I’m jealous.

What I notice about both is that

a) they set up their shots (backgrounds, etc.) b) they’ve got light

So… I naturally am using this as an excuse to buy more camera equipment.

This will make more light, but I may also need something that can produce more close-up lighting.

For an upcoming trip, something wide-angle might be nice, too. But by Canon, or Sigma?

And finally, while in the throws of camera lust, I might mention the extra battery grip.

Or should I just concentrate on making better food, and not pictures?

Recently I found a fortune cookie that told me “bing” in Chinese (now, I know for a fact this isn’t the only interpretation) can mean “disease.” The opposite side of this “fortune” read: Truth can be harsh, but it can be helpful.

So maybe you can use Bing (or bing) to help you find things. But what I really want to comment on is the ad itself.

First, they’re out to use “bing” as a verb. “Google it,” might become “bing it.” Okay, they chose a probable word in English and they want to attach meaning to it. We’ll see if that works out.

But the example in question is a Microsoft product, their own webcam. Their silly “cashback” program is at play here (a poor icon choice, I think, because cash sounds like squishy green paper money, not gold coins from an arcade game), but would you use their search engine maybe only to search for products they themselves made??

Then there’s the hilarity involved, in using your own product as a prop, and learning “it’s not the best.” It’s only a 4-star webcam, not 5. Only 86% of people found its size a positive factor? Where do these metrics come from? Is Bing chasing Amazon (with the stars and orange color) or Google?

Lastly, would you type in web cams (with a space) or webcams?

Let’s go to Bing and find out if this works the way they propose.

No, I didn’t get a nice picture of a webcam and arrows pointing out the benefits. The ad is contrived.

I clicked on “top 10,” hoping to see the graphics with arrows and reviews. What shocked me was what a knock-off of Google bing really is. “Sponsored sites” on the right, blue headings with links for the results, and green URLs with cached versions. Take away the stupid surfer at the top (now, if the search results page put in an image that related to my search, say, a big fancy Microsoft webcam, then I’d be impressed, but what surfing has to do with webcams is quite foreign to me), and you’d think you were looking at a Google page, perhaps.

More curious notes:

• the word “web” at the top left is not on the same line as the next words.
• MSN and WindowsLive is also not on the same line as the rest either.
• Why do all of their properties need a Bing search bar at the top? It’s on WindowsLive, MSN, etc. Oh, that’s right, you might not be using Internet Explorer.

Poorly done.

For those that don’t know me well, I enjoy listening to music in two primary locations: in my office and in our Salon de musique family room. Each of the two rooms contains important assets.

1. The office has my workstation where the media files are stored.
2. The family room uses the better loudspeakers and a more sophisticated hi-fi system.

A computer-based hi-fi system isn’t atypical today. I’m currently taking analog audio from my computer and passing that into an integrated amplifier. That, in turn, drives two bookshelf speakers on either side of my head here in the office. I use iTunes to drive the music, available in varying qualities, from 256kbit MP3s to lossless files ripped at 750-800 kbits.

I used to stream music downstairs to an Aiport Express using a Toslink cable plugged into a rather clear-sounding digital to analog converter. This little box is magic, and in a future upgrade, it will find its way upstairs with the computer.

Needless to say, since upgrading to iTunes 8.1 (and unchanged in iTunes 8.2), I noticed some sound quality issues downstairs. The music, especially with certain types (say, solo violin) became strident and ugly. Extensive testing revealed the “bad” link was the Airport Express. That’s not to say another cable might not have helped, but using the same cable, going directly from computer to DAC revealed correct-sounding music.

Some reading indicated it may be a problem with clock jitter.

I therefore upgraded the system from an Airport Express to a Mac mini computer. Because i fancied running the mini headless (without a monitor), and I want to keep the media on my main workstation in the office, I set up an auto-mounting function in Mac OS X Leopard called autofs. This auto-mounts the media volume from the workstation on the mini. I made a copy of the iTunes library on the mini. Now, when it plays music, it’s “streaming” it over the network. The machine also goes to sleep and wakes up on a schedule. The jittery-problems have not surfaced.

The issue then becomes, “What’s next?” Obviously, this solution needs maintenance (upgrading the library to the auxiliary mini). However some point to USB as a superior communications medium between the computer and the DAC. Wavelength Audio’s products especially look enticing.

The iPhone works as a great remote control, operating volume, track selection, and start/stop.

I took this photo a couple years ago when visiting Staunton, Virginia. I was about to get into my car. We were parked right next to this church. I looked up, and the sun was right behind the tower.

This weekend is also a good time to catch up with new music purchases.

My mother was editing a document for work with our family’s Mac Plus in 1990. At this point, it was going on two years old. She was using Microsoft Word. Interesting to me is how slow it drew the choices in the dialog box that appears.

My screen was acquired in October, 2001, for $2500.00. The Apple Cinema Display’s price had just been slashed from $4000.00, so I bought up the same display for a sweeter price. That’s right, today I use the same screen. It still looks and operates great. The only thing wrong with it is the resolution isn’t as sharp as some of the newer offerings.

I estimate that I’ve put between 10,600 and 21,300 hours on the display. That’s a big discrepancy, but my guess is it’s right in the middle: let’s say 15,000 hours. I’ve owned the display for over 2500 days, and I’ve figured the cost per hour, when I divide the cost of this thing, is around 18-19 cents. That seems high. But $2500 was a lot of cash in 2001 for a monitor.

My PowerMac G5 tower has not been my favorite computer. When buying it, it required two trips back to the Apple Store for repairs. They ended up replacing the power/cooling unit more than once, and eventually, the entire motherboard. Ouch. Thank goodness for warrantees. This is the first desktop computer where I purchased AppleCare. The computer to this day is awfully loud. The fan constantly goes up and down and the slightest thing to keep cool.

In contrast, my work computer, a Quad-processor G5 tower, is quite quiet. From what I detected at the Apple store, the current crop of Intel-based towers is likewise very quiet.

The computer at the time cost me $2999.99. I am confident i no longer need the fastest thing Apple puts out for my hobbies and such, but I need something fast.

So, I made up a little comparison chart. Click it for a full-size version. Surprising, perhaps, is that the quad-processor machine I have my eye on is about the same price as the dual G5 from 2005. I then compared the price of this machine against Apple’s fastest iMac and their fastest MacBook Pro, with the legendary 8-hour battery.

It turns out the laptop isn’t value priced, but check carefully. For $2869 you’re getting almost 3Ghz with 1920 pixels; the iMac is a value for a little more speed and the same number of pixels… at about 800 less.

I am using my current Mac as a workstation and a media server. I had planned on using the new computer in the identical capacity, but I have to now consider what to do with the old machine.

Sell it? Keep it as a media server (i.e., iTunes)?

What I was looking for was a high-quality point and shoot camera. My research told me only one model actually does this, and it’s the Nikon P6000. It has a built-in GPS receiver and does geotagging. It’s up to other software to take these codes and place them on a map or identify their location. In other words, the camera records 44 degrees north by 25 degrees west, and software like Flickr (for sharing photos) or Google Maps (for finding locations) identifies this location.

Why are geotagged photos valuable? I think this is valuable because it’s very useful metadata to have. “Here’s a picture of Susan in front of this giant bridge, and yes, to get back here, go to these coordinates.” But think of it this way… you can create a map where all of your photos were taken.

Of course, it is possible to take geotagged photos with other equipment aside from the P6000. Many cell phones with GPS capabilities (including the iPhone and iPhone 3G) record geographical data, and many add-ons to higher-end cameras now add geotagging data (memory cards and battery grips).

We were snapping away on part of the road trip off of the Golden Gate bridge and it would be nice (now) to know where those spots actually were.

Imagine you were house hunting, and shooting candidates. You’d know precisely where those homes were.

Of course, Google has already geotagged photos as part of their Street View program in Google Earth/Maps. But what makes geotagging compelling to me is this:

If folks are sharing their own geotagged photos, we’re building an enormous library of data about the world around us… what if GPS systems in cars could tap-into this data and show us the most recent photos from intersections, roadways, and points of interest?

Social computing is still under development.

I found this blog post from December 29, 2001, I thought I’d share.

One evening, my dad took us to Jack Baker’s Lobster Shanty, a little family-style seafood restaurant in Rio, Florida. You can read the entire history of the place on their website, if you like. I’ll save myself the trouble. But my dad orders chicken. Seems odd, wouldn’t you think, for a seafood place? Then he only eats half, and claims he’s sick. My mom blames it on the corn fritters which she adored. They had been fried, you see, and my dad doesn’t react well to fried foods. I had a crab cake and shrimp, and my mom ordered the entire fried shrimp dinner. At Jack’s, you get a choice of salad bar or chowder with your meal, and a seemingly complimentary little scoop of cole slaw. Odd, we thought. But my mom started on those hush puppies, pretty much ignored the slaw, and joined us at the salad bar. But come time for the entrees, she was unsure she could finish the large platter. I admit, I was pretty full upon finishing mine. It was decent food, not gourmet, but a worthy dinner. My mom–and this is the interesting part–claimed she was “done” when the waitress came to clear plates. She said, “Oh– you’re done?!” in a half-believed kind of way. The thing was, my mom’s plate was at first glance still very full. But upon close inspection, you could see that she had cleanly bitten-off only the tips of the shrimp. When questioned, “I don’t want to eat the tail.” Hmm. Seems to me you could divide a fried shrimp into thirds: tip, middle, and tail. But out of a petrid fear of getting to close to that handle of a tail (and I’ve known some Filipinos who eat the tail), she only ate the tips. It could have been said, “Oh, there’s a lemon-scented meal o’ SHRIMP TIPS over at table 4…” So yes, my mom only ate a third of her shrimp, the tips.

So, the next time you invite my mom over for a catered affair, be ready to sink an awful lot of money into shrimp tips, because she’ll leave the rest.

This was the first GUI computer I laid eyes on; it was very early 1984 before Macintosh was released in our computer store, Mace Electronics.

It’s glowing light; the separate hard disk drive. And the mouse. Ah…