped screws (mostly small aluminum and light steel), it removed all but one when used as per directions. I don’t think I’d try removing a screw that has the entire head broken off using these, but they work well for stripped screws.

For comparison, I’ve used Black & Decker and Irwin screw extractors before, but they required much deeper holes to be drilled in the screw, and I rarely if ever managed to remove a screw using them.

Travel Gear: Normal

While I might spend a few days at a beach resort with just my lightweight travel kit, for work related trips a “full” laptop is necessary. So here’s my normal travel setup, which centers around a new Macbook Air, and support accessories.


travel_gear
    Clockwise from upper left:
  • Macbook Air – I’ve spent most of the last decade living with a top of the line 15″ Powerbook/Macbook Pro. Even though 6 lbs. doesn’t sound like much, it was the day to day of hauling it around town that got to me. The Macbook Air suits most of my mobile needs while still hooking up my desktop monitor for full programming sessions. I’ve chosen the solid-state drive version to minimize the likelihood of a drive failure while traveling. Some users bemoan the limitations of the Macbook Air, but I see most of them as necessary evils to get the best possible travel laptop. Working tethered to a desk in a hotel room isn’t comfortable or convenient so I always bring a wireless access point, instead of depending on in-room ethernet. I rarely use the CD/DVD drive while traveling, and if I do want it, can add the external DVD burner and still come in lighter than my old Macbook Pro. Much has been made of the lack of swappable batteries in the Air, but if I wanted to carry an extra two pounds of power, I wouldn’t have minded a larger/heavier laptop. Overall the MBA seems rugged and comfortable enough for prolonged use. Look for a long-term review after I make a few long trips with it.

  • Steve Sleeve – (under the Macbook Air) Ok, this is more just a cute case than a practical travel case. I’ve already ordered a Tom Bihn Brain Cell for real travel.

  • TrekStor Microdisk 120GB – the smallest drive I could find that would allow me to clone a bootable version of the internal drive in my Macbook Air. I make a complete backup clone of the laptop hard drive the night before a trip, and take it with me. In the event of some kind of failure on my Mac, I can get by with any other Mac that can boot from USB (which is most of them).

  • Zip-Linq USB cable – There are a lot of cheap USB cables available. This one is reliable even with high-powered USB devices, and doesn’t take up much room in my accessory bag. This cable is used to connect the external hard drive and my digital camera (see below) to the laptop.

  • Logitech Premium 4-Port USB Hub – This small USB hub fits in well with my travel kit, and seems like a good thing to carry considering the single USB port on the Macbook Air. My external hard drive works with this hub, but the special Apple DVD drive still needs to be connected directly to the MBA. But the hub is still small and useful enough to carry for my other USB devices.

  • D-Link DWL-G730AP – I usually bring a wireless access point on work trips, since hotels sometimes only provide ethernet connections (or charge per user). The smallest, most versatile access point I have ever found, this D-Link access point, has the benefit of: being tiny, running on USB (see the USB power adapter from my ultralight kit), and doubling as a wireless adapter and ethernet-wireless bridge. That kind of versatility makes the G730AP a worthy addition to any geek’s kit.

  • Zip-Linq Cat6 Ethernet cable – Again, there are smaller, less expensive alternatives, but this Cat6e seems to be the most reliable in adverse (e.g. travel) conditions. This cable was more useful when I travelled with a laptop that had ethernet built-in. These days it connects my portable wireless access point to in-room ethernet. Since I don’t use it as much anymore, I’ll probably switch to the smaller & lighter cat5 version soon.

  • Mini DisplayPort to VGA – Pretty much a necessary accessory if you plan to give a presentation with any of the current Macs. I’ve used some version of this adapter for years so I’m used to carrying it. Frankly the mini DisplayPort gives me as much flexibility as I ever had on the Macbook Pro.

  • USB Key – as large an amount of memory as I can get at a good price. When 128GB flash drives become available, I’ll probably replace the TrekStor with one. I’d like to set-up one these with Windows XP to dual-boot the Macbook Air, but this seems to be a pretty large project. I’ll have to see if I can manage it.

  • Ricoh GX200 – On longer (or more interesting) trips, a better camera than my iPhone is warranted. While I’d like to take a full digital SLR setup, a single point and shoot is much more convenient. The Ricoh GX200 is a photo geek’s friend, with manual focus and exposure modes. The 24-72mm focal lengths might seem limiting, but it’s a wide enough range for my needs; available tele/wide converters can extend it’s flexibility for more demanding users. Unfortunately, it requires it’s own charger which adds to the bulk of the setup.

Adding this set of devices to the ultralight travel kit provides me with a relatively small computing configuration with minimal comprise. I usually pick and choose the right setup for each trip, and the results have kept me happy so far.

What tools do you find indispensable when traveling?