Happenings from M.D. Shivers

Yay!
Haven't installed it yet, but the folks at Google have just made my life easier. Now only thing I need is Google Calendar sync with the iPhone without plugging into my Mac. (Crosses Finger)

Check out the Google iCal page

Posted by Michael Shivers at 01:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How it can change your day to day life.

1. Driving to work- listening to the radio and they are talking about how Miss America fell down the night before and how embarrassing it must have been. I proceed to pull out the iPhone and watch the clip on Youtube (while at a red light of course).

2. Going to a new store in a different part of down
Where is that turn again?
Google maps with GPS on iPhone... thanks.

3. At Home Depot
Shopping for a new Weed Eater. Straight shaft or Curve? What the heck?!
Google it on the iPhone and find some dude in Texas that knows a lot more about that than I do. (I bought a Straight Shaft)

4. Wife is late for a party and needs directions quick and of course our printer doesn't work.
Google maps with directions

5. My neighbor SMS's me to get together.
It use to take me 10 hours to write one sentence. I hated that. Now it's fun to get them. Looks just like iChat.

6. Bored waiting in traffic
Games
I have had time to play games of late.
Now since the iPhone is usually with me everywhere, so are the games.

Posted by Michael Shivers at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apple Safari on a PC, originally uploaded by mdshivers.

click for larger
I can't believe it. Apple just a few minutes ago has released their web surfing application on for XP/Vista. I've installed it on a XP box. Looks great and pretty snappy. I have noticed when you customize the toolbar, it crashes. I've surfed a few sites and it really does go fast.

The new brush metal finish looks great.

I remember when I-Tunes came out for PC, it was a strange world to see Mac software on a PC. It was awesome... like a family member that you haven't seen forever all of a sudden appears out of no where.

Posted by Michael Shivers at 02:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Someone on a flickr forum asked a question about how Aperture handles RAW files and if it was possible to send RAW files for RAW processing to another program. Also another question raised was comparing the two different programs in how they handle RAW processing.

@ Aperture handling sending RAW files to another program,

Yes, Aperture automatically handles all the RAW settings. When you open it with another program, you have to convert it to another file format. It can't send a native RAW file to another program. So you can't use ACR to change the settings of your RAW file inside Aperture. You could open the original file inside Finder, change your settings in ACR or Lightroom and then save it as another file format. ACR or Lightroom also doesn't let you edit RAW and save changes to that RAW file and then send the RAW file to another program. RAW conversion only happens once when you need to export the file. You can keep the original RAW with adjustments but it has to live in the native program that you editied with. (ACR,Lightroom,Aperture).

Hopefully in the future these programs can export RAW to another program and be able to reimport RAW.

hopefully this makes since :)

@ comparing ACR/Lightroom with Apeture Raw settings:

I have all three and I really enjoy Aperture's interface and auto tools. But when I need to get a specific look, I have to send it to photoshop.
One thing I love about Lightroom is the presets for adjusting RAW. It seems to be way advanced from Aperture and there are several settings that Apeture doesn't have. There are several websites now that you can download these presets for free or a small price. Excellent.

I am very happy with Apeture and it's file management and interface. But i really like Lightroom's RAW settings and presets. Guess I'll be using both and making sure Apeture mangages my files.

Posted by Michael Shivers at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For those who use the Adobe Creative Suite Software- I'd wait on the purchase. They are announcing CS3 on March 27th and shipping it later this spring. For Mac users, this will be Intel ready. Adobe calls it "the largest software release in it's 25 history."

http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/03/05/cs3/index.php

Posted by Michael Shivers at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've joined in on several discussions and blogs talking about the best way to backup your Aperture library immediately and long term.

Obviously you can use Aperture's great backup feature called the "Vault". That is smart actions that you take to choose a location to where you want to backup Aperture's files and when you update your photo library or make significant changes, the vault icon will turn red telling you to update. It's recommended to use an external hard drive or at least another hard drive that your main library is not on.

SO what if you want to use DVD's to backup? Well I've been mulling over this for a while. I want to have multiple backups and I want to have a disc based backup too. So the recently released Roxio Toast 8 for Mac came to mind. I just got it a few days ago and my findings are that it's a great upgrade from the older version. It does "Disc Spanning" for both Mac and PC on the same disc. So say my photo library is 100 gigs it would take about 25 4.7 gig discs to use. Toast will automatically embed the software needed to read the spanned disk and will restore your library.

Now optically what should you backup? At first I thought hands down just back up the aperture original library. Drag it into Toast and it will tell you how many discs it will take. Then after I started it, it was going to take about 30min on each disk with verification. Bah. that's a lot of time. So I canceled it and decided to think about it more.

If I backup my Aperture library in it's entirety, I need Aperture to read it when I want to recover it if something goes wrong. So what if I want just my photos and not all the data base stuff? I then thought it would be best to export all of my masters by Year/Month/Day and in a Folder called PhotoBackup. Then I could have all of my original photos backup (it doesn't do versions but it will export PSD files as masters). So i dragged the Parent folder "Photobackup" into Roxio Toast 8 and then do a cross platform disc span.

Now I have all of my photos in their original form backed up to Mac and PC format. Now I'm not swithching to PC anytime soon, but it's nice to know that I have the option. Also if I wanted to stop using Aperture for the next best app, i can just import my Photobackup with the Year/Month/Day scheme into another program. And then my photos aren't archived and be required to have Aperture to open them up. (I'm thinking long term here folks!)

Posted by Michael Shivers at 09:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

After days of trying to print with Aperture to my Epson R200, I wasn't have much success. I followed all the rules, change the setting in the Epson R200 perfences to Photo RPM, and turn off color management. Back in forth etc. Print borderless was usless and I was having color banding issues and my prints looked horrible. I tried everything!

Untill i did more research.

Conclusions to all of the headaches and sleepless nights...

For some reason when you add the Epson R200 to your printer set up using the "plus" key it adds the wrong drivers and wrong color proflies. It says it's it but it isnt'.
You have to delete the one you added "normally" and go about it another way.

1. System Pref - Printers and Util
2. click add printer with plus sign
3. more printers
4. choose Epson USB under the drop down menu
5. click on the Stylus photo .....
6. under drop down menu for Page setup choose "Sheet Feeder Borderless"
7. Go back to Aperture and follow all the normal rules of printing.

MY LIFE HAS CHANGED.

well may be not too much but i've got consitent good looking real bona fide borderless printing now on my trusty R200.

I'm excited and I can finish the christmas gifts that I had in the works!

Posted by Michael Shivers at 08:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The lead article in the magazine "Federal Computer Week" which is a publication for Government-Business Techonolgy has an awsome header that I would love to quote.

"There is one reason above all others for agencies and departments to consider shelling out money for Vista, the newest version of Microsoft Windows: There are currently no Vista viruses".

WOW this is the most stupid thing I have ever heard of. There is already a known virus for Vista, and Microsoft has already released a patch. Guys.. it's Windows for crying out loud! Of course it is going to get about 10 viruses the first week of release to the public in January. I just can't believe this guy wrote this, and that is his main point for upgrading. I mean at least point out something else besides this!!!

If one wanted to update five computers in their office to the new version of Vista, it is going to cost you a couple of grand. Upgrade ten computers to the newest version of Mac OSX, for $400 . While Vista for one license will cost you $450.

Word from the wise... don't upgrade to Vista :)

Posted by Michael Shivers at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)