Exif, not EXIF: a Wikipedia primer

Exif is the main way digital cameras store date and other information. Capturing date information is hugely valuable for most home shooters, so you'd think there'd be a robust standard around this type of metadata.

Wrong.

The Wikipedia article is excellent. Read it, understand why image editors routinely wreck Exif metadata, and weep. The article could be improved by mentioning Adobe's XMP, I'll add a comment to that effect.

The modern hard drive: Apple tech note is geekily interesting

Apple is implementing Intel's specification for the organization of data on hard drives. This will take OS X beyond the 2TB limit. The Technical Note (TN2166: Secrets of the GPT) is surprisingly readable and, for a geek, is a neat introduction on how very large storage systems work.

Monitors for adults with poor vision

In the old days it was easy to put a decent display together for someone with poor vision. You'd buy a CRT and run it at a low resolution, something that gave 64 pixels/inch. (You could try using XP's option to change how those pixels are used, but it really doesn't work. OS X 10.4 doesn't have that option, 10.5 is supposed to be scalable -- so more pixels/inch can just mean better display of objects of unchanged size.)

With LCDs things don't work that well. Dan's Data has ideas. The one I favor is bolded.

Dan's Data letters #178

1: Get a good-sized CRT monitor, like a 19 or 21 incher, and run it at a suitably low resolution. 1024 by 768 on a '21 inch' screen with a 20 inch real viewable diagonal gives about 64 pixels per inch.

2: Get a big LCD monitor and run it at less than its rated resolution. That'll give you a fuzzy picture as the monitor spreads displayed pixels around its physical pixels, but you should get sharp results if you can run at exactly half (or even a quarter) of the rated resolution.

The advantage of this strategy is that if someone with 20:20 vision wants to use the computer, they can crank the resolution back up. And some large LCD monitors actually cost about the same as similar-sized LCD TVs with much lower resolution. Dell's popular (jf: 24") 2407WFP is the best example; it currently lists for $US720 or something, has a rated resolution of 1920 by 1200, and should be easy to run and good-looking at 960 by 600. That'd give about 47 pixels per inch.

3: Use an LCD TV that does fit on the desk. There are plenty of mid-sized options, and a lot of them have 'RGB' inputs suitable for computers - many have a plain old 'VGA socket' on the back, and that usually means they can sync to normal computer output scan rates (you can't bet on a TV with a DVI socket on the back being able to take input at various resolutions or refresh rates)...

Dan likes the TVs because they're ppi are low compared to a computer display. I like the LCD option, but it's expensive. You have to pay a LOT to end up with something that's a bit better than an 800x600 display. Maybe an old CRT is really the best option.

PS. I checked my iMac. It has a 21" display and the resolutions are 1680x1050 (what I use) and half that is 840x524. I didn't think 840x524 was any better than 1024x768.

Aperture 1.5: my emergent review

My one month free trial of Aperture 1.5 began yesterday. Note that after installing the free trial Software Update offers a 128MB 1.5.1 update download. Don't accept the update -- it will terminate the trial.

Alas, it's hard to evaluate this produce without the update; I ran into many nasty bugs, some of which are said to have been fixed in 1.5.1. Aperture crashed 3 times-- don't think I lost any photos). Aperture displayed unpredictable white lines and black lines on RAW images -- a known bug. Apple made a mistake by not supporting the 1.5.1 update; it's not like Aperture is a polished application. It was train wreck on release, and it's only now been promoted to a pile-up.

I won't bother reporting what everyone else reports. I'll sequentially update this blog posting with brief comments. Newest on top for a change. I'll focus on date issues and what odd things strike me (See also Timeature 1.0: adjust image date field in Aperture). I tested Aperture on two low end machine by Aperture standards:

• a 2GHz G5 iMac with 1.5GB SDRAM and an ATI Radeon 9600 with 128MB VRAM.
  
• a 2GHz MacBook with 2GB SDRAM and an integrated video card
  

The G5 mostly worked with JPEGs. I moved a project to the MacBook and imported a few hundred RAW files. The MacBook felt about as fast as the G5, maybe a bit faster. It would do for small Aperture projects. The MacBook handled both the internal display and an external Dell 20" LCD panel without a hiccup (ok, one crash). Pretty impressive.

Aperture performance was unpredictable. Sometimes it felt fast on the MacBook (only a few hundred RAW images though), sometimes it felt slow. If I restarted it seemed faster -- maybe memory leaks?

There are some things Aperture does well, but in general it's a less polished application that iPhoto 6. Despite Aperture's pro orientation, there are parts of the iPhoto workflow and image review toolset that spank Aperture. If iPhoto could manage importing and exporting "projects" or Libraries there'd be little reason for the non-pro to look at the current version of Aperture.

• It doesn't feel like a Mac application. The UI is cramped and murky; it's full of pointless, even gratuitous, non-Mac UI elements.
• There's no OS X help file; the "Help" menu references the PDF manuals. They're pretty well done, but I really missed the Help function. There are two main manuals, it's not obvious sometimes which one to look in. Neither manual described the baseline RAW tuning tool.
• Performance on these machines was often acceptable and sometimes surprisingly quick, but I didn't try a Library with thousands of RAW files. My large library test was JPEG. Periodically, however, Aperture would slow down mysteriously.
  
• An iPhoto Library of 1.94 GB is 2.88 GB in Aperture (ugh).
  
• The number of options to set seem way too small. I think they're scattered in other parts of the app. Did I mention this doesn't seem to be a Mac application?
  
• Dates are really messed up. I have a scanned image in an iPhoto Library with a date of 1890. Aperture actually sets the date correctly internally (I can see this by sort order), but the date displayed in the UI omits the first two years, so it appears to be 1990 (or 1690, whatever). Yes, Aperture has Y2K problems.
• Aperture won't let users set an IPTC date prior to 1972 (known bug).
  
• Aperture iPhoto install stupidly ignores files it cannot import -- without a warning or report. One might delete an iPhoto Library after initial testing, only to discover all the videos were lost.[Update: It says a file format could not be recognized, but it doesn't identify the file.]
  
• The install is about 220MB.
  
• The iPhoto "phantom edit" bug that's afflicted many of my iPhoto Libraries does not seem to affect Aperture import. My test Library imported correctly. Images that had been edited stacked as two images, images that had not been edited appeared as one image -- even when iPhoto "thinks" there's been an edit.
  

I really wanted to like Aperture. Sometimes I did, but at other times it just gave me a headache. It's not a train-wreck any more, but it needs a LOT more work on performance, stability, date management, import/export, user interface before it will be an excellent solution. I'm going to wait and see what iPhoto 7 brings (Library import mayhap?). Perhaps by then another maintenance release of Aperture with some performance improvements will have come out.

Update 12/19/06: I'm back at it again, this time with Aperture 1.52 trial. Within 10 minutes of first launching it cratered. The crash left junk in an OS X cache folder, so that even iPhoto didn't work. A 'safe boot' clean-up (hold shift on startup then restart normally) purged the caches and fixed everything. Aperture is still a work in progress ...

Disco is in beta (Toast replacement)

Macintouch reports Disco - is available as a public beta:

Disco 1.0b3 is the first public beta release of Madebysofa's CD/DVD disc burning utility. The software offers disc spanning, multi-session support, audio burning, support for multiple file systems, VIDEO_TS folder burning, motion sensor support (to guard against possible burn disruption), a variety of disc image options, and more. It also includes Discography, a feature that tracks all files and discs burned and lets you search for burned files to locate the disc they're on. Disco is available at an introductory price of $14.95 for Mac OS X 10.4.

The product comes from a well regarded independent group of engineers. It's been anticipated and I'm looking forward to trying it out. If it's good it will likely displace Toast completely.

Palm crashes and dies .. "Fatal Alert"

So I'm synching my Palm T2. Routine stuff. Abruptly, sync terminates with a well named message "Fatal Alert". The Palm was completely unresponsive -- the standard reset button did nothing.

Impressive! A search on the details (VFSDBCache.c, "found trailing records after dir sync") returned only one one reference and it's not applicable.

I played with a warm reset (push navigator up, while pressing reset) and rocked the navigator up and down with the memory card remove. It finally reset. A resync (outlook overwrite handheld) worked fine.

I suspect a problem with Palm's cruddy connector caused a communications flaw during synchronization. They could have used a reliable USB mini-B like the Tungsten T and Blackberry, but, no, they had delusions of grandeur ....

Check iPhoto for mystery folders

I'm going to see if I have these folders, even though I don't get the error message mentioned here. Via Macintouch.

Unimported photos found in Library when iPhoto is launched

... look in the root level of the iPhoto library folder for a folder named 'Recovered Photos' or a folder named 'Import'. Move this folder to your desktop and try launching iPhoto again.

iMac fans running

The SMC reset directions seem to have changed a bit:

iMac (Late 2006) fans run at full speed after computer turns on:

After plugging in the iMac and turning it on, the fans (blowers) may be noisy and appear to run at full speed. In this event, shutting the iMac off and turning it on again wouldn't fix the issue...

My iMac runs its fans more than it used to. Annoying. Either the CPU is being taxed more, or Apple has changed the fan settings to run cooler, or something's wrong ...

Printer drivers for 10.4

From Apple's kb, a full list of supported printers in OS X 10.4 plus links to CUPS sources for more printers:

Mac OS X 10.4: Included printer drivers and PostScript PPD files:

The Driver Version column contains the PPD file version for PostScript printers or printers using CUPS drivers.
# Drivers that are denoted on the list as a Modern Driver are PPD files or drivers designed for CUPS (printing architecture available in Mac OS X 10.2 and later).
# Drivers that are not denoted as Modern Drivers cannot be selected when adding an IP printer or Windows shared printer.
# The drivers that list 'ESP' as the manufacturer are sample drivers included with CUPS.
# Some HP printer drivers support a series of printer models. To determine if a specific printer model is part of a series, see this website.

Small Dog Electronics: why they're a good place for Mac stuff

Small Dog Electronics speaks out on theft-in-transit, credit card fraud and more - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) is in line with what I've read and experienced -- more issues with theft and damage in UPS and USPS shipments. The article also reminded me that SDE should always be on my vendor list when I buy electronic goods and especially Mac stuff.

OS X auto-complete: who knew?

Daring Fireball: Can I Get an "Hallelujah" for Auto-Completion With the Esc Key?. Hit F5, get an auto-complete drop down. Works in Nisus Writer Express. In 10.4 the Esc key does the same thing. Who knew? It raises the old usability question -- how do users learn about these occult features? What happens when one runs out of keyboard bindings (on laptops F5 controls the volume, you have to type Fn-F5 to get this).

Practically speaking auto-complete is extremely important for pen text entry, but it's far less useful for keyboard text entry. As DF notes it might help when one is unsure how to spell a word.

Gmail advanced search operators

These advanced search operators are well worth using: Gmail: Help Center - How do I use Advanced Search?. They're similar to Lookout (for Outlook)'s operators.

Thanks allblue.

Search gone mad - Custom AJAX API search

Google has now combined their custom custom search tool with their AJAX search API. Any geek with a bit of spare time can put together their own personal web 2.0 search utility. It's all a bit rough on those startup companies who've been creating a multitude of special purpose search tools. The barriers to entry have dropped.

The demo page is remarkable.

Google delivers custom search pages

I asked Alta Vista to do this in 1996. Now we have it: Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO Review: Custom Search Engine.

There's more there than meets the eye ...

...there’s a bookmarklet (Google Marker) so that if you’re surfing the web and find a site you’d like to add to your search engine, you just click and that site is instantly added to your search engine. And it wouldn’t be based on Google Co-op if you couldn’t choose to allow volunteers to edit your search engine and add new sites if you want.

Wow. This is my custom search page. If it works well it'll be embedded in my web site and blogs. I'll also create another custom search page I use to hold a larger set of sites. Hmm. If they enable site-sets, one could create ontologies of sites to search, and create a very sophisticated set of custom searches ...

The collaborative aspect is very noteworthy.

OS X: The OS without backup software

I can't figure out how to link to the Daring Fireball post that sent me to rentzsch.com: Hole in the Umbrella: Backup 3 but it was a good one.

Wow. This is bad.

Rentzsch suggests using Retrospect. Uhhh, no. Retrospect was acquired by EMC, a mega-corp with zero interest in the home market and even worse support than Dantz (which is saying a lot). It was a creaky and ailing software package before EMC bought it, it's now a zombie. [I use an old version of Retrospect Pro for Windows, I'll use it as long as it works.]

There are some small distribution backup solutions for OS X, but they're hardly home user friendly.

Backup is in bad shape under Windows, but it's in even worse shape in OS X.