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Aperture 2.0 arrived today. The upgrade process went smoothly until Aperture began updating previews. I would rather it have given a progress bar and insisted it do that work modally rather than as a background task. The app was unusable during that time anyway.

FlickrExport fortunately works with 2.0 out of the box, and I've uploaded a few photos I took this afternoon with it. FlashAlbumExporter works as well.

Shortly after upgrading to 2.0 (and on about the eighth launch), my vault encountered errors. I had to delete it and re-create it, a lengthy process. On the up side, it eliminates the wonder I had whether I should create a clean, fresh vault. 🙂

And yeah, Aperture 2.0 speed >>> Aperture 1.0 speed. I might be able to leave most of my applications running (on a Mac Pro!) with 2.0.

P.S. Remember to vote!

A few days ago, my Time Machine drive filled up.

I back up a 500 GB drive nightly to another 500 GB drive. My main drive (and the exact, full, bootable backup) have 130 GB free.

Since I began backing up my Time Machine drive shortly after Leopard's release back in October, I'm fairly impressed that it took so long to "fill up."

Occasionally, syncing contacts on my iPhone takes minutes. Like 5-10. Other times, it takes 30 seconds.

I sync with .Mac and Entourage (just the contacts), but I don't think those matter. The .Mac syncing is always on, and disabling the Entourage syncing doesn't magically speed things up.

FWIW, I have only 54 contacts in my "iPhone" group in Address Book, and those are the only contacts that I sync with the iPhone. A few (three or four) have pictures. One has a custom ringtone.

I just ran three syncs back to back. The first took four minutes. The second took five minutes. The third took less than 20 seconds.

Since updating to Mac OS X 10.5.2, my computer will randomly and semi-frequently drop its AirPort connection. This has never been a problem before.

I'll usually notice because Safari will complain that it's not connected to the Internet. I look at the signal strength in the menu bar, notice it's gone completely dim, and click it. I reselect my network (WPA) and it works again for a day or an hour or so.

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From gamesindustry.biz: "SquareTrade, a firm that specialises in electronics warranties, has found that of a sample of 1000 Xbox 360 consoles, the failure rate was 16.4 per cent."

Normally consumer electronics try to shoot for failure rates of 2-3% or less, if I remember correctly. I have a hunch that 16.4% is even a little bit low. My Xbox 360 has been fine so far (knock on wood), but since announcing Rivet beta testing starting tomorrow, no less than two of the 15 testers we have lined up have informed me that their Xbox has gone belly-up in the past two weeks.

This seems appropriate:

And don't get me started on the DRM hell a busted Xbox 360 gets ya.

In no particular order…

Free Software for Apple Employees
If you're an Apple employee (with an @apple.com or @filemaker.com email address), simply drop by http://cynicalpeak.com/apple/ to claim a free copy of Cyndicate or Scorecard (or both!). It's our gift to Apple employees for all the hard work they've put in, and it doesn't matter if you're a retail employee or Phil Schiller. It's free for all.

Scorecard for Windows
Cynical Peak is also announcing today the immediate availability of Scorecard for Windows. Built by Geir-Tore Lindsve, Scorecard for Windows is effectively a port of a pretty nifty golf stats application I've been using for over two years. The two applications can swap and share the same database and license file.

Rivet Beta Testing
Will begin on Friday. If you're on the Rivet team and you've not logged in to the bug tracker and changed your password yet, please do so now.

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Now that Aperture 2.0 is out ((I still hope mine ships today so that I can play over the weekend. I ordered at 6:08am PST yesterday, after all, and have two-day shipping.)), with "image adjustment plugin support," I'm curious what kind of plugins people might want to see made.

My personal list is rather short.

• Great noise reduction (there are a few good ones out there).
• A complete HDR plugin.
• A panorama stitcher.
• A plugin that can flip images horizontally and vertically ((Seriously, Apple, how is this not a basic feature in a 2.0 product??)).

What's kind of plugins do you want?

P.S. I may not want any plugins. It appears that the Image Adjustments API, unlike the rest of Aperture, isn't quite "non-destructive."

A few people have asked (here, here, and in email and IM) about submitting photos for or joining the Photo Battle Blog.

I'd like to accommodate the requests, and if possible, I will - just not at the current site. In fact, given the relative success of the project, I'd like to propose a little project. Read on for more…

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I've come across a bug in QuickTime Player, and only yesterday while watching about 40 of Aperture 2.0's tutorial videos did I discover how to reproduce the bug 100%. This bug certainly existed under 10.5.1 (and prior to QuickTime 7.4.1), but remains today under 10.5.2 and the latest system software and QuickTime updates.

Anyway, here's how to reproduce the bug.

1. Open a movie file in QuickTime Player. It doesn't seem to matter what kind of movie file it is - a .m4v or a .mov will be fine.
2. Hit the space bar a few times. The movie plays and pauses. Hit the up/down arrow keys and the volume changes. All is well.
3. Enter full screen mode (cmd-F). The same keys continue to work.
4. Exit full-screen mode (cmd-F). Press the same keys. They don't work, and instead you get the standard "you idiot!" alert sound.
5. Click the video portion of the QuickTime Player window itself (your movie, if it was playing, will probably pause). Now, the space bar and arrow keys work again.

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I'm going to wait for my upgrade version to arrive (I paid for two-day shipping, hoping to get it by Friday), but based on the Aperture pages and some "first impressions" posts by others, here are my first impressions.

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Sometimes I just want to view all the comments on a particular entry. Why does WordPress make this so damn difficult? I swear, as soon as I figure it out this time, I'm editing my templates to make the URL a one-click type of thing. The only place this URL is given to you is in those emails - I don't think it's given anywhere in the admin interface at all.

http://domain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?p=xxxx&c=1

Needless to say, I went out and bought a neck guard today.

What's most incredible is how lightly he seems to have been struck by the skate. It wasn't a slicing motion and it wasn't even firm enough to push his head or neck backwards. Another video can be found here.

Two games I've played recently - NHL '08 and Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 - have some interesting songs on them.

You know what would be nice? Being able to instantly and easily buy some or all of those songs ((Or even getting a free copy included with the game, though that's obviously so unlikely to happen I've relegated it to this footnote.)).

Unfortunately, the current means of acquiring these songs goes something like this: find a track list for the game online. Type each individual song name into both iTunes and Amazon. Listen, compare the prices and file formats, and then buy.

I ended up buying a few songs from iTunes (the DRM-free album ones), and I've not yet gone back to Amazon to pick up a few others. I may not. After spending 30 minutes doing all of the above, I had to move on to other things.

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CoreImage: slow?

We're finding that as we work on Rivet the bottleneck isn't the network, but the image itself. We're performing two operations: resizing (to the larger of 1920 x 1080) and compressing (currently, the options are none, 90, 70, 50, and 30). These operations all seem to take about the same amount of time, and that time is slower than most networks can probably just push the extra 2 MB of data we're saving per image.

Is that realistic? Is CoreImage that slow?