For a guy who went to the school of Graphics and Photography at RIT, and working for 25+ years in Graphics/Technology industry, I have certainly gotten away from photography in recent years. For many years I harbored a desire to get into panoramic photography with a Fuji GX617 camera, but I could never cough up the dough. Ten years ago when I worked for Scitex (with it’s Leaf digital cameras subsidiary) at the time, I had my first exposure (forgive the pun) to High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography.

So, I am looking into combining HDR and panoramic photography. Maine offers a lot of excellent opportunities to showcase this style of photography. Sadly, the GX617 is a conventioanl film camera and not satifactory for HDR. I have an old (first genreation) Canon EOS film body and lenses. So, I am looking most likely to get a digital EOS body (40D?), and panoramic head for stitching frames.

But I am looking for any opinions on comparable setups.

Ahhh, These are the days of Wine and Roses...when a Liberal can look to the future with pride and satisfaction. The economy may be down and retirement ever further away, but we now have HOPE for the future. Hope that sanity will once more return to our national politics; and it comes in the guise of a Joe Cool: confident and hopeful, a multicultural intellectual:

Seriously though, I AM looking forward to the new administration. Not because of some wide-eyed optimism of a left-leaning political junkie, but because our sudden national realization of the serious issues confronting us will be met by a president to-be who epitomizes everything that a 21st century President ought to be. With the anticipated victory of Obama, we will finally put to rest the culture wars of the 60’s. The multicultural, intellectual and centrist aspect of Obama is an opportunity for the US to rebuild it’s stature in the international community. His promise of restoring our international credibility will be vital for building the cooperation necessary in rebuilding a global financial system, fighting fundamentalism abroad, and advancing containment of states such as North Korea, Iran, and Russia. His refusal to to fully embrace a radical agenda of the Left will hopefully permit bipartisan negotiations in the discussions to come on the economy, health care, Social Security, Medicare, Energy, Global Warming, and National Security.

Obama’s belief in pay-as-you-go government will be familiar to both economic conservatives and Clintonites alike. His position on utilizing every form of energy production including clean-coal, nuclear, and limited offshore drilling, while pursuing a comprehensive alternative energy program is seen by many as reasonable and vital. Much more so than the simplistic drumbeat of “Drill, Baby, Drill”. His long standing belief that we need to extricate ourselves from Iraq, while seeking a solution for a worsening situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan is practical. And finally, Obama’s fiscal position of increasing taxes for those with incomes above $250k/yr is likewise seen as reasonable in this age of bank failures, bailouts and over-the-top AIG sales meetings.

Soon, our long national nightmare will be over. As a nation we have already put the jingoistic, and hawkish policies of the Bush administration behind us. With the election and inauguration of Barak Hussein Obama, a new more mature chapter in the history of the US will unfold. The racial, religious and culturally reactionary forces of our nation have been deposed. While Obama is human and will have his policy critics, his election none the less represents a sea-change in so many respects that it is hard not to be proud to be an American once more. 

Going on the record now...I’m thinking Obama landslide, 339 vs 200 electoral votes.

The frantic game of rumors prior to each anticipated Apple conference is somewhat comical abeit generally harmless. While it is often possible to gleam what might be possible or likely based on these rumors, I don’t place much faith in any particular rumor at the time. My crystal ball fails me quite often however this weekend’s rumor that Apple will not only be adding a user facing video camera for use in video ichat, but will also be releasing a Window’s version ichat strikes me as a good idea!

Since Maureen came down with one, it seems like I hear of GBMs all the time now. When I heard that Ted Kennedy had an unexpected seizure the other day, this was my immediate fear. It’s Too bad for Ted. He’s the last of this tragic generation of Kennedys.

I hope he can get though this with dignity.

An excellent with an only slightly facetious title by David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals.

Me Thinks, Gruber has it right.
The SDK is too complete and comprehensive to have been rushed to the development community as many had pre-supposed. Apple has been laying ground-work for this for some time.

No great revelation here, but reinforcing my belief: The overwhelming interest in the iphone/ipod touch SDK convinces me that we are witnessing the formative stage of a major new computing platform, not just one or two new devices from Apple. I expect that 6 months from now we will see a huge number of 3rd party applications which will popularize these and many new devices which for the lack of an official name I will call the touch platform. Expect to see:

• a touch based pad
• a touch based gaming platform
• possibly a touch based personal video device (video playback, as well as capture and editing??)
• and obviously new generations of the ipod and iphone

“Must see V”...

Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. Just use the widget you see below. It is also the most efficient way to support my fundraising efforts with Maine Handicapped Skiing.

MHS is a fantastic organization which helps children, adults and veterans enjoy various outdoor activities throughout the year including skiing, cycling, kayaking and golf.

On March 29th, I will be participating again in the Annual Ski-A-Thon which last year enabled MHS to raise over $348,000 to support these activities. Any amount you wish to contibute will be greatly appreciated.

For a little viral marketing be sure to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

For more information or visit the MHS web page at: http://www.skimhs.org or
http://www.firstgiving.com/donaldpotter

I have taken the plunge and started my self-guided exploration of Ruby and the Rails framework. 
I was happy to discover that Ruby, Rails2.0, Mongrel, sqlite3, and subversion is already integrated into Leopard. Then I discovered that all of the published tutorials are based around Rails 1.2! There is virtually no tutorial information out there on Rails 2.0 aside from a few screen-casts going over some of the new features. Consequently, I downloaded and installed Locomotive for a rails 1.2 stack for me to learn on before moving on to rails2.0.
I also loaded MySQL on leopard by using the Tiger version. And yes, the problem with the non-functioning preference panel has been fixed. A new preference panel can be downloaded separately, until an official leopard version of MySQL is released.

So, far I am still getting the hang of migrations & scaffolding: the sexy part of rails. So far, I am very impressed!

I’ll be making progress reports as I go along.

While I will never be privy to it, I would be very interested in understanding the terms of the Apple-ATT agreement. No doubt, Apple agreed to prevent the addition of a SIP/VoIP client to the iphone. The addition of such a sanctioned or unsanctioned application would tear a gaping hole in the revenue model of ATT and to a lesser degree Apple, as they most certainly have some form of revenue sharing on cellular contracts.

But as certain as the sun will rise, Apple surely realizes that VoIP will ultimately transform the cellular industry as we understand it. The Apple-ATT exclusive agreement has a life of 5 years. I suspect that Apple could not and would not agree to limit the adoption of VoIP technology on it’s platforms for that entire period; it simply would have been too limiting.
The question then is when will we see the doors open on a SIP client? Apple has stated that it will release a developer SDK in February of ‘08. Will Apple allow developers to release a SIP client.. unlikely. But we will see what will happen on the 1 year anniversary of the iphone. What I expect is that we will see not a “iphone” with SIP capability, but rather some other form of touch-based communicator.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Led Zepplin, so the news of their reunion this week has been a non-starter. But the release of the first album in 25+ years by Levon Helm, the original drummer and vocalist on the “The Band”, is outstanding.  Levon demonstrates once again again his ability to combine American Roots music with a modern rhythm.
Check it out...

And for the NPR/Fresh Air interview...

First off, Before I get a bunch of hate mail, “No I don’t really believe that the mac is dead”.

But, I do think we have begun to see a sea change in Apple’s product line. The first such change was the transition from the Apple II to the original Mac and it’s revolutionary user interface. More recently, the Mac underwent a major transition to OSX, but ultimately it was still a Macintosh. Initially, the Mac was promoted as “A computer for the rest of us”, which suggested not only elitism, but the goal of freeing the user from the technical complexities of computers and thereby enable real work. Over the years this has been more or less true compared to other computing platforms.

But even the most ardent mac user will agree that the personal computer is still a long way from being a truly personal computer for the casual user. By casual user I mean your grandmother and Joe 6-pack both of whom still struggle to find that letter they saved somewhere on their disc last week, and who couldn’t tell you the difference between dhcp, WEP, WAP or any other number of other acronyms that the digirati take for granted.

Enter the iPhone, iPod touch and what I expect will be the new paradigm for Apple in other such multi-touch devices. While the Mac will continue as a distinct product line in the years to come, it is the multi-touch devices which will fulfill the needs of a whole new class of user (consumers).  The original iPod showed the way for Steve Jobs...That there was another world beyond the classic Windows vs Mac wars of the ‘80 & 90’s.

While we may not see a tablet device from Apple in January, I believe we will see such a device with in the next 6 months. Imagine a device perhaps twice the size of the iPhone featuring the same functionality (sans cellular). With additional storage (ie: 32gb), N-wireless, microphone, speaker and a slew of newly released 3rd part apps the device will have great appeal at say a $600 price point. The addition of a single HDMI port and front-row would also provide an entry level iTV like device.