Color Correction Woes

I’ve developed a nice little workflow over on the photoblog; My entire editing process happens in the sRGB IEC61966-2.1 color space, and the final JPEG that goes online has the correspondng ICC profile embedded within. Recently, I realized that none of the thumbnail images had color profiles; the result was a small difference, but one that bothered me nonetheless.

While batch processing the thumbnails to add profiles I was surprised to realize that the early photos not only didn’t have profiles, but that I didn’t save the photoshop files with the editing adjustments, just the original TIFF files. The lack of profiles makes some sense since I didn’t get a colorimeter until May 2005, and the Nikon D70 until June. But the idea that I didn’t save any of my editing intermediate work is totally alien since I always save them now.

As a result, on some rainy day I’m going to have to go through all of those photos and redo the editting and add color profiles. Not fun, but I’d rather have some control over the look of my photos.

For those of you who care for your photo work, consider developing a workflow and buying a color calibrator. If there’s any interest I’d be happy to post a DIY guide to developing a reliable, basic color workflow.

A day in Baltimore

A view of the Inner Harbor from the bow of the Cisne BrancoI had a doctor’s appointment thursday; nothing serious just an initial check-in with my new permanent physician. Normally, I’m not a big fan of going to the doctor, but the new docs are just two blocks from Baltimore’s Lexington Market.

Lexington Market is a cornucopia of food stalls – most selling prepared food, but many with fresh meats, produce, and of course seafood. I’m terribly partial to Berger’s Bakery, not for their (justifiably) well-known cookies, but for their version of a cream-filled sandwich cookies – which are an acceptable facimile of the one’s I used to get from Danny’s Bakery as a boy. But the real attraction of any visit to Lexington Market is Faidley’s Seafood, and their world-famous crabcakes.

I ordered one of their lump crabcakes and a bowl of cream of crab soup. Now normally, I’m a big fan of tarter sauce, but Faidley’s Crabcakes are so tender and creamy inside, that no adornment is necessary. Faidley’s is one of the best this land has to offer; trust me I know, I’m a marylander born and bred, and I’ve had my fair share of crabcakes. I’ve I don’t know where you’re from dear reader, but once in your lifetime treat yourself to a Maryland crabcake made by one of the greats, it’s an experience not to be missed.

After lunch I walked down to the Inner Harbor to catch some pictures for the photoblog. The Volvo Ocean Race is in town, and I wanted a chance to check out the boats up close, as well as tour the tall ships visiting as part of the celebration. The Ocean 70’s were mostly docked, but the Extreme 40 catamarans were out practicing for races held in the harbor. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn those boats had motors: amazing accerelation, wicked speed, and man did it look like a blast out there. I’m looking forward to catching one of the in-port races later this week.

I finished out the day by heading over to Jef and Becky’s for dinner. Becky had to dash off to her studio, but I had a lovely dinner with Jef and his dad at Paper Moon.

Windows compatibility in Mac OS X

While, I usually find myself agreeing with Robert X. Cringely (aka. Mark Stephens) more often than not, his current article get so much wrong that I begin to even wonder if he’s got a clue or not.

First, the idea that Apple should switch from a microkernel to a monolithic kernel for the performance increase that would provide, is flat wrong – mostly because Darwin (the underlying operating system in Mac OS X) is not really a microkernel. While, large portions of the Mach microkernel codebase made it into Mac OS X, the file-system, network stack, and other components were integrated into the kernel as well. The performance gains that Linux might show over Mac OS X on the same hardware has a lot to do with the talent of the Linux kernel team. Should Apple spend a lot of time looking for ways to make kernel faster? Sure! Could the Apple engineers learn a thing or two from Linus and the Linux Kernel team? Most probably. Should Apple toss their existing, working, kernel code and start from sratch? Hell no!

As far as Apple having a monolithic kernel running in the lab today, of course they do – it’s called FreeBSD. Darwin and Mac OS X share a large amount of their codebase with FreeBSD, and have since version 1.0. Any move to a monolithic kernel would simply involve migrating the existing OS X kernel drivers to FreeBSD, and simply compiling Quartz and other OS X only technologies on the revisied system. I’d guess Apple almost always has this type of a system running in the lab, simply to make integrating updates from FreeBSD into OS X smoother.
Finally, Cringley’s main point is that Apple will probably one day have Windows XP API’s implemented natively under OS X. He says this makes more sense than a “compatibility middleware like Wine”.

Huh?

What does Cringely imagine that Wine is? Has this guy ever seen Wine, or even the Wine home page? Wine is an “an Open Source implementation of the Windows API”, the fact that it’s running on top of Unix and not Mac OS X is merely a matter of fate, and not some imagined difference in technology. If Apple were to contribute to the current effort to port Wine to the Mac, Cringely would achieve his goal, but to pretend that Apple should be doing something different is non-sensical.

Cringely goes on to assert that somehow Apple should promote XP versus Vista compatibility in terms of API support. I’m not sure why anyone would believe that Apple would be interested in only supporting the 5 year XP set of APIs (or that there is that much diffence in the two API sets). Even the Windows XP APIs are a moving target – .Net was not in the orginal Windows XP APIs. Do we want to relegate the Mac to running Windows software releases 2-3 years ago or more? Clearly any attempt to make Windows API’s available on the Mac would have to involve targeting Microsoft’s latest API releases.

The number of clueless commentators out there is enormous (I won’t even try to address Dvorak‘s issues); I used to expect a little more from Robert X. Cringely – my mistake.

Love Monkey

So, I missed Love Monkey‘s short 3-show stint on CBS. The show, starring former Ed leading man Tom Cavanagh, seemed to be part of the huge, mid-season roll-out that led to several shows being cancelled after only a couple (or fewer) episodes. Based on a novel of the same title, I think the show suffered from an awkward title, and no confidence from the network.
But much to my surprise VH-1 picked up the show, and plans to air the existing set of eight episodes. Having now seen four episodes, some things are immediately apparent to me. First, the pilot wasn’t particularly good; there’s a distinct: been there, done that, typicalness to it. Next, the second and third episodes are much better. Finally, this show deserved better – I think the networks have lost the ability to be patient and nurture good shows. Possibly they don’t have faith in their ability to pick winners; or maybe the pressures of instant ratings feedback make patience difficult, if not impossible. But if the broadcast networks want to start reversing the trend of viewers flocking to the shows on the cable networks, they’ll have to start developing some of the same sensibilities that have allowed HBO and Showtime to start producing excellent TV.

I’m not surprised that Love Monkey has found a new, if somewhat temporary, home on a cable network (although this particular was a bit of surprise), and I hope that it florishes enough to get a whole new lease on life (more episodes). Do yourself a favor, catch Love Monkey on VH-1, new episodes are currently airing Tuesday nights at 9pm.

Windows fans catching up with reality?

Well, it’s finally starting to happen; even the usually unflappable windows fan press is starting to catch on to the fact that Microsoft has gutted Windows Vista (something I blogged about over 6 months ago). Paul Thurrott goes over recent builds of Vista and analyzes the remaining features; the conclusions he comes to don’t make him happy — and don’t particularly surprise me.

The mainstream population has to wake up and start understanding that there are other options out there. They deserve: more convenient, more secure, and just plain better, from their operating systems. Microsoft either needs to start living up to their own marketing, or consumers need to start voting with their dollars.

Sharing my life

For a long time I’ve been looking for someone to share my life with, and in some ways waiting to live life with someone.  I don’t know if it’s the fear of being alone, or the need to share experiences with someone else, or just a sense of loneliness, but I’ve been waiting for someone ever since I can remember.

I remember being asked by an English teacher once what I wanted in life and my answer was simple: a stack of good books, a comfy chair, and a pot of tea.  Years later that English teacher forwarded my answer to me and asked how it had changed… I added just one thing, “and someone to share it with.”

Now almost 20 years later, I look back and I finally realize that I’ve been wrong all along.  While there could be one special someone in my life, I’m blessed with far more friends and family than one person deserves.  I don’t see them enough, and I certainly don’t share my life with them enough.

And so my life is on hold no longer.  I’m going to live each day with verve and intensity, and I’m going to share my life with all those who’ve touched me over the years.  If any of you are reading this: let’s connect again,  get together, go out, and grab life by the horns.  It should make for a fun ride!

Letting go of control in my life…

I am a lucky man. I know this, and others sometimes remark on it.

I am blessed by a life that runs itself, and runs itself well. But I have always railed against my life saying, “It runs best without my intervention.” I despaired over my attempts to control my own life that led to frustration and disappointment; while allowing life to run it’s course resulted in success and happiness.

I have long since decided to surrender myself to providence, and to reap the rewards of a life of luck. But all the while I remained depressed and alarmed over my lack of control in life.

Tonight, depressed over my latest attempt to force my will on my life I finally realized that I am the cause of my own grief. While I had I long since decided to surrender myself to providence, and to reap the rewards of a life of luck, I have never wanted providence in my life. I sought to control my destiny, but it has never been mine to control.

I now realize it is my duty to trust in the world, and to want to surrender my will to providence. To let go of idea of control and to accept what comes with joy in my mind and love in my heart.

Sergeant’s Program

I signed up for the Sergeant’s Program (again). I had been a member six years ago, while I was working at AOL. While looking into them for my buddy Scott, I discovered that they’ve got locations much closer to my house these days, so I took the liberty of joining back up. Been at it since late January, and I’ve lost some weight, put on some muscle, and discovered just how bad it is to start exercising after a long hiatus. Man, does it suck.

Hopefully, more (and more regularly) later.