Tag Archives: Apple

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Dai-sy, Dai-sy…. Give Me Your Annnnssswerrrr Doooooooo

The Little-Macbook-That-Could endured the equivalent of a heart transplant tonight. It’s battery went tango-uniform sometime yesterday (or the day before), leaving the MacBook a vegetable unless the power feeding tube was attached.

Weird thing was that the power cable indicated the battery was charged, while the laptop couldn’t even see the battery, much less charge it.

Tonight, a quick run to the Apple Store confirmed my suspicions: my battery had converted from a nice lithium-based piece into a nice piece of toast. After a little checking, I was informed that I wasn’t eligible for a battery-replacement program that’s running around out there, and shortly thereafter, the forceps entered my wallet, and I walked out with a new Macbook battery.

I wasn’t thrilled, but after 22 months with this machine, I guess that wasn’t a horrible deal. Still, with that money, I coulda bought one of the new iPod Nanos announced today! 🙂

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak, Photography

Printing, Crossing the Streams, and How I Spent the Last Three Weeks

As I’ve begun playing with printing more and more, some of my fellow photographers at the office have asked me to begin printing for them. They’ve been pleased, I’ve been pleased, and I’ve learned a bunch from the experience. The latest challenge was stymieing me — how to get good prints on Epson Premium Canvas Matte paper?

After a boatload of permutations through print driver settings on the Apple side, I picked up Windows XP and VMWare Fusion in an attempt to print my work through the Windows print drivers. And that, fair readers, seems to have hit the mark.

I printed comparison runs using identical print settings in Lightroom on XP and Lightroom on Leopard, and there were definitely differences — major differences — in how the driver forced ink through my trusty R1800. With that knowledge in mind, I set down today to try printing the three canvas works ahead of me.

After making a custom paper size (one of the images is a bit oversized at 13″ x 25″), I started cooking canvas with what I’d learned. After all three were on the planks, drying, I took a good look at them, and believe I’ve found my printing path — do the work in Photoshop or Lightroom on Leopard, and them do the printing through Lightroom on XP.

Convoluted? Yup. But the results seem to be worth it!

Apple Existence, Photography

Crossing the Streams

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been battling printing issues, trying to print some contract work on canvas through my Epson R1800. To say it hasn’t gone well is giving the experience too much positive light.

As I researched the issue, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one seeing dark prints with the R1800, and not just on canvas. I’ve seen that with other media, but I “band aided” the problem by increasing the brightness of the ready-for-print images. Not elegant, and shouldn’t be necessary, but it worked… generally. However, that process didn’t translate well onto canvas, and after blowing through a roll of canvas, and a lot of ink, I was still no closer to printing canvas correctly.

One of the interesting things I noticed was that the Windows-based folks weren’t having this problem. In fact, some folks would bring the same image up on their Leopard-based Mac and a VM-based Windows XP environment, see exactly the same thing on the screen, but get different print results. And the results on the Windows side were spot-on.

The more I read, the more I decided it was time to put VMWare Fusion and Windows XP on my MacPro.

A quick run up the road, a little time spent installing, and I’m close to having XP on my Mac. For printing. Crazy, eh? I truly have crossed the streams! 🙂

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Back to My Mac

While I haven’t spoken in this forum about the Back to My Mac functionality that was released with Leopard, I’ve been kinda bummed ’cause I couldn’t get it to work with my home network. I’d thought that this would be pretty cool stuff, especially on the Great American Roadtrip.

I’d tried before we left to get my Belkin N1 Vision to do the right UPnP stuff in order for Back to My Mac to work, but all to no avail. I never quite figured it out, and vacation tasks loomed tall over geekly tasks, so that project fell to the side.

Now, a few weeks after vacation, I’ve found some time to work on this little problem again. First, I made sure that it was still broke. Yup, still broke. 🙁

I found that Belkin had released new firmware for the N1 Vision, so I blasted that onto the router, and enabled the UPnP bit on the control panel. Still no joy. 🙁

I took a gander at my good friend Google to see if anyone had reported success with this router and Back to My Mac. Sure ’nuff, someone had reported the same problem I had, and had the brilliant idea to power cycle the router.

Guess what? It worked. The Systems Prefs panel for MobileMe now indicated that it could configure the router, and all things magic took off. Cool beans.

Now, to start doing a little playing with the new functionality!

Apple Existence, Photography

A Little Coolness

Tonight, I arrived home to find an e-mail from Amy Judd at NowPublic. I’d never heard of Amy or NowPublic, so I was a little surprised at her request. She was writing a story about the PRODUCT (RED) branding concept, and asked if she could use one of my photos of my iPod Shuffle that she found on Flickr.

I did a little poking around at the NowPublic site, and from all appearances, it appears to be grass-roots journalism, aimed at mobilizing the average Joe into reporting on just about anything, from local to national to international stories. I liked the feel of the site, their expressed respect of my copyright wishes for my image, and the fact that they asked before just using one of my images. All good marks in my book, so I said “yes”, added a comment, and now have my first published photo in a journalistic context. Definitely a different stroke for me.

You can see the article here. Look for the slideshow, and you’ll see my image, as well as plenty by other folks. Enjoy!

Apple Existence, Geek-Speak

Rubbish!

So, since I’ve my shiny new iPod Shuffle, I’ve been mortified that I would misplace it somewhere. I mean, the thing is tiny, and since I don’t have it lojacked to track its every move, it’d be real easy to put it somewhere and forget where that was. I can just see some far-distant archaeologist trying to figure out why some bizarro 21st century biped needed an iPod in the very same place all the missing socks from the dryer landed.

Now, my MacBook I have a pretty good tack on. Generally, it can’t roam too far away without me knowing where its spiffy cool black self is. After all, it’d be pretty tough to lose a laptop behind the couch, right?

Well tonight I read a piece over at Ars Technica that likely sheds some doubt on the safety of the new MacBook Air machines. It seems that one of their reviewers got a loaner from Cupertino, and decided to use it for a while…. until it disappeared. Hard disappeared. Not to be found.

The current theory? His spouse scooped it up with the newspapers, and tossed the whole lot out. Yup. Almost two kilobucks of MacBook Air sweetness into the grinding, gnashing jowls of a trash truck, never to be seen again…

… Except perhaps by that far-flung archaeologist, trying to figure out why us odd 21st century types would toss out a brand new laptop computer. Then again, since the recyclability of the machine has been touted so much, it’s possible the thing’s been decomposed into its component parts, with the components finding new life as Zunes and HD DVD players.