My Photo Is in a Gallery!
Glory Hole, Lake Berryessa Originally uploaded by Jeff Carlson. A couple of months ago, my pro photographer friend Laurence Chen encouraged me to submit this photo to the Environmental Photography Invitational, a photo contest open to residents of the Pacific Northwest. To my great surprise and delight, it was selected as a winning photo! It ...
Final Cut Express HD 3.5 Goes Universal
[Cross-posted at TidBITS.] Apple today released Final Cut Express HD 3.5, an update that brings Intel compatibility and a few welcome improvements to the company’s intermediate video editor. Until recently, the Final Cut family wouldn’t run at all on Intel-based Macs; Apple released Final Cut Studio 5.1 in April, which includes universal versions of Final ...
Bought a MacBook
As I mentioned yesterday, the new MacBook looked pretty appealing in the Carlson household, as a replacement for a 4-year-old iBook. After talking it over with my wife—who will use the computer most of the time—we drove to the University Village Apple Store and bought a 1.83 GHz stock model. This was the first time ...
My Officemate Kim in the NYTimes
My officemate Kim Ricketts is featured in a big New York Times article today: Authors Meet Fans Far From Bookstores, at Company Events. Kim puts together author events, public and private, where writers on book tours give readings and talks. I’ve been to a few, and it’s a great way to touch base with your ...
MacBooks Debut, Drool Erupts
Apple today announced the 13-inch MacBook, the Intel-powered replacement for the iBook. As rumored, it also comes in black (which, naturally, is only offered at a higher price). I’ll let my TidBITS colleague Mark Anbinder nail the details: Like its 15-inch and 17-inch counterparts, the new MacBook features an Intel Core Duo processor, here at ...
iMovie HD 6.0.2, iDVD 6.0.2 Updates Released
Check your Software Update preference pane (or click the links below), as Apple released iLife updates today. iMovie HD 6.0.2: This update to iMovie HD 6 addresses issues with Ken Burns rendering performance, scrubber bar editing performance, theme image quality, PAL audio, and displaying iLife Sound Effects automatically in its iLife Media Browser. It also ...
QuickTime 7.1
Apple released QuickTime 7.1 last week, accompanying it with their now-typical brief release notes. Allow me to republish them here in their entirety: QuickTime 7.1 is an important release that delivers numerous bug fixes, support for iLife ’06, and H.264 performance improvements. This update is highly recommended for all QuickTime 7 users. However, there seems ...
New Coffee Grinder and Office Espresso Machine
After my Solis Maestro Plus grinder broke, I took it to Home Espresso Repair, a local shop that I’ve turned to in the past. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to do much with it, and I was still wary of spending $80+ to send it to Oregon for repairs. So, I decided to go ahead and ...
AVCHD: Improved HD Format for Camcorders
This is potentially interesting: Improved HD Format for Camcorders (via Gizmodo). Current consumer HD camcorders record in HDV, which uses MPEG-2 compression to fit HD-sized video onto a MiniDV tape. You still get the large format with more overall pixels, but there’s more compression applied, leading to degraded images (the quality varies widely depending on ...
Dictatorship
Writing about the Angry Liberal Guy Rant yesterday allowed me to vent some steam, but then I got roiled up again by today’s news that the NSA has been monitoring billions of domestic phone calls without court approval, something that is clearly against the law. From USAToday: The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, ...
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 