macandlinux

Apple App Store

2011-01-07T23:21:00.001Z

By upgrading to 10.6.6 OS X users get access to the new App Store. Thankfully it's not been rolled into iTunes which is now way too confusing, cluttered and altogether big and slow. App Store is fast, lean, simple and will drain my bank account faster than if I had some sort of habit.

So far the free version of SketchBook, LightCompressor and Pixelmator have made it to my applications folder. According to the hype I can now also download them to use on my other machines too. Always handy.

No getting away from it, dropping the price of some of the apps and making it so, so easy is going to put a lot of cash into the Apple coffers and hopefully that of the developers too. Don't see much from the likes of Adobe, Quark et al. Life has just moved on, keep up. just when us Mac users were feeling un-loved in the shadow of all things iOS.

Freeway 5.5

2011-01-05T23:54:00.001Z

So I did the trial period with freeway 5.5 and enjoyed the process. I'd been a Freeway 4 user and got on fine, with one exception. Building rollovers. Back in the early days with Freeway before CSS everything you built the rollovers by making two graphic objects, aligning them and then turning on/off the states in an inspector. This all worked fine if you got everything right first time and didn't try to edit (who does get it first time). However, nothing has improved in 5.5 except that if you are building in CSS mode you need to go back to non CSS to build the rollovers then back into CSS to carry on. Then they do not always work. Nothing seems to have improved.

I spent hours designing an interface to go on the master pages only to find some bits just didn't work. The errors seem to occur when you edit content time after time and even with a forced re-build it still creates dud bits of code which don't get over written on publishing. This is all very frustrating and eventually lead me to not stump up the £73 odd pounds for the upgrade. I was seduced by the £25 upgrade to RapidWeaver instead along with all its inflexibility but get a page up fast goodness.

Quark & html

2010-11-16T22:53:00.001Z

So Quark 8.5 is here. It's a big beast to download and fixes a few Snow Leopard issues apparently.

If Quark is so bent on being a useful web tool I just wish they would put more effort into the html pages and not in to the Flash side of the application. I'm sorry but buggy, bloated flash has had it's day and the sooner we move to html5 the better.

Quark html pages for me just cannot seem to produce what I need. Every time I try to create a rollover with a round button, looks fine on the Quark screen, when it renders on the web preview I just get a round button with a square background in a slightly lighter tone. I've been on to Quark about this, along with the 'Quark is broken' box which pops up from time to time and still under 8.5. Do they know what the rest of us know? Sadly Quark is broken.

As I write I'm downloading a trial of Softpress Freeway 5.5. I used to use this, lapsed but am now going to try again.

See the nasty little square corners?

Why I've finally given up on Linux

2010-11-10T22:03:00.000Z

I started using linux in 1998ish and have constantly used it from then to now. I've also used Mac OS 7 through OS X 10.6.

Recently my NEC box went wrong, it had SuSe 11.3 on it. I tried re-installing and Xserver problems. Tried Fedora 14, more Xserver problems, tried Ubuntu 10.4 more Xserver issues. Spotted a trend here yet?

I simply can't get this NEC box or the other old Dell one to any longer reliably display anything better than 1024x768. So far I've wasted the best part of two full days, broken systems more times than I can remember. Why is X11 so flaky these days. Was a time not long ago that any distro worth the name would offer Xserver config tools that would allow you to set the resolution. I remember all of the above successfully probing monitors, setting correct resolutions and working. Why Xorg has seen the need to remove the xorg.conf file from most installs and made it really difficult to get a working one back I don't know.

Ubuntu gave me the option of installing the Nv drivers, that just made things worse, giving an unusable display. It all used to work so why not now?

Given that OS X can install in a few minutes, detect just about any monitor and just work as I'm told can Windows why if Linux really wants to be accepted can it not just install and work, after all these years. Where is the progress and what is the point?

I can now do everything on OS X I needed Linux for not so long ago. Yes I know it is owned by evil big business and is not free, but I'm not free. I have to make a living, I don't have two days to waste not even to get back to where I was. I think I understand this stuff, I've used it for long enough. But now it's broken and less and less relevant.

Apple Aperture 3

2010-05-14T23:03:00.003Z

Aperture3 Blog notes

At £79 inc VAT I'm not sure the upgrade from V2 to V3 of Aperture is really really worth it for me. I don't have a camera with built in GPS. I can imagine the new generation of SD cards with Wi-Fi location in them work fine in the San Francisco Bay area but in a mucky field in Norfolk I doubt there are many mapped W-fi hot-spots to lock on to. GPS map tagging being the main feature of Aperture 3.

There have been so many horror stories on the internet about the perils of upgrading from version 2. Tales of corrupted databases, treacle like performance, huge memory leaks. These tales of perilous software adventures are as close as us namby-pamby's get to the fearsome tales of ancient mariners, tales of sea monsters, storms, battles, cruelty and perils of the sea. Loosing a few snaps to us is as frightening as loosing a leg would have been to a sea-faring man of yore. I digress.

If you are sensible in the approach to upgrading then things should go fine, especially now that Aperture has been upgraded to 3.03 at the time of writing.

For me the following worked, it may not work for everyone so you have been warned.

1. Rebuild the database currently in use. Option-command whilst starting
2. Back up your existing V2 database to a separate drive
3. Install Aperture 3
4. Run Software Update before starting to update to 3.03
5. Agree to having Aperture update the database to V3. This will take a long time so just let it get on with it and don't fiddle.
6. At the end of the process Aperture should have started up and all should be fine.

First things to note for me were that they have increased the size of all the interface elements by about 10% so the once Apple Pro app elegant look is now replaced by something chunky looking like Charlie aged six and 3/4 had made. This really irritates me. I assume it has been done to accommodate 17" MBP users.

There is a new RAW processing engine and any RAW files give you the option to re-process using the new version. The revised processing appears to give more punch, colour saturation, vibrancy but at the cost of increased contrast. I'd hazard a guess that these new files will print a bit too contrasty on a traditional press. look fine on screen. Indeed, the reprocessed files make the originals look positively muddy.

I can't see much real difference in the full screen mode, even though it is much trumpeted in the marketing materials.

I've just made a book with the new version for a client, indeed it is uploading as I write this. There are one or two new layouts for books, mainly incorporating the new maps GPS features. I would have liked to have seen more development on the books front. These are still real client pleaser's. Aperture 3 also incorporates the ability to quickly load plug-ins for three external book publishers products. All appear to be aimed at the wedding market.

One bug in the Books section is that if you double-click on an image in the book browser to edit it the only way back into the book is to click into another project or folder then back into the book. you can't get back directly from the edit stage.

The new quick presets for colour effects, B&W and image enhancement are useful as too are the adjustment brushes. I've just improved a sky with one. They are still not as good as the u-point technology in Nikon's NX2 however which I find even better than Photoshop for serious photo enhancement.

Faces button - I'll never use it
Facebook button - I'll never use it, I value my privacy
Flikr Button - I'll never use it, sorry but I don't give my photographs away to my 'mates' I attempt to sell them, I know it is quaint and old fashioned but it's all I know.

Slideshows looks great, I'll use that. Lots. At last Aperture has the ability to handle video files. iPhoto has done that since day one. I have buckets of video files shot on an old Fuji FinePix that I never look at since moving to Aperture.

Importing has had me scratching my head a bit. I store all my pictures on external drives and use Aperture to manage the referenced files. Gone is the great snake like bar joining the source to the destination. Now all there is a popup for the destination and it does not always work as one would expect. importing has never been Aperture's strength, even down to the only way to browse ones file system is via the columns method, no option to browse via a list view with the latest import at the top. If they can offer this in the finder why not in Aperture?

All in all Aperture is a comfortable place to spend a day working. Learn the keyboard shortcuts to make life snappier. I'd rather use Aperture to Lightroom and I'm impressed that it still seems to run generally quickly. Only applying brushes seems to slow it down a little.

Quark 8 as a web tool

2010-03-19T23:53:00.000Z

We've had web one, we've had web two, we've had social networking, FaceBroke and TwitterTwat now I've decided to bring you the ironic internet. An internet where things are ironically broken, don't work as one would expect and most definitely doesn't toe the rather bland corporate line.

This week and if I'm honest, for the last few weeks on and off as you do I've been re-vamping my web site. I spend a fair bit of time working on sites for other people but rarely for me.

For some reason which I cannot fathom I decided my tool of choice would be Quark Xpress. It says it can do web so I gave it a try. I also set the target of not using Flash anywhere on the site. I was gladdened some weeks ago to have my susspicions about flash vindicated by none other than the great mr. Jobs him self in his town hall rant on the subject. What started off as a cute, light and fluffy way of displaying a few vector shapes on web pages has now develped into a super-sized behemoth, guaranteed to bring anything but the spritelyset of computers to it's knees at the click of a mouse. So, no flash spoken here.

I'd done some flash development in Quark and it does a pretty good job. The tools are easier to use than the officiel flash and at the ned of the day it was one of the prime reasons for splashing out on the upgrade. But now I've seen the light and won't use it. So that's my foot with a small .22 sized hole in it.

So, fire up Quark 8 and start on a web layout. At first all goes well. I used to be a dab-hand in Softpress Freeway, Quark for the web but no use in print. With Quark though I can have it all. Stlye sheets specified, an ironic design firmly planted in what little mind I still can call my own and I'm off. All goes swimmingly and I'm quickly previewing in Safari and getting pretty similar results to what I expect. However, have you noticed whenever someone uses the word however, what comes next is going to undo all of the positive stuff that came bofore. I once did some work for a big UK retailer who on the advice of a swish New York agency banned the use of the word 'but' throughout the company. No one at any level was alowed to use the word 'but'. The NY gurus said that if you use 'but' you immediately cancel everything which came before the 'but'. As we all know; a. what do the American's know about the English language? B. It was all a load of butt as the colonials are want to say.

I digress. However, if in an ideal world I was clever enough to get it right first time, make no mistakes, not change my mind etc then it would be fine. Life is not like that. I change my mind, tweak things, adjust and generally bodge my way through. Quark just doesn't accurately overwrite the files each time. Changes are not always accurately registered. Quark is not alone in this behaviour, just about every visual web editor I've ever used suffers this problem. Design once and it's fine. Muck about and it just created mess.

The abilty to create nice looking graphics, have them rendered and named PNG's all from Quark was very satisfying. Creating rollovers that didn't and code that ran to hundreds of lines for the simplest of tasks wasn't. Taking the rollovers as an example. Creating them is thankfully simple. Create a graphic, right-click on it create simple rollover job's a good un'. Test in Safari, looks good. Test in Firefox (still on the Mac, no windows malarkey yet) and it all looks horrible. Nice circular logos suddenly have nasty square borders to them not of the colour prescribed. Once the rollover has been activated it steadfastly reffuses to go back to the proper initial state graphic unless the whole page is reffreshed. The actual over-state graphic even showed up distorted. A circular button looking like a mutant egg. Go to the finder, look at the mutant egg graphic, it's round, circular as it should be.

Time to contact Quark via the web site. Managed to get hold of a real person eventually who said my troubles were that I was creating gif's not Png's. Yes, some of these did get through but were trapped. So, he thought he had done his job and signed the query off as 'user twat' or some other call-centre customer service code.

I'm starting to bore myself now. The solution, and I can't really beleive just how convoluted this is and I don't really want to admit to this but I'll come out. I had to buy a copy of Dreamweaver (had it on old computer but didn't migrate over to new iMac thinking it too klunky in the shiny iMac'y world. Having said that I really do like DW CS4 it is very good. I'm liking the whold Adobe ethos and look) just to clean up and put right the Quark files into something which works. The workflow goes like this: Do the nice designs in Quark, export the pages to the html files. Open Dreamweaver pass it the pages. Remove the wonky graphics and now badly rendered position of text boxes. Re-make all the rollovers etc still using the same graphics which Quark did indeed make quite necely then clean up the long, long code, save the page and go onto the next one. This is before I've got anywhere near putting in any content. That would be just too ambitious at this stage.

No wonder I've not got my ironically retro site up and running. I've been visibly ageing in the process. What did I do to create the last site for me I hear you asking and why did I not just stick with that? I used a thing called RapidWeaver, it took me no more than a day, worked well, was enjoyable and I've created countless other sites for happy customers also with the same ease and joy. Why make life difficult when is doesn't have to be?

Now having seen the full story on the iPad

2010-01-27T22:59:00.000Z

Now having seen the info on Apples's site, the pictures and the video with the nice Mr. Ives I'm even more convinced. With 3G for remote connection when away from WiFi and all the other iPod loveliness this looks like it should fly out of the stores by the shelf full.

Shame there is a 60 day wait plus no indication on price points here in the UK $499 in the States will no doubt in Rip-off Britain probably relate to £400 as a starter. Which it has to be said is far better than many were forecasting, £700 was more in the region,, even though you can still pay that for the fully featured model.

Interesting also that iWork for iPad is going to be in the $10 region, not sure if this is for each module of the suite or for the full set. If all applications are deemed to be in tis price region, a precedent set by the iPod app store then will we see Photoshop for a quid and Quark for a fiver? Doubt it!

All in all, another must have product to feed us addicted chubby westerners with all things new and shiny - iBuy

iPad - iWant

2010-01-27T20:27:00.001Z

iPad - iWant

After all the months of speculation the iPad is here. I would rather have gone for the name iSlate. There seem to be too many mucky jokes that could and no doubt will be made about iPads. Will I be able to rollerskate in white jeans whilst using one?

Apple once again seem to have hit the mark first time. With the recent cartel like announcements that most of the daily newspapers intend to start charging for content who wouldn't want to pay for the Torygraph and read it on their oh so slick iPad rather than on tomorrows chip wrapper. Paper is sooo last millennium now. I really do think that if this device (and it's more clunky imitators) takes off get out of paper, quickly.

Initially I was disappointed that it runs the iPod OS rather than a fully blown version of OS X. All credit to Apple for being able to get a version of iWork up and running. Oh to have Photoshop, Quark et-al running on this device.

I was also disappointed to see that Apple were not handling the media of the event themselves as what I ended up watching by the time it crossed the Atlantic looked more like the sort of crap one would expect to see as a 'video installation' in the TV, it started well then creaked to a halt under the sheer weight of geekdom.

Once up on a time I'd always go out and buy version 1 of anything, now, I'll wait for V2. Even though there is a 13 year old in this very building who will be declaring is soo unfair that I won't go to the Apple shop in Birmingham tomorrow and get her one. No idea when they will be in the stores.

Will be interesting to see how this all develops. There are issues over the form, shame it is not more lovely than the iPod, I'm surprised that the case work didn't have more embellishment. I also don't know how the form-factor will play with consumers. At just off 10" screen and only iWork is it better to go for a MacBook or the iPad? It is still too big to pocket. I don't know. I still think that the size of the iPod touch and iPhone are right in human scale terms. The iPhone is too big for a phone but given what you get it is a small price to pay.

Will I be able to plug in a USB modem? what use is such a device if I can't really take it on the road?

Verdict. Winner, with caveats. As ever.

Using Sun's VirtualBox virtualisation on OS X

2010-01-25T23:53:00.002Z

Sun Virtual box

Virtualisation has come a long way n the last few years, with the advent of recent chips from AMD and Intel having routines for virtualisation built in.

Here I'm going to look at virtualisation on the Mac. It's near impossible, let alone legal to virtualise OS X on anything else but a Mac. Indeed where I started from was wanting a virtual OS X on top of my main OS X to try things out on without doing too much damage, should it all go wrong.

On the Mac the main virtualisation products most people will be aware of are VMware Fusion VMware's paid for Mac focused virtualization product. VMware also offer a whole host of other free and paid for virtualiztion offerings and are probably the biggest player in the market. Also for the mac there is Parallels Desktop for Mac. Another paid for package. Both of these are good and both have a focus on virtualizing windows.

The one I chose however was Sun's VirtualBox. This is a free (no cost) virtualisation application which will run on a variety of platforms and provides all of the services one could want. It will happily virtualise Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSd. It will run windowed, full screen or in Seamless mode where individual guest application windows appear on the screen of the host much as native apps would.

I'd tried VirtualBox some time ago on a Pentium 4 Linux box, which admittedly doesn't either have the grunt of a Intel Core 2 Duo nor the specific virtualisation hardware. Basically, it didn't work. The app ran but I couldn't get it to boot anything useful. VMware's Free Player software on the other hand had worked fine on the old machine. So, I was keen to try V3.1.2.

Downloading and installing was a sinch as most OS X apps are. One area Apple have really scored over Linux is that native applications just install. I know it is more work for the developers but a lot less for the users. However, having installed not is all as simple as the excellent videos on Sun's site would have you believe. I thought I'd start with OpenSolaris. After all, it would be in Sun's interest to have it's own OS running under it's own recently acquired virtualisation package.

There are two ways of installing an OS on top of VirtualBox. One is to download and install a pre-packaged run-time version of the software. The first one I downloaded was a pre-compiled .vdi version of Solaris 10, I'd always wanted to get to use proper Solaris. No matter how hard I tried it just would not boot. It kept coming up with various warnings at the early stages of booting and that was a far as it would go.

Next up was to try OpenSolaris. I'd always assumed OpenSolaris to be just another Linux, but it's not, it's much more Solaris than Linux, especially when one gets down to the command line, there are several real differences in both file structure, syntax and commands. I had an Iso of OpenSolaris from when I'd attempted to install on the pentium box (it had installed but not networked). Choosing New from the VirtualBox screen leads you through a step-by-step process to setting up and installing the guest OS. The trick is to link to the ISO file to boot then after successfully installed to point the VM back to the install directory to boot, if you don't change the path it just attempt to install again. This can be a little tricky until you understand the wirkflow. With the pre-compiled packages you just need to point the VM at the .vdi file (if it works).

Eventually OpenSolaris installed and was up and running. It looks great and is probably one of the most professional looking implementations of the already great looking Gnome desktop. Al well and good, but it wouldn't network.

Part of the problem was down to the default VM's NAT (Network Address Translation) setting, it didn't. I had to set networking on the host to DHCP then on the VM to Bridged, then muck about with IP's and all manner of voodoo and time.

Here in lays one of the most difficult and frustrating areas of Virtualisation, when it doesn't work is it the host OS, host hardware, VM, VM settings, guest OS? Where do you start? At least installing on real hardware you have a pretty good idea of what is where and if it is working. To cut a long story short the problem was with OpenSolaris and it's DNS and is probably what scuppered my last install. Why in the C21 can an OS ship where it is necessary to hunt down the solution and have to tinker under the hood just to get networking going? Can you imagine buying a Mercedes, being handed the keys and then being told by the salesman that inorder to drive it out of the car park you would have to go into town, find someone who had both understood the problem and had fixed it, to give you the parts, go back to the garage, open the bonnet (hood), bolt on the parts, then drive off. Bonkers, Bonkers, Bonkers.

In between trying to fix this I decided to try installing Debian. After all, Debian is the Godfather of free, open OS's, linux's stallion, having sired champions. With minimal ISO downloaded I was off, this looked good. The minimal ISO would go to the internet and install the rest of the OS on-line. Except it didn't. It did make a connection then broke at the part where it didn't like the fact that I was trying to install the UK version and not the US version. Even when I tried installing the US version again it failed due to language issues and there was no way of circumventing the installer, both GUI and Ncurses. When I did get past that step it failed at the Grub/Lilo stage and was un-bootable. I know at this point you must be thinking I'm some sort of numpty. But I've been using Linux daily since Linux-PPC in 1998. I know this stuff and claim to understand it. I do however, have the three-hour rule. 'if it can't be easily fixed in three hours it is either too expensive or just not worth it'. Debian wasn't worth it.

Next up was Ubuntu 9.10. Again I had the ISO burned to disk from another install. This time the install was pretty straight forward. Once again, networking didn't work post-install. IP's worked but DNS didn't. Ubuntu kept changing the gateway to 0.0.0.0 when it wasn't. Eventually again bridged networking was the order of the day.

It was very difficult to get networking to function as it should and represents in my opinion one of the weak points of Virtualisation. The settings I have today which do work don't look any different to when it didn't work. Finding where the weakness, the failings in the system are is time consuming. When it does eventually do everything you expect VirtualBox is very good, very good indeed. The ability to share clipboards between host and guest is really useful, running in fullscreen and seamless mode covers most workflows. What is unnecessarily difficult is to use the shared folder facility on Linux. This again requires use of the terminal and having to describe mounts. Getting all the permissions to work is also a pain when just trying to share a folder. Interestingly the VM was unable to see the guest OS X when it was sharing via SMB so that wasn't an option either. In order to get files in or out I ended up using an external server mounted on both host and guest or Ubuntu's One cloud server mounted over the web. I understand under Windows VM on VirtualBox it is more straightforward to mount the shared folder.

In conclusion, I'm glad I persevered with Sun's VirtualBox, it now does what I wanted. I've learned a lot. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without a sound computing knowledge, especially if they had mission critical tasks to perform. I can just hear the phone ringing with that ring of an angry, confused customer who'd broken something or didn't understand something. For the rest of us VirtualBox is great fun. Saves me having to boot up racks of dedicated machines, saves power and puts the whole caboodle on my nice shiny iMac. One box, lots of OS's all for free.

File sharing permissions Snow Leopard

2010-01-15T15:30:00.002Z

Up to the introduction of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard sharing disks via ethernet or Firewire over the local network has been a sinch. Providing you can remember the password of the other machines in you go and use as your own.

Recently due to the cold weather I decided I could no longer stand it in the office. just too cold. So, I moved an iMac 24 into a warmer part of the building. Took the firewire cable out of my array of LaCie external disks, plugged it into an ageing G4, set up file sharing and assumed that would be that. Noo, Whilst I could see the disks they and some of the directories were both read-write not all and as soon as I attempted to write folders to the drives the crossed out pencil icon appeared and no joy.

A quick trip to the terminal showed that indeed the permissions were wrong. The way to fix this (appart from using the terminal) is to go to System Prefs>Sharing. Highlight the sharing line, even though you don't want to share from this machine. To the right is a Shared folders list where you can by clicking the + button add the correct user to the mounted drive and change the permissions in the next column.

It begs the question why Apple chose to change this feature and just how many people give up trying to write to shared disks mounted on different machines. I can imagine going to a client, plugging in my external drive then being unable to copy files across.

Following writing the above I encountered various other permission errors. Re-started the server but still find that some folders are read/write and some read only. When accessing from a 10.4 machine all folders are Read/write with none of these problems.

Safari disk Thrash

2010-01-06T14:03:00.002Z

Safari is a great web browser by any metric you choose to measure these things. However, on the PPC there seems to be an issue. After Safari has been running for a few minutes it starts thrashing the hard drive constantly. Running Top on the machine shows huge amounts of activity and there is one process constantly running. At rest it can take 60% of the CPU cycles. Why? Have reported it times but no better in latest 4.04 upgrade.

A cynical person might say that Apple have done this to toast the aging hard drives of pre-Intel machines so they fail and we all have to buy new Macs. I just removed Safari and will stick with Firefox.

The below works and solves the problem. my thanks to the kind chap who posted a comment.

'Go to Preferences | Security, and turn off "Fraudulent sites". Then close Safari & restart it.

QUark 4.1 to Quark 8 why bother?

2009-12-21T23:53:00.002Z

A few weeks ago I was asked by a very nice man from Quark why I upgraded and more to the point why I'd not done so far before.

As a general rule; show me a software update and I'll show you my credit card. It's new, It's better, it'll be the Holy Grail, the one piece of software that will change the way I work, do business, make money… We all know the score, us suckers who upgrade 'till we drop the victory is pirric. However, and it is a big However. I stuck with Quark 4.11 for years and years. As new Mac's came along everything else got upgraded and moved across, but not Quark. I kept it on an old, old box, so old I'd be embarrassed to tell just how lowly. That was half the joy. It didn't seem to matter how big the project I threw at it Quark just kept going and performing as it should. Meanwhile I went through every version of Photoshop, Illustrator, Keynote, iPhoto, BBEdit, Freeway and a raft of others. G3, G4, G5, Intel… The only trace they left was the look of horror on my accountants face when he wondered just how could I get through so much software and hardware and make so little money?

The purity of old software like Quark 4 was that it just did one thing, page layout. Everything had to be prepared outside. It was just the final point of assemblage and it did it quickly.

Faced with having to do a presentation to a new client who was going to give me just sooo much work I thought I'd have to do the right thing and move up a gear. At least if I got my hands on Quark 8 early before the job was in the bag I'd be up to speed. So moving from a Pre-G series Mac to the latest and fastest version of the Intel CoreDuo I was expecting great things in terms of speed at least. After all the machine was magnitudes faster than where I was coming from. Here lays the only real disappointment. Quark 8 was sluggish and sadly the latest point version upgrade is even more torpid. I also was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the new client just as the recession hit.

Last week I had a favor to do for a client at the end of a simple job. They wanted some simple technical drawing annotation boxes doing for simply pasting on to plans. These had to include compass cardinal points marking North points etc. Being lazy I decided to do all the artwork in Quark rather than using Illustrator. The result was a couple of tabular boxes, some artwork and sixteen compass drawings with the north point rotated by 22.5 degrees on each. This one extra page to the existing artwork was enough to bring Quark 8 to it's knees, even on a new machine. Redrawing of the screen, navigation, content of some of the pallets disappearing all kinds of problems.

I don't wish to appear harsh, I'm so impressed with just what I can use the new Quark for. As discussed in previous blog posts, it really is becoming a sit-in- all-day kind of application. I can get most of my day to day done just in Quark 8. I've not got round to installing Illustrator on the same machine as I'm running Quark on. Frankly, I don't need to. Simple graphic devices, grads and effects are all there.

One of the biggest plus points for me about upgrading though is nothing to do with the software it is to do with Quark the company. A few years ago ask almost anyone who had dealings with Quark as a user and not many had kind words and praise for the way customers were treated. Following the rise and rise of InDesign, loss of market share Quark seems to have come though, transformed and I'd say are now possibly the most approachable and customer focused software company out there. Definitely the best one I've had dealings with in recent years. By showing a genuine interest and desire to learn from the users. Quark have given me a reason for sticking with the product and feeling good about splashing the cash for that upgrade.

Quark 8 Interactive

2009-11-26T17:18:00.003Z

Quark 8 as a viable multimedia tool?
I fairly recently upgraded to Quark 8 on the Mac from the aged 4.1. I liked 4.1 it ran quickly on anything and provided you knew all the keyboard shortcuts it got the job done quickly and efficiently.

Quark 8 is indeed a great upgrade. As part of the process I felt compelled to also try Adobe InDesign as well. Deciding it was not for me for a variety of personal reasons. Even though it did run considerably faster on an old G4 iBook than the copy of Quark. Version 8 is indeed software bloat at it's flabbiest.
One of my prime reasons for the upgrade, apart from the obvious page layout updates was to gain the web and interactive tools. I create quite a lot of web content, shoot a lot of photos and video and have been searching for the 'web holy grail' for years. Somewhere where it all comes together under one roof, across media, somewhere that is not Dreamweaver or Flash. Never found it and probably never will now.

However, with it's integrated web and interactive environments Quark 8 looked to show promise.

Initially creating web pages in Quark seems laughingly simple. That is until one runs into areas of complexity which require the insertion of site specific code. Back as always to the savior of all things web BBEdit. Every time I think I won't have to call on BBEdit to do something out it comes. This must be the consistently most useful tool on the Mac (or any platform). Indeed, I've just decided to write and edit this in BBEdit rather than the Google box. Needles to day it was not long before having to pass the Quark files to BBEdit before testing on my server. Am I the only one who simply can't rely upon one package to do it all. The problems come when trying to re-edit material some months later and having to remember what exactly I did.

To summarise the web page creation part of Quark 8 it's fine as long as your requirements are not too demanding and you can keep things simple. Where it really scores is as a holder application for content created in the interactive environment. Quark Interactive used to be supplied as an Xtension but is now integrated right into the application.

Where Quark 8 scores over Flash is that you don't have to do battle with what must be the least intuitive time-line in the business. I never did get on with timings of actions in Flash. Other time-line dependent apps, Final Cut, Blender, fine. Quark uses pages as it's time based metaphor. Do they assume designers brought up on page layout only understand things one page at a time? Trying to explain everything animation wise one page at a time is almost as clunky as Flash's timeline. But it does work as long as you don't bring too much baggage from print to the party.

Control over interactive and motion actions are controlled from the Interactive pallet from under the Window menu. New items on the page need to be named and then actions and scripts can be assigned to the items, no time line no fuss. Well, sort of. Firstly, many of the actions are self explanatory but may are not
and there is an awful lot of stabbing around in the dark hoping an action will do what is asked. There seems to be no documentation relating to all of the actions. WIthin the interactive pallet there are five tabs covering: Objects, Events, Scripts, Pages and Keys. The difficulty comes when trying to decide which action goes where. When it is necessary to build a script, is the path assigned to the object to go along it or is the object assigned to the path. It's a great way to waste large amounts of time and not achieve what you really wanted. One other slight issue was that like many auto code writing apps I'm not sure it really over-writes all of the code all of the time. Changing behaviors doesn't always result in the behavior one would expect. Once built it is necessary to launch the Flash player app to test the quark file. On both the machines I've tried this on the Flash player renders the files very jerkily compared with normal Flash web content. This is not much of an issue though.

Having really not achieved much with Quark 8 interactive I was delighted to receive an email from Quark UK inviting me to a Webinar on just this subject. On the alloted day at the alloted time I logged in and was met with a very impressive presentation from one of Quark UK's marketing men who obviously knew his stuff and it all became clear. I was amazed by just what one could do in Quark regarding producing Flash content. I had not for example realised that included with Quark 8 is a converter from Quicktime to flash video format. Normally you have to buy this as an add-on to most applications. The only down side is that it is only a single pass converter. I tried passing it some QuickTime content which was just plain type out of white. Looked fine under QT but really ragged and pixelated once converted to .flv in Quark which is a real shame. There is also not the option to embed QT content without the conversion which is a pity.

So, full of enthusiasm I set about a real project, it was just a simple text web banner bringing words to the front of the screen and past, sinch I thought in Quark. I ended up doing it in Apple LiveType!

Ubuntu 9.10

2009-11-06T16:54:00.001Z

Recent impressions on Ubuntu 9.10 and other recent Linux distributions.

Ubuntu 9.10

Here we run a mix of Macs and Linux boxes. There was a time not long ago when I was going to go over to Linux for everything, it would become the system of choice, the free alternative. Having used linux since about 1998 starting with LinuxPPC I'd been through the lot, you name it and I'd probably installed it somewhere.

Then recently it started to break. I use Blender the OpenSource 3D application. Whist it is difficult to use, and that is half the challenge, Blender works across Linux, OS X and Windows (not used). So for me it is a good choice to have on all machines. Up till recently it all worked. Then someone nobbled the video drivers in X.Org Server and machines using the flaky IntelGraphics just stopped working with Blender. Because Blender makes use of OpenGL for drawing all elements of it's interface and as the code and size of Blender has been gradually increasing over the last few years as new features are added the demands on graphics infrastructure were being increasingly stretched.

I know one should not run graphics intensive applications on IntelGraphics equipped hardware, but sorry, this is the real world where money & resources are scarce and I feel there is an obligation to 'sweat the assets', both in terms of business sense and not wanting to add to the pile of computer land fill.

In order to get graphics performance back up to where it had been a couple of years ago I tried everything on this one machine. Fedora 11, failed miserably. SuSE 10.x nope, even PCBSD, how could BSD not be perfect. Well it wasn't the interface drew more slowly than I can with a pencil and paper. Nothing would run on this bog standard Dell box.

Ubuntu, which had been running fine until 9.4 bogged down. And there lays the story of just leave alone. The grass will not always be greener with the next upgrade. Ubuntu were touting the countdown to v9.10. With improved XUL implementation of the X.org drivers to counter problems on InteGraphics. Great, I'll have that.

The install was clean, at least in that it cleaned off my long standing WinXP install which had not been used but was there for testing and had survived some 20 other installs, that went in the flash on an eye. After first boot all was fine. Subsequent boots though. No display, swap monitors, boot again sometimes helps, not often though. Install again, works, next boot, no graphics.

Linux is never going to get to the stage of acceptance if they can't sort out the install and configuration. If I had a pound for every time I've had to dig round to get networking, graphics, printers or something working after a botched install I wouldn't have to be writing this now. OS X and even Windows just installs. With the OS X upgrades I don't even consider that it might fry everything on my disk. There may be minor issues but it just works the way things should just work.

One of the most fantastic features of Ubuntu 9.10 is the free UbuntuOne cloud. It's a great service. Will sync ubuntu machines registered with the cloud via the desktop and is accessible from a web browser to other machines, If you want more storage than the 2Gb included just flash the plastic and 50Gb is yours. I uploaded a photo to test it, went to a client who said "have you got that photo I asked you to look out?" "Yes, it's on my cloud, I'll get it". Bugger, 'This server is temporarily unavailable' Apache message said. Not all clouds have silver linings. Some are little black ones.

Once I did get Ubuntu 9.10 up and running (and who knows if it will boot tomorrow) Blender does indeed run just like it used to so thanks for the XUL men. Just a pity I've had to endure months of it not working. But as Blender always works well on OS X one of the few reasons for my continuing to invest time in Linux is also being removed. I like the look of Gnome and Windowmaker, hate KDE with a passion, it looks like it was designed by a 12 year old (which it probably is). The world has moved on. OS X has settled down as a mature system and even Windows 7 looks pretty great and is no longer attracting the brick-bats of Vista.

There was a window of opportunity which lasted for several years for Linux to establish it's self on the desktop market, sadly that time has now gone.

64Bit on Snow Leopard

2009-11-06T16:50:00.003Z

Using 64Bit on Snow Leopard
by simon cooper — last modified 2009-11-06 15:51
Is it worth booting into 64Bit?

As everyone seems to know now Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is 64bit, that means it can access huge amounts of memory and take full advantage of the latest processors power, especially in complex mathematical computation. However, by default 10.6 actually boots in to a 32bit kernel even though the 64bit version is sitting right there along side. The reasons are that not all applications ight be 64bit aware and some drivers will not work under 64. If you are running a Core2Duo or Xeon then give it a go at your own risk.

To boot into 64bit mode simply hold down the 6 and 4 keys whilst booting. To go back to 32bit just hold down the 3 and 2 keys at next boot. The way to tell it has worked is to go the Apple Menu>About this Mac>More info then look in the Software>Extensions to see that all the drivers are 64bit compatible if so look under Software to see if it says: 64-bit Kernel and Extensions: Yes if so you are in 64bit mode.

I would say that the iMac 24 3.06 I'm running it on is faster and there seem to be less 'sticky' delays in the finder, disks are ejecting faster, apps appear to launch faster and all seems good.

As an addition it appears that the 3 2 flag is not needed at reboot to go back to 32bit mode as on the next boot it appears to automatically boot into 32bit mode. The 6 4 flags obviously need to be set at each boot.

Snow Leopard Issues now mostly fixed by 10.6.2 update

2009-11-06T15:52:00.005Z

Some of the pitfalls of installing Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard issues. Now mostly fixed

Now let me state right away I am a huge fan of all things Mac and have been for many years. Indeed if it was not for Apple I simply wouldn’t use computers. I’d just go off and do something else. I use Linux too and have done since 1998 but never windows.
But, having fallen for the marketing hype about 10.6 Snow Leopard I went ahead and installed and regretted.
The main problems seem to stem from using older software versions. Such as Photoshop CS2 and any PostScript Type 1 fonts, Appletalk networking etc. In spite of all the claims of a speed increase if anything the machine (iMac 24 3.06) actually felt slightly slower, more stuttery, less fluid. Ejecting external disks now takes an age for example when on lesser systems they just fly off the screen.

Adobe Photoshop CS2
Adobe Photoshop CS2 nested tabs are no longer readable, for some reason the non-active tabs fonts have gone the same colour as the tab. Plus the open and save dialogue boxes do not render all the elements in the same colour. not a major problem but on something as polished as OS X it doesn’t really look the part. Only solution; expensive upgrade to CS4.

No need, now fixed by 10.6.2

Stitcher Express

Stitcher Express is another application I rely upon. The feature set for most uses is as good as the full version and now that the app has been taken over by Autodesk there is not Express any more. What happens under Snow Leopard is that all the icons, previews, start up screen etc all render in some bizarre 4bit inverted manner. Fortunately the actual renders are as expected. Fix; have to upgrade to full new version. Not going to. Not big fan of Autodesk - sorry.

Quark 8 & PostScript Type 1 fonts

The worst and most worrying though was opening Quark 8 files which had been created under 10.5 and seeing that all the text had re-flowed. This is a well reported problem as is apparently due to the removal of type 1 font support from 10.6. How could they do this? There must be so many of Apple’s core users with large investments in type 1 fonts (good fonts are not cheap and you need lots of them) who are coming un-stuck. What appears to happen is that the OS looks to add about an extra 2.5pt of padding into the rendering. Thus everything reflows. The fix is to either re-buy all ones fonts as OpenType or use a utility such as Transtype or Fontxchange. However, with a bit of manual fixing and for documents created after the change to 10.6 there don’t seem to be so many problems. I think the issues then come in either attempting to use the files on pre 10.6 systems and when transferring to your printer to run through their RIP’s. Fix; buy new fonts.

May I pont out this is not a failing of Quark 8, apparently it happens with all sorts of applications when using PS t1 fonts. I love Quark 8.

Looks to have been fixed by 10.6.2

HP print drivers.
I use a B&W Lexmark laser printer which is just the best thing I ever bought and always does the job, works with anything, Mac, Linux any version, networks to anything and then there is the HP9180 which is everything the Lexmark is not. In short it is the printer equivalent of having the most highly-strung operatic prima donna sitting down stairs on a desk. It only works when it wants to, never the first time. Always complains that it absolutely has no print heads in it and needs new ones to be ‘snapped’ into place. The slightest, tiny mistake in configuring it’s myriad settings will result in an expensive A3+ sheet of mud. Oh yes, 10.6 broke this too. Not badly but what I assume is that because the printer was not on during the install of Snow Leopard it did not properly upgrade. I lost all of the speciality paper and colour settings plus the PhotoMerge plug-in to Photoshop. By going to Apple’s site there is a link to download the revised full driver set which did fix the problem. As for the HP9180, like all pd’s when it does eventually spew out a fine print it really is superb, far better than I ever managed in 20 odd years of darkroom printing. So for that I can put up with tantrums and the staggering price of filling it with HP ink. Currently about £180 - £190 a set.

AppleTalk
We have an ancient (and I just want to see how long it can carry on running) Cobalt Qube server. It is brilliant and has, touch wood, run for ever. I like to access it via AFP if only because it looks better than by SMB, you only see the files you want to see. Not the .DStore and other config files. It works like a Mac should. Not any more. Under 10.5 there were several fixes needed before one could get AFP working as it should. These no longer work under 10.6. I can get to home directories but not named users. Support for AppleTalk pre version 3 has been removed from Snow Leopard so fix; use SMB networking and just feel a little grubby.

Not any longer, following the update it just worked again with my old Cobalt server.

QuickTime X
The latest version of QT does away with the surround of steel and just plays the file. No Pro-version, just a player. A big improvement. But, no support for QTVR any more. I make QTVR’s and they are no longer supported y the people who invented it. Why? This is going to cause me big problems over the coming months. I don’t really want to have to migrate to a flash based solution but it is looking that way. You also have to make the implicit decision to install the older version 7 into the Utilities folder at the same time. My QT X won’t handle flash either. Only a matter of time ‘till QTVR is a thing of the past.

Out of Sleep.
Go get the children, cook tea, take to various activities, put to bed, go back to work, take Mac out of sleep. No, not any more, I now have to grab a window from the second monitor and manually wipe away the black screen saver in order to refresh the screen. I’ve tried changing the sleep, screen saver settings. Fix; minor irritation.

Plus points.

I like the way Exposé is now integrated into the Dock, I like the little slidey bar to increase the size of the icons. That’s about it really. So, spent £25 on the upgrade. Am faced with spending another £300 odd on upgrades just to get back to where I was a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t have it any other way…
I know there is huge amounts going on under the hood and 10.6 lays down the roadmap for years to come, plus they have had a good purge of out dated code bloat.

64Bit - see another story - it’s good.

All in all the 10.6.2 update seems to have fixed most of the main problems in Snow Leopard. Just a shame these issues made it to market but I suppose the rush to get the product out there before Windows 7 has more than a little to do with it.

Aperture

2008-05-23T22:28:00.002Z

Aperture in it's latest 2.1 form is good. Enough said. All I'd change is that in iPhoto when working on RAW images there is a RAW badge displayed on the bottom of the screen. In Aperture you have to go to the Metadata tab to look at the file ext. Why does this matter? Can push RAW files quite a way, can't do the same to JPEG's.

In fact iPhoto 08 does many of the things Aperture does so for simple sorting, correcting a bit of duff exposure etc Aperture may be over the top for some. I was also a little disappointed to see that the range of books on offer is just about the same in Aperture as iPhoto all be it that there is more ability to edit the frames in Aperture.

Latest version of Blender

2008-05-23T22:18:00.003Z

Last week I downloaded the current version of Blenderr possibly the best it of open source software there is and rapidly becoming one of the best 3D apps there is too. Great. Having got the new replacement iMac 24 3.06 with the dodgy screen I went over to blender 3d to find a shiny new version 2.46 quote "The work of the past half year - also thanks to the open movie project "Big Buck Bunny" - has resulted in a greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the "Bunny release"!

This version supports a new particle system with hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation, fast Ambient Occlusion, a new Image browser, and that's just the beginning. Check the extensive list of features in the log below... have fun!"

Will try to have fun. Runs really fast on new iMac. Plus it runs on Linux as well as OS X. So files created on one machine can easily transfer to another for rendering or other work. Brill

iMac 24" Al screens

2008-05-23T21:45:00.003Z

After what I thought was much research, deliberating and general procrastination at the thought of having to shell out for another new Mac I parted with the readies at the Apple Store, Bullring, Birmingham, UK.
And as a 3.06 24" iMac it is a really, really great machine. Fast, big, impressive, great graphics card, everything I could need for working on. Aperture, FinalCut. Me up to speed.

Oh no. Spotted the achilles heel of this fine machine. The display suffers from vertical banding. It's brighter on the left 1/3 than the right 2/3. On the first example it was 1 stop brighter on the left than right side. That's twice as bright on one side than the other for the photographically challenged. Plus it has a blueish tone to the left and yellowish to the middle. All this is well documented on the Apple forums and here on at Silver Mac.

So, I took the first one back and have the replacement here. Sadly just as bad. I need this machine for editing photos and video. Colour accuracy is a must.

THe thing is that the iMac 24" ships with the screen brightness right up and it is so bright in a normal working, editing environment that you need sunglasses just to look at it. Photos which are really under exposed look fine. So turn down the brightness all the way to get an acceptable image, loose the default 'star-field' desktop and things start to look far less rosy. See photo (de focused to remove screen interference patterns). The banding isn't possibly as bad as the yellowish field in the middle of the screen.

Apple Bullring and AppleCare were very good about having the machine replaced and I wanted to see the new one up and running. However, in the store with all the bright lights, glossy screen it is really difficult to accurately asses the issue. The wooly hatted assistant, nice chap, but obviously thought 'got a right one here', just couldn't see what the problem was.

If you are trying to edit photos accurately a colour shift and brightness shift of this degree will have an effect upon the final image.

Apple really should address this issue. Apparently, the old white 24's were all ok but many of the new al ones are not. I have to decide if I want to keep this or change to a MacBook Pro.

My current solution was to buy the mini DVI to VGA adaptor (another £15) and hook up my old LaCie CRT monitor to the iMac and do all the critical colour stuff on that.

Focus on Imaging

2007-02-26T23:03:00.000Z

Focus on Imaging

As anyone who has read any of these drivelling will know we have a great interest in all things photographic here. So with the annual UK photo expo held in the NEC in Birmingham we decided to send Charlie the photo monkey to check it out for us.

I've been going on and off to Focus since it first started in Birmingham. The early days of the show were somewhat shaky often with at least a quarter of the hall empty and partitioned off. I'd come back feeling slightly like I'd had half my day wasted and vowed not to go the following year, but always ended up going in spite of my self.

2007 however has been a bumper show. Covering two halls at the NEC (which is nothing compared to some exhibitions) Focus was packed to the gunwales with punters and full of interesting stuff. (raise the tone. ED).

I was in the market for a new digital camera system. Having been an early adopter into all things digital and having eschewed all things film, from 35mm through 6x7, 5x4 and up to 10x8 I had to admit that I'm just not getting the images I want and need out of digital cameras any more. Great shots of the children on the beach but the serious stuff is just not cutting the mustard. To the extent that for 2007 I've vowed to start shooting film again where I can. My mission was to find that Holy Grail of a digital camera system that would deliver all I needed and not break the bank.

A quick scan through the catalogue showed that two of the things I really wanted to see were not there. Canon and Leica were not exhibiting. Canon for one normally put on a good show. Not that up to now I bother having been brought up in the Nikon camp. I was however prepared to jump ship if sufficiently tempted. Leica has exhibited in the past but again were absent, again I was interested there.

On to the highlights for me. Well, there was a great perspex spherical flash diffuser great for soft overall room lighting, ideal for QTVR production. On the subject of QTVR there were some very interesting specialist cameras from the Swiss firm of Seitz being demonstrated on the Teamwork stand. The motorised QTVR rig which would automatically shoot a full 360 degree panorama set at the push of a button was particularly interesting and should prove to be a great time saver. Seitz were also showing off their digital scanning Roundshot D3 camera. Designed to take 360 degree panoramas without any stitching in one pass. Again a highly novel solution to a time consuming problem. The other big advantage of getting a full pass in one hit is that should there be any problems you can see them there and then on location rather than getting back and finding that some images just will not stitch. The only real disadvantage I could see was that it is not possible to use flash lighting with this system as the exposure takes a few seconds to complete. When I shoot panoramas I tend to use an old Metz flash behind the camera and shoot off one flash per sectional image.

Not to be out done on the scanning/rotating camera trick next up was the even more impressive SpheronVR scanning camera. Not only is this one self levelling it also has a vertical field of view of 183 degrees using a Nikon 16mm lens so for spherical QTVR's it is all there in one shot apart for the nadir image. Looking like a large 3d number 7 on the tripod it quickly makes light of the full 360 scan and managing to create a huge resulting file. This is the way to do cubic VR's. If you've got the money that is.

Talking of money I headed off to see PhaseOne, Leaf with their modular back systems. Nothing much new there but the results are mighty impressive. Apple were exhibiting Aperture which is starting to look to be a very attractive proposition given that the previously very high hardware demands have now been reduced so it will run on any Mac currently being sold. PhaseOne and Hasselblad though will not shoot direct into Aperture as they use their own software to RAW convert out of the camera. I managed to get my hand on one of the Hasselblad H3D cameras, a snip at £15,000 or there abouts. Whilst feeling and looking more plasticy than the classic 'Blad they are a mighty impressive piece of kit and Hasselblad claim that the H3D-39 is getting up into the former 10x8 film quality zone even the 22 looks to deliver quality which would more than suffice for most assignments. Hasselbald are also getting into the digital back market where for £13,500 you get a back using the same Kodak chip as used in the PhaseOne. One killer feature of this is the three shot mode where the camera takes three exposures and moves the ship by one pixel between each exposure so that each site has seen one Red, Green and Blue exposure rather then having the RGB spread over three adjacent pixels as in the normal one shot mode. When viewed side by side at high magnification the improvement of image quality was pretty spectacular. Improving on what was already a high benchmark. Obviously the three shot system only works on scenes where nothing can move between exposures.

Finally I went to see Fuji and check out the new FinePix S5. It only seems a few days ago that they were launching the S3. The S5 is based on Nikon's D200 body and probably accounts for the relative short life of the S3. It was all a bit disappointing really. The S5 has lost all of the chunkiness of the S2 and S3 and now looks more like a prosumer camera than a serious pro tool. The spec on paper looks impressive but is it a 12 or 6 Mega pixel camera? You never can really tell with Fuji. The inclusion of various film modes is potentially useful but I doubt how much it would get used in reality. It is also a shame to see FireWire dropped in favour of USB2 for the tethered shooting mode. Again as with all APS sized cameras the viewfinder image is small and mean. Just try going back to looking through a Nikon FE or Pentax 67 and see just how BIG the image in the viewfinder really is.

My final thanks must go to the very nice man from South Notts College. An ex London pro himself helped confirm to me that yes; the great days of photography are somewhere behind us and yes; the world has gone just a little bit mad.

Vista or Vesta?

2007-02-14T22:44:00.000Z

Now as anyone who has ever read any of these witterings wiill know I have no love lost for the products of Redmond. Indeed as a personal statement I go to quite extreme lengths to avoid them. It's just a personal preference, like not eating sprouts (which I do love). Anyway, I have to support this stuff, its a fact of life. Try as I might to wean everyone onto Mac or Linux there are still some poor souls in my flock who know not the folly of their ways and who are happy to face damnation for the sake of 'because everyone else does'.

I recently spent some time in my local PC World trying to get to know the inner workings of Microsofts new Vista OS. The press has been full of it. Although not as high profile as some of the other launches of recent years. Remember all the fuss over Win95, 98, XP? Having said that the BBC's Money programme ran a Vista love-fest edition on the 9th February which was more advotorial than an editorially balenced piece.

I found my self a really very nice Philips laptop retailing at £699 on which to 'fiddle' my way through the basics of Vista. Having read lots in the press, even the Mac and Linux press I knew more or less what to expect. It has to be said that on first interacting with Vista in all it's Aero splendour on this very slick Philips I even allowed myself a little internal squeak of joy at my first encounter. It was a bit like coming upon the first really ripe red as black cherries of summer, plumply filling a bowl, then biting into the firm, sweet, juicy dark flesh. Enough of this revere, my joy quickly turned to sniggering.

Yes, Vista does initially look stunning, glossy, wet and even dare I say it a step on from OS X. However, as with all things aesthetic and Microsoft, they just don't get it. For example, and don't forget you are going to have to live with this stuff so it had better look good. The drop shadows surrounding windows on OS X are just about perfect, they give the impression of layering in a subtle, sophisticated way that is just enough to enhance the user experience without it becoming an intrusive annoyance. In Vista though the shadowing is broad, crude, unsubtle and pleases not. It's like the difference between a Saville Row suit and something from NEXT ( a UK retailer of clothing to the spiky-haired youth of call-centre Britain). What is even more aesthetically jarring is the way that the red of the close, min/max buttons on the top right of the windows bleeds into the background. I don't want my buttons to bleed everywhere, it's not nice. I know this is being really picky but if I have to look at this stuff all day it had better be right as in OS X or Gnome using Cairo.

Then we come on to the source of fun poked at Vista in the latest Mac ads, the constant need for permission to do anything, not just some things but anything at all. (see item on adverts for more on this). I thought I'd try to configure the networking on this philips laptop. One of the jobs I have to do regularly on PC's. First the control panel still exists and most of the icons are well drawn and renedered. The problem was though that I had to change to 'classic' view just in order to make any sense of the information presented, there were lines of text asking me if I wanted to set up this or that. I'm sorry. I know what I want to do I want to assign a fixed IP address thank you. I don't want my hand holding by some out of work Wizzard, if I wanted that I'd go to the local circus and dress up as a child. Once I did get as far as where I though I should be to achieve this simple task I was presented with the now infamous 'permissions' box, to which I had no answer. Yes, security is an issue and yes, OS X does sometimes also ask for such permissions. But living with this level of constant questioning would quickly drive me to do as the disgruntled American gentleman did recently who shot his laptop. A just end I feel.

The reference to Vista or Vesta?
Vesta was the brand name of the first real ready meals here in the UK in the 1960's. The packaging was glossy, inviting and the dishes the first exotic foreign food many Brits had tasted, it was all de-hydrated and simply promised the world with the addition of boiling water. You can imagine the reality.

Apple Adverts

2007-02-14T22:43:00.000Z

It is interesting to see that Apple Inc have seen fit to need to Anglicise the current 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' advertising campaign. The new British version is running across media from grubby bus shelters to the UK version of Apple's web site. I don't really see why the marketing people saw the need to copy the US versions which are excellent, who said the Americans don't get irony?

My favourite is the 'Permissions' one. Poking fun at the way Microsoft's Vista constantly nags one for permission to do anything, however simple. The two protagonists are joined by a burly security agent, resplendent in dark glasses and moulded earpiece with curly cable. Whenever the Mac tries to talk to the PC the security man states the obvious that there is some sort of communication protocol about to be initiated and asks much to the irritation of the PC if it should be allowed. The whole thing is carried off brilliantly, timed to perfection and with a subtlety that belies its message. The sad thing is the average MS user will never get it. So one might argue, what is the point of preaching to the converted?

The UK versions on the other hand are quite clearly copies, tailored for us Brits. I wonder if there is a version for the French, Italians, Swedes and Koreans? Being really, really picky the filming is just ever so, ever so slightly inferior. On the version I saw there were the odd green shadows on the floor which are not on the US version. That's just someone who's spent too long behind a camera talking.

The performances from Mitchell & Webb (?) are however first class if not reaching the subtlty of the US version. I only hope they grow into the roles. There was the sneaking look on the face of Mr. PC that he really didn't quite get his motivation. I particularly enjoyed the 'Virus' ad (does Vista suffer viri?) where the PC says that he is going down with this virus which is going round and eventually crashes to the floor whilst the Mac looks bemused at what a virus is and how it could have such a devastating effect.

Going back to the permission's advert; it wasn't 'till I got some hands-on experience of working with Visa (or should it be Vesta as in the 1960's de-hydrated packet chow mein?) that the full irritation of all this would be brought home. More later on this.

Appletalk on Suse 10.2

2007-01-24T22:44:00.000Z

I've been using SuSE linux for years and inspite of them selling out to MS I still carry on. Show me an upgrade and I'll do it, so with great joy I decided to upgrade from Suse 10.1 which I think was the best ever SuSE to 10.2

Whilst the upgrade went smoothly, I never for some reason trust Linux upgrades, preffering to re-install normally. OS X is the only one which seems to have cracked upgrades without pain.

Anyway, I rely upon AppleTalk (over TCP/IP), over Samba (also runs but looks nasty in it’s log in and showing .files etc). After the upgrade to 10.2 Appletalk / Netatalk was broken. It would get to the point of authenticating and just about to mont then no, sod it error message and no mount.

went onto the Novel Bugzilla and got a reply which was half right. For anyone suffering the same fault the answer to getting AppleTalk working again is:

Stopping the server with rcatalk stop, removing the /home/user/.AppleDB folder then running the /usr/sbin/upgrade_netatalk_AppleDB.sh /home/user/ script (as root)which reported errors then restarting the server with rcatalk start did work and it is up as before.

I don't know if simply removing the .AppleDB folder would have the same results. Thanks for the pointer, hope others benefit!

Blender 3D Developments

2007-01-24T00:05:00.000Z

I've ling been a big fan of Blender 3D one of the true lighthouses of OpenSource. Having gone from a commercial project and nearly going to the wall since OpenSourcing Blender has gone from strength to strength. Ok the interface is one of the most difficult to master on the planet (half the fun) but the results can be stunning and it's a joy to use. plus there is a strong develper community to boot.

The latest soon to be stable release includes some novel features such as combing, brushing and cutting of hair. There is a very impressive demo video and I was really very, very impressed. I wonder how long before a Tony & Guy plug-in?

PTMac and the scrambled images

2007-01-19T15:43:00.000Z

Having recently suffered the frustrations of trying to get Hugin to stitch together my beautifully shot VR’s I decided to give PTMac a go. I’d demoed it’s smaller brother Calico, also from Kekus.com and that had worked fine on a test set of images and created a passable cubic VR.
Having bought the license for PTMac and again tried it with my set of images from the Regent’s Gallery in Belvoir Castle again it like Hugin managed to totally scramble the images. PTMac is really yet another variation on the panorama tools theme with autopano tools rolled in to ease the pain of having to manually find keypoints on the overlaps. The software can be ‘wizzard’ driven each stage asking for more information. At lease with PTMac it does ask for the zenith and nadir images as separate items so these key shots are clearly marked.
I can only assume that there must be something really confusing about the set of images I have that is causing so much trouble. I’ll have to go back to QTVR Studio and see if that can cope with them.