Posted on by mwhybark

buoyancy

The white fish is swimming upside down more now than last night. Before I fed them tonight, he was swimming normally. As soon as he ate the food, he became unusually buoyant, like an underwater balloon. None of the other fish in the tank seem to have this problem.

I noticed him struggling to swim down to the bottom last night after feeding, and as he tired, he’d bob to the top of the tank, slowly rotating until his belly brushed the surface of the water, then seeking to right himself in a frenzy. In all other respects, he appears healthy.

But as he tires, he swims upside down more and more. I am reasonably certain the white fish will follow the call of an impossibly beautiful black fish looming
in the distance sometime in the next couple of days.

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a happy ending

I just spent the last half-day trying to fix my father-in-law’s e-machines desktop Windows XP box. He can’t clearly explain what happened, but somehow he became concerned that a new scanner he’d purchased had installed bad stuff on the computer, and I think he sought to remedy this by hand-removing some of the items he thought the installer had put on the disk. Hand-removing stuff under Windows is a bad idea.

At any rate, the upshot of all this was a non-functional sound card – the system thought it was running fine but no audio was produced. After walking through the unhelpful, very basic audio troubleshooter built into Windows, I took a deep breath, cleared my calendar for the day, and initiated a support call and ticket with e-machines.

After a brief intake, it was determined that the never-registered machine was out of warranty, and that the ticket would run $20 to initiate. I had been expecting some sort of charge, so I okayed it and we began.

After a few followups and verifications, we were recommended to run a full system install, wiping the HD, after pulling my father-in-law’s documents to a backup. Happily, we were able to do that with no gnashing of teeth, and I initiated the system restore.

When the initial-boot Windows XP setup appeared, it appeared over soothing music! Hurrah, the card’s fixed, I thought. After reboot – nothing. Alas.

One more phone call, and I was advised that the physical sound card was bad and that I should simply replace it. Now, my father-in-law really enjoys his computer, but rather than learning about it by reading or becoming a tech-nerd, he has evolved an elaborate personal set of metaphors that suffice to allow him to use the machines. However, that means he’s likely to blame the last person who touched the machine if things start going awry, and thus, the last thing I wanted to do was pop the case and start rummaging around in the guts of the machine.

I may understand how to assemble and disassemble computers but my level of expert Wintel knowledge dates to 1993, the first year I could afford to buy a Mac and get the hell outta Dodge.

After some frowning thought, I realized that the support person who advised me to buy a new soundcard had missed a clue: the machine played audio when booted into the setup routine. The card, physically, was fine. There had to be a way to address whatever tangled thing had cut off the circuits from the software.

One more call back to e-machines and I was told, in this order:

a) your machine is still in warranty for another year

b) we’re refunding your $20 ticket fee

c) use the device manager to uninstall the modem, then reboot

d) we’re going to reinstall the audio drivers from the restore CD before the modem drivers are re-enabled at startup

As it happened, due to a slight accident, the machine booted into Windows directly, with the startup chime!

I’m happy that the emachines support people were able to help; each time I placed a call I was connected to a real, live human within 30 seconds of having navigated the intake telephone tree.

On the other hand, I was told that the machine was out of warranty and that the audio card was dead, inaccuracies that would not have been corrected had I not pushed back, something that makes me reluctant to recommend the manufacturer to naive PC-users.

Finally, I have to note that the whole experience occupied me for four hours. Yeesh. I’m sticking with my Macs until they pry ’em outta my cold, dead hands.

UPDATE: One reboot later, the sound output is AWOL, again. On a clean install! Man! How do you people live with it?

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ividly

I spent a big chunk of today finally exploring the integration features in iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, and iMovie. I’m working from a mixed base of assets representing the two most recent camping trips we went on (to Mount Baker in June and to the Olympic Peninsula this month).

As it happens, long-time MacWorld editor Jim Heid saw a prior entry on the topic of helping my Mom learn to use her new Mac, and kindly offered to send a copy of his book, The Macintosh iLife. We corresponded, and he sent a copy, inscribed to her.

I hadn’t ever really even attempted to use the apps as they were designed to be used (with the exception of iTunes), and before I sent the book on, I wanted to work through a demo project involving all the integration features with the book at my side, so I would be familiar enough with it to refer Mom to a chapter as needed. It’s been helpful, although my questions have been a bit more specific and technically oriented than the book is designed for.

For example, I did find a passing reference to the fact that iDVD only supports slideshows composed of up to 99 individual picture files, as I searched for reasons a folder of images was not generating the anticipated button upon drag-and-drop.

So, beyond the passing help the book’s provided, here are the issues I’m having that I think are failings in the suite of apps, speed not being considered (I’m using them on a G4/400 at the very low end of supported machines, and the speed is quite intolerable, something I cope with by time-slicing with household chores such as laundry and dishes).

The best feature that the suite provides is the ability to marry sets of images to selected songs from your music library. Unfortunately, each of the image-oriented apps – iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto – provides this feature with a slightly different implementation, and thus far I have not found a good way to seamlessly combine the various implementations. iMovie, for instance, will render your stills into a sliding, cross-fading quicktime montage using the well-known Ken Burns Effect. Unfortunately, the various transitions available in iPhoto, for example, are unavailable (at least at first) in iMovie, and in particular in the attempt to create a Ken Burns extravaganza. Furthermore, selecting and previewing a song and transition sequence in iPhoto is easy, easy, easy. Duplicating that in iDVD, or iMovie, is not quite so straightforward.

(UPDATE: Yes it is. in iDVD, dragging an iPhoto album from the iDVD Photos selection pane will also bring iPhoto slideshow effects into the iDVD slideshow.)

iPhoto offers an ‘iDVD’ button, presumably to allow you to send your iPhoto slideshow to iDVD. I say presumably because each time I used it, iDVD would launch and then crash. If it launched, would it add the sideshow to an existing project, or close the current project, replacing it with the new slideshow? I can’t say.

iDVD disappointed me in ways that are similar to and reflective of QuickTime Pro, rejecting native mpeg files for drag-and-drop inclusion in menu-item playback. I’ll be experimenting with optimal ways to incorporate the variant mpeg formats generated by our cameras into iDVD, probably routing through iMovie.

As I noted about a month ago, Apple’s applications treat video and photos as truly disjunct, something which made sense prior to the prevalence of dual-media recording devices. This is something that Apple must change to retain the leading-edge cachet regained with Jobs’ return.

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First Test

In one hour and thirty minutes I will be taking the first drivers’ test of my life.

Update, 2:30p. I failed. This is not surprising or upsetting given that I haven’t practiced at all for several months and loathe cars* and driving anyway. But my tastes and desires aren’t germane here, and I’ll be testing again as soon as possible. I was ready to go two weeks from today at 8am, but was overrruled.

*As a class, I mean. I have no problem with individual cars and kind of like ours as a specific object. But I would happily disappear it and all other cars from the world with a wave of my magic wand if I could do so.

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Microfilm

lake_crescent

(1 minute. 6 mb 1.8 mb, 320 x 240 mpeg, no audio. Control-click to download, looks like I have Apache set to not stream mpegs or something.)

As I mentioned, Viv and I (and Spencer) were out of town this weekend. We were on the Olympic peninsula, in an ill-advised attempt to visit the Hoh river valley on the rainiest day of the summer. We failed.

Instead, we gave up fighting the rain in Port Angeles, and eventually moseyed over to stay at the Crescent Lake campground, Fairholm, on the far east end of the lake. (Cabins and a lodge are also available – oh man, I bet a winter stay here would be something.) On the north side of the lake is a flat, wide trail, a converted railroad after which the trail is named, the Cedar.

Partway along the trail is a large railroad tunnel, filled with ties and collapsing within.

At 1 am, Spencer and I walked down to the lake and watched cloud formations over it move around. The moon rose over a high shoulder of the steeply forested surrounding hills, and I saw a bright green meteor flash in, arcing from west to east.

Sadly, we did not get much hiking done, due to extreme dawdlesomness, but on the way back we drove up to Hurricane Ridge for the obligatory best picnic table in the northwest, where we were accosted by the usual menacing array of deer, chipmunks, and mid-size birds. Our meal was closely supervised by two regally nonchalant adult ravens, each the size of a small black pony. The deer and assorted other wild hooligans have been my acquaintances in that spot for years; the ravens were something quite new.

Crescent Lake is currently in the local news, on and off, for diving recovery projects. Years ago, the lake was also the site of a celebrated, grisly murder mystery that began with the recovery of the saponified body that became known as The Lady of the Lake, a tale I sadly neglected to learn before camping. Next time, I get to tell the ghost story to end all campfire ghost stories.

I do have loads more pictures. In fact, an overwhelming amount; in addition to Viv’s new camera I brought both the old Kodak and the tiny, Lomo-esque Veo, which I think I am getting the hang of. It has a truly irritating interface and settings are totally transient, so you can’t assign a default mode for it to boot into, but the lens produces shading and hazing that are clearly in the Lomo tradition (not to assert that the Veo has any of the magic of the eastern European wonder, mind you).

The film above was iMovied from bits of 10 to 30 second silent mpegs captured with the camera. Amazingly, I filled the card up with stills and clips on one AAA battery.

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A New Thing

I live in a heavily rental-oriented neighborhood in downtown Seattle. Renters are not, by-and-large, voters, and thus they are not generally campaigned to.

This evening, I stepped outside to take the trash to the dumpster. I’ve been listening to the Democratic convention speeches all week, generally with interest and sometimes with criticisms. Tonight, as I carried my dripping bag of refuse out, John Edwards was just entering the “two Americas” portion of his speech.

To my amazement, the speech did not fade into the distance as I approached the alley. Instead, it seemed to be coming from everywhere. I stopped and listened closely. From more than one apartment and backyard within a half-block radius of my house, my neighbors were tuned in to Edwards’ speech, volume up, as they prepared dinner or puttered in the yard. His voice echoed off the buildings in the summer sun.

I’ve lived in this neighborhood for fifteen years, under three presidents; it’s the kind of neighborhood where I still see Nader 2000 stickers and I doubt that a single person on my block is opposed to gay marriage.

But I have never, never known the neighborhood, collectively, to be so engaged in the national political state of affairs that they would listen to a convention speech in unity. I am amazed.

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Change

Viv got home late last night. Among her California booty was a bumpersticker that her dad gave her.

As some readers will already know, Viv’s parents came to the U.S. from Cuba after the revolution. While my father-in-law is far from being the political caricature of Cuban emigres seen as players in both Florida and national politics, it’s safe to describe him as a reliable Republican voter, comfortable in the Reagan-Nixon zone of Orange County, California.

The bumpersticker he gave Viv endorses one John Kerry, lately of Massachusetts. I’m beginning to suspect that the current President may – just maybe – be in trouble, barring Osama, Osama, or bimbo eruption.

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Cam, gear, shaft

I bought Viv a Minolta DiMage X20 as an anniversary present. My primary criteria were size, cost, and standard batteries (I hate manufacturer-proprietary rechargeables). It’s currently available at Amazon for $170, a somewhat different price than I paid.

I was very surprised at the camera’s bounty of features, which includes (as do many cameras these days) low-res digital video clips as an option.

Shortly, I’ll get Viv up to speed on using iPhoto, storing her photos outside iPhoto as a backup, and so forth. However, I noticed that she has a strong tendency to flip back and forth between still snapshots and movie clips when she’s using the camera, which means that iPhoto will simplay fail to meet her needs. She’ll expect to see chronologically organized galleries that incorporate both kinds of media seamlessly.

That means I need to look at iPhoto alternatives.

FootTrack presents itself as iPhoto for movie clips. Which is nice, and all, but not quite what I want.

Back in the day, I relied on iView Media Pro to do pretty much exactly that. Unfortunately, I hated the HTML and web-oriented features it had, and so don’t know if it will do what I want or not.

I suppose the single most important feature of iPhoto to me today is the presence of that iPhoto to Gallery plugin. Ideally, an alternate desktop multimedia manager would employ the iPhoto plugin API. Which would be nice.

iView offers a (mighty pokey) user forum, so praps there’s an answer there.

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ten years ago on a cold dark night

Vivian and I had our first date ten years ago tonight. It was wiltingly hot. We had a choice between The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl or The Lion King.

The documentary was my first choice, but Viv was unsure who the subject was. Let me tell you, explaining why you want to see a film about a Nazi filmmaker to your partner on a first date is nothing I can suggest as a mating strategy. I struggled though weaker and weaker attempts to tell Viv who Ms. Reifenstahl was before finally blurting out, “Or we can go see The Lion King!”

Exactly four years after that, on another blistering summer day, Viv and I were married at the top of the Smith Tower.

For those of you out there wondering, I have concluded that being married is a Good Thing.