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I haven't had credit card debt since… well, since I paid it off shortly before buying my house. It wasn't even that much back then.

Today I heard of someone who has $140,000 of credit card debt. I figure once you hit $60k, the urge to go as high as possible before declaring bankruptcy has to be tempting, huh? Sad.

This video is a chilling statement of the times: a man is harassed simply for taking video of people in a public place. The problem appears much worse in the U.K., but I suspect they're simply a few months ahead of the U.S. on their ass-backwards "no cameras/pictures/filming" policy.

I've just read a short essay by Bill Jay called "The Photographer as Aggressor" that talks about how, since the portable camera became common, photographers have been seen as an aggressor or predator - capturing public moments of people doing embarrassing things, women momentarily caught topless by a wave, etc. Though most of the paper talks about the early 1900s or late 1800s, the question still bubbles to the top: are photographers aggressors? Though the law may allow taking of pictures in certain places at certain times, what's the morality of doing so?

This Post-Gazette article points out that the Penguins have a better record without Sidney Crosby in the lineup than with him. Whaaaa???

One paragraph that stood out to me, part of a quote from Brooks Orpik:

"That being said, no one wants him out of the lineup. Maybe guys kind of sit back [when Crosby plays]. I don't want to say he makes other guys nervous, but they kind of look at him and know he's in the lineup and they don't have to play as hard."

If that's true, the Pens won't win the Stanley Cup this year or any year. Here's to hoping someone - the coach, Gary Roberts, or even Sidney Crosby step up and make certain that such an attitude doesn't continue. The Pens could win the Cup this year, but not with that attitude.

Rivet, Cynical Peak's software for connecting your Mac to your Xbox 360 to stream movies, music, and photos, is coming along well. We have one more beta to release (most likely) and then we'll begin selling it.

Cyndicate is going to be bumped to version 1.2 shortly. We've made a dramatic improvement to startup speed and added a few features. Quitting Cyndicate now results in some database optimization. It defaults to a time period that's a bit longer than I like, but if you want to set the key manually you can do so by setting "IROptimizePeriod" to whatever period you'd like (in seconds). Mine is defaults write com.CynicalPeak.Cyndicate IROptimizePeriod 3600.

Scorecard is selling well for both Windows and Mac OS X. We too were among the many given the "wait a bit longer" iPhone SDK response from Apple, but we're optimistic and will look to add iPhone scoring and syncing to Scorecard as soon as possible. For a limited time, you can save 20% by using the coupon code "SANDTRAP" at checkout.

I've remained mum about this for the longest time, but I just can't take it anymore. My copy of Photoshop CS3¹ seems incapable of writing files with a preview embedded in such a way that the Finder, Preview, Safari, etc. can see the darn files. Instead, I just get the message you see to the right (in English and three other languages).

Photoshop's help is not, and I've set the preferences the way that makes sense. So what am I doing wrong? Why won't the damn Finder show previews or, more likely, why won't Photoshop embed them?

Update: That trick always works. The instant you publish something to your blog, you remember you haven't checked Google yet and you find the answer. "Maximize Compatibility" must be turned ON. Derrr.

If you're into college basketball (no, and no for me personally) as well as some great Mac software (yes, duh!), then you might be interested in entering Cynical Peak's March Madness contest.

As for my entry, uhh, just give me the top seeds in every game with a few 13-over-5 type upsets.

I usually agree with Rotten Tomatoes. I Am Legend got a 68%. Perhaps their math library's not working and the decimal was misplaced, because that's all I can figure. The plot was horrible, disconnected, and incoherent (I'd list examples, but every time I think about it I come up with several new ones, so I'm afraid I might not be able to stop). The characters were poorly developed. The animation was wretched.

68%? More like 6.8%. Blech. I'm glad I spent only $1.25 to see the movie and am glad to remove it from my Netflix queue lest it take five days to receive, watch, and return.

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A few days ago I picked up my Airport International v2.0 from Think Tank. It's a medium-sized roller-case that meets international standards for carry-on luggage. I needed a bag that would carry the 300/2.8, the rest of my gear, and a few other things.

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This car remained parked in the same location for nearly an hour.

Behind it, an empty driveway. Further behind it, 200 feet of treelawn (and no intersections).

Rumors have been floating around for over a year re: the Canon 5D Mark II (see also: Canon 3D, 6D, and 7D). Earlier today, MacNN's generic electronics site and Gizmodo both published specs of the "forthcoming" Canon 5D Mark II. The source? Some bozo without a source or a real name on DP Review's forums.

C'mon. Some bozo on a forum isn't news.

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I read the Strobist review. I read the reviews at amazon.com.

Originally I tried to buy the book at Barnes and Noble. They had one in stock. For $54.99. Same at Borders. Sorry, but there are very few books (paperback no less) worth more than $50. Amazon.com sells it for $35.

The book - via the subtitle - promises to give you "photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters." In that regard, it's pretty much a failure. There are very few "secrets" in the book.

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You know, one of the most amazing things I've discovered about photography is just how amazing our eyes are. They auto-adjust for white balance, saturation, focus, and the amount of light available.

The last constantly amazes me any time I try to take a shot indoors. At f/2 to f/4, and ISO 1600, I'm often reduced to 1/40 to 1/80 second shutter speeds. Outdoors on a sunny day, at ISO 100, the "Sunny 16 Rule" tells you the shutter speed should be about 1/100 at f/16. That's nine stops faster or about 500 times the amount of light generated indoors.

Yet most people have no trouble seeing in either. The human eye is pretty incredible.

Handy javascript bookmarklet that shows only the image at flickr: http://blackr.net/. It's free.

BTW #1: Except for sports photographers who need the raw speed of JPEG (file writing), I have a hard time understanding why anyone would shoot JPEG over RAW when given the choice.

BTW #2: Lighting indoors can sometimes be awful. I'm constantly amazed at how good a job our eyes do of auto-white balancing things we see.

This summarizes my iPhone SDK experience:

In other words, after installing the iPhone SDK, I experienced massive screen artifacts. Behind the mess on-screen here is Safari.

I used Time Machine to restore my /System/Library/Extensions folder (the iPhone SDK installs several kexts), rebooted, and all is well. I doubt I'll be doing much iPhone development anyway until Interface Builder is updated to include the iP* elements.

P.S. Mac Pro, ATI Radeon X1900 XT, plenty of RAM… and the problems went away with the old Extensions folder. Artifacts appeared for every user.

I have only one iPhone SDK question: Is it possible and/or easy to synchronize data with desktop computers?

I ask because the first application we intend to make for the iPhone is an add-on for Scorecard. It will allow users to enter their stats on the golf course, then ideally to "synchronize" them with the desktop app (on Windows and Mac OS X) when they return home. And of course we'll want to make sure the user's iPhone has the user's course and tee details, so we need a way to copy that information from the desktop app to the iPhone.

At the present time, this doesn't appear to be possible. Failing any sort of "file movement," I wonder if we'll be able to automate something like emailing of a round of statistics (as an XML file or whatever) easily.