found_drama

• Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens Review
  (tags: camera lens photography reviews 50mm)
• FM Reviews – EF 50mm f/1.8 II
  (tags: camera lens photography reviews 50mm)

• Scrivener – A Writer’s Paradise
  via The Apple Blog
  (tags: Scrivener writing software reviews todo)
• Flickery – The “iPhoto” For Flickr
  via The Apple Blog
  (tags: Mac software Flickr Flickery todo beta)

• Postgraduate Writers’ Conference (August 8-14, 2008)
  Vermont College of Fine Arts (Union Institute & University)
  (tags: Vermont writing conference todo)

• AJAX Libraries API – Google Code
  via a tweet from @ckelly – agreed: HOT!
  (tags: ajax api framework webdev google jQuery javascript)
• Drawing Conclusions
  via Jettison Canopy (via DF) :: “Illustrator vs. the world” — the great vector drawing app round-up of ’08
  (tags: Illustrator OSX vector essay todo)

• 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life
  (tags: lifehacks future goals health personal productivity philosophy todo)
• Beer Suggest
  via LifeHacker :: I never did get around to Cork’d, so I don’t know why I’m flagging this as “todo” — but we’ll see…
  (tags: food beer reference reviews todo)
• B&H Photo Video
  (tags: camera photography video shopping)

As with many “Year’s Best” type anthologies (regardless of genre), it is difficult to evaluate Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection as if it were a whole. Unlike a themed collection (e.g., Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse), you cannot easily ask how each story is helping to advance or otherwise round-out the speculation or evaluation of that given theme. But that’s OK; that’s not why we pick up and read a collection like this. And it’s a hazard we’re willing — nay: happy — to take on.

That said, the rating for the collection here is a computed average of my ratings on the individual stories themselves. Out to four decimal places, the 24th Annual Collection scores: 3.3929

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Well, gentle readers, yesterday I wrapped up the hemming and hawing and took the DSLR plunge.  Motivated in part by the impending baby and in part by a good Memorial Day Sale deal, I picked up a Canon XTi.

A. & I ventured out yesterday to hit a couple of stores and try our luck with the advertised sales and their not-always-advertised deals.  The main objective was to get a little bit more hands-on play time with the front-running models (i.e., the Nikon D60 and the Canon XTi) and shore up the decision.  I had found a couple of good deals online (Amazon.com to the rescue) but figured by the time we factored in shipping, there was a chance I would spent about the same amount at a brick-and-mortar store.  Plus (as mentioned above) the last thing I wanted to do was commit to one without having had another chance to get a feel for the controls.

Our first stop was out of the XTi but we did spend a few minutes with a D60.  After about 10 minutes screwing around, I decided that the D60 would be acceptable but there was something unfamiliar about the controls and the icons that bugged me out.  We left there and moved on to store #2.  They had both the XTi and the D60 in stock but neither camera was sold “body-only” — so that combined with the lack of 50mm primes combined with the less-than-great sale price…  We moved on.

Store #3…  Well, they took care of us.  The price was right, the sales person was knowledgeable and friendly and candid.  And though they carried neither a body-only kit nor the 50mm prime…  Well, she convinced me.  I’m glad I went ahead with it:

Left on the to-do list?  The kit lens is a great starter, I think but everyone keeps bringing up that fast 50mm prime.  Oh…  And does anyone have a recommendation on a good “backpack style” camera bag?

Special thanks out to Chris, John, and Justin for their feedback, recommendations, and tips.

A few thoughts on Mac OS X 10.5 (“Leopard”) after having spent a solid week using it:

1. Spaces.  I didn’t think that I was going to use this at all but it turns out that it’s a great alternative to minimizing certain windows.  Example: during the day I typically run all the apps I need and minimize certain ones (e.g., Things; e.g., OmniOutliner) to “get them out of the way” while I work in others.  What Spaces has allowed me to do is to put these apps off to the side, in their own separate context, without having to get them jammed up in the Dock.
2. Time Machine.  In a word: awesome.  It’s already come in handy and permitted me to recover some inadvertently lost files^[1] from the otherwise certain doom of “Secure Empty Trash”.  The UI is a little intense but the metaphor makes sense and it didn’t take me long to figure it out.
3. The “new” Dock.  I’m a hidden-Dock-on-the-side kind of guy on my main machine so I really haven’t noticed this.  That said, I actually like the way it looks.  Also…
4. Stacks.  I didn’t think I would use this either.  But I’ve found them to be pretty useful.  It has also been nice to pull stuff off the ol’ Desktop.  This new default Downloads folder, for example: I could get behind that in a big way.
5. Translucent menubar.  Meh…  I could see why some folks are turning it off.  None of the Desktop graphics I’ve used have made it difficult to read the menus (at least not yet).  One thing that I do like about it is that it seems to soften the top edge of the screen a little bit while still maintaining that “hard ceiling” effect.
6. Cover Flow in the Finder.  Another one that I thought I wouldn’t use.  Sure enough, it’s replaced column view as my preferred file browsing method.  Combined with Quick Look, it’s emerged as a very nice UI improvement.
7. Accessing Shared Machines.  Weird.  I’m undecided if I like this change or not.  On the one hand, it seems to be a lot easier to access the machines I need.  On the other hand, I was accustomed to the whole “⌘k” thing to get to the Connect to Server dialog.  So that screwed me up for a while — especially since it didn’t seem to want to respect the afp:// in my server addresses.  Once I figured out how to make the connections, the rest kind of fell into place (e.g., network-connected volumes still “live” at the same place on the command line so I didn’t need to update my rsync scripts) but it was a little bit of a rocky start.
8. “Unified” UI.  I like.  Active/front-most windows are certainly more obvious than before.  And this UI treatment seems to make better use of individual pixels and overall screen real estate.
9. New Mail.  A lot less crashy.  (At least for me.)  But just like when they threw RSS into Safari: /meh.
10. Quicksilver.  Not “Leopard” per se but I’ve noticed a couple things about Quicksilver since the upgrade.  First, like Mail, Quicksilver also seems a bit less crashy than before.  Second, some of Quicksilver’s pre-loaded scripts seem to require updating; e.g., “Show Character Palette” and “Show Keyboard Viewer” (both of which I use all the time) seem to just flake out now^[2].  Also, something about the animations and special effects in the UI are a bit different.
11. Plays well with others?  Seems to play less nice.  Example: finding printers shared over Samba?  Oh you can find them.  But forget about authenticating.

1. Damn you, Microsoft Office 2008 Upgrader! [↩]
2. Fortunately I found where apps “live” and I have instead dropped aliases to them in ~/Applications. [↩]
3. Except for this tip here.  Damn but I wish this still worked. [↩]

The DSLR hunt continues.  As I mentioned last hit around, I continue to digest all of this.  It feels like a big move.  And while it’s not like a house- or car-level Big Purchase, it’s certainly a large wad of cash than I like to drop outside of true necessity.  Thus do I continue to contemplate, to deliberate, to ruminate, to speculate, and to vacillate.

The latest exercises have been to compare the various available packages (e.g., CostCo’s D60 kit vs. Ritz’s D60 kit; e.g., Best Buy’s Canon XTi kit vs. Circuit City’s XTi kit; etc.) and then compare those against “roll your own” scenarios (e.g., the Canon XTi “body-only” and then add on a fast 50mm prime).  It’s a tough road to travel, I tell you.

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• The Cure for Content-Delay Syndrome
  via A List Apart
  (tags: marketing projects publishing writing content essay todo)