The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: Product Reviews

  • Monitor Calibration with the Spyder 3 Pro

    Over the past few years as I have gotten into photography more, I have been farily successful at ignoring the fact that my monitor(s) weren’t the best and probably weren’t outputting color correctly.  Every now and then I’d tinker with Adobe Gamma but give up after nearly going cross-eyed (you know what I mean if you’ve used that tool before).  So instead of having a good baseline color profile to edit photos with, I would just keep in mind the color casts or contrast issues my monitor has and try to adjust accordingly.  Photos would end up looking decent on my machine and a little crappy on others’ and in print.  I could live with that.

    As I added multiple monitors to my PC, the situation became maddening.  I would get done tweaking an image, only to slide it to another monitor and have it look like crap.  Which one was correct? Or more accurately, which one was closer to correct?! 

    So about a month ago I gave in and purchased the Datacolor Spyder 3 Pro, and I must say that I’m very happy with it.

    It goes like this – after you install the software and drivers you’re asked to calibrate your monitor(s).  Monitor by monitor, you’re asked questions about the display controls you have available to you (brightness, contrast, etc) and are then instructed to attach the device to the screen at a location indicated by the software.  You can attach it with the built-in suction cup or by slinging the counter-weighted cable over the monitor and dangling it there.  I have only used the suction cup method and not bothered with dangling.

    After getting the device positioned, the software cycles through the spectrum to figure out how your monitor is outputting color and what needs to be done to correct it.  When it’s done, the result is a system color profile that gets installed so that any “color managed” applications (fancy term for applications that know how to use color profiles) will display images more accurately.

    The Spyder 3 Pro also keeps an app running in the background that uses the hardware device’s ambient light sensor to detect when the light has changed sufficiently that you’d need to recalibrate.  And finally, you can have it notifiy/remind you at sent intervals to reclibrate the monitor – because over time your monitor changes. 

    Initial calibrations take 7 minutes per monitor, and those periodic reclibrations take 3.  I don’t have anything to compare this to, but have read that older models took considerably longer.

    To date, I haven’t really found any negatives with this thing.  I am glad I purchased it, as it has taken alot of the second-guessing out of photo editing.  If you’re someone that has invested heavily in your camera equipment, computer and editing software, you seriously owe it to yourself to get one.

    OK, that’s all.

  • Bug Tracking

    The development of Chef has been pretty interesting thus far. I had almost forgotten how much work is involved in getting an application shippable like this. My previous experience was with the release WakeUp! Alarm Clock, but that was as off-the-cuff as you can get: simple version control (umm, none at first then graduated to CVS); no bug tracking; no build process – builds were simply done on my development box; no unit test for regression testing (unit tests, what are those?!); and really no plan whatsoever. But I was in college and had no real experience in software, it was my first.
    In these regards, Chef is completely different. I mean completely. My development environment is quite extensive in comparison to the days of old: Perforce for source control; FogBugz for bug tracking, support, forums and a bunch of other things; an automated build system driven by CruiseControl that give me a build and install at the click of a button; full NUnit test cases for the entire Chef API; and multiple VMWare environments for testing. Future posts may include some information on some of these topics, but for now a little information about FogBugz.

    (more…)

  • MySpace

    As promised a while back, I have a few comments on the short time I’ve been a member of myspace.

    First, a quick background.  I’ve been quite curious of the whole social networking fad that has been going on.  As such, I first joined Facebook to get a peek at what it was all about.  I created my account, added a few people, checked it frequently.  Then sat there.  Outside of getting in contact with old classmates/friends, it’s a pretty damn boring environment.  I think it’s safe to say that I still didn’t get it.

    A little time went by, and I got tired of hearing all this roar about MySpace.  I assumed it was just another site like Facebook, but wanted to be sure before I wrote it off.   So I went and created an account…..

    Now that I’ve been on it for a month or so, I feel no need to hold back judgement.  Holy crap, what a steaming pile MySpace is.  I was definitely wrong when I first thought it was another Facebook.  Hell no, at least facebook has a web application that is clean, relatively fast, and… here’s a thought… WORKS!  I can’t keep track of how many times I’ve tried searching and get a stupid error page saying their engineers have been notified of the error.  I’m throwing the bullshit flag on that one!  They’d probably receive on the order of magnitude of 100,000 emails a day if that were the case.

    I then tried setting aside my frustration from the technical side of myspace, and focus on the idea and not the implementation.  Yeah, there’s nothing there either.  I now fully believe that 90% of MySpace users are legally blind, and 85% of the remaining 10% are color blind.  I’ve never seen so many webpages that make me wish I’d just have the seizure and get it over with.  Again, I tried setting my disgust aside and focus on the content.  But then I realized I couldn’t focus on the content because some really annoying song just started playing from someone’s page!  When I finally turn that off, all I see are retarded internet joke images, lame shout-outs on the bulletin boards, and shitty camera phone pictures.  To those I say: 1) everyone has seen those jokes, they aren’t new.  Ever.  2) Oh boy, you’re only the hundredth person to say “Wow, it’s been a long time!” and 3) just because your phone has a camera doesn’t mean it was meant to be used all the time.  Seriously, put it down.
    I’m convinced that MySpace needs to just be buried in internet history and forgotten about.  I admit that I still don’t care about social networking sites, but someone’s gotta come along and beat MySpace.  Please!

  • Taskbar Shuffle

    I’ve been using this great utility for a few months now, and it’s installed on every one of my computers now. If you’re using Windows and find yourself inundated with applications in your taskbar you should give it a shot. I started using it just to rearrange running applications but I just installed the latest version (2.0) and it has some cool grouping options that are going to come in handy.

    Oh, and it’s free. The author does take donations, however.

  • Campbell’s Chunky: Fajita Steak with Rice and Beans

    Best. Soup. Ever. Especially for breakfast.

    can_FajitaSteak-1.jpg

  • TechSmith SnagIt

    A while back I installed the trial version of TechSmith’s SnagIt software.  I remember asking myself why on earth I would need a utility to capture screenshots – seriously, what’s so hard about alt+PrintScreen, pasting into an image editor, cropping, and saving to a file?

    This afternoon I purchased a copy.  I grew to love the 2 seconds it took to get a screenshot taken and saved.  It also has a bunch of other screen capture capabilities (regions, scrolling windows, to PDF, time delays, including cursor, etc.) that are very useful.  Most of the other screen capture utilities I’ve tried in the past were shitty little apps that were just clunky to use and didn’t speed up the process.  Way to go SnagIt, you have replaced MS Paint.
    A side effect of this purchase is most likely going to be an increaesd number of screen shots/clips.  I don’t know yet if that’s a good or bad thing.

  • Axialis Icon Workshop 6.0

    A week or so ago I purchased a copy of Axialis Icon Workshop 6.0 Corporate Edition so I could crank out good looking icons for Chef. I have used trial editions of past versions and found it to be a very good product, but never pulled the trigger to buy it.

    6.0 changed that in a major way. They’ve come up with a fantastic way to allow the user to take stock “objects” and quickly and easily compose them into great looking icons. With their older versions it took me a long time to come up with icons, and they still never made me very happy. But that is surely not the case anymore, great work guys.

    I’m halfway expecting some of those computer graphics wizards out there to start putting out “object” libraries of their own.  I’m really looking forward to such a thing (anyone?! anyone!?).

    Ontop of their great software sits a reasonable pricing model and the lifetime upgrades are nothing to balk at!

  • Mouse and Keyboard

    I now have a new mouse and keyboard, and they are awesome! The keyboard is the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and it’s definitely the most comfortable keyboard I’ve ever used. It’s unique for several reasons: the comfortable curve in addition to the “natural” style of keyboard; great key action; comfortable, padded wrist wrest built-in; and reverse tilt. This one is for home, but I know I’m going to end up getting on for work too.

    The mouse is the Wireless Optical Mouse 5000. There’s not a whole lot interesting with the mouse, other than it’s a lot smoother than my previous first generation optical mouse. When I picked it up today, I really wasn’t expecting a better feel, but I sure was wrong.

    If you’re in the need, these two products are definitely worth the money. Particularly the keyboard.

  • Longhorn Steakhouse

    Ana and I dined at the recenly opened (within the past couple months) Longhorn Steakhouse. We were expecting something in the range of Lonestar, both in price and taste.

    Boy were we WRONG!

    I ordered a filet and Ana ordered a serloin. First, the prices were a bit steep compared to Lonestar, and inching into Alexander’s territory (the BEST place for a steak). Second, the food sucked! The steaks were soooooo salty tasting that I ended up not even eating the entire thing, which is almost unheard of. Not to mention that my filet appeared as if it were “grilled” on an appliance you might find at McDonald’s or Taco Bell (think the grilled burrito machine) – it was unnaturally flat and “even” (for lack of a better term), looking as if it were pressed with a hot iron. Grill lines? Who wants those!

    The salads were ok, although the ceasar dressing was almost non-existant. The potato was ok, although it’s hard to mess that up. The beer selection was poor, I ended up with just a Killian’s instead of a Black and Tan or Newcastle Brown.

    I warn anyone thinking of eating there. Shame on us for not going to Alexander’s.

  • Photos

    When I want to print some of my astronomy photos, I usually take them to Meijer’s Photo Lab on a memory card and use their photo kiosks to submit them for printing. On Saturday I went online and discovered they now have a Windows client application that allows photos to be submitted from home. I downloaded and installed the app, submitted my photos, and picked them up at the local Meijer just over an hour later. Worked flawlessly and I highly recommend it.

    In the past I’ve tried Wal-Mart’s digital photo services, but the astronomy pictures I tried just came out very poorly. I think this was due to Wal-Mart trying to be smart and make adjustments to the submitted digital photo, and it getting aweful confused when the pictures I was printing were 99% black.

    Since I’ve been printing them at Meijer, they’ve come to know me and often comment on how much they like printing the ones I send in. Saturday I printed one of my sunspot pictures and, when I picked them up, the lady explained that she was really confused about what the picture was – until she saw and recognized my name. At least I have a fan!