Google calendar labs - worth a look

Google's "Labs" are often silly, but the Calendar Labs are all interesting.

I've added:

1. One on one
2. Year view
3. Add gadget by URL
4. Dim future repeats
5. Attach docs
6. Jump to date (at last!!)
7. Next meeting
8. World clock

In other words, just about all of the current lab offerings. They show on the right side of my calendar, which is fine on a mega-display. You can collapse the gadget/lab list with a single click.
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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 ...

See also:

• Gordon's Tech: Epson vs. Canon scanners: who has better OS X support (how I picked the V700 - 2007)
• Gordon's Tech: Obnoxious old Epson Scan bug: EPSON Scan cannot be started
• Gordon's Tech: Image Capture for Scanning: the 2nd most underestimated OS X application (2007)
• Gordon's Tech: VueScan vs. Nikon Scan on OS X
• Gordon's Tech: Scantips advice on VueScan
• Gordon's Tech: Digital Imaging Software Review: Vuescan 8.1
• Gordon's Tech: Scanner support remains problematic in Tiger: Epson support

Update 12/27/09: It even automatically found my 4yo networked Brother MFC-7820N - with no drivers installed! It took a long time to do the initial scan - spent about 5 minutes spinning. I was about to kill the process when it completed. Subsequent scans start fairly promptly. Page processing seems slow - and I'm using an i5! The B&W 200 dpi scan PDF results are excellent though, 4 pages at 745KB with very fine post-processing. I suspect there will be glitches though, I've seen this machine have trouble switching between acting as a scanner and acting as a printer.

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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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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.

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.