On iPhones and the Macbook Air

Recent addition to my quiver is the 13″ Macbook Air. I looked really hard at the 11″, aka the iPad Pro, but decided the larger screen and SD Card reader were a worthwhile $100 upgrade. Timing couldn’t have been better either as I picked it up barely 24 hours before I had an event to cover with a fair bit of travel. Here are a few quick notes.

• Fast – Did I say fast? Yes, fast. The best way to describe how fast is by using iPhoto. On my 13″ Air, from click to fully loaded is less than 2 seconds. On a brand new 13″ Macbook Pro (with roughly the same number of photos) from click to to fully loaded was 12 seconds. The speed makes itself known everywhere too.

• Battery life – I’m not sure about how long it will actually last, but I think the 7 hours claimed is pretty close to being accurate. Not to mention, when the lid is closed, this baby is sleeping and sleeping hard! Over night battery useage with the lid closed so far has been zero.

• Portability – It’s not as light as the 11″, but close enough. And it’s thinner than my iPhone. Yet, it doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap.

• The Screen – Something you don’t notice right away, but after you use it for a bit, you start to notice that the screen on this is pretty great.

Comments are open if you have any questions about the Air.

And, for the first time, really, I actually used my iPhone during an event. Now that I’ve had it for a few months and have my groove down, it’s the perfect device for that kind of work. I was able to do things mobile that I always had to rely on external devices to do. For the first time I went to an event with only 3 devices (and it could have been two); an iPhone, my Canon DSLR and Macbook Air.

I’m excited to see what I can really do with these in the field this year!

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This Christmas brings thoughts of good cheer and tiddings to all readers of donburnside.com, and maybe a little geekery about iPhone photography.

iPhoneography

We all know that the iPhone is pretty amazing at taking photos. We also know that there are apps that improve the experience quite a bit, from cool effects and filters to ways that make sharing photos easy. Here are some of the things I’ve found so far, along with a couple new pieces of kit that I got for Christmas.

Apps

• Camera +. My favorite so far. It’s like photoshop for the iPhone with some great features that really make photos look awesome.
• Instagram. Or, what I’m learning, the new Flickr. I’m not a huge fan of the filters, but I am a huge fan of using Instagram to share my photos. 1 click sharing to all social media sites, plus a spiffy UI that makes it fun to discover new people to follow and see some great examples of iPhoneography!
• Diptic. It’s how the photo above was created. Very cool. Opt for the $.99 in app purchase for additional configuration options. Totally worth it.
• Flickr. It’s installed, but I rarely use it. More why shortly

Hardware

I scored this Christmas! Check out these two great things Stella got me!

• The Gilf. I saw this when it first appeared on Kickstarter and I was sad I didn’t have an iPhone to use it with. The minute I got my iPhone, the first thing I wanted was this. Allows you to easily mount your iPhone to a tripod.
• Joby Gorillamobile. Said tripod. This one comes with a case to use but if you have any kind of screen or back protection like Ghost Armor or a MotoringBadges iPhone wrap, it’s not a great fit. The tripod does work fantastic with the Glif!

Online services While Instagram works great for sharing photos to all of your social media sites, the way it works with Facebook isn’t that hot. Same goes with Flickr to Facebook integration. I think many FB users have those services blocked, so a lot of the time the photos go without being seen.

Enter IfThisThenThat, a service that’s been around a while but I haven’t used. You use it to build your own programs that actually do stuff. I will probably do an entire post on it later. You can even create recipes that are shareable, which is what I have done.

This will take any photo that has been uploaded to Facebook and automatically move it to Flickr including a link back to the original photo in Facebook. And, it works!

I’m still on the hunt for photo apps, but slowly. I know that some of you have more than a few you would like to share, sound off in the comments below. I’m sure Hipstagram is a favorite out there, but I’m not really a fan yet. I would love to hear others!

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Photography over the years

From what I can tell, I started my Flickr account way back in 2005. I didn’t even own a digital camera at the time, but was using it to share photos that I took with my Motorola Razr and LG Env. Here comes the magic. Click any of the collages for a larger version.

Amazing. At the time, I was sharing photos for no other reason than to share. I wasn’t paying attention to how they turned out, proper framing of shots or anything. Just point, and shoot.

Moving forward to 2006, things really aren’t that much better.

Still stuck with a crappy camera phone my photos didn’t really improve much here. Enter 2007 and my purchase of the Panasonic DMC-TZ3.

Photos definitely getting better with the introduction of a ‘real’ camera into my bag. I start to pay attention to what I’m shooting, trying to get good shots.

Finally for today is the 2008 collage.

My camera got a real workout this year! All over the US for MINI Takes the States, AMVIV and a host of other opportunites to just take photos.

While I still shoot with the Panasonic, I have now moved into shooting with a DSLR whenever possible (it’s an older Canon Rebel). Not only that, but I have also upgraded from the crappy VGA camera on the Razr to the 3.1 camera on the Blackberry (best feature of any Blackberry, if you ask me, is the camera) to the 8.0MP camera on the Droid Incredible (not as good as the BB).

I still don’t think of myself as a photographer, but it’s nice to know that I’ve gotten to the point where I can count that as part of my skill set. None of my stuff is ever going to show up in print, but for my purposes I think I do ok.

And, if you are curious, here is my first Flickr photo. And you can find the app, called PhotoGrabbr, here.

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A New Layout

This is one that I have been wanting to do for quite some time, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. After I moved to Arizona, I got the opportunity to redesign the website for work and decided that this would be quite a bit like that. You know me, like to work with known good.

Which is exactly what I did!

Take a few minutes to look around. Somethings are still a little wonky, but I’ll be getting those taken care of in short order. The short list includes cleaning up the CSS, making comments look better and returning the sidebar on the blog to it’s former, kick-ass, glory. I have also updated my Portfolio if you would like to get more information about the sites that I have done.

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A New Tool for my Bag

This week, I picked this up at Amazon, a Shoot remote timer that works with my camera. It allows for timing of the shutter release at just about any interval you can imagine. Set it to start shooting in X seconds or minutes and continue to shoot every X seconds or minutes until X photos have been shot. Or, shoot until you run out of space on your memory card or the battery in your camera dies. Automatically. As a bonus, this also works as a standard remote shutter release. Even without batteries, this feature works.

Then it was time to study up on best practices for doing time-lapse photography. For those of you that don’t know what time-lapse is:

Time-lapse photography is a cinematography technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that which will be used to play the sequence back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, and then played back at 30 frames per second; the result would be an apparent increase of speed by 30 times. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography.

via wikipedia.

History lesson out of the way, I started reading up on the best way to set up my camera. As you can see in the sample below, I still have some work to do, but I’m getting close.

This was shot over the course of about 90 minutes in the heat of the Arizona sun. The camera used was my Canon Rebel XT capturing the photos in jpeg. The timer was set for 20 second intervals which created 145 photographs.

I created a custom action in Photoshop to process the photos. It did some minor color correction (but not enough), image and canvas resizing and some cropping. I fired it up and about 10 minutes later I had a batch of photos ready to put into a time-lapse film.

I used iMovie ’11 this time, but I can tell you from previous experience that Picasa does a better job. Sure there are specialized apps that do this for you, quite nicely, but my budget doesn’t allow for such things.

In iMovie, the shortest interval I was able to set the photos to display at was .1 of a second. That is 10 frames per second. In Picasa, you can set it to pretty much any duration you want, and then import that into iMovie for further editing. We’ll talk more about Picasa later.

Next time I do this for a short interval like this I will be shooting in raw instead of jpeg so I can process the photos better if needed. I also need to pay better attention to the aperture and shutter speeds, which is to say that it’s time for me to become a real photographer, paying attention and learning what f-stops are and how to actually use my camera in full manual mode, not just aperture priority.

I’m pretty excited for everything I’m going to be able to use this for. I’ll be posting more of these in YouTube channel and on Vimeo as I do them.

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iPhone 4 vs. iPad 2

Hooray! The moment that 90 million people were waiting for finally happened last month, and that is Verizon Wireless getting the iPhone! And I want one. I almost pre-ordered one. Then I almost went to the VZW to buy one. But I didn’t for budgetary reasons. You see, I picked up the Droid Incredible back in August and I’m stuck without any upgrade pricing until June or July 2012. While I’m sure it’s worth it, dropping $600 on an iPhone right now just isn’t in the cards.

Then last week Apple introduced the iPad 2. Essentially an iPhone 4 with a 10″ screen. 2 cameras? Check. IOS 4.3? Check. Music playback and video editing on the device? Check. Can be purchased without a carrier contract? Check!

So, here’s the thing. While I could rush out and drop $600+ on an iPhone (when funds permit), why don’t I save a bit of coin and pick up an iPad 2? The price is $100 less (on a 16gb WiFi model) than the base iPhone. For what I need an iPhone 4 for, the iPad 2 will do and then some. Video editing, Garage Band, Keynote and Pages. Add a bluetooth keyboard and I wouldn’t even have to carry a laptop for most of the stuff that I do when I’m on the road. Then, in 2012 when I’m due, I can pick up whatever iPhone is being offered.

If I need connectivity while on the road and I’m not within reach of a WiFi access point, I can turn on the hotspot on the Dinc and be good to go. To me, this sounds like a pretty good deal.

I don’t mind carrying multiple devices. I already carry a phone with me everywhere, and almost always have a laptop for when I need to have a keyboard. The only thing I can see being a problem with only carrying an iPad would be storage. When I’m out at a MINI Cooper event for example, I’ve been known to generate as much as 20GB of content over the course of a few days. Sure I can edit that content on the iPad now, but with only 16gb available, I would need an alternate solution. Essentially, some kind of backup. Maybe I get a 50GB dropbox? Multiple 8GB SD Cards?

Regardless, this is what I’m looking to do. If anyone of you have had any success with mobile storage on the iPad or have some tips to lay down, comments are open and I would be interested in hearing what you have done.

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I Don’t Get It

The dream of many to be sure. To escape the grip of the cable company for television service. It started when I decided to stop using the teleco for phone service when I had a reliable cell phone. So far, 5 years and counting. Now, here we are, in the 21st Century, surrounded by high-speed internet service and the ability to get television programs streamed to computing devices. But not.

Using our friend Chuck Bartowski as an example. A show that has been on the fringe of being cancelled every season that it has been available. A show that seems to be saved by huge write-in campaigns and large turn-outs at ComicCon. A show that, as best I can tell, could easily be saved. How?

Allow streaming.

You see, on the Roku box I actually signed up for Hulu Plus, thinking that I would able to get all that was good and awesome about Hulu streamed directly to our television set. It would seem that is possible, as long as it is not a show that I’m a fan of. ABC programs? All of them are there. Crappy reality TV? Yep, it’s all there too. Family Guy, 30 Rock, The Office and SNL? Yep, those are all there too.

But drill down to shows like Chuck and The Cape on NBC. Burn Notice and White Collar on USA. Human Target on Fox. All programs that I watch on a regular basis. All shows that I enjoy on Hulu currently, from the confort of my office chair. But, not from the comfort of our sofa.

Why?

You see, when it comes to getting the word out and making sure something gets high ratings, I think that it needs to be in as many places to be consumed as possible. I think that in TV Land, that means as many eyeballs as possible to see as much advertising as possible. I think I’m right. No, scratch that, I know I’m right. Too toot my own horn, if you open the podcast section in iTunes under Games and Hobbies -> Automotive -> Audio, you will see that White Roof Radio is near the top of any list that contains audio programs. We get the word out. We make it available to as many people as possible, any way possible.

Which leaves me scratching my head about Chuck. If it’s close to getting cancelled all the time, why not allow it to be played on Hulu Plus on televisions? Is it because the revenue from iTunes and Amazon are too high? At almost $3 per episode, I would hope. But why not cash in on some revenue from advertising too? Why not make it available to as many people as possible, any way possible? It would cost almost nothing since it is already streamed on Hulu anyway. Win win.

So now we have a very fancy Roku box that rules at streaming NetFlix, Amazon and Hulu, just not the shows I want.

I just don’t get it.

Hey NBC (and CBS too. You guys are dead to me anyway), when the time comes and you are ready to join the rest of the world in the 21st century, give me a call and I will help you get everything sorted out.

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The Holiday Post

And, if it’s Christmas, then things around the donburnside.com family of sites start to slow down just a little bit. Those include

• donburnside.com
• dbmini.us
• windthefrog.net
• White Roof Radio

While the words aren’t flowing quite as much as they normally do, there is plenty going on behind the scenes. Watch for a brand new donburnside.com coming shortly after the New Year if not a little sooner. As tradition dictactes, those changes will filter down to dbmini.us and White Roof Radio shortly thereafter.

We are hoping to start taking on more projects in 2011. With the relocation to Arizona, there is an entire state that has yet to experience the raw, unadulterated awesome that is produced from donburnside.com, and we think it’s high time they do.

Over at White Roof Radio we will be covering events like it’s nobody’s business. Not to mention trying to get a few more dealer grand opening’s under our belts and a couple of other things that I can’t share at this time.

We aren’t ignoring the motoring blog either! Besides a new layout, there is an entire state left to explore, a new club to join and new dealers to continue to break-in. Plus the continuation of the OP/ED pieces that we love to write.

Finally, in the continuation of the transformation of Wind(the)frog(dot)net, you will begin to see more posts there that are more personal in nature. It will remain the one true blog under the roof with cool links from the internet, words and, of course, the w(t)f video hour which will become a bi-monthly affair.

We certainly hope that all y’all have a great Christmas and fantastic New Years! And thank you for sticking around, commenting, and overall just being the most awesome audience anyone could possibly want.

See you next year!

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The problem with paper

Back in 1995 I started my transition from analog to digital when I purchased my first DVD player. All of my music was already on the go for the move too. A few years passed and my hatred for printers continued to grow until I got to the point where I didn’t print at all and never wrote a check. Cash or plastic. And this has served me well for the past 7-8 years.

Then, at a local branch of Chase this week to open a new account and it turns out that my guy completely agreed with me. However, his agreement didn’t come because he also bore hatred toward paper and all paper generating devices like myself. He agreed because of security.

Duh. Why didn’t I get that?

Take a look at your check. It has your name. It also has your address, maybe a phone number. If you are older than I am, maybe your driver’s license number. Look lower. Account number and routing number are right there at the bottom of the check as well. That means that, really, anyone could get ahold of one of those, fill it out and take it to the nearest check cashing store or bank and trade it for cash. Then, they will drive to your house and steal your Macs and HD televisions and iPods.

Not good.

Versus the debt card that you probably also carry. Associated with that are 16 digits + 4 digits + your 4-8 digit pin. That’s practically 256bit encryption right there friends. Not only that, but you can easily track transactions quicker than you can with checks. And, the only bit of personal information on it is your name.

I’m going to continue my paper-free existence. Saving trees and increased security is how I roll. Paper is so 20th Century, maybe you should think about it too.

Comments are open.

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World Domination

You all know that I have opposable thumbs. You all also know that being equipped in such a way is also 50% of the solution when working towards world domination. I am here today to empirically deny the fact that I am trying to take over the world, which isn’t entirely true. I am going to take over the world. Just my little chunk of it.

Back in 2008 things changed. For the first time pretty much ever I became unemployed. And I stayed mostly umemployed for the next almost 3 years. For all but the last 18 months, I was able to continue to write, do stupid video blogs and amuse everyone on Twitter. Self promotion aside, I think I really started getting pretty good at it.

Then things changed. I ended up living with my folks and getting work fixing computers. It was a mediocre gig at best and combined with my living situation I lost track and focus. I stopped writing for the most part. Stopped the silly videos. My toots got snarky. And I wasn’t motivated.

Time to change all of that. My new job will require that I use all of those skills I honed over the past almost 10 years and have let a nice layer of rust form over them. I will have to write, shoot and tweet on a regular basis. And do it in such a way that it is entertaining, have promotional value and drive traffic.

Just like I’ve always done.

To that end I have made some very positive changes that will allow me to get back on track. A new job in a new state with a brand new living arrangement that is all, so far, suiting me just fine thankyouverymuch.

Watch for regular stuff coming out of me again. More words here and at Wind(the)frog(dot)net (which is where my more personal posts will go). Video blogs more often than once a quarter. More photos as I explore my new surroundings. Hell, even more MINI stuff as I break in a new dealer and try to get involved with the local enthusiast scene.

So, stay subscribed. I think you are all in for a real treat!

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