So I was a bit upset when the impending doom of my Adobe Lightroom Beta finally came and now the product is shipping and thus my Beta version no longer usable. I am sorely disappointed with Apple's lame iPhoto app due to the nature of how it creates multiple copies of an image file for any little tweak made, including rotating vertical images. So about 6 months ago I sat down and went through my hard drive, scouring it for copies of JPEG images that iPhoto had created and vowed to never use the app again.

But at that time I was able to take advantage of Adobe's beta version of Lightroom, which is a really nice application. However, I don't really feel like plunking down 300 clams for it, so I was feeling a bit at a loss not being able to preview images I've taken raw in a virtual "light table" so to speak.

But then - ah, I took a closer look at an app I've had since purchasing Adobe's CS2 bundle a little over a year ago. That's right - the Bridge. For a version 1.0 application, it is surprisingly robust and fills in nicely as a virtual light table, metadata and asset management app. I'm able to browse through all of my raw, .crw captured image files, along with being able to see previews of other file formats, like .indd (InDesign) and .ai (Illustrator). Awesome. You can even do a slideshow of a multiple-page InDesign layout, and leaf through the pages of a PDF.

Below is a screen capture of it as a Finder Window on steroids -



And then as an image browser -



And finally, as a light table -



It's quick to simply select an image then turn on 'filmstrip mode' by clicking at the bottom right of the window to view a large preview of the image or file.

There are a bunch of different workspace options to choose from and the windows can be tweaked quite a bit. You can have multiple browsers open at once, they can be made compact (or ultra-compact) and float over all other open windows to use when dragging files into other open files. Snippets and files of all types can be simply dragged into an open InDesign layout while designing. Metadata can be added and processed in batches of files, then searched with up to 13 different specific criteria. Photoshop actions can be run straight out of Bridge on a batch of image files, as well as a nifty little script called the Image Processor, which can do a ton of different things to an image or a pile of images - a great little tool for taking hi-res, raw images and quickly (and automatically) batch-processing them for uploading to the web, like for Flickr. After, of course, batch-processing them with saved subsets from Camera Raw.

I heard yesterday from an Adobe-insider contact that Bridge will be ten times more robust in CS3, not that I'll be buying that, either. But I'll be using it at work. Have to get myself out of the Finder mode on the Mac, and the only really hindering aspect is there is no 'column' view in Bridge as there is in Finder, so that will take some getting used to.

It's not Lightroom, but combined with Camera Raw it's a pretty powerful tool. And here at home, I'm excited once again at being able to do what I thought I couldn't. And all without ever having to open the lame-duck iPhoto again!

OK - so in June '05 Jeff and I went hiking out to the Enchantments here in Washington. Most beautiful place on earth. Raw, still-forming. Granite peaks. Delicate larches. Lakes of turquoise blue ice floating in them year round. Just an incredible, incredible place. It was my first time there, too. We camped on the shore (or above it, technically) of Colchuck Lake under the immense north face of Dragontail Peak. It was amazing. I remember sitting on this granite rock overlooking the lake and staring up at the inspiring granite shape of Dragontail just talking with him. We were totally chilled out and it was an awesome trip.

But rather than just be nostalgic, the point of this is sometime last night (I've been eyeing this for a few days now) my photostream on Flickr hit 10,000+ views. Now, for a lot of people on Flickr I'm sure they get that many views with a few pics. But you have to keep in mind I only have 201 images (as of now) available to view by the public. So yeah, that's only 50 or so views per image. Big deal. But on top of that most of my pics are black and white - which, when presented in a tiny thumbnail on Flickr - will never have the pull of an über-saturated HDR image or something along those lines so I'm quite content when I get 50 views or so per image.

But - and back to that opening story - we got back from our trip and I asked Jeff when he'd have his pics up on his blog so I could look at them. He didn't think it would be for a while because he was slammed at work. And a week or two later I came across an article in Macworld that talked about this little photo-sharing website called Flickr. So I checked it out, signed up for what is now an 'old skool' account (yep, proudly one of those folks despite that functionality being stripped come the end of this month after the purchase by Yahoo! last year much to us old skoolers' dismay), threw up pics of that hike (which can still be found at the very back of my stream or in this set) and now here we are.

Flickr really is a cool thing. If you haven't checked into it yet, do so. It's way more than a photo-sharing site like some of the others - there is some very real, serious talent that posts images. Really amazing stuff of anything you want. But please - be mindful of people's wishes for copyright and such and do not use their images (certainly not for any commercial purposes but even just to blog) without asking first. It's the nice thing to do - and Flickr is all about being nice.

Anyways, it's a bit of a milestone so I thought I'd throw that up here. One day I'll actually have my halflightphotography.com site designed and up (for which I keep paying Jeff year after year for the domain name) - but until then, Flickr has sufficed.
cheers

So I came home today to find a recorded message from an organization calling themselves the Positive Christian Agenda tersely urging me to contact the state representative responsible for sponsoring a bill (Washington state bill SB5297 'The Healthy Youth Act,' for medically accurate sex education) and inform this person that it is a terrible, awful crime to actually want to teach kids in school the dangers and reality of sex. More useful information on the bill can be found here. Of course, the PCA argues that abstinence is the proper way to deal with adolescent sex because I'm sure we know just how effective that ideology is today - rather than education - when nearly every possible angle of marketing is driven by our culture's seemingly insatiable appetite to sell the imagery of sex.

The first message I received about a month ago again informed me in a rather offending and also terse way that I must contact the state representatives responsible for sponsoring legislation that allows same-sex marriages (HB1350 Marriage equality) and increased benefits for same-sex couples (HB1351 Protecting individuals in domestic partnerships by granting certain rights and benefits) because of no doubt the terrible harm that will be bestowed upon all of us should fellow people be recognized as equals.

So - rather insulted at their message and the fact they blindly call thousands of households preaching their rhetoric without knowing on which religious, moral or social grounds those households stand - I crafted a letter to the three contacts listed on their website.

>I am writing in response to the second unsolicited phone call in which
I received on our home telephone from your organization, Positive
Christian Agenda (http://www.positivechristianagenda.org/). These
political solicitations are unwarranted and offensive to our household
and we request our phone number be immediately removed from your
telephone directory.

If we receive another phone call from your organization, I will be
forwarding this email to the office of the state Attorney General and
contacting the FTC to request an inquiry be made into the legitimacy
of your organization making such unsolicited phone calls after having
received such written notice as I am hereby sending to you per the
National Do Not Call Registry for which the number below has been
registered since 9/4/2005.

signed,<

The response I got shortly thereafter was this -

>Sorry to be bothering you like this. You are not on any list which
we possess. From time to time, we tap into information that comes from
voter registration in specific regions. I am pretty sure that is where
your info comes from but am not absolutely sure. This being a political
call it has certain free speech protections. How about we strike a deal of
mutual respect? I will try not to call you again. If I do, I apologize in
advance. How about you email back your address and I will send you a $10
starbucks card as a token of my desire not to be a pain to you.

With best wishes,<

And my reply back (no, I didn't hand out my address for a Starbucks card) -

>Your offer is appreciated but not necessary.

I do wonder how effective recorded, cold-calling campaigns such as
this prove to be. Certainly, there are many other households such as
ours that do not share the same religious, moral, or social beliefs
your organization supports and for whom the rather terse messages
being delivered offends.

Furthermore, I am fully aware that direct political campaigns have
certain rights with the TSR (Telemarketing Sales Rule) - however, it
would be my assertation to the FTC that your organization is
indirectly telemarketing for an individual poliltical campaign and, on
that basis, if I am contacted again I will promptly report that call
to the FTC.

From the FTC website -

However, if a third-party telemarketer is calling on behalf of a
charity, a consumer may ask not to receive any more calls from, or on
behalf of, that specific charity. If a third-party telemarketer calls
again on behalf of that charity, the telemarketer may be subject to a
fine of up to $11,000.

I have now so asked not to receive any more calls from your
organization on the behalf of any individual's political campaign.

regards,<

If I hear back from the president of the organization again, I will be sure to post the response here. And thus concludes my rant.

His response -

>OK. No coffee for you. But at least if we ever happen to be in the same
place, and you hear my name, come up and say hi.

All the best,<

We'll see if I hear from them again. I will follow through if I do. OK, now I'll quit ranting.

OK, so I'm a little behind the times. Apparently by about 6 years or so. But I just came across this website called touristofdeath.com - spawned from the prank pic that quickly spread around the world of a guy (some Hungarian dude, evidently) standing on the viewing deck of the WTC unaware of the plane below him he thought would be cute to email to a few friends ...

Of course the image was quickly discovered to be a fake and eventually the guy hesitantly came forward - but nothing could stop the wrath of that bad karma in the form of thousands of spook images to be found at the site above.

This is one of the funnier ones (but, admittedly, I thought the movie Airplane! was a riot) -



I mean, these pics are flippin' hilarious. No, really.

Miscellany -

Rachmaninoff's pianism is generally considered among the finest of the twentieth century. It displayed features characteristic of the Russian school of piano playing: effortless technical ability; interpretative freedom that is now frowned on; creative freedom in dynamics and phrasing.

Hrm - here's Steve Jobs half being persuasive and half sounding like he's passing the buck -

Steve Jobs on the Future of DRM

I think what he's saying and suggesting makes sense - and of course, as a consumer - I think DRM is ridiculous and I refuse to buy anything from the iTunes store. But it all comes back to the record labels (of which one of the four biggies - EMI - is currently up for sale as it falls into backruptcy) - with EMI having fallen I am fairly certain that without a change in business behavior which seems blatantly obvious to the layman consumer but oblivious to the label oligarch the others will follow suit.

Read Jobs' sentiments - they make for an interesting turn of events.

Well, I'm obviously on a roll with my anti-RIAA soapbox, so here's another bit I came across in regards to them targeting the illegal downloading of music on college campuses across the country -

Purdue University (1068 copyright complaints from the RIAA) ... rarely goes into trouble of tracking down the offenders. "In a sense, the (complaint) letter (from the RIAA) is asking us to pursue an investigation and as the service provider we don't see that as our role," spokesman Steve Tally (of Purdue) said. "We are a leading technology school with thousands and thousands of curious and talented technology students.”

Go Purdue.

OK - adding to what I just posted - here's a quick tidbit -

The demise of AllofMP3.com has been predicted many times over the past 18 months, but news this week that the option to buy xrost cards/Click and Buy (the way I've always used) to add credit to accounts, means that only Diners Club holders can now buy from the site.

I'll be looking into signing up for a Diners Club card tomorrow. Seriously.

Do only old people use those or what? It just sort of has that "old people" ring to it. Nevertheless ...

Disappointed to find myself unable to refill my balance on the website allofmp3.com, I Googled the site name to see what news I could come up with.

A little background quickly - the site runs out of Russia and offers MP3-format music downloads based on a flat fee per MB, rather than a flat fee per song. A good bit of their catalogue - which is enormous - is downloadable as a digital duplicate of the original recording; which, of course would cost more because the file size would be comparably larger. But - with their standard encoding bitrate of 192kbs, a song costs around $0.20US.

Compared to the restrictive DRM-format encoded at a bitrate of 128kbps (VBR, I believe) offered by the iTunes store run by Apple at $0.99 per song this is an incredible offer and over the last few months I've stocked up on hundreds of CD-quality songs from bands I would never (read never) buy an entire album from.

I am not going to get into the moral issues people feel obliged to debate over the legality of such a site - I'm not an attorney and won't pretend to be. Of course, the lovely RIAA has been mounting a legal battle over the site as they struggle to figure out just what the hell to do in light of P2P and many, many MP3 sites that offer music in forms other than the stale, restrictive and costly CD format. They have been struggling to hold onto their antiquated business model hoping that somehow they will be able to continue to dominate the music industry and hold the band's profits in their tight-fisted grip.

But this statement I came across from the directors of allofmp3.com was quite fitting (they were referring to their model of dealing directly with artists rather than record labels) -

Let's start with the fact that the record companies have little regard for the majority of musicians. They are concerned with making money for themselves, not the artists. In our opinion, we and the artists would be better off dealing directly with each other. In fact, we believe that is the future of the music industry. We think labels will fade, not disappear but fade, and that artists will have much greater freedom to actually control their work, which they don't the minute they sign their contract.

They continued with one final thought in response to the question of their sustainability over the coming months and years -

Of course, we will survive. The music industry is rapidly changing and we will change with it.

I completely agree. I vowed last autumn after spending nearly $20 on a CD (it was an impulse buy - I was just so excited to see the artist had released a new album, her first in nearly ten years) - and then getting home and seeing I could have bought it on the iTunes store for $9.99 and gotten a bonus, album-only remix track or on allofmp3.com for about $3 - that I would never buy another CD again.

I have no respect for businesses that fail to adapt to the changing business environment and will do nothing to support that behavior. Adapt or become extinct. The power of the internet is here to stay - reformat and roll with it.

I only hope allofmp3 staves off the wolves and survives as a business model for others to follow.