NSLog();

I've mentioned it before, but never as formally as this (in its own post). Aperture has the lovely ability to do two things:

1. constrain crop proportions (say, to 4:3)
2. Export images resized to a maximum height and/or width

Great. I use it in creating my Desktops as well as the 500-pixel wide images you often see here in my blog entries.

What bothers me, though, is that either the 4:3 cropping isn't being done properly, or the resizing isn't being done properly. Oftentimes, with a desktop image exported at a maximum width of 2560 and in the 4:3 format, I'll get images that are 1919, 1918, or even 1917 pixels wide rather than the 1920 I should get. The other day one of my images was exported at 2559 x 1920 ((The source was about 3500 wide, so it wasn't too small already.)).

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 255); »

I just found out.

As of February 17, 2007, Studio 60 had been pulled from NBC's lineup to be replaced with The Black Donnellys starting February 26. NBC said that they will place it back in the lineup later this season. However, on April 2nd, NBC announced that Studio 60 would not reclaim its Monday at 10pm time slot at the conclusion of the Black Donnellys's run and that The Real Wedding Crashers, a reality show based on the popular movie, would occupy the timeslot from April 23rd through the end of the TV season.

You have got to be fucking kidding. The Real Wedding Crashers over Studio 60? Seriously? I must give some "real" thought to not watching anything on NBC ever again.

I took some pictures of some ball bearings. One of them is now on the desktops page.

The first one was taken with a black cloth over the top and back of the ball bearings. I turned the overhead light off and bounced a gridded flash into a large sheet of blue paper camera left. All the brown/orange you see is the ceiling (wood). I'm clearly visible behind the camera here.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 242); »

Zach Johnson wins the 71st Masters. I spent my day live blogging the proceedings here.

Sorry Tiger, there will be no slam for you.

I'm trying very hard not to look at the snow we have lying around on the ground right now. Just a week ago I was golfing. Now, snow. In North East, they have three or four inches.

I was scheduled to play Cranberry Highlands this Friday, but I don't think that's going to happen. Cranberry isn't even scheduled to warm up dramatically between now and then.

Goodness I dislike Erie sometimes.

Iris beta testing will officially commence on Monday, April 9. Those who have signed up should look for something on the mailing list at that time.

Ron and I went to Lake Pleasant last Sunday afternoon. We weren't terribly inspired, and despite having some semi-interesting subjects, the flat lighting made even the nifty subjects rather boring.

I've added one of the shots - a version of the "berry shot" - along with another shot of a flower in my front yard to the Desktops page.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 285); »

I've written up a little summary and installation guide for the desktops resizer script. If you have any questions about this first draft, please post them in this post's comments. I'd like to keep the comments on that page clear of the early bug reports and/or editing suggestions.

a) because I almost never use Spotlight
b) this

I use LaunchBar. It does all I need - quickly launch things or allow me to drag and drop. I can even add items to the party shuffle (though I wish I could disable certain functions, like "play" and a lot of the other iTunes shortcut).

Yeah, uh, this is not a very wise cron task:

/bin/rm /bin/rm /files/I/actually/wanted/to/delete

Stupid copy/paste. Needless to say, I now have a /bin/rm_backup file as well. 🙂

I have an interview scheduled with someone later this week, and I will have to record a phone call. Prior to today, I thought I might just use Skype. At 2.1 cents/minute, it's not exactly expensive.

Still, I have some questions and concerns. Can a third person (on the Skype application) be conferenced in to the same call? Will the quality be very good?

I record our podcasts via Skype (and Audio Hijack Pro), but not by calling an actual phone. Should I look instead to buy some hardware that can hook up on my phone or to my phone line to record a digital file? Or should Skype be fine? I may be doing more of this sort of interview this year, so I'm not opposed to a small investment in some equipment if it's worth it.

The "Desktops" section is now available. Aaron Linville and I still have some tweaking to do to the resizer/watermarker script, and we'd still like to iron out some image quality issues, but it "works" in that images are served at the size you request and properly watermarked.

If you like what you see, consider donating a little cash towards the photography "hobby" and I'll keep trying to update the Desktops regularly. I promise, though, this and "step 3" on the Desktops page itself is all the begging you'll hear from me on this.

Feel free to suggest additional shots you'd like to see posted, as some people already did in the original entry on this.

Hopefully this will be handled easily. I have a few EMI tracks, but I'd like to be offered the chance to seamlessly "upgrade" to the higher-quality, DRM-free versions.

Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

I'd also like my existing tracks to be replaced, and the play counts, ratings, etc. to be preserved.

My friend Josh has released Lightbox XMP, which he describes as "an export plugin for Aperture tool that allows you to export XMP information, beyond what Aperture provides automatically, with your images." LXMP can export referenced master sidecars, export sidecars, export images and sidecars, and embed the XMP or export both sidecars and images with embedded XMP.

Lightbox XMP is donationware, so download it for free and try it out.