halfpress

More about reCAPTCHA

Here's a nice article I spotted today in my RSS feeds that gives some insight into reCAPTCHA, the system I implemented here on the blog last week.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

P.S. Screw you, spammers. :)

halfpress.com Update

This is just a quick note to let everyone know that I've upgraded MovableType today to the latest version. The version I was running before was quite old and it's been on my "to do" list for ages now.

There are new features I'll try to utilize once I have time to explore them, but my goal for now was to not destroy the current site while gaining the ability to implement captchas on the comment system. Comment spammers have been hammering me to death for years and I finally hit my frustration limit. I'd call spammers the sub-human scum of the earth, but that would be an insult to scum. Scum serves more of a purpose and, as little as I appreciate scum, I respect it infinitely more than I respect spammers.

But I digress...

Anyway, I've implemented reCaptcha on the comment forms, so if you take a moment to leave comments on here, you'll also be helping digitize books! As a Kindle owner, I appreciate your efforts. :)

More to come...

- Aaron

Dumb Luck 101: My First "Organic" 3D Modo Project on History Channel

I'm planning to write more about this when I have some time, but I figured I'd link to a local news item about my first "organic" Modo project ending up in a nationally broadcast documentary.

Understand that this is not a suggestion that I have any great 3D modeling experience (I don't)... it was kind of "dumb luck" to be perfectly honest. :)

Mahler's Venus on History Channel

Frankly, the model isn't completely finished yet and, I've had my hands so full with work, TWiP, forthcoming TWiM producing and photo gigs that I've not had much time in Modo recently. I've got a pile of projects I want to do with it soon since the app is just insanely cool.

I'm working on a few things combining Modo models with textures I shoot digitally and equirectangular HDR panos (most recent one here) that I shoot and assemble to use for real-world lighting.

This is the model I started after spending part of Christmas screwing around in Modo and modeling an AMF bowling pin I had sitting on my desk.

Of Local Interest: Waterstone Finally Open

I'm pleased to say that a restaurant we've been eagerly awaiting here in Lynchburg is finally open and, more importantly, it doesn't suck. In fact, it's really quite excellent! :)

There wasn't an official Google Maps entry yet, so I just added one for the meantime.

It was last year sometime that I first heard about the plans to open Waterstone, a wood-fired, brick oven pizza restaurant attached to a brewery. It's located on Jefferson Street and is part of the larger Bluffwalk Center / Cradock Terry Hotel complex which also includes Shoemaker's restaurant and The Jefferson Street Brewery.

My remark that it "doesn't suck" is just my general semi-negative attitude about the Lynchburg restaurant scene. Yes, we have some very good restaurants here. We also have a lot of mediocre crap, the worst of which make a play at being creative (surprisingly few make even that effort) and fall miserably short. My wife calls me a pessimist (I'm truly not), but I've found it safer to assume mediocrity around here and to be pleasantly surprised (and very supportive as a customer) when they pull it off. :) Waterstone pulled it off VERY well.

We visited with a couple of friends during the restaurant's first hour of being open to the public and found the whole operation to be very polished. The waiter was comfortable and engaging, the atmosphere was attractive and tastefully designed and, above all, the pizza was superb. As a group, we ordered four ten-inch pizzas including the Waterstone White, Greek, Wild Mushroom and a Sicilian (the most traditional of the four). All had a superb flavor, were not at all oily, heavy or greasy, and each was true to its theme with fresh ingredients and distinct flavors. The Sicilian, with its various sausages, was at the greatest risk of being overly heavy but managed to be just as "light" as the others.

We focused on the pizza last night, but the menu was fairly extensive and there is a lot left we'd like to try. I'm all for anything that brings quality to downtown Lynchburg and can say with certainty that we'll be repeat customers. They have plans for a two-level outside seating area as well as other refinements and their location on that part of Jefferson Street provides a lot of promise for community engagement. Here's hoping Waterstone is the beginning of a positive trend in the local dining scene and a little less having to flee to Charlottesville for a really great meal! :)

In closing, I will mention three other local restaurants of note. There are more, yes, but I want to mention these three right now: Machu Picchu, Grace and Main Street Eatery. Main Street has history and remains a Lynchburg institution, Machu Picchu is simply fantastic for those desiring Peruvian dishes (Elsa is passionate about her cooking) and Grace is probably the single most creative, elegant restaurant in the area and absolutely worth the visit.

Photos from Newport Trip

Newport, RI

I've finally had a chance to put up a set of images from our trip to Newport, RI. We spent four days there starting June 7th and thoroughly enjoyed this fascinating island.

For those not familiar, Newport was the turn of the century summering location of the American "aristocracy". I provide some additional background on Newport in my previous post with a QTVR of a massive weeping beech tree, so check there and the wikipedia link above.

Average temperatures in Newport are in the 60's and 70's this time of year, so I was pretty thrilled to be leaving the 100 degree heat wave of Virginia for the trip. Understand that I despise hot, humid weather. Well, the heat wave followed us to New England and hit around 90 degrees and humid a good bit of the time. This sucked the total life out of my photographic endeavors since I spent the mornings feeling like I was wearing a greasy washcloth instead of a shirt. Yuck. I can't say the photos here are particularly stellar, but they should at least give you a taste of some of the Newport mansions and surroundings.

There are a couple of HDR images in here, though they need some more tweaking. Also, I geocoded most of my shooting using my AMOD AGL-3080 (look for some posts soon detailing this process). Until I get some good geo-coded linking worked into my halfpress.com workflow, I'm making use of Flickr for mapping. To see these images placed on a map, go here and be sure to note the slider along the bottom to see the full set.

Newport, RI

The Weeping Beech of Chateau-sur-Mer

I'm planning to put together a full gallery, including some HDRs, but wanted to go ahead and post this 360 VR that I made during our trip to Newport, Rhode Island.

I'll save a more extensive write-up on Newport for the full gallery entry, but I will take a moment here to say that I highly recommend making the trek there if you haven't been before. I was unfamiliar with Newport and its history until just recently when we received an invitation to visit some friends in their final weeks before they relocate to Maryland. Suffice it to say, I'm glad we took the opportunity while we had it... both to visit our friends and to see this rather unique piece of American history.

Newport, in a nutshell, was the oceanside summer playground of the American aristocracy in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Names like Vanderbilt, Berwind, Oelrichs and Wetmore are synonymous with the area. These insanely wealthy, status-driven families built monstrous mansions here that they often used for only seven weeks out of the year. The most elite of the New York social scene migrated, en masse, to Newport for several weeks of nightly entertaining and continuous attempts to outdo one another throwing the most lavish parties and balls. Naturally, they took their staffs (often numbering 30 or more) of maids and liveried footmen with them to tend to their every need.

The rest of the year, the houses generally sat empty and were maintained by a caretaker with a small staff that looked after the place and readied it for the next summer season of over-the-top entertaining.

For a sense of the sheer number of estates, have a look at this Google Maps satellite view centered on Chateau-sur-Mer and the bulk of the mansions on Bellevue Avenue.

Anyway, as I said, I'll write more about the trip in a separate post with a wider array of photos. This entry is all about the Weeping Beech tree that sits outside of one of the more unique mansions on the island: Chateau-sur-Mer. After touring the home and on our way back to our car, I happened to step through the curtain of branches to see what the tree looked like "inside". Needless to say, it was pretty amazing and also pleasantly cool since we hit Newport in a bizarre, 90+ degree heat and humidity wave.

I've prepared an HDR version of this pano as well, but it needs a little more tweaking. In the meantime, this mid-tone (0 EV, 7 fisheye shots) set from the five exposure HDR spread (-4EV to +4 EV in 2 EV increments: 35 shots) does a decent job of representing the scene. This file is about 12 MB in size and retains a good deal of its resolution, so give it a moment to load if you're on a slow connection.

TWiP: This Week in Photography

I've been a fan of the various This Week in [insert topic here] podcasts for years. The podfather namesake of this family, so to speak, is This Week in Tech. Recorded every Sunday, TWiT is Leo Laporte's baby that evolved from a post-TechTV recorded get together a few years back. Fast forward a bit and it has become a podcast network with several of the shows being among the most popular, cornerstone shows of the entire podcasting scene. Hell, Leo has just set up a whole studio and is gunning for about 25 hours a week of content, much of it streamed live by video now, too.

A core player in the TWiT scene is Alex Lindsay, founder and chief architect of The Pixel Corps. I became a fast fan of Alex's work through a number of his appearances in various podcasts and, most directly, when I got hooked on This Week in Media, a podcast that he hosts with a great team of regular contributors and guests. I also found The Pixel Corps fascinating and, thanks to Alex's generosity when I met him at MacWorld in 2007, I was given an opportunity to become a member of that awesome community. Things I'm learning there feed straight into other projects I'll blog about later.

I started listening to Scott Bourne, too, through his various guest appearances in Leo and Alex's shows (MacBreak Weekly being a TWiT/PixelCorps podcast as well). Scott has also become a major source of podcasts including The Apple Phone Show which was born in the run-up to Apple's iPhone release. It is -the- show about all things iPhone. Scott is a renowned wildlife photographer, former radio host and author of quite a number of books on photography and Apple's Aperture.

A few months ago, Scott and Alex teamed up to create a new podcast, This Week in Photography. Needless to say, this is a rather ideal combination of hosts and topic for my particular interests. :)

I responded to Scott's call one day for a volunteer show note writer. In the podcasting scene, show notes are the written, web-based guides to each show that include a summary of the discussion and provide links for many of the topics (and sites) discussed in the course of a show.

After several episodes and many zillions of show note lines later (I have a bit of a reputation now for writing detailed notes), I started tossing out some guest ideas and took it upon myself to try to line one up: legendary photographer and author, Joe McNally. Joe graciously obliged, hooked up with us on Skype and did a fantastic interview. Somewhere around that time, I was very flattered (and startled) to be asked to become the producer for TWiP and help manage the guest wrangling, topics, and schedule for the show itself. I'm about eight shows into working with them now, enjoying the heck out of it and starting to get into more of a groove with the process.

The first thing I did was build an internal, private wiki that we use within TWiP. It's evolving quickly now as our central organizing resource for each show and provides the schedule from which the hosts work as each episode is recorded. By design, a wiki provides a growing, searchable database of content and, more importantly, is by its very nature collaborative. The hosts and our regular contributors, Ron Brinkmann, Frederick Johnson and Steve Simon can all directly add notes, content, etc., throughout the week in the run-up to each show.

That's some of the "technical" side of the process. The other side, though, is the fun of working with everyone. Getting a chance to chat with the various guests, such as Joe McNally, Rick Smolan, Richard Harrington, Christian Bloch, Bill Crow and others has been a real treat. Beyond that, it's tremendous fun gaining insight into the production process via the show and The Pixel Corps, especially after listening to Alex detail much of the evolution of the process in other shows such as This Week in Media and Gear Media Tech.

I'm always connected via Skype during the show to chat a bit before and after with the gang and listen in on the live recording. They are also brave enough to let me pipe in once in a while during some of the episodes. It's never been my goal to be "on air", but I'm glad if I can bring something to the table once in a while that might be of use to listeners.

If you've not already, be sure to try TWiP. You can subscribe via iTunes, stream it from Pixelcorps.tv and follow the other half of the show's content via the TWiP Blog. If you're truly into photography, be sure to check out TWiP's Flickr Group which has discussions and photo sharing along with a critique forum and bi-weekly contests that, yes, include prizes. :)

You can also interact with everyone involved via Twitter: Scott Bourne, Alex Lindsay, Ron Brinkmann, Fred Johnson (we're still pestering Steve to get into the Twitter scene), and me.

Tap. Tap. [cough]. Um, is this thing on?

I built a blog so that the threshold would be low enough for writing posts that I'd be inclined to do it more frequently. Instead, I still keep finding myself putting it off "just a little longer" so that I can give an entry proper attention.

I've got to stop that since it's been, oh, about a YEAR since I really posted anything. I think Twitter, which some describe as "micro-blogging" has gotten me going again. That and the fact that I've got a million things to talk about these days. :)

Waaaay too many things have gone on in "the silent time" to really catch up, so I'll just summarize a little here and then TRY to get my butt in gear to post regularly now.

I'm doing a great deal more contract photography work now, both for the college and other individuals and organizations. I enjoy it a great deal despite it adding about a half-time job to my already greater than full-time job. Busy is good, really, and the added income pays bills and buys more gear to, of course, do more work. :)

On a related note, I re-arranged much of my home studio / office work space and built in a new permanent desk into the corner of the room that uses up one full wall and more than half of another. It gives me about eighteen feet of continuous surface at an ideal height with cable management underneath, good lighting, etc. I'll put up a VR of the space soon (the current one I have is outdated).

One significant and wonderful addition to the computing tools was adding an Apple 30" Cinema Display which, some months later, I mounted on a fully articulating hydraulic arm. I can move it around most any way I like with just a finger (up, down, side to side, in, out, 180 rotation, etc). I almost can't abide using the laptop's own 17" display anymore once I got spoiled by all the screen real estate of a 30" display. Throw in OS X Leopard's Spaces feature and you've got limitless screen room. With the MacBook Pro, too, I can open the lid and run both side by side which I might start doing soon with the Lightroom 2.0 Beta.

One nice thing about reworking my office space was freeing up the rest of the room for a small studio space with my strobes, etc. It's more than enough room for portrait work, product photography, etc. It's another reason I'm using the 30" display and arm, too, since I can swing the monitor into a nice position to see while standing across the room and shooting tethered. Great for high resolution previews of each shot right after it has been taken.

I'm always doing various things with my camera gear. Since I last wrote, I added a second body (Canon 30D) for convenience and backup, sold my Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 and replaced it with Canon's L-class equivalent, added an Epson P-3000 in place of my Hyperdrive, and misc other things including bags, etc. I try to keep my hardware and software list up to date here for anyone curious.

I've gotten involved in quite a few large new projects (podcasts, 3D modeling, etc), too, but I'll blog about each of those separately here in a few minutes. This entry is already meandering a bit with little or no real point other than to catch up on some technical minutiae.

Aaron's Equipment, Software & Tools List

This is an ongoing index of equipment, software and tools that I use routinely. Links are provided wherever possible to either manufacturers or vendors. It's my goal to keep this list as up to date as possible. I will likely start linking off this list to blog posts in the future if I write about noteworthy techniques or experiences involving listed items. Jump To:
[Photographic] [Computer] [Software] [Misc. Gadgets] ]]>

Photographic Equipment

Camera

Bodies

Canon EOS 30D

Canon EOS 20D

Lenses

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM

Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM
Canon 50mm f/1.8 II

Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EF-S USM

~~Canon 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II USM~~ - (Sold)

~~Canon 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM~~ - (Sold)

~~Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM~~ - (Sold)

~~Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro~~ - (Sold)

Sigma 8mm f/4 EX Circular Fisheye

Kenko Auto Extension Tube Set

Speedlite

Canon 580EX II Speedlite

Canon 420EX Speedlite

Canon ST-E2 Speedlite Transmitter

Filters & White Balance

82mm ExpoDisc - Digital White Balance - Neutral

Hoya HMC, Tiffen or Marumi UV on all lenses for protection

52mm Hoya HMC Circular Polarizer

67mm Quantaray Circular Polarizer (67->58mm stepdown ring)

82mm SunPak DHG Multicoat Circular Polarizer (72mm stepdown ring)

Media

Lexar Pro 133x 4 GB CF

(2) SanDisk Ultra II 2 GB CF

(2) SanDisk Ultra II 1 GB CF

SanDisk 512 MB CF

(2) SimpleTech 256 MB CF

SimpleTech 128 MB CF

Support

Manfrotto 3021BPro Tripod

Manfrotto 679B 3 Section Monopod

Bogen-Manfrotto 3047 3D Camera Head

Bogen / Manfrotto 3229 Swivel/Tilt Head w/QR

(2) Adorama Pro 10' Air Cushioned Lightstand

JTL 300 Back Light Stand

SunPak 6400UT Tripod

Kirk FB-8 Macro Flashbracket

Bogen / Manfrotto 3398 Convertible Boom Stand 420

On-Stage Stands Universal 2nd Tier (holds laptop on generic X-stand at head height in studio)

15 lb heavy nylon saddlebag style sandbag for boom counterweight

Studio Lighting & Tools

Metering

Sekonic L-358 Flash Master Meter

Monolights

(2)Flashpoint Model 620 300 w/s Monolight

JTL Versalight J-110, 110 Watt Second Monolight Strobe

Light Controls & Modifiers

Flashpoint 24"x36" Softbox

(2) Adorama 45" Umbrella, White w/Removable Black Cover

DynaPhos DPU B/G-2 Pro Umbrella - Gold Lined

43" Silver/Gold Collapsible Disc Reflector

JTL Art Work Set: Barn Doors, Honey Comb & Filters for backlight

DynaPhos X-Large Collapsible LightCube

Flashpoint II Four Leaf Barn Door Set

Flashpoint II 40° Honeycomb Grid

Accessories

Grip & Power

(2) Canon BG-E2 Battery Grip

Op-Tech Wrist Strap

(2) Op-Tech Pro Loop Strap
Readers

Lexar CF FireWire Card Reader

SanDisk 12-in-1 Reader/Writer

Cleaning & Maintenance

Sensor Swab

Eclipse Optical Cleaner

Pec*Pads

Giotto Rocket Air

Formula MC (filter cleaning)

Photo-Clear Microfiber Cloths

Transport

Think Tank Photo Airport Airstream Rolling Bag

Tamrac Velocity 9x Sling Pack

Tamrac Expedition 7 Backpack

LowePro MicroTrekker 100 Backpack

On-Stage LB6500 Lighting Truss Carry Bag

Toshiba aluminum rolling foam-lined LCD projector hardcase (22.5"H x 17.75"W x 10"D) (modified to carry my monolights)

Protection

(2) Kata E-702 GDC Elements Cover

Control & Panoramic / QTVR

RS-80N3 Remote Switch for EOS Series

Nodal Ninja III Panoramic Head

Hot Shoe 2-Axis Bubble Level

Portable Storage & Viewing

Epson P-3000 Digital Storage / Viewer

Computer Equipment

Systems

Laptop

Apple MacBook Pro 17"

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (Santa Rosa) Model

4 GB RAM

160 GB HD

Slotload SuperDrive (DVD-R DL/DVD-RW/CD-RW)

Display (desktop use)

30" Apple Cinema Display

Desktop

Custom Built Linux Workstation

Asus A7N8X-E

AMD Athlon XP 2800 (2 GHz)

1.5 GB RAM

(2) Seagate 80 GB, Maxtor 80 GB HD

Sony DRU-500A 24XCD-R/W, 4X DVD -R/W

Benq 56X CD-ROM

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128M

SoundBlaster Audigy

Display

Westinghouse LCM-19w4 19" Widescreen LCD

Music Composition
MIDI

Studiologic SL-880 Pro 88-key Piano-Weighted Controller

Miscellaneous x86-based Linux servers (home office and attic)

Input Devices

Removable / Portable Storage

MacAlly PHR100ACB FireWire 800/USB2.0 Enclosure
- Seagate 200 GB HD
MacAlly PHR100ACB FireWire 800/USB2.0 Enclosure
- Seagate 250 GB HD
MacAlly PHR250CC 2.5" FireWire 400/USB2.0 Enclosure
- Seagate 60 GB HD
(2) Seagate FreeAgent
- Seagate Barracuda 500 GB SATA HD
Seagate FreeAgent Pro
- Seagate Barracuda 1 TB SATA HD
Apple Video iPod 30 GB
Apple iPod 40 GB Dock/Clickwheel

Color Calibration

Pantone ColorVision Spyder2 Pro

Printing

Networking

Connectivity via 54mbit modified Linksys WRT54G's w/DD-WRT - 130 foot tower to office (Sweet Briar College DS-3)
Misc hubs & switches throughout house
10mbit fiber from tower to attic
(2) Apple Airport Extreme Basestation - GBit Ethernet
Apple Airpot Express

Software

Operating Systems

Linux x86 - Fedora Core 5 (desktop workstation)

Apple Mac OS X - Leopard (10.5.x) (laptops)

Microsoft Windows XP Pro (desktop - mostly gaming... too big of a headache otherwise)

Photo Editing & Management

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

Adobe Photoshop CS3

iView Media Pro 3

3D

Modo 301

Panorama Stitching

RealViz Stitcher Unlimited

PTMac

Video Editing

Apple Final Cut Pro Studio (FCP, Motion, LiveType, DVD Studio)

dvGarage Conduit (Nodal Compositing)

Apple QuickTime 7 Pro

Programming & Development

Python

Nedit (X11)

BBEdit (Mac)

MySQL

Misc. Gear & Gadgets I Rely Upon

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Williamsburg is one of my favorite places in the world, so I love any chance I get to do even a couple of hours of photography there (see: anniversary / pre-inauguration / inauguration). This past weekend, I traveled with my Dad and Aunt for two days in the Historic Triangle.

Our main goal was to see the fantastic new exhibits at Jamestown since this is the 400th year anniversary. A few new exhibits had just opened this past weekend that we wanted to see, so we decided to hit them while the weather was nice and before the security insanity of the Queen's visit or next weekend's celebration festivities.

The archaeological site being managed by the APVA is quite fascinating and their new Archaearium is beautifully laid out.

We also made visits to the Glasshouse and the Jamestown Settlement, neither of which I have been to since I was in grade school. The Jamestown Settlement in particular turned out to be absolutely fantastic.

As children, my Dad and Aunt both visited Jamestown in 1957 when the original museum and "festival park" was first established for 350th anniversary celebration. Because of this, returning to see the new, far more elaborate museum built in honor of the 400th anniversary was a nice twist. We hope to make a few return visits during the course of 2007 and 2008, partly to see the various installations of a multi-part exhibit entitled World of 1607.

I can honestly say that the permanent exhibit alone is one of the best I've ever seen and is certainly equal to, and in many ways, more elegant than a lot of the Smithsonian exhibits I've visited in Washington, D.C.

The photos in this set include sunrise shots of Williamsburg, the Jamestowne archaeological site, Glasshouse, and Jamestown Settlement.

I'm also in the process of reworking various parts of this site, specifically the slideshows. This is the first halfpress slideshow I've ever paired with music, so let me take a moment to also thank Magnatune and the Brook Street Band for their recording of Handel's Sonata No. 4 in G Major - Allegro A Tempo Ordinario.

Williamsburg & Jamestown

Enjoy!
- Aaron

(Note: The current version of this gallery is fairly bandwidth-intensive, so a word of warning to people on slow connections... I'm making adjustments as I experiment...)

Lantern Bearing

Lantern Bearing

In the eleven years I've worked at SBC, I've never witnessed a Lantern Bearing but have always been fascinated with the concept. From a photography standpoint, I've always had a weakness for low-light shots involving flames or other interesting lighting (Williamsburg Blacksmith - Paris, France - Canal du Briare, France). Lantern Bearing didn't disappoint in this regard...

Low-light photography is challenging enough. It gets even more challenging, though, when need to assemble six-shot, 360-degree panoramas involving people. Fortunately, the juniors here were wonderfully willing to oblige and patiently put up with my odd request to stand very still while I walk in a circle pressing a button on the end of cord. :)

Links to 48 images from last night can be found in the drop-down box above. I think the slideshow works especially well for this. Click on the images below to see two 360-degree panoramas from last night. You will need Quicktime to view these (Mac users are set already and Windows users who have installed iTunes should already have what they need as well).

For those not familiar with VR Panoramas, just hold down your mouse button on the image once it appears and drag around. Be sure to look up and down as well.

Enjoy!
- Aaron

In the month since...

A lot has happened since my little flurry of posts from San Francisco and MacWorld 2007. I stopped writing from there about halfway through the trip mostly due to having come down with a friggin' cold. I spent Wednesday evening and much of the day Thursday that week holed up in my hotel room, conserving energy so I wouldn't miss the podcasting party at Jillian's (a bar in Sony's Metreon). I'm glad I did since I had a chance to chat some more, however briefly, with Leo, John Foster, Alex Lindsay, Merlin and Scott Bourne. Inspiring guys...

Unfortunately, the time between MacWorld and today has had a few small joys and one tremendous tragedy.

My Grandfather died last October. While not sudden, it was nonetheless a deeply saddening experience. A few weeks ago on January 28th, almost three months to the day we buried him, my Grandmother also died. Her death, by contrast, was quite sudden and unexpected and involved a whirlwind 48-hour escalation from discomfort to emergency surgery to, ultimately, passing away in a virtual coma. None of us were in the least prepared, especially in the wake of my Grandfather's recent death.

I wrote a tribute to my grandfather on here the day that he died. By contrast, I've been silent here from just prior to my grandmother's death through the few weeks since. My grandmother was an incredible and unique woman who easily had as much influence on my life as my grandfather. The sudden and unfair nature of her death, however, leaves me grieving not just for her, but for the combined loss of them both as grandparents. It's not two deaths in three months but, in a way, three.

The two weeks of dawning realization prior to my grandfather's death had a lot to do with being in the proper frame of mind to write what I did on the day that he died. I'm just not there yet with writing about my grandmother. In time...

Whatever my reasons for periods of silence on here, I need to get my ass in gear to post more frequently. Part of why I switched to a blog format from my previous static pages was to overcome the "effort barrier" that often killed spontaneity. I now have little excuse outside of a lack of discipline.

Outside of the personal events mentioned, I've got a somewhat blog-worthy backlog that I'm now setting out to tackle...

MWSF: Day Three

Day three started with a fun MacWorld Live event hosted by David Pogue of the New York Times. This is a tradition that started since my last MacWorld ('97 in Boston), so it was a first time thing for me. It's done in a sort of David Letterman-style talk show format with a few guests and ended with Pogue and one of the guests performing two comedic songs he had written. The funnier of the two was mocking the RIAA and was set to the music of the classic "YMCA" song.

I attended my second round of seminars afterward and also spent some more detailed time on the show floor visiting vendors and seeing interesting products.

Unfortunately, though, the thing I wanted to avoid finally happened. Since Monday afternoon, I'd started to feel a scratchy tickle in my throat behind my sinuses.

]]> It didn't do much and then just turned to some minor nose blowing by yesterday morning. By late afternoon, though, I was feeling pretty tired and cruddy and finally had to leave and crash in my hotel for a while (missing an event I had been looking forward to attending). I slept for about an hour and a half, then grabbed some soup from the little shop in the hotel lobby before crashing again for the night. I woke up a lot during the night, blowing my nose some and feeling generally cruddy. As of this morning, I'm mostly blowing my nose and coughing, but certainly feeling better than I thought I might.

I'm almost certain this comes from the petrie dish we all flew out here in on Sunday combined with temperature shifts and being generally run down from the jet lag. I suppose it's not an unusual scenario for travelers, especially in January. I've definitely been in close proximity with zillions more people than I would under normal circumstances and shaking hands a lot (not to mention that we all have to shout at each other to be heard in public spaces at most events).

Regardless, I am conserving my energy and lying low in the hotel until around lunchtime. Then I'm going to try to take another foray to the convention floor for a bit, but I'm mostly trying to keep my energy up for a podcaster event that I really do not want to miss tonight. I also don't want to make the cold any worse if I can help it since flying home on Saturday is going to suck out loud if it worsens.

So, yes, I'm pissed off that this is curbing the adventure... but at least it didn't take hold of me until AFTER the keynote and other big festivities of Tuesday and Wednesday morning. I think I will also buy the DVD set of recordings from the seminars, both to catch up on some minor ones I'm missing, but also to be able to share some of the events with folks back at SBC who couldn't come this time.

Anyway, I'm off to catch up more on email and news for a bit and relax a little more. Here's hoping I can kick this stupid cold in short order...

MWSF: The Big Day

I'm quite tired at the moment, so this one is going to be brief. Obviously, I'll start with the big one:

The iPhone is positively stunning.

Go see for yourself. Download the keynote. There is nothing I can say here that others have not said (and probably said better).

Oh, and did I mention that it's positively stunning?

Speaking of the keynote... total blast. Yes, we got there at 5:30 AM and the line was already wrapped around the building into the next block. Sometime after 7 AM we were herded into Moscone West. I got split, based on my pass, into the priority seating group and ended up being in about the first 120 attendees into the hall (behind, of course, the VIPs, press and various Apple employees).

I made some great friends in the line this morning. That's one fantastic thing about MacWorld conferences... you just meet the neatest people and almost instantly start talking like you've known one another for years.

Speaking of great people, I got to meet at least three tonight that I have admired for a long time: Alex Lindsay, Merlin Mann and Leo Laporte.

Lots, LOTS more to tell... but I need some sleep. :)

Oh, remind me to tell you later about the Google Sketch-Up socks.

MWSF: Day One

Today was probably the one and only "relaxed" day at MWSF. Any Power Tools seminars you were signed up for started this morning and ran all day without any distractions. Tomorrow, however, the craziness begins and there will usually be about four things you'd want to do all going on in the same time slot. It sure sucks having a million interests... :)

As predicted, I woke up at 5:15 AM (feeling surprisingly rested, actually). Three cheers for the east coast body clock. San Francisco is remarkably dead at that time of the morning, so I had to forage a bit around the nearest block or two to find something to eat. Unfortunately, the best I could do under the circumstances was Carl's Jr. (also known as Hardees where we live). Oh well... I got some protein along with the grease.

]]> For some reason, the hotel's internet provider was down when I got up and was still down when I wandered out around 7:30 AM to get to the 8 AM registration. There was already a line, but it moved pretty quickly. We were given PDFs when we registered online that had a bar code on them. Once you made it into the building, they scanned your sheet. I was wondering what that accomplished (since I was still in line) when I heard my name called out from the counter and I was able to skip the rest of the line and head straight to the desk. I think that's a perk of the Platinum Pass and definitely a nice one.

The other apparent "perk" of the Platinum Pass is the one everybody carrying such a pass was asking every conference staff member (and each other): what's the deal with my keynote seating? The top two ticket levels for the conference (Platinum and, just under it, Super) claim "priority seating" for the keynote. This is a pretty enticing thing since people are talking about lining up outside as early as midnight and 2 AM. It does not, however, mean "reserved". It wasn't until around noon that the staff had been asked this question enough times that they all sought answers and started giving us the scoop.

Apparently, the doors will be opened at 7:30 AM tomorrow for those of us with these passes and we get first dibs on the available seats. What we don't know is how long this lasts before the general admission opens up. More importantly, we don't know how many of us there are with the passes that will be competing with one another. Fortunately, the auditorium seats 5,000 people, so I feel pretty confident this will work out in my favor as far as the "standing in the cold in the wee hours" cattle call goes.

That said, I was still advised to get there relatively early. My friends Steve and Shannon arrived today and are staying a couple of doors down the hall from me. Steve wants to head out by 5:30 AM, so I'll do my best to head out with them.

This is where I hope my body clock is still on east coast time since it will make getting up at 5 AM a heck of a lot easier. We'll see.

The seminar ran from 9 AM to 5 PM today and was quite fascinating. It's a master's workshop on advanced Final Cut Pro Studio techniques and the insights from an industry expert are quite enlightening. I'm plenty comfortable in FCP and have been using it for years... but it's very much the Photoshop of the video world in that there are zillions of tips and tricks to be learned that have you muttering "oh, cool!" throughout the day.

Lunch, on the other hand, was a bit of a death march. The line was stupidly long but, in the end, moved a bit faster than I predicted when I first staggered into it. I was screamingly hungry by the time we broke for lunch and was starting to get a headache. Thankfully, the headache went away promptly as I ate. My only other complaint is that the wireless access points are not enabled in the seminar rooms. On the other hand, I probably paid a lot more attention as a result. :)

He demonstrated a MIDI control surface at the end of the day (Tascam FW-1082) that I am lusting after. While it would be fantastic for audio, the bigger attraction for me is integration with Motion allowing me to build effects using sliders that I tie to the various numeric inputs. Someday...

I'm eager to put some of the shortcuts and nifty insights he's presented to good use on the second episode of AHIJAM when I get home.

So as I write this, I'm constantly listening to clanging street cars and a cacophony of street musicians (with various levels of skill). The hotel I'm in is pretty neat but more than a bit noisy. I'm six floors up, directly overlooking the Powell Street cable car turnaround, and I just finished hearing a rendition of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring hammered out on a steel drum. Now the saxophone guy is at it again and I've yet to pick out an identifiable melody. I'm not opposed to street performances, but give it a rest, dude.

I didn't take any photos today worth sharing. I hope to remedy that tomorrow, especially if I can spot some interesting things in the wee hours as I wait for the keynote.

Here's hoping...