I wish we had French cars here in Canada, there’s got to be a market for cars that are unapologetically comfortable and stylish, even if they aren’t the fastest or sportiest things out there. I mean just look at it, mon dieux! I love fast cars maybe more than most people but some days it’d seem like a no brainer to trade it all for something from the utopian future of the Renault design team. I mean just imagine the drudgery of a long boring day at the office* and imagine opening the doors (if you can even call them that) and seeing this:

So in summary, Renault please make this – and then sell it here. It’s the kind of kool aid I so wanna drink, maybe swim in even.

Oh ya, and the roof is a single panel of red glass too. Hawtness.

* (not that I’d know what working in an office is like, but office buildings are pretty common in Canada too, so I’ve heard)

More pics and details over at WIRED

High geekery // Comments

On the mac there are plenty of apps for time management and keeping track of what you need to do in the day. Being a terrible procrastinator I’ve probably tried them all.

Oftentimes the simplest solutions are the best, so what I’m proposing is a tiny app that lives only in the OSX menubar (or Windows toolbar) and changes color during the day depending on how close you get to a specified time.

Usage of the app would be super simple:

• In the preferences, there would be a field to define a start and end time. In this case, the start time is 7pm and the end time is 12pm. For many people this could be the start of the workday at 9am to 5pm, or whenever it is that you’ve decided to commit yourself to a task/project.

• The other field would be to define a start and end color. In the example above, yellow is the start color and red is the end one, as the time period elapses the color transforms along a simple linear gradient from start to end color.

• Maybe an option for a beep or growl message when the timer is done and you’ve arrived at your end color

And that’s it! I have no idea how to program for OSX, but if anyone thinks it’s a great idea and it’s simple enough and would like to program it please go right ahead :D

What do you think?

High geekery // Comments

I’ve heard that when Adobe first invented PDF files oh so many centuries ago they were derided for being proprietary and wonky – or maybe I just dreamed that (some lame-ass dreams). Today, PDFs haunt so much of my academic life, required class readings, journal articles, archival materials are all only provided in PDFs. It’s not too surprising though, especially on a Mac, the format is really easy to use and create.

So ain’t technology grand? Okay time to do some reading… Here’s where I get screwed anally royally. Because I prefer desktops to laptop computers, I’m now stuck in front of a huge immobile computer screen, my eyes hurt, my ass is numb and I probably have 50 tumors from all the radiation.

The ideal solution is easy though. Ideally, I’d want some way to carry a bunch of pdfs on a portable little machine that has a super good battery and a nice readable screen with a simple zoomable interface. I prefer to take my notes on paper, because I can connect information and scribble pictures in a non-linear way so I don’t need a big input device.

 

So what are my real-world options? (I’m thinking out loud and talking to myself at this point):

- A laptop computer.
I had an ibook for 2 years, and now that I look back on it, the day it got stolen was a blessing in disguise. Laptop computing is a pain in the ass – and the neck. You’ve got to constantly worry about whether your fast dying battery holds a charge, lug the weight of it around, and just generally deal with more stress as a result. I say this in a totally non-hipster way (mostly because they annoy me), but rediscovering the joys of paper has really improved the quality of my life.

- iphone/ipod touch.
I’ve heard good things about the iphone (who hasn’t?), and my phone is still a non-color kinda ancient and my ipod is only 2gbs. But apparently, despite the potential, reading PDFs is still a bitch and it’s far too big to be a phone (to me). That and the price.

- Printing shit out.
I’d love to do this, but it’s not uncommon for me to have to read like 40-50pages for each class a week. That’s a lot of paper, I just don’t have the heart to waste that level of resources.

- Palm Pilot
I’ve still got one of the Sony ones from back in the glory days. The problem here is that they’re far too slow, the screen is too small or low resolution, it’s such a bitch to get working with a mac and the acrobat reader software sucks balls and doesn’t work for PDFs that are made up of scanned images. Oh, and I hate it like poison. (Does anyone want to buy a Sony PEJ22?)

- eBook Readers.
I think this might just be the ideal solution, in theory at least. The batteries last forever, it’s super clear, they support PDFs, and nobody likes them so maybe they’ll be cheap on ebay. The problem is I have no idea how they deal with pdfs that are basically large scanned pages and are not normal book size. I’m researching it right now, but information is hard to come by. The information I have right now about both Sony and Amazon’s readers imply that they’re made useless by DRM. Fucking DRM.

If anyone knows anything about them or has any other ideas, let me know :)

This is something that should be a lot easier than it is.

High geekery // Comments

With Adobe releasing Lightroom Beta 3 (now for Windows) and Apple’s Aperture (version 1.1) for mac it seems like everyone and their dog has been comparing how both deliver on the hype as being the all-in-one pro shop for managing and editing photos ‘post-production’ once they leave your camera. I think though, that there’s probably still lots of room for me to throw my opinion of the two in based on the way I shoot and see images.

(for no real reason, I’ll be interspersing throughout this post some photos I never really got a chance to display here)

Blah I Shoot Photos Blaah blah

First of all, both products like to hype themselves up as being the best at dealing with RAW format images. Even though I easily could, I don’t shoot RAW though, I prefer JPEGs because it’s way faster and isn’t markedly different unless you’re printing images super huge. Additionally, for reasons of cost and size I don’t use a digital SLR either. That might all make you think, why then is someone who uses a digicam and shooting JPEGs wasting my time discussing two programs aimed at professional photographers that shoot in RAW with 10lb ultra cameras?

Simply because, over and above ‘consumer’ level programs like Picassa and iPhoto (which I used to use), these two have much more in-depth editing controls and photo management features which allow you to do things (after a mildly steep learning curve), that you could never do with the more simple programs. Once I used Aperture for the first time, more as an experiment as anything, I was surprisingly addicted – even though it’s harder to use at first and a lot slower.

Histograms v. Curves

One huge difference between the way each program approaches images is in balancing exposure range/colour. Aperture uses the Histogram approach and Lightroom uses Tone Curves. If you clicked either of those links and then were nerdy enough to read through them you’d notice that both are very difficult concepts to grasp, so pick the one you either understand better or like more. Pros and people with too much time will say that curves are more powerful and flexible, but I haven’t seen a difference really, I stick with histograms simply because it’s a paradigm I can understand and it’s what’s used in cameras.

More image editing

Some images really become something new and interesting when you alter other aspects of the image such as tuning the amount of highlight and shadow (easier in Aperture) or altering lens aberrations and vignetting to mimic a better lens or adding a subtle color cast (Lightroom wins). Other times.. well most times, what I shoot is boring and dull, nothing will change that.

Black and White

One area where Aperture easily wins is when you want to turn an image from random or crappily exposed photograph to artsy monochrome. Everyone’s doing it!
Anyways, in Aperture when you activate the ‘monochrome mixer’, you can choose to pretend that you were shooting black and white film and select what color filter you were using (as you experiment with them, you learn the different characteristics of each) or more directly manipulate RGB sliders. Doing the same in Lightroom gives you a list of 6 sliders which in theory might be more flexible, but in reality isn’t nearly as useful or quick. Ideally, I think you should have apertures color presets, but then also have the 6 sliders (Yellows, Cyans, Magentas also manipulatable) available.

Organization

The other forte of Aperture is that you can ‘stack’ images. Basically, if you’re style involves taking a few photos of the same thing (to cover possible angles, or exposure ranges etc), instead of having a library full of these similar images you can stack them into one pile that can be expanded at will, as well as rated to find the best one of the stack. It’s a feature I absolutely love and combined with the auto-stacking (which stacks photos that were taken really close to each other in time), saves me a lot of time. I won’t get into metadata cuz it’s boring, but Aperture’s system is a lot nicer to work with as well.

(Lightroom’s strengths)

I don’t want to hate on the other because Lightroom’s a Beta still and also a bit (not a huge amount really) faster on my G5 mac with 1GB of ram and is the only one of these two available for windows. Neither is perfect, and each has it’s own vision of what people (or professionals more likely) want to do with their photo files.

I just like Aperture more is all.

Photos // Comments

I suppose I haven’t really been paying too much attention to this place lately. Not that I’m apologetic or anything. From the time, a few months ago, I really stopped posting in earnest, it’s felt about time for a new look. But in only one short year a lot has changed when it comes to designing these things; what works, what’s trendy, or what just looks good today. But more than all that, as people age or change or even (gasp) mature, so do their tastes and style.

So ya, anything new being done is simply to reflect that.

So what’s this about two layouts?
A few months ago, I designed a new look for pketh.com. I thought it looked really sharp and different, special even. But in the end it just didn’t feel like something I could’ve lived with. Plus coding something that complex would’ve been a bitch (cough * Internet Explorer sucks ass and makes life painful * cough). Anyways, here it for ya.

I suppose that’s a lot of work + time down the drain, but hopefully I’m onto something I can really enjoy in the long run as well as the now.

Well, umm, see ya for now! (Now you know the site isn’t dead :D)

High geekery // Comments