found_drama

Taking the Aperture plunge…

After about four years and approximately nine thousand digital images collected, processed, managed, and shared via iPhoto, we’ve more/less out-grown it around this house.  Yes: this coincides in large part with the DSLR upgrade and the desire to shoot RAW but iPhoto just didn’t seem to be cutting it for us.  But was Aperture really going to fill our needs?  Or was it going to be overkill for this here hobbyist, this admitted amateur?  Did the perceived 120% I needed out of iPhoto translate into 10% of Aperture?  75%?  53.68%?  I had no illusions about taking 100% advantage of Aperture¹ but I wanted to at least get an idea of our utilization level before going all the way.

And so did the 30-day free Aperture trial period come in to the rescue. Read the rest of this entry »

1. I have some sincere doubts that I’ll ever shoot while tethered, for example.[↩]

Just back from Maine where we helped my maternal grandparents to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Grandpa didn’t want the pageantry of a full-on cake, so we talked him down to cupcakes:

(The cupcakes in lieu of cake.)

It’s been a little hard for me to come to grips with it. I was certainly eager to help them celebrate 50 years (!!!) but my Grandpa has been pretty sick these past couple of months. I’d been trying to “head in the sand” it a little bit but my mother in her wisdom assigned me the project of coming up with a slideshow for the event. Burned down to DVD, I managed to fit 218 photos into about 20 minutes without it being too tedious or boring. More so, I then took it upon myself to get the scans over into a little book (thank you, iPhoto) that folks could inscribe their well wishes.

(Their best man from the wedding makes the toast for the 50th.)

A bit trying, emotionally but we all got through it. Even if I did almost lose it when my Grandpa stood up to announce that he was leaving. “I’m getting to old for this sort of partying.” The man has an awe-inspiring presence. Such a charm and charisma - - it’s no wonder he’s managed to keep my Grammie around for 50 years.

That said, the highlight of the weekend came when the photographer snapped a picture of my Grandpa and the best man. Grandpa was explaining the connection to the photographer. “This is John Gallagher. He was the best man at my wedding.” Then he pauses a moment, eyebrow raised. “Actually, no. I was better.”

Been toying around with doing this list for a while now. The question: What are the top 10 software applications for OS X (that aren’t out-of-the-box, mind you) that are absolutely essential? The top 10 apps that I couldn’t live without:

1. [tag]Quicksilver[/tag] (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/) - The launcher to end all launchers. Is there anything this app can’t do? “Oh, that? There’s a plug-in for that.” Seriously, having used it for a over a year now, I can’t imagine computing without Quicksilver. Not just computing on a Mac without it. Computing. (In other words, Quicksilver is the reason I’ll never be able to go back to the PC.) Some folks say [tag]Spotlight[/tag] can do the same thing. Clearly, they weren’t using Quicksilver to its utmost.
2. [tag]VoodooPad[/tag] (http://www.flyingmeat.com/) - A personal wiki and info manager. Fast and easy to use, if works the way a notepad app should. Because it’s a wiki at heart. Encryption, backlinks, document-wide searches, categorization, sketching; the list goes on. Also available in “Lite” version.
3. [tag]Cyberduck[/tag] (http://cyberduck.ch/) - Fully-featured FTP application. Complete with SFTP support. Complete with [tag]Rendezvous[/tag]/[tag]Bonjour[/tag] support. Complete with [tag]AppleScript[/tag] support. Complete with [tag]Keychain[/tag] support. (Insert your localization here.) Oh, and it’s open source. (Honorable mention here: [tag]Fugu[/tag]!)
4. [tag]OmniGraffle[/tag] (http://www.omnigroup.com/) - Pretty much the perfect diagramming application. And with some sweet drawing capabilities wrapped up in it, too. (Because those are prett intrinsically linked.) Worth the price. And so is the Professional version.
5. [tag]Camino[/tag] (http://www.caminobrowser.org/) - Don’t get me wrong, [tag]Safari[/tag] is a great browser. (And apparently the first browser to pass the Acid2 test.) But in the “real world” there are plenty of sites that either don’t support it (or that Safari doesn’t support). Politics and rhetoric aside, Camino is a great browser in its own right and the superior Gecko-based browser on OS X. For when you need to (you know) use a WYSIWYG editor like the one in [tag]WordPress[/tag].
6. [tag]ImageWell[/tag] (http://www.xtralean.com/) - A lightweight image editor for running certain quickie image manipulations. Including the ones that you’d expect to see in [tag]iPhoto[/tag] but didn’t manage to make it there. (And this is another one of those freebies…)
7. [tag]Lingon[/tag] (http://lingon.sourceforge.net/) - The [tag]launchd[/tag] editor/manager. And it’s open source.
8. [tag]OnyX[/tag] (http://www.titanium.free.fr/) - A little app that opens up some of OS X’s secret preferences. Like sticking your Dock flush right.
9. [tag]Flip4Mac[/tag] (http://www.flip4mac.com/) - A plug-in for [tag]Quicktime[/tag] that lets you play Windows Media files. Nothing spectacular here except that it rids you of having to download RealPlayer in order to browse the music on [tag]Amazon.com[/tag]. (And recently made free!)
10. (insert your [tag]text editor[/tag] here) - A controversial subject, I know… Many folks would shout “[tag]BBEdit[/tag]!” here … but I’m not one of those. I tried it. I could see how someone might fall in love with it. But I had a hard time getting used to it. Didn’t “do it” for me. That said, I’ve recently discovered [tag]TextMate[/tag] and am rather enjoying that. As far as text editors go at least. Also, honorable mention here: [tag]jEdit[/tag] - - a Java-based text editor. Open source and free, it’s pretty powerful and has a slew of awesome plug-ins. I’ve used it for 3 or 4 years now and have been pretty happy with it. Except that (like all Java apps) it’s hella slow…

Another Honorable Mention: [tag]Adium X[/tag] … a neat little chat client. And (in my experience) a hell of a lot better than [tag]iChat[/tag]. But I don’t include it in the top 10 because frankly, I kind of abhor chat. A.k.a. “latent messenger”…

currently playing: Chris Connelly “Come Down Here”