The Ginger Sisters
The Ginger Sisters, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
For mothers day I got the girls to do their own hair and outfits so I could take their pictures and present them to mom in a nice frame. Mom loved them.
A whole bag o’ #canadianmusicfind
I’ve been saving these ones up for a about a week or so. There is lots of great Canadian music here from [#canadianmusicfind](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=canadianmusicfind “canadianmusicfind – Twitter Search”).
* [Dog Day](http://www.myspace.com/dogdaytheband “DOG DAY on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos”)
* [Holy Fuck](http://holyfuckmusic.com/ “!_______HOLYFUCK_______!”)
* [Woodhands](http://www.myspace.com/woodhands “woodhands on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos”)
* [Winter Gloves](http://www.winterglovesmusic.com/ “WINTER GLOVES / about a girl”)
* [Ohbijou](http://www.ohbijou.com/ “Ohbijou”)
* [Shuffle Demons](http://www.shuffledemons.com/ “sHuFFle dEMoNs”)
* [Fairchild](http://www.fairchildrocks.com/ “Official Fairchild”)
* [Feist](http://www.listentofeist.com/ “Feist”)
* [Dan Mangan](http://www.danmanganmusic.com/ “Dan Mangan Music”)
* [Immaculate Machine](http://www.immaculatemachine.com/ “Immaculate Machine”)
* [Bedouin Soundclash](http://www.bedouinsoundclash.com/ “Bedouin Soundclash”)
* [The Details](http://www.thedetails.ca/ “The Details – www.thedetails.ca – the official website of The Details”)
* [Boats!!](http://www.myspace.com/boatthemusicband “boats!! on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos”)
* [The Provincial Archive](http://www.theprovincialarchive.com/ “The Provincial Archive”)
* [Swan Lake](http://www.jagjaguwar.com/artist.php?name=swanlake “SWAN LAKE”)
* [Arkells](http://www.myspace.com/arkellsmusic “Arkells on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos”)
* [Hollerado](http://www.hollerado.com/ “Hollerado”)
1/101 “Living with Barbie”
1/101 "Living with Barbie", originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
I have come to the conclusion that if I can’t beat them I must be assimilated. My house is over run with Barbie dolls and to be honest, the situations I find the girls have left them are quite comical.
I have missed some of their best moments prior this idea, thinking to myself, I ought to document this some day. Well that day is now. I am going to try to take 101 pictures of these Barbies over the next 101 days.
We’ll see how this works.
The Kids
A little cherub
A little cherub, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
The sister of a college friend of mine recently had this precious little bundle of joy. I was fortunate enough to get to take some pictures of the little treasure. What a sweetheart!
Early morning bliss
Getting it just right, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.
There is nothing quite like waking up before dawn and not just enjoying a picturesque sunrise, but actually photographing one. That’s what myself and four other photographers from the Kitchener Waterloo area did early Sunday morning. We gathered or tired and weary selves at the Kiwanis park in Waterloo (Bridgeport area).
It was a fantastic little walk that presented us with all sorts of photo opportunities which included beautiful sunrises, morning mist on the Grand River and plenty of dew drenched vegetation.
To see the collection of images that I shot that day, go to the flickr set I made for the occasion. To see the works of others that were with me, try the most recent images marked “kiwanis” at the Kitchener-Waterloo flickr group.
Tis the season to be shooting
The holiday season is upon us and there is always plenty of family to take pictures of. Take the a moment to play with your family photography in ways you might not have thought of. Family dynamics can be very rewarding to photograph as I have written about here.
All the best in over the holiday season and here is to a wonderful new year. Until then, take care.
New Photoshop how-to
I’ve written a new, quick and simple Photoshop how-to that came to me while working through Scott Kelby’s 7-Points book. It’s not an earth shaking tip but it might have had you stumped just as I was. Read more here.
In other Merrifield Photography news, I just finished a shoot this past weekend, a family shoot, that really illustrates the importance of having fun with your clients (more in this article). It was great to get the family laughing and enjoying themselves as much with each other as they were with me. I’ll post pictures soon.
Time Machine. A giant leap backward.
Boy did Apple ever get that slogan right. Let me preface this post by first stating this; I truly *had* high hopes for [Apples new Time Machine](http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html “Apple – Mac OS X Leopard – Features – Time Machine”) found in the new [Leopard OS X](http://www.apple.com/macosx/ “Apple – Mac OS X Leopard”)… ***had***. Now that I got that out of the way, I can comfortably start my rant.
Time Machine for OS X Leopard sucks! No, it more than sucks; it sucks the biggest suckiness this side of suck universe. There is more suck packed in this one app than all of the os’s that Microsoft has ashamedly released in the last decade. I had suspected some of Time Machines downfalls in an [earlier post](http://www.nutmac.com/index.php/2007/10/27/day-one-with-leopard/ “Day one with Leopard.”) postulating that Time Machine could in fact instill a *very* false sense of security. I have successfully realized the hard truth in this fact.
First let me tell you what Time Machine is good for; retrieving one, or perhaps a small handful of misplaced files or pictures or movies or schematics for building a HAM radio or whatever… Let me tell you how Time Machine does this; all space flight through starry backdrops aside, Time machine effectively uses Finder to dig through another disk or partition on, or mounted near your computer, looking for previous states of your current or selected location or file. Once you find a state that give you warm fuzzies knowing you won’t have to retype your entire book report or PHD thesis, you select “restore” and watch as Finder copies that file or picture or yada yada, into the present state. That’s right, “copies”. As in you open one Finder window and copy one thing from one location to another. Herein lies the problem. Finder is not the most adept tool for restoring or copying in this instance because, despite it’s ability to do so, Finder won’t preserve all of the touch data (Unix and Linux touch command that controls the attribute, modified, accessed and created dates) which can seriously mess up other backup and syncing programs that you *should* be using in addition to (or because of) Time Machine.
Further to this, Finder is acting as the user when performing this copy action. This is fine if all you need to restore is your files or pictures or movies or letters to Grandma… but Finder is tragically under-authorized to restore important things like user settings, application states, support, caches, preferences, (and the list goes on)… anything that might require root or admin access. Anything in the *~Users/adam/Library*, for instance, and that is exactly the sort of inadequacy that might prompt me to exclaim things like “Time Machine sucks”.
When, you might ask, would one ever find themselves needing to restore their user Library folder? Well here is the scenario that had me pulling my hair out (noting that I take full responsibility for my stupidity but also noting that something similar and equally as tragic can happen to anyone). Those that follow me on [Jaiku](http://seyDoggy.jaiku.com/ “Jaiku | Your Conversation”) might recall a lot of talk last week about me rebuilding G4′s, moving G5′s, setting up Mac Pro’s, etc… Last week, an employee of a print and graphics outfit, for whom I do contract design, got a new Mac Pro. This spurred into motion a great shift of computers that involved no less then 5 computers as the now unwanted G5 made it’s way downstream, bumping another G5, a G4 PowerMac, a G3 PowerMac and a dead slot load iMac further down the chain of their useful lives.
Since I spend a great deal of time at this firm, and don’t own a MacBook Pro (a full Mac Pro sits happily upon my desk in the home office) I have managed to happily exist by syncing my home computer with whatever machine they’ll seat me at via a firewire drive I carry with me. I sync with [Chronosync](http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/ChronoSync/chrono_overview.html “ChronoSync | Perform File and Folder Synchronizations and Backups Like Clockwork | Econ Technologies”), a brilliant and powerful, hassle free application. The machine I had been using at the firm, until the arrival of the Mac Pro, was a G4 PowerMac (we’ll talk about the joys of working on a Mac Pro at home and a G4 at the office in future rants) but I was now about to move everything over to the G5 that was now available.
Migration assistant had served me well in the past and had done it’s job as expected in this instance as well. One thing I had overlooked, mind you, was the small but important issue that the touch information was altered to the extent that Chronosync would now view everything on that G5 as being newer than what was on my firewire drive, *and* I had Chronosync set to automatically sync as soon as the firewire drive was detected. I initially thought this wouldn’t be much of an issue since both machines, at the firm and at home, were in sync… or so I thought.
To shorten this story a bit, I’ll jump right to the part where I discovered that the caches, preferences, user settings and application states tend to have a way of resetting, or forgetting themselves in the process of moving from a G4, to a G5 to a firewire drive to a Mac Pro. Odd but totally true (yes I did already own up to my stupidity so you can just shut up now). What I was left with was a Mac Pro full of what it now considered unregistered software, empty address books, no bookmarks… Kind of puts a kink in productivity as I sure you can imagine, so I set forth to recover my entire user from Time Machine. Sure I could have just used my other Chronosync backup disks, but Time Machine seemed like a cleaner solution… at the time. Not to mention that Steve Jobs made it look so easy and fast.
So I just jumped into Time Machine, selected a state that my user was in earlier that morning, clicked restore and without a trial sync, file scan, folder analysis or any process that would do any sort of pre-check to see what complications might arise before beginning the process, time machine set my request into action. I identified immediately that all that was taking place was a “Finder copy” and knowing how Unix works (over writes instead of amends folders and folder contents) I immediately panicked. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Time Machine, or the Finder as it were, chugged along happily for a few brief minutes before stopping to inform me that Finder does not have sufficient permissions to copy *to* the Library folder… after it already over wrote the folder itself with nothing inside. Not good. A messy situation just got much, much worse. Many people might not realize how critical the data in their user Library is. In short, your computer ceases to be anything you once knew and loved. The computer doesn’t really know who you are anymore. Applications don’t know you and many won’t even launch. The whole experience is unlike anything you may have had on a computer before. It is not a good experience at all.
How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility when it’s got no safety checks in place, no trial-sync, no scan, no prior assessment of any kind? How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility that replaces entire folders in true Unix fashion instead merely replacing files within? How can Apple call Time Machine a backup and restore utility that does not have sufficient permissions to restore anything, anywhere anytime?
Lucky for me, I am very conscientious of my data storage, maintenance and security and was able to recover my entire user from a Chronosync backup and was back up and running in a matter of hours. But had I not had an alternate plan and been like any average user out there, I would be screwed! So let this be a lesson to you; Time Machine might look cool but be very careful on what you are entrusting to it. It might cause more harm than good.
[tags]Time Machine, OS X, Leopard, Chronosync[/tags]
Day one with Leopard.
I picked up my copy of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard from the Apple Store area of BestBuy (it must be a new thing, I didn’t question it) last night. I rushed in at 6:00pm sharp to beat the crowds (the Apple rep there told me there would be a lineup) only to find a lonely unmanned stall with a full compliment of Leopard boxes locked behind glass… not a single copy sold. I swear I am the only Mac user in Kitchener Ontario… Anyhow, I spent the evening downloading all the latest releases of all my apps (VersionTracker Pro.app is the bomb for that stuff), and backing up my drives, and backing those up on more drives, and so on. Then this morning I pulled out TechTool Pro and ran the full suite, to get me all optimized and what not (I would hate to copy over a mess of frags and discombobulations to the new setup). I also had a fresh new 500 Gb SATA drive ready to migrate to. Once I felt safe and secure, I popped in my Leopard DVD. No, I did not perform any sick, Apple product disrobing ceremony and no, I most certainly will not post pictures of how I opened the box.
So all went smoothly despite all the FUD I had read on MacFixit over the last few days. The install and migration took all of about two hours, including updating apps that didn’t make the cut so well and resetting keyboard shortcuts that got jumbled in transit. So here are a few thoughts;
* ##Finder…##
Cooler than before… but it still sucks. [Path Finder](http://www.cocoatech.com/ “Welcome to Cocoatech”) still blows it out of the water from a productivity standpoint.
* ##Coverflow##
Coverflow is cool if you don’t keep anything in folders, but not so cool when you actually organize your life. You know where coverflow is cool? In iTunes! ‘Nuff said.
* ##Quick Look…##
[Path Finder](http://www.cocoatech.com/ “Welcome to Cocoatech”) has had that built right in for quite some time and still does it better IMHO.
* ##iChat…##
I might have to open that app for the second time since it’s introduction way back when… I do think the desktop sharing is going to be cool though
* ##Time Machine…##
Now here is a great piece of software that is going to get in the wrong hands and generate all sorts of false security. For a guy like me this is cool because I will still do my regular cron backups, but I will have time machine going too. Why? Because time machine only keeps backups for as long as there is space n the disk to hold it. You can’t just keep shoveling crap into and figure it will be there for all time. I guess what I am saying is, don’t start arbitrarily cleaning off your main drive without a care in the world because you think Time Machine has got your back. I still recommend a daily regiment of backup, preferably automated.
* ##The Dock…##
There is a lot of extraneous visual information here that really impedes productivity. Until I get used to seeing reflections and transparencies and swoopty Web2.0-like lines and what not, I am going to struggle to see active versus inactive apps. This isn’t a huge deal for me though since I rarely use the dock but still, trying to spot those shining lights is a little tough, especially if you use the default star-scape desktop background.
* ##Stacks…##
Could be cool and I definitely plan to really play around with it. This is one of those new features, like expose, that might be a sleeper concept but something that everyone should use to make life faster. As of right now though I have the two default stacks. I have one for my Downloads folder (which I made myself and put in a special place, so how did it know where to find it?) and one for my Documents folder. And my documents folder is not one that should ever be sprung open without fair warning. It’s a big, scary, messy, unorganized place that should strike fear into all those who stumble upon it unsuspectingly.
* ##Front Row???##
Did I miss this in the press release somewhere? I have a Mac Pro… which has no IR capabilities… therefor Front Row is disabled… except now??? I did try to hack it a long time ago, but the hack never worked. Or did it?
* ##Speed…##
For all the griping that I may have had with all points above, that all pails by comparison to the fact that Leopard is FAST. Nothing add up to productivity like speed and Leopard has bags of it!
Was it all that bad to have made the switch? No, I am actually glad I did. The experience so far has been enjoyable… I just complain a lot. It was a quick and painless transition that could not have been any easier. WELL worth the $129 price tag… worth double if you ask me.
[tags]Mac, OS X, 10.5, Leopard[/tags]