I’ve been deliberating lately about data backup, and how to design a solid strategy for both OS and data. All on a tight budget of course… 
Being a photographer and avid net user, I can fill up hard disks with the best of ‘em. And having a ‘hoarder’ personality type also means that I don’t like to delete anything. So backup is a subject that has always been dear to me (see my earlier post on backup). But given that I’ve been a pc user for 15 years, I’m doing pretty well. Despite 4 hard disk deaths in that time, I’ve only ever really lost vital data once. And that just reinforced a lesson I already knew. So to me, backup means double or triple redundancy, with one set off site. But that’s in theory. In practice I have a more complicated and not quite complete set-up. Budgetary constraints shoulder most of the blame for that, but now I have decided that it’s time for no more excuses!
Continue reading ‘The Perfect Backup Strategy’
Sometimes location is not very important at all in photography. For a lot of portrait photography for instance, the main ingredients are nice light and interesting colours in the background. With the lens opened right up, the background disappears in a lovely blur of colour and bokeh, and so any park or beach or even back yard can be a great location.
But at other times, location is everything. Try taking great surfing shots in the outback for instance 
Or if your thing is gritty modern street photography, you won’t have much joy if you are stuck in a regional area or the ‘burbs. Smaller, regional places are just lacking in the variety a big city can offer. In such places, it’s a lot harder to think of what to shoot. I have been wanting to get out just to shoot for fun, but I’ve been finding it hard. What am I supposed to shoot? I know it is a cop out, and that any good photographer worth his salt will just get out there and find something interesting. I’m talking more about the preconceptions we have of places, preconceptions which heavily influence motivation. Why we cop out, and how we change the way we think…
Take me - I’m mostly interested in portraiture. Without someone specific to shoot, my thoughts tend to drift to art photography. And then I stall, as art photography generally takes a lot of planning, forethought and consideration. A budget does’t hurt either! I also like urban photography, but where I live is beautiful, yet somehow strangely bland. So too much of the time, the camera sits in the corner, waiting for me to figure out what to shoot.
I can see I need a new strategy. Some way to break my preconceptions and go out find interesting things to shoot. Any ideas?
Vista has not had good press since its release. And I can see why. Despite the eye candy Aero interface, it’s what’s under the bonnet that counts, and a lot of reviews certainly point to deficiencies in Vista when compared to its immediate predecessor, XP. I ran XP Professional from the start and at least from SP2, it was a really good, stable OS. Maybe it’s worth remembering that. XP had loads of blue screens of death before the first service pack, that’s for sure, and it wasn’t until SP2 that it became a really stable, first class OS.
Anyway, I think Vista has lots of improvements in lots of areas, but I also have my pet hates. The almost non stop UAC requests drive me crazy, and I was annoyed at first that some of my older programs wouldn’t run correctly on it. But worst of all was my experience with the Security Centre, and it’s really that I wanted to talk about.
Continue reading ‘Windows Vista and the need for patience’
For those who have never heard of The Blue Nile, I can only encourage you to go and listen to their music. They are a three piece band from Glasgow with a penchant for taking their time to make records. In the 27 years since they formed, they have released only 4 albums. They formed in 1981, and released their debut album, A Walk Across The Rooftops in 1983. It’s an interesting blend of acoustic and synthetic sounds, with the end result sounding like beautifully crafted 80’s pop, firmly entrenched at the high end of that market. It was not a huge commercial success, but it received much critical acclaim. ‘Tinseltown in the Rain’ is the absolute classic from this album, and it was clear that this was a band to watch.
Continue reading ‘The Blue Nile’
In March 1987, Canon produced the first EF series lens. In November, they followed up with the industry’s first Ultrasonic Motor powered lens - the EF 300mm f/2.8L USM. Then in September 1989 came the EF 50mm f/1.0L USM. Yes, that right, f/1.0.
Now it has reached the incredible milestone of producing over 40 million of these EF lenses. And the rate of production has accelerated wildy in the last ten years due to the digital boom. Canon produced its 10 millionth lens in August 1995, it hit 20 million at the start of 2001, and 30 millionth in January 2006. Now just over 2 years later, they have hit 40 million. At this rate 50 million will be reached before the end of 2009.
It’s hard to image there are 40 million EF lenses around. Even taking into account the various manners of death a lens can encounter, there’d have to be still 35 or so million still around somewhere… Staggering.
Anyway, congratulations Canon! I have supported the cause with 3, soon to be 5 of your EF lenses, and I find them to be quite lovely. Even Canon’s cheapest most plastic lens, the current 50mm f/1.8, is a lovely little lens that takes fabulous portraits. Now Canon has 64 lenses in its EF line, from ultra wide angle through to super-telephoto models, zooms and primes, and even special tilt-shift lenses that distort the image perspective. It’s a real testament to a tuned in company who keeps improving their products in line with and even above customer expectations.
Is America really as prudish as it sometimes appears to be? It’s really hard for me to tell. Particularly as I’ve never been there. Judging a country solely on their cultural exports is clearly fraught with danger. I mean, I have seen American films from every degree of separation of morality’s compass. From ‘Wild at Heart’ to ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. So that tells me nothing. I have read that over half of all Americans would not vote for an atheist president, yet some of the smartest, wittiest , most liberal people I have ever heard speak come from the USA. Hmmm, it makes it hard to generalise doesn’t it.
So I’m at a loss what to think about the recent Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus scandal. On the one hand I get the feeling that it’s a cynical but very successful manipulation of the media, from everyone involved, including Vanity Fair, Disney Channel, Miley’s own management and possibly even the photographer, Annie Leibovitz. This explanation sits best with me, because the alternative is simply too weird to comprehend.
Continue reading ‘Is America really that prudish?’
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