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iLife '09: Couldn't care less about iMovie. Don't use it. Haven't for years. iPhoto - I use Aperture for my "serious" shots - iPhoto is the dumping ground for the photos Carey takes with the P&S. Will I have to go back and add "places" and "faces" to everything? I hope not. How many cameras have GPS in them? I guess earlier is better than later, even if it's a minority.

iWork '09: I don't care about Keynote (that may change, however), and I like what I saw from Numbers and Pages. Pages still uses a drawer, though - I saw that.

iWork Online: Charging for it? Seriously? But if it works really well it may be a very cool thing. Still not sure I'll want to pay for it though, on top of two full MobileMe accounts in this household already.

17" MacBook Pro: Don't care. Never did. Wonder if Apple can sell their battery technology to Tesla. Run your car from a single 17" MacBook Pro for up to 200 miles!

DRM-free: Sure, but at $0.30/song and 30% per album? Isn't that like an early adopter fee?

Phil: He did fine, but he didn't have much material to work with. We've had pretty boring Stevenotes too.

Overall: Zzzzzzzz. Which is fine - I'm not as caught up in the "excitement" as I used to be. If anything, this expo saved me a lot of money on hardware. On software it's another story: I must admit I'm feeling awfully nickel-and-dimed today:

1. $0.99 for a stupid Keynote remote application.
2. $?? for iwork.com access after the beta (when MobileMe is not exactly the best value these days)
3. $100.42 (that's a lot of nickels and dimes) to upgrade my library, despite iTunes Plus songs costing the same $0.99 as when I purchased the music?

Blarg.

I'm pretty annoyed right now. How much of that has to do with the Pittsburgh Penguins and how much of has to do with what I'm about to write about, I don't know…

A friend of mine just started a photoblog, and I commented that he should include the EXIF information in his photos so that I could see what his settings were (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, etc.) and make better comments or suggestions.

He said "I am." I then noticed that he was embedding smaller versions of his originals from flickr.

I did a quick search and, gee, this post from JDD comes up. Guess who was the first commenter?

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I've just renewed my driver's license online. I guess I'll get a "camera card" in the mail eventually, will take that to the DMV, and they'll give me a license. And only $26!

I got my last license in 2005 around my birthday. Licenses in PA expire the day after your birthday (March 23, so, March 24, 2009 for the current one) and not long after I got that PA license, I moved. So for years I've been carrying around a dumb yellow piece of paper that has my "corrected" address because PA doesn't want to print and give you a second license, I guess. In other words, my actual license has had the address of the apartment I lived in for a few months when I first moved back to PA.

Blerg.

I also renewed my two kayak registrations online. Double-blerg. $18 + $2 apiece. The boat registration renewal form didn't like when I put "0" in for the amount I wanted to donate to two charities. The form wouldn't work until I left the two fields blank.

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By far, the worst movie Kevin Smith's made ((Well, at least that I can think of off the top of my head.)).

The best part was seeing Elizabeth Banks in a classic blue Penguins jersey. Maybe she should try out for them - they couldn't get much worse lately ((They'll pull through the slump.)).

I only paid $2 to see it, but it wasn't worth that.

JPG Magazine is closing its doors. The website isn't even going to last a week - it closes January 5, 2008.

The last issue I got was issue 19. I'm a paid subscriber through issue 31. Neither the website nor the form letter I got tells me that I'm going to be reimbursed for my subscriptions. Here's to hoping that's just because it's so early.

I just renewed for another year on December 24. I received a gift subscription, which I gave to a pal named Dan. He gave me an iTunes Gift Certificate to say thanks. Fortunately I've not yet spent it, and I'll talk with Dan to see how I might make things right with him.

Of course, we'd both rather have the magazine than our money back, but that's not happening. I'll give JPG time to figure out how it's going to reimburse everyone, too.

I've got a Really Right Stuff camera plate for the Canon 5D for sale. It's the B5D model and I used it all of, oh, about once before replacing it with the L-bracket.

Any reasonable offers accepted (ideally within the U.S.).

Following yesterday's post, I've resolved to do the third option: "limited edition" type releases in very small number. I'll post three desktops (most months) on the first day of each month. They'll be available that month and that month alone.

For January, I've posted six - the "best of," if you will so that everyone has one last chance to get them. Click Desktops above or, well, right there.

Come February 1, they'll be gone, and three new desktops will take their place.

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Though the Desktops I offer were initially well-received, they've not exactly been downloaded at a steady clip. Some aren't downloaded at all, and even the "popular" ones have tailed off dramatically.

I haven't been promoting them much, and after the initial batch, I only refreshed the listing once. That, no doubt, led to some of the stagnation.

Thing is, I don't really want to close it up. The script is still probably valuable to someone and I still like showing off a few photos. Though I can (and do) also do that at my photoblog, those images are capped at 950 pixels in width and are unsuitable as desktop pictures.

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Literally a sign! I took this picture at my local bank, a National City branch on 26th Street. We were there to close out a mortgage line (we're consolidating) and noticed this sign. National City was recently bought out by PNC - the final approvals just occurred, as far as I know, and many of the local branches will have to shut down. Frankly, we don't mind so much as customers simply because our nearest branch will likely be the PNC on Interchange Road.

Anyway, the quote is particularly… I don't know… appropriate?

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Great attitude!

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Anyone else out there have Animal Crossing: City Folk? I'm looking to add some friends.

I'll post my friend code as soon as my wife gets off the game. She's already logged about 10 hours (with assistance from the gift's recipient). 🙂

Update: Here it is. Don't you just love my little Apple shirt? Oh, and the town name? QTVille. Wife and kiddo picked it…

Over at 37 Signals I read about a guy who says every one of his Macs has failed.

I've had my own computers - always Macs and almost always two to three at a time - and, knock on wood, every single one of them has worked without any sort of "failure." The worst I've had it was my ATI card acting funny earlier this year, and that was replaced by Apple.

In fact, my kiddo just played some Web things on the 12" PowerBook and, as of right now, we've got no less than four Macs all running smoothly. Again, knock on wood.

By far, one of my favorite things about the holidays are chocolate covered cherries. And peppermint ice cream, but less so.

For $0.99, you can pick up some truly awful chocolate covered cherries, but even those are good in limited quantities. The really good ones you pay for, naturally.

I have but one question, though: why are chocolate covered cherries a holiday treat? I know you could probably find them at chocolate stores year-round, but you certainly won't find them sitting out year-round at the stores that carry them during the holidays.

Yes, like last year, I put the Alien Bee 400s in the living room and took photos of the present-opening. I haven't gone through the images from this year yet, but I should have re-read last year's settings: f/4 at ISO 200. I think most of the shots from this year were at ISO 200 and f/5.6, which means I was throwing out about 2x as much light as last year.

Next year I hope to pop the Alien Bees with Pocket Wizards attached to a Canon 5D Mark II. 🙂

I think I might like to try my hand at learning to ride a unicycle. It can't hurt anything and it might be kind of fun.