• Search for:

•  

  July 2009

  S	M	T	W	T	F	S
  « Feb
  			1	2	3	4
  5	6	7	8	9	10	11
  12	13	14	15	16	17	18
  19	20	21	22	23	24	25
  26	27	28	29	30	31

• Categories

  • beverages
  • bitching
  • food
  • home
  • iPhone
  • jobs
  • Mac Tip
  • NFL
  • Pic of the Day
  • quotes from the wife
  • tech
  • travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Weight Watchers

• Archives

  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007

• personal

  • Friends of Orianna Hill Park
  • Little Shorty Monkey dot com
  • Northern Liberties dot ORG
  • PPUG

• professional

  • ParkerDigital
  • PowerPage
  • TechThoughts.org

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

I grabbed this shot while wandering through Chinatown In Philadelphia. The combination of a spectacular sky and vibrancy of the colors in the sign made it irresistible.

Shot with my Panasonic Lumix LX3 24mm f/4 1/800 ISO80

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

For people who make a living shooting stills and video, the pushback from law enforcement, cheap security guards and even the general public has long been an issue. The tourist has generally been left alone when it comes to snapping and taping in public places. Professionals, however, have always been harassed, intimidated and told to turn the camera off. But in this post 9/11 world things are spiraling out of control.

Take the deliciously ironic story of Dwayne Kerzic, the man at the center of an uber-ridiculous photo-controversy. Kerzic was participating in an annual Amtrak photography contest that asks “shutterbugs” to photograph Amtrak trains and submit them for cash and notoriety. Seems harmless enough.

Well, these days nothing related to photography is harmless if you’re a cop or security guard. These guys think they can make up the rules as they go along and that’s exactly what they did. Kerzic was the victim of an overzealous pair of Amtrak officers who handcuffed him to a railing for an hour while they figured out that they should arrest him for trespassing. He was on a public platform by the way.

The Colbert Report did a funny job of telling the story but I can’t reconcile the actions of the Amtrak officers in my own mind. Maybe because I have personal experience with this kind of thing.

Digging deeper, we find out that Kerzic is a member of the NPPA - the National Press Photographers Association. That certainly made a huge difference in the way this story unfolded because we now know that Kerzic is one of us, “the media.” It is likely that he has had similar encounters with guards and cops and he probably felt his rights were being violated. I’m sure he was defiant and it didn’t sit well with the Amtrak officers. That kind of attitude will get you arrested, even if you’re right.

I have a colleague who needed a few shots of a New Jersey federal court building for an educational project she was working on. She stood across the street on a public sidewalk and snapped a few shots with a tiny little point and shoot digital pocket camera. A security guard came across the street and demanded that she answer questions and then erase the contents of the memory card. She complied. I would have gone to jail.

Last year I was working on a video for Philadelphia’s Center City District. The video was a showcase of some of the city’s nicest places to eat, sleep and play. As I was across the street shooting an exterior of a “Ritzy” hotel, I was approached by someone from hotel security demanding to see my identification. I told him to shove it and carried on with my work. He walked away.

I could go on and on with stories like this. I have many personal accounts of law enforcement and plain old “yellow coats” unnecessarily harassing photographers who were working in a public space. My point is that you can’t just stomp on people who are doing something that is constitutionally protected. A terrorist doesn’t need an exterior shot of a hotel to know how to blow the thing up. Stop the photography and you haven’t stopped a single criminal act.

Do terrorists use photography to help them carry out their heinous acts? Of course they do. They also use credit cards, cars and and phones. How about we hassle everyone with a car? What say we bust the chops of everyone talking on a cell phone? That would surely make this world a safer place, right?

Renowned nature photographer Scott Bourne from the TWIP photography blog has been selling t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase, “photography is not a crime!”

Amen, brother.

I found this cool scene on my street after a light snow that turned to rain.

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

I recently had some correspondence with a guy who wanted to know how to migrate his hard drive to a new Mac. Apple makes a good tool for doing this if you all you want to do is get your machine up and running with all of your old settings and software as quickly as possible.

I did this when I moved from a 2 year old MacBook to my new MacBook Pro and it worked fairly well. The one major problem was that while I was easily moving all of my applications, files and settings from one machine to the other, I was also moving all of the garbage that I had accumulated over the last 2+ years.

After a short time with my new hardware, I realized that all of that gunk was slowing me down. I decided to start fresh and reinstall my stuff from scratch. What a difference! the machine booted SOOOOO much faster and the speed of general tasks was much improved. Here’s my conversation with Brian.

Hi. I hope you don’t find this a bother, but I had a quick question for you - I heard you on the PowerPage podcast and you were recently an advocate of a clean install on your computer to make things more “zippy”.  I have used migration assistant in the past but have accumulated several transfers over the years including a PowerPC>Intel and Norton mess. I want to transfer my files also from a system user to a limited user and keep my iTunes and iPhone connections.
Any advice?

Many thanks,
Brian

=====

Hi Brian,

I would suggest doing two backups. One should be a clone to an external hard drive. You can use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper and they’re both free.

Boot from the backup and make sure that all of your critical stuff like email, banking and work related stuff is working. Make sure all of your photos and music are working properly. Open Keychain and make sure that all of your password data is intact.

Then back up just your home folder to DVD or another drive. Again, check the integrity of the data. I like to back up my home folder to DVD because it can’t be re-written by me later. I know I won’t be able to do anything to incredibly stupid like overwriting my backup!

Now you need to make some plans for the future. De-authorize your installations of things like iTunes and Photoshop. You only get so many authorizations so it’s a good idea to de-authorize them now and re-authorize after your fresh installation.

After you feel comfortable with your backups, boot from your installation DVD and perform an “erase and install” OS X. I would not suggest an “archive and install” because that preserves all of your data including all of the junk that has accumulated. The erase and install will wipe the drive clean making your backups very important!

After the DVD finishes the installation, reboot into your new OS X installation. The computer will ask if you want to copy your files from another machine. DON’T DO IT! Install everything from scratch for maximum performance.

Go through the registration process skipping mail if you like and when you get to the desktop, run software update ’til the cows come home. Get everything up to date. You may have to run it several times because each time you update something, it may prompt an update of something else. Some people like to do Mac OS X updates from the latest combo updater which you can download from Apple’s software downloads website. If you’re doing a fresh erase and install, you’re probably fine just running Software Update.

First thing I do when I’m up and running again is copy over my mail stuff. Here’s how you do it…

Your mail settings live in /your user folder/Library/Mail. Drag that “Mail” folder from your backup and drop it into the corresponding location on your new installation. If it prompts you that there is another version there, tell it to replace the current version with the one from your backup.

Do the same thing with the mail downloads folder.

Then go find your mail preferences file. It’s in /your user folder/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Drag this file from your backup into the corresponding Preferences folder on your new installation.

Now when you launch Mail, all of your settings and emails should be there.

Keychain has a folder in there too and you should copy that over if you want to avoid having to re-enter your user names and passwords for saved sites.

If you have a MobileMe account you can set it up to sync your contacts and calendars. If not, you’ll have to migrate them the same way.

I always download and install my programs as I need them, using a text file that I have created to copy and paste the serial numbers into the new installation when prompted.

This sounds like a lot of work but it really isn’t too bad and I assume since you listen to the podcast that you, like me, are a sick-o for this kind of thing. I find it soothing and my machine is always much “snappier”!

After you have built your machine, you can create a new account, make it an administrator and then turn your freshly rebuilt account into a limited user. I don’t currently do this but I have tried it in the past.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. All the crap is over. The parties, the work, the rat race of six months of travel, bad matchups, great performances, blood, sweat and tears has led us to this point.

The NFL Films breakfast meeting is over and we’re loading the buses. Ready for liftoff.

Interesting story on this photo. I was lying on a pool of ice along a trail in the woods as I shot this photo. I had taken a few shots when I heard a woman’s voice call out asking if I was ok. She was walking her dogs, saw me on the ground from a distance and pulled out her phone to call 911! Sometimes you have to endure a little embarrassment in order to get the shot.

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

Wem runs in the Kubinsky’s back yard. December 2008

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

This picture was taken on the day after Christmas, 2008. Wem visits his relatives in Selinsgrove, PA.

L to R: Wembley, Toxie (mom), Fletch (brother)

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

By now you should know that you can close a window by clicking the red button in the upper left, send a window to the dock by clicking the amber button and re-size a window by clicking the green button. Here are a few advanced tricks that’ll shock and amaze your friends.

You can close all windows in a program by holding the option key while clicking the red button on one of the windows. This is helpful if you have several pictures or documents open and you want to close them all without quitting the program.

You can hold the option key while clicking the amber button on an image or document and all open items in that program will jump to the dock together. Option - click an image or document that is hidden in the dock and all similar items hidden in the dock will spring to life.

And if you really want to amaze your pals, hold the shift key while pressing the amber button to send your item to the dock in slow motion!

By default in Mac OS X Leopard, portable Mac trackpads are set with some really cool features turned off. Open the Preferences in the Apple menu and then choose “trackpad” or “keybard and mouse” depending on which portalbe you have. Here you’ll get access to clicking and dragging features that can make your life a lot easier.

I always turn on the “tap to click” feature when I get a new machine. It’s so much easier to simply tap than push the clicker button.

Another really cool feature of the trackpad is two-finger scrolling. Instead of using the scroll buttons to move your web pages and documents up and down, you can just slide two fingers up and down (and even left and right) while hovering over a window. You can even scroll things that are in the background. Once you get used to this feature, it’ll become as basic as breathing.

Ok, if you’re in the TV news media, listen up. This is an example of why you have no credibility and people hate you.

I just saw a promo for WCAU’s lame-ass local sports wrap show. The host is Vai Sikahema. So Vai pops up and says, “Will the Eagles make the playoffs? We’ll tell you tonight!”

There’s just one problem. It’s impossible for ANYONE to tell us if the Eagles will make the playoffs because they’re neither “in” nor “out” at this point. Having personally worked in TV news for 15 years, I am personally offended by this kind of crapcan hype.

Glad I’m out of that world now.

A: jingleshitz

Q: What do you get when holiday shopping has got you down?

The number of programs you can effectively have running simultaneously depends on the amount of memory you have installed on your machine. Remember, memory (or RAM) is not the same as hard drive space. Memory allows your system to efficiently perform its functions. Not having enough memory - or running more programs than your installed memory can handle - can cause your system to slow down or crash.

Mac OS X needs at least 512MB of RAM to run reasonably well. At this point, 1GB of RAM is the bare minimum you should have if you expect to run the latest version of OS X with a few programs running simultaneously.

If you add Windows running in Parallels or Fusion, you should probably have at least 2GB of RAM.

You can check your system configuration by choosing “About this Mac” from the apple menu.

Wembley lost a good friend recently. Louie the Brittany was nearly 17 years old when he died in early December. He had an amazing life, traveling the world and even living in Russia for a while. A happier, more likeable dog you’ll never find.

This photo was taken at the Orianna Hill Dog Park this past summer. That’s Wem in the background.

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

It has been a while since I updated the blog. I lost interest for a while. I needed a break.

Now I’m inspired again and I’m trying to think of new things that will be of interest to people.  I’m starting to post a Mac tip of the day. The tips are geared toward Mac beginners and switchers but I hope that even advanced users will find that they don’t know everything!

You can shut your Mac down at night but that’s not necessary. Sleep mode uses a little battery power but it allows your Mac to come back to life much quicker than restarting.

To sleep your Mac, choose “Sleep” from the Apple menu. An easier way is to press and release the power button, then hit the “S” key. If you have a portable Mac, you can just close the lid, although I no longer do this because once in a million times it doesn’t work and your machine may continue to run with the lid closed.

We all know that Mac applications never hang or crash, right? well…

If a Mac program becomes unresponsive and you want to quit it, press Command + Option + Escape and follow the promts to force the program to quit. On some older machines, the command key has a little apple on it instead of saying “command”. It’s almost always found immediately to the right and left of the space bar.

This key combination is similar to control + alt + delete on a PC.

If you have kids and you haven’t visited Franklin Square Park, you’re missing out on a nice inner-city playground. It can be a little expensive if you’re going to eat, drink, play miniature golf and ride the carousel but it’s not outrageous.

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

I’m sitting at the dog park at 10:40pm and the Phillies have just won the World Series.

Fireworks are going off all around the neighborhood and it’s making the dog crazy. Inchers, bottle rockets, you name it.

Wem has been pacing since the 7th inning. That’s when I started yelling at the tv. It felt inevitable tonight. We weren’t going to lose.

Outside, choppers slash the crisp night sky, some looking for troublemakers, some showing pictures of the celebrations.

I’m surprised that no one else is out with their pup. Wem usually gets a walk between 9 and 11. Tonight he was ready to go at 9 but I made him wait. I wanted to relive the feeling that I last had as a 15-year-old kid.

When the Phillies last won the World Series in 1980, I was in the basement of our house on Maple street watching with my family. What a night.

This one doesn’t feel much different from a pride standpoint except that I live here now and back then I was considerably more removed. I have seen first hand how starved this city was for a champion.

On this night, the freedom of being the best rings loud and clear.

Wem takes a drink after running hard in Blue Bell Park.

more of my pix at my flickr photostream

Next Page →