Gordon's Tech

Friday, December 18, 2009

Image Capture 10.6 is one heck of a scanning app

Apple doesn't say much about the newly enhanced scanning feature built into 10.6 ...

Apple - Mac OS X - What Is Mac OS X - All Applications and Utilities

... Image Capture transfers images between your digital camera or scanner and your Mac for use in iPhoto and other applications....

There's nothing there to suggest this ...

Shoot. It's not like Apple is known for modesty. Why not boast a bit?

Good old Image Capture, which always had more abilities than most realized, is now a very sweet scanning app in 10.6. Apple has silently removed one of the OS X's bigger weaknesses -- crummy scanner support. Yeah, that was due to hardware vendors outsourcing device drivers to the lowest bidder, but users felt the pain all the same.

For years I've made do with Epson's crummy and buggy product, and I was worried how my sweet Epson V700 would do with Snow Leopard.

It took about 5 minutes to answer that question. I plugged a bright orange $10 LaCie 800-400 flat firewire cable into the i5 and the V700, then fired up Image Capture and clicked "Show Details". Everything is there, and the results are fine. (I scan to high res TIFF then post-process to archival JPEG in Aperture, or, as of today, in Lightroom beta 3.)

I didn't install anything. No apps, no drivers.

The new scanning features include automatic detection of separate items so you can scan multiple items at once. The downside is that not all scanners are supported; HP scanners are particularly problematic. Of course all HP consumer products are problematic ...

Adobe Photoshop Elements - still evil

Since Aperture appears to be dead, I decided to take another look at Photoshop Elements for use with iPhoto.

I've tried it before, but Adobe's installers have been truly evil. Security mess-ups, incompatible with non-admin users, messy installs, etc.

That was then. Today I tried again with a demo version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac.

Yep, same as ever. A bizarre proprietary installer, no obvious uninstall, and it looks like it scatters a 1GB mess everywhere.

Next I'll look at the 68 MB Lightroom 3 Public beta and see if that installer is less evil.

Update: Yes! Lightroom uses a standard OS X installer. It puts a 91MB file in my App folder. Beautiful.

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Using a 27 inch iMac as an external display

When I bring my work laptop home, it would be convenient to use my i5 as an external display ...

Using a 27-inch iMac as an external display

... Connect a male-to-male Mini DisplayPort cable to the Mini DisplayPort on each computer. The 27-inch iMac will enter Target Display Mode and display content from the source computer.

Note: If you are connecting two 27-inch iMacs, connect a Mini DisplayPort cable to each computer and press Command F2 on the 27-inch iMac keyboard that you will use as an external display....

My work laptop has a Display port output, but not a Mini DisplayPort. Alas, modern video cabling is a complete mess. (Yes, it's all about the DRM. Oh, for the brief shining moment of VGA everywhere)

It looks like what I need is a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort adapter cable ($12.95). I'm going to give this one a try and update this post with my experiences.

Incidentally, Belkin sells a $30 Mini to Mini cable through the Apple store and circuit assembly sells a $13 version.

I found a quick topic review on Ars Technica as well.

Update 12/22/09: The results of my purchases. They worked.
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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Aperture RIP?

The last post on O'Reilly's Inside Aperture page was from March 2009.

I don't hear about Aperture at all any more.

Looks like this product's dead.

Update: In retrospect, the extended absence of 'dodge and burn' (masking) was a pretty clear indicator that Aperture wasn't going to make it. I'd love to see a "pro" version of iPhoto. In the meanwhile I'm going to download a trial version of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements.
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Using Excel matrix operations to sum a range of inverted numbers

There’s an interesting story here about how Google makes us smarter, but I’ll try to post that one to Gordon’s Notes. This post is about sharing what I learned about Excel.

As we all know Excel is the gem of Microsoft. Word was once great, but it fell (though Word in Office:Mac 2008 is surprisingly good). Excel, which started on the Mac, has always been impressive. This time I used one of its more obscure features to solve a problem of my own creation.

The problem was that I’d asked team members to rank their top three topics in a list of about 40. So their top choice was numbered 1, 2nd choice 2, etc. I knew I’d have trouble interpreting the results, but I wanted to make the data entry process very simple.

When it came to creating a cross-topic metric I ran into the usual troubles. I couldn’t just sum them up. I’m sure there are better solutions, but I decided to sum up the inverted numbers. So if 3 people had rated a topic 1, 2 and 3 then the sum would be 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 multiplied by scaling factor to give a more readable result.

Thanks to Google (Google Suggest is mind blowing) I learned that summing the inverse of the non-zero (null) values in a row or column is a matrix operation (I have vague memories that there’s a mathematical name for this value), and that you can do this in Excel (credit to the hideous Experts Exchange for the key entry).

It’s a bit bizarre, but here’s what the formula looks like:

={SUM(IF(ISERROR(1/E41:T41),0,1/E41:T41))*10}

Okay, more or less looks like – because you type it in like this:

SUM(IF(ISERROR(1/E41:T41),0,1/E41:T41))*10

Then you hit Ctrl-Shift-Enter to tell Excel to treat this formula as a matrix operation.

You need the “ISERROR” function so Excel ignores the divide-by-zero (null) cells. The “E41:T41” says that the range goes from column E to T on row 41.

This formula did the job. I’d never have come up with this fix if not for Google, but that’s a topic for another post.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The iMac i5 27” screen – we’ve exceeded the vertical limit

I’m increasingly enjoying my sadly flickering i5 iMac. The performance is great, and when the screen doesn’t flicker it’s fairly agreeable.

I’m not sure I’d buy it again though – especially if Apple were to produce an i5 in a smaller form factor.

The screen is just too high. On a conventional table and chair I spend too much time looking up. A sore neck awaits.

I could move the display much further away, but then I’d be unable to read the screen.

It’s the wrong computing form factor for human anatomy. I’d like the top of the screen to be about 8-10” lower, and then grow the display area horizontally. Practically speaking the classic dual monitor arrangement would work better.

Of course that aspect ratio isn’t nearly as good for watching a movie, which mostly shows that one screen won’t work for movies and productivity.

The iMac does drive two displays of course. I think I may end up using an older 21” Dell LCD as my primary reading area, and the massive 27” screen as my photo, video and general workspace. This will take some desk manipulation …

Update 12/17/09: I'm doing better by learning to create smaller windows, and move them to the bottom of the screen. So the top half is a parking area, and the bottom half a working area. It helps when apps open new windows near old ones - Safari does this well. I'm looking forward to the connection to my external Dell however.

Update 12/22/09: I got my mini-DisplayPort to DVI cable, and now I have my Dell 2007WFP as an secondary display. It's a bit tricky to adjust the two to matching brightness levels, I found it easiest to pick a mid-range level for the Dell then use the keyboard control to adjust the i5. (Note the old iMac ambient light sensor is gone!). This arrangement is easy on my eyes, especially since I boosted my Safari font size to suit the high pixel density of the i5. It's quite a display surface, even if Emily does remind me that Al Gore's displays are much bigger.

Update 12/29/09: The enormous Apple discussion thread on this topic includes posts from customers developing flicker problems weeks after buying an i5. I decided to go ahead and apply the firmware update in case a firmware problem might be causing overheating and damage to the GPU. Of course it helps that it's about 8F outside, and fairly cool in the computer room.

Google Reader Social is currently train wrecked

I’m a huge fan of the potential of Google Reader/Social – especially as Google’s miraculous translation tools improve. I’d love to trace the “like” links to Chinese and Indian annotators, then follow their Reader shares into language and knowledge domains I can’t currently follow. I know that’s only a few months away – even though yesterday’s effort to follow one Chinese geek failed without a trace.

As of today, however, Google Reader/Social is horked.

Exhibit A is taken from a mash-up of Google Reader “notes” and “comments” on a (micro-blog, think Twitter status post) “note” written by Patrick J with comments by Rahul and me …

Google Reader - Patrick J note

… Shared by Hanna... Tried to comment on hers but couldn't.

… I've noticed this too. I've been working on this on and off for a while, here and there. It appears to be more prevalent when both people in reader have protected their items…

.. I also add google reader people to a group that allows them access to my items, and in addition I also share my items with other groups/people in my contacts list. I have not noticed a difference in group membership vs. the `bump'…

… People keep bumping off my groups … I cannot comment on some posts.…

… why cannot they merge same post shared by different people. I mean, let me see the post just once and say these people like it. These people have shared it. You want to comment to someone specific then click on their name else write a general comment and we will share it everywhere among your contacts…

… It's a wreck. The comment/note dichotomy, the failure to merge items shared by multiple people, and the inexplicable following failures….

Not to mention that one Google Reader display says I follow 28 people but only shows 14 names, and another view says I’m following 19 people.

It’s a train wreck. I’ve given up on trying to “follow” anyone until Google does a reboot. Instead I’m using the GR “Like” links to find new blogs I can follow in the “traditional” feed reader manner. Now if Google would only improve GR’s translation tools …

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Facebook privacy settings

Facebook privacy settings are Class One Complexity Attack. There's no easy escape, but this blog post is the best one stop explanation I've seen to date: 10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

Update 12/16/09: Additional references.

Behind all of the complexity it looks like their primary motivation is to provide more of your personal information to the often shady (sometimes criminal) 3rd party applications. When an app vendor finds a gullible person, they can then target their friends.

Facebook's latest machinations support their high ranking on Gordon's Corporate Evil Scale.

Update 12/17/09: The bad news continues. The motivation is obviously the FB Apps market.

Banks using Shadowy Apps to Harvest Personal Information from Facebook Profiles: This feels a bit improbable. It does illustrate, however, how some of the information now exposed to FB apps can and will be sold and used.
Is Facebook a Brand that You Can Trust- - O'Reilly Radar: This article also links to some past FB references such as Beacon Debacle, Scamville Furor and the current Privacy Putsch. It includes two key quotes from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
…new 'privacy' changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before… The privacy 'transition tool' that guides users through the configuration will 'recommend' — preselect by default — the setting to share the content they post to Facebook, such as status messages and wall posts, with everyone on the Internet, even though the default privacy level that those users had accepted previously was limited to 'Your Networks and Friends' …
… You Can't Opt Out of The "Sharing" of Your Information with Facebook Apps..

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Snow Leopard screen saver buggy

We know SL is buggy. You shouldn't upgrade before June 2010 or so.

I have a new i5 though, so I have to live with the bugs.

Today my screen saver locked up in an odd way. It cycled between two images, and I couldn't get it to stop. I switched to my Admin account and rebooted from there.

I'm streaming images from a server, and I'm seeing the old 10.5 network flaws, so I wonder if this is a combination of network bugs and screen saver bugs.

If it recurs I'll move my images locally and eliminate the 802.11n traffic.

see also: Snow Leopard screen saver issue -- sporadic but severe - Mac Forums

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Bug with Aperture 2 and Snow Leopard install

If you install Aperture 2 into a new Snow Leopard machine for a non-admin user you get this error message "The license file will not be written to disk because the user does not have enough privileges".

The workaround is to make the user an admin, then login and enter the serial number, then make them a non-admin.

Very annoying, esp. since 10.6 admin privilege changes require a restart! (In prior versions of OS X a restart was not required.)

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Admin privilege escalation in snow leopard requires a restart

My first nasty regression with my new machine's Snow Leopard - making a user admin, or removing admin privileges, now requires a restart.

This is a pain!

Obviously done for security reasons, but it's a nasty usability regression.

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Friday, December 11, 2009

My transiently flickering i5 iMac and notes on academic store purchases

After an unusually prolonged period of weakness I bought a 27-inch Core i5 iMac. It's a lot of money, but we've had a moderate need for a new machine for some time.

I purchased it through the UMN apple store (I'm adjunct faculty) so I got $100 off but paid taxes (MN needs the money). The alternative is Amazon, where the final price is a bit lower (no taxes, free shipping) but there's a higher risk of shipping damage, a longer wait, and the modest hassle of pickup.

It's been a while since I bought at the UMN store. One things I'd forgotten is that it only looks like an Apple store -- it's a separate business. They don't allow any returns at all after something is opened (!) and they don't have access to all of Apple's bulletins and internal documents. Their mildly discounted AppleCare came with $100 off an iPod, but we already have a lot of iPods so we passed on it. My AMEX card doubles the standard 1 year warranty.

The store was selling Crucial memory for $180 (w/ discount), the same memory from Crucial is $114. I passed, the machine has 4GB. I'll get more after it's settled in. The Apple mini-display port to DVI adapter cable costs $30 and lacks analog pass through, Amazon currently has one for $8 (plus shipping!) with decent reviews and a full set of pins.

I'm sure I'll run into bugs. Here are the first three ...

After a restart it seemed to have trouble finding the bluetooth mouse. It put up a warning note but it found it a few seconds later. I gather this is a known glitch.
When I went to show the machine to Emily the screen saver started to stutter! I was going to tell her how trouble free things had been. It hasn't done this since, but there are known problems...
There's an old glitch with MobileMe registration that probably impacts me and five other people.

The MobileMe glitch hits people who have "mac.com" Apple accounts and MobileMe accounts that didn't migrate from the original .Mac account. It's not an unexpected glitch -- Apple has trouble with the five of us. It's easy for a geek to work around and only a geek would ever be in this odd situation.

The packing and unpacking really is a zen experience. There's one cord on this machine, and that goes to the wall socket. The screen doesn't feel big to me, I can get used to big screens very quickly.

I'll update this post or add new ones if I find any more surprises.

Update: An unofficial site claims Apple is replacing the video card and holding shipment. If I'd caught wind of this one I would have waited until the end of January. I'll go slow on making this a primary machine until we find out if it will need to go for repairs or replacement. It's quite heavy to move!

Update: After a few hours of running a network accessed slide show we saw one episode of severe flickering and another of stuttered image display. So I have the video problem. I strongly recommend holding off purchases of this machine. My serial number is W8946HAH5PJ (emphases mine), that would mean it was manufactured in week 46.

Update 12/13/09: It is a weird problem, but I can't believe Apple hasn't known about it for weeks. I wonder if this is why none of the three local Apple outlets had an i5 on the floor. The flickering video would get quite a bit of attention! The issue has started to get trade pub attention, so I hope we'll get an Apple response this week.

My particular machine passes all hardware tests, and I did the never-useful PRAM reset thing, but it still shows up during my screen saver photo slideshows (images are on a server, network is 802.11n). I called Apple Care just to create a tracking number for my machine problem, but I didn't ask for a replacement.

Most recently, I'm finding that after an hour or two (on average) the zoom and pan transitions will start to stutter, with occasional violent jerks. If I move the mouse the screen is fine again. I haven't had this occur except during the screen saver shows because I've made so little use of the new machine. I'm reluctant to move it into production use since there's a good chance I'll have to return it in the next week or so - which will mean a full reinstall.

I'm betting this is a hardware defect and it will require a recall or a firmware "fix". I wouldn't be shocked if there were problems in more than one hardware component.

Sigh. I know better than to buy a new Apple machine. I was weak, and I'm only getting what I deserve.

Update 12/13/09b: Saw this post on how a tech fixed his own machine. It hints at what to look for if there's a recall ...

Apple suggests ...

1. Verify if it occurs with an external display too. If it does (see separate chart)
2. Check all four cables for being damaged, pinched, etc...
3. If it still occurs shine bright (low heat) flashlight into front of LCD. Verify if an image is being displayed when flickering issue is occurring. If so, replace vertical sync cable (between LCD panel and upper end of LED backlight board) and retest.

If issue persists, replace LED backlight board.

If not, replace internal DisplayPort cable (between logic board and LCD panel), and retest.

For horizontal lines it says:

1. boot from dvd and see if it still does it, if not, it is a software issue
2. if it does still do it, check external display, if it does it there it is not the lcd, but could be the video card.
3. If video card is replaced and reseated and it still happens
4. Check ram by using only one module and testing with another available module.
5. If it still happens replace logic board.

Update 12/16/09: A relatively technical post from the PC World about flickering and the i5's graphics card. Reading the Apple Discussion threads it feels like there are more than one set of problems going on.

Update 12/21/09: Apple has a graphics card firmware update out for the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850. Some machines may have the updated firmware: " You should see revision 113-B9110C-425 or 113-B8030F-260 if the update has been successfully applied." Apple is also busy deleting posts from the original discussion thread -- I wonder if the entire thread will disappear. Some of the deleted posts reported the firmware update reduced GPU clock speed and heat -- so it seems the update might reduce GPU performance.

Others have already reported the update did not fix their display issues.

This smells like a fragile graphics infrastructure prone to multiple pathologies leading to flicker and image mangling. It may take several different fixes to clean up the mess.

My own display flickering resolved a week ago without applying any update after I moved my i5. The only changes were a new outlet, very close proximity to my 802.11n router, and possibly a cooler room (but not much cooler).

Update 1/12/10: An interesting comment on Macintouch:

Patrik Montgomery
... There seems to be at least two different defects. One is a software thing that the firmware update is supposed to fix, and another is the display cable coming loose internally - possibly during transfer, which is why the problem seems to be more common with CTO machines.
The software defect seems to be something in the settings getting corrupted. A PRAM reset can correct this, but if the defect is still there, it might happen again at any point. The firmware update is there to correct this defect, so a firmware update + PRAM reset can be a permanent fix. One big gotcha is that the wireless keyboard apparently cannot reset PRAM reliably, so you may need to do it with a wired keyboard. A Windows keyboard works fine, if you don't have a wired Mac keyboard - just hold the Windows key instead of Command and left Alt instead of option (so Windows-left Alt-P-R).

Update 1/21/2010: I've not seen any flickering since the first 1-2 days of use. I did move it upstairs. Maybe a loose cable moved into alignment?

Update 2/2/10: MacFixit has a good discussion of the state of the fix after the 2nd firmware update. The newest update aims at the mysterious chip, not the graphics card, that controls the display, which I'm impressed they can update. Since this feels like a multi-factorial problem, this would leave people suffering from a loose cable that moves around when the case is moved. MacFixit suggest PRAM and SMC resets be applied after the firmware updates.

Update 2/24/2010: No flickering - so I never had any more after that two-three days of use. I wonder if a cable had shifted when I moved it around. I checked the Apple forum flicker thread -- Apple had to lock it on page 300 because browsers were choking. They hit some kind of forum software maximum. Apple opened a new thread to continue the complaints. I've never seen them be so accepting of unhappy customer posts. The second firmware update, the one that worked on the display chip, did seem to help many.

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OS X Apps to contemplate

The unexpectedly vital Macworld has several list of OS X apps and products to contemplate...

Some of these I use all the time. Others sound interesting, but potentially risky. The ones that I personally might look into include:

Shimo - VPN management
RipIt - copy DVD
ClickToFlash - Safari plug-in
Back-In-Time - advanced interface to a Time Machine backup
BusyCal 1.0 - tempting. iCal doesn't merely suck, it wretches
Dropbox - I've been resisting, but I'm becoming resigned to yet-another-service
Acorn - vector and raster for $50. That's hard to equal.

ClickToFlash--
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Creating a photo collage: Picasa on OS X (Intel)

My family does some things well, but family pictures are not among them. So for the Solstice this year I had to go the "collage" route.

iPhoto does many things well, but Collage creation is not among them. (Neither is Library merge, but don't get me started.) So for our Solstice collage I had to turn to Google's free Picasa 3.6 for OS X (Intel only). It worked very well.

If you do go this way, and you're not a Picasa expert, these install and setup tips might help:

Download and install Picasa 3.6 for OS X Intel. It's a very straightforward drag and drop to Applications install.
Launch. It will start reading in your photo library. You don't have all day, so you want to turn this off. Go to Tools:Folder Manager and remove everything.
Go to Preferences and turn off face recognition. You don't need it and it will slow things down.
From iPhoto export your images to a desktop folder. (Picasa can browse your iPhoto albums (not events) in a mixed year/name hierarchy, but it won't let monitor just one album/folder. It's all or nothing for iPhoto monitoring. So you have to export.)
Using Tools:Folder Manager monitor the folder you just created to.
Select what you want to work with, and choose Create:Collage.

I didn't fully investigate the Collage tools, but they're impressive. Right click on images to change their stacking order. Click and move the red dot to change size and orientation. There's a "Clips" view on the left side you can add from, but I didn't investigate it further.

From here you can create your collage as a JPG that can be edited and exported. Export and them move it back into iPhoto.

I might start using Picasa for Mac as a supplement to iPhoto. Among other things, it's a powerful tool for reviewing and managing Picasa Web Albums -- which Apple conspicuously fails to support. If I do I'll write more on that, and add a link to this post.

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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Google Groups and the lost free version of Google Apps

Google Groups, long thought to be following DejaNews into extinction, has been reborn as a Google Apps service. It provides mailing-list like functions, something that Gmail makes (intentionally) very tedious.

Google Apps Premier that is ... (emphases mine)

About groups - Google Apps Help

... As a Google Apps administrator, you can create and manage groups for your entire domain. If you enable the user-managed groups service (available for Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition)...

So we can't add it to our free family Google App.

The free version of Google Apps doesn't show up on the main page any more. It's still around though, hanging off Business Apps page (nonprofit is there too). I imagine it's a pain for Google to (non) support.

If the business version were $25 a user I'd pay for it, but $50/year/user is steep for what my family does.

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