Melastmohican's Blog

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FREE Exercise Videos and Workout Programs - WORKOUTZ.COM

My first week with Palm Pre

melastmohican — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 19:19:39 +0000

This is my first smartphone so I cannot compare to my past experience. I decided to have Palm device cause I wanted two from the same manufacturer after we switched to Verizon due to reception problems in our new apartment. Also I wanted a smaller form factor than most of present smartphones. My wife was not very interested in smartphone so Pixi for her was also kind of compromise.

Palm Pre

Pros:

1. It is fast. GUI is really responsive and you only wait if you are connecting to outside world
2. Multitasking. You really can do many thing at once. Did not try if you can make calls while doing other things but music playing with surfing work.
3. Works as USB drive.
4. Syncs with my Gmail address book.
5. Video. Shoots better video than point’n'shooter even if it has less megapixels.

Cons:

1. Keyboard is pretty small or my hands are too big.
2. Entering numbers is a nightmare.
3. Battery life is very short.I would say it is more like 5h instead of advertised 8h. Do I really have to switch everything off?
4. No way to filter out Facebook contacts.
5. Photo. I am not so impressed with still camera. I need to do more test but built-in flash is not very good.

Shutterstock Raise Confirmation

melastmohican — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:44:55 +0000

I have reached $3000 or more in all time Shutterstock earnings and my Standard License payout rate has been increased to $0.36 per download. It took me a little over two years to reach this level despite of global slowdown.

Pay per download is determined by your total lifetime earnings:

Earnings per Download	Lifetime Earnings
$0.25	Less than $500
$0.33	$500 to $3,000
$0.36	$3,000 to $10,000
$0.38	Over $10,000

Extended license sold

melastmohican — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 04:30:00 +0000

It has been a while since my last extended license on Shutterstock. Hopefully it would break a spell and I will have more this month.

Green beans

Moving to Verizon Wireless

melastmohican — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:39:05 +0000

I was tempted to buy new iPhone 4 but I decided to wait till end of July for resolution of all problems reported by early adopters. In meanwhile I moved to Gemello neighborhood in Mountain View just to find out that AT&T got no reception there. We got two phones there and we cannot call each other cause we have zero bars and phones do not even ring. According to AT&T map it should be good reception there but I do not think zero is good.

Gemello AT&T Coverage

The only real alternative seems to be Verizon. Their map shows that they have this area covered all in red which should be best reception for voice and digital services. In reality after switch we can talk but 3G is almost not possible to get. It’s just pathetic. In the middle of Silicon Valley both major carries got mediocre services.

Gemello Verizon Coverage

If rumors are true Verizon will have iPhone next year but now I am on two years contract and two Palm phones. So until iPhone 6 will be released I will be testing webOS on my Palm Pre phone

Palm Pre Plus

June 2010 earnings breakdown

melastmohican — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 23:02:29 +0000

It was bad month overall. I got almost 30% less than in May which was also worse than previous month. Hopefully it is just summer slowdown, otherwise trend does not look good.

Individually SS made worst result this year and could be worse than 123RF. 123RF on the other hand made the second best result this year. I guess January record will be hard to beat. Others, DT and FT are pretty stagnant. I would call their results average, one month they are slightly above next one a little below their own median. Positive surprise in recent months are results from IS. They actually beat FT and grab 4th place this month. I am talking only about results without third parties which are published later. After adding these results they may be third this month. On positive side we got SXP which finally transferred my images to ThinkStock and started posting earning. I have to wait couple days to see how I am doing there. BS got BME which is so low that it was sufficient for 6th place.
June Jun/May SS 39.54% 62.34% 123RF 34.62% 248.07% DT 9.01% 82.56% IS 8.08% 79.15% FT 5.17% 98.52% BS 2.52% SXP 0.69% CSP 0.27% 40.00% CS 0.11% 100.00% Total 89.04%

Crestock acquired by Masterfile

melastmohican — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:42:06 +0000

If you logged in to your Crestock account today you were presented with new contributor agreement. It would not be anything worth mentioning if I would not notice new copyright statement in a footer of the page: “© 2010 Crestock Corporation. A Masterfile company.” When does it happen, I asked and looked at About page. Voila, it states that it happened today: “Crestock was purchase on July 1, 2010 by Toronto-based Masterfile Corporation, a premium stock photography agency with over 30 years experience in commercial licensing.” There is no official press release on neither of websites but there is an article on Crestock blog. Let’s see what other changes new management would bring.

Crestock acquired by Masterfile

Three extended print licenses in a day on 123RF

melastmohican — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:27:45 +0000

Print-Only Extended License on 123RF is allowing to use media in print if it is published in less than 10,000 copies. So far I sold only Comprehensive Extended Licenses which are 3x more expensive but if you got 3 PELs a day it seems like the same I wonder it this images are going to be used in magazine or book. It’s not possible to get customer info from this site so I am hoping somebody will let me know if these images are spotted in some publication.

Bryce Canyon National Park

Arches National Park

Lightroom 3 upgrade

melastmohican — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:10:24 +0000

I did expect to have my LR3 Upgrade shipped so soon but couple days ago I got info from Amazon that it will be sent earlier than at the beginning of July. I got it today and installed it without making any special preparations. I have been doing upgrades on this machine since version 1 and so far no problems. This time installation was quite fast and it asked if I want to upgrade my current catalog. I confirmed and it did it quickly. I tired all my archival catalogs and no problems were detected. I quickly launched it to see how much difference I could see at first glance. It’s almost no visible signs that I am using new version besides big logo it top left corner. It seems to be faster. Maybe because it optimized my catalogs to make them smaller. It is also truly 64-bit. Preview generation also seems to be faster. I read that raw processing engine has been given a complete overhaul so I tried it on few images and sometimes it is immediately visible and sometimes I cannot tell a difference. I cannot see any setting to turn it on permanently but I assume it will import using new 2010 process. Lens calibration recognized two of my lens and visually it seems to have bigger impact on image than just switching a process. I need to play with it more especially when I got images where distortions or chromatic aberrations are more visible. I cannot tell much about noise reduction until I try some high ISO images. Next I wish to see how it handles videos

Adobe Lightroom 3

I am glad I did not pre-order iPhone4

melastmohican — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:23:26 +0000

It looks like early adopters are facing all sort of problems which may be sorted out when there is no longer pressure to ship it ASAP. Apple was trying ship iPhone so quickly so they did not have enough time to let bonding agent used to bond layers of glass to dry. When it happens after few days of usage discolorations should disappear. Great, at least one problem has logical explanation. Other problem related to external antenna seems like software bug cause rather than design problem because I read than some users of earlier models who upgraded to iOS4 reported similar behavior and they do not have metal band around their devices. And finally something went wrong and manufacturer of devices cannot make white glass so this variant will not be available till end of July. Here you can read official statement on Apple site.

Finally, 3rd party 5dmk2/7d batteries

melastmohican — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:12:20 +0000

I took a while to reverse engineer Canon batteries. LC-E6 is expensive and sometimes hard to find in stores. The Series 7 SL-E6 is a 7.4v, 1800mAh Lithium Ion battery pack which can charge on the Canon LC-E6. The SL-E6 battery also communicates with the EOS 5D Mark II and 7D digital cameras, allowing you to check the remaining capacity on the camera’s power source info screen. The SL-E6 does not have the data chip necessary to provide storeable information on the Canon 5D/7D’s battery registry screen.

SL-E6

It is available on Amazon from $56.49.

Pacifica Pier [Flickr]

melastmohican — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:11:37 PST

melastmohican posted a photo: