Some time ago, I made the break in taking photos as JPEGs in favour of the superior RAW format. Through using the Lightroom tool, i found my photos becoming much more superior in their tonality and colour ranges. The only caveat I had was that if anyone wanted to see my photos, they had to be exported in the Jpeg format.
There have been many recommended updates to the standards over the past several years: Jpeg2000, PNG, HD but none of them have supplanted the increasingly obsolete format with its limited dynamic range and lossy compression. It may have been replaced by now with a superior format if it was not for the fact that the past several years has seen an explosion akin to the Big Bang when it comes to photos on the Internet. Everyone is taking and posting photos and since most people have compact digital cameras, they invariably have jpegs as the only format available to them.
On the other hand, RAW format images have an issue in that between different manufacturers and camera models there is no standard. Programs that deal with RAW images have to load large libraries of code for every RAW specification.
That is why I looked favorably on Adobe’s Digital Negative format (DNG). The RAW format variations will still exist for now but by converting them into a standardised format primarily for Adobe’s imaging programs but also to give portability to the image for other programs. If the format becomes a standard, we may see it implemented on the cameras themselves in the future at first supplanting the RAW format on the high end Digital SLR cameras but eventually on to the compact cameras too. Then it is just a step away to become the JPEG format replacement though I am not holding my breath for that. Still, anything that can ease the movement of an image from a camera to the web page with high dynamic range, excellent tonality and no loss in detail will be greatly appreciated.
With all of the going ons in my life, one thing that has been put on the back burner has been my oft-discussed move to the new iMac computers. As a priority in my life, it has been downgraded quite a bit. But like many other things in life, sometimes waiting for something may prove more advantageous than rushing in.
This week the iMac received a bit of an upgrade with faster CPUs and more default RAM for the same price pints as before. Apple also released a new top-end version of the iMac, a 24″ monitor version with a 3.06 GHz CPU and a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS graphics card making it more a gamer’s machine than anything else.
Considering that the desktop line received a major overhaul last summer, it is premature to expect any significant upgrades for the iMac. This year, it is the MacBooks that will get the overhauls as we have seen first with the Air version.
The Leopard version of the Mac OS will be getting a new update in the very near future and may get another one yet by the time I get to buying the iMac. So far I am still comfortable with my decision to switch but holding back for a bit looks like a prudent decision if not a totally voluntary one.
The new 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac, for a suggested retail price of $1,499 (US), includes:
- 20-inch widescreen LCD display
- 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with a 1066 MHz front-side bus
- 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM expandable to 4GB
- 320GB Serial ATA hard drive running at 7200 rpm
- a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
- ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory
- built-in iSight video camera
- built-in AirPort Extreme 802.11n wireless networking & Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
- mini-DVI out (adapters for DVI, VGA and Composite/S-Video sold separately)
- built-in stereo speakers and microphone; and
- the Apple Keyboard, Mighty Mouse and infrared Apple Remote.
Note
Part of the collection of photos taken by Idlewild photography as we shared our last moments with our son Nicholas.
The photographer is part of the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep organisation to record images of families and their passed children.
When visiting their website, please see all of the good work they do and feel free to donate to support their efforts.
Ah spring.
Daffodils bloom, dogwoods spread their blossoms and the air warms under a bright sun.
For some people, spring signifies a change, an opportunity to do things you have not done since the autumn’s cold creeping embrace.
For me, this means that I can now drive with the top down on my Eclipse Spyder.
With the sun on your face, wind in your hair and blue sky everywhere, there is no feeling that can match driving around in a convertible. You feel more alive with a sense of freedom. You can see everything around you even if it means breathing some trucker’s exhaust.
I always wanted a convertible whenever I thought about having my own car when I was growing up in Newfoundland. The problem of having a convertible is immediately obvious with the island’s long winters and high number of rainy days. A few brave souls around St, John’s had convertibles but realistically. If they got 2 weeks worth of top down driving in a year, they were fortunate.
When I moved to the sunshine state of Florida, convertibles were quite common but I still could not get one as convertibles are more expensive than comparable cars. So I had to remain content with my Neon for several years. In the spring of 2001 when the Neon decided it could not run anymore without getting thousands of dollars of maintenance , I though this was the time to make one of my dreams come true. The Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder was one car I was looking at for quite awhile. At the time, the $30,000 price tag was doable for me so I soon was behind the wheel of the car. For several weeks after, whenever the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, the top came down and I was on the road. The exhilaration of driving the vehicle was incredible.
One thing I did find out about driving in Florida with a convertible, that every day was not a good day to drive with the top down. Summer days were especially bed with the torrid humility and an unrelenting sun; if you stop even just for a moment, you immediately feel the heat. So, like so many others that summer, I found myself with the top up during the daytime and the AC turned on. When night fell then the top could come down. In time, I realised that daytime driving a convertible is best in northern Florida during the March-May & October-November months otherwise it is too hot or cold.
What I found good about North Carolina is that it is made for cruising with the top down with the mountains in the west to the beaches in the east. The summers are quite tolerable and rarely do I need to put the top up except for the most humid of days which are few here. UNtil Madeleine came into our lives, we cruised the Blue Ridge Mountains experiencing the fall colours with unrestricted views
Since Madeleine’s birth, the convertible i essentially my car for commuting. Everything else is handled by the CR-V as it carries everyone comfortably and hauls bigger load. For viewing landscapes like the fall colours, it not so bad though nothing like the Spyder.
Soon, though, it will be time to give it up entirely. Just not practical anymore with the kids. Not too bad on wear and tear with just 85K miles on it so if I do trade it in, I should get a decent price for it.
For seven years, I have cruised the highways and byways of North Carolina and Florida with the sun on my face and the wind in my hair and feel alive and happy. It has been a good run but I think I have one more summer of driving with the down top.
I am going to miss my Eclipse.
Note
Part of the collection of photos taken by Idlewild photography as we shared our last moments with our son Nicholas.
The photographer is part of the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep organisation to record images of families and their passed children.
When visiting their website, please see all of the good work they do and feel free to donate to support their efforts.
You can see the rest of the photos here on the Snaps Gallery under the Gallery “A moment with Nicholas”.
Well, nearly lost another one the other night. Christen’s television was acting up and started to block part of the screen with a black video box. Could not figure out what was the problem. It was a relatively older television which barely functioned when everything seemed to be working. Given this situation what were we do?
Well, we buy another one. We could have sought to repair it but why bother when you can buy another one for about the price of a repair. At Walmart,a basic television can be for little as $140.
Far too often, when something breaks down, we find it more expedient to just buy another one when a repair could have fix it for far less but generally we rationalise it by believing we get something with more features with better quality at a cheaper price than the one we had previously. Why is this so?
Well, as the centres of manufacturing keep moving to China and other parts of Asia with their extremely low wage rates, the prices of electronics, furniture and other household items keep going down. The quality of the items is just as good as before at prices that from year to year seem only to go down.. In America, relentless materialism requires that we get everything we can to make our lives feel complete otherwise we are failures by whatever standard society feels it needs to judge our success. Hence, the need for the latest and biggest SUVs, big screen TV’s, houses that in other eras would be considered mansions or summer chateaus even to the relatively inexpensive iPod players. Even at the lower prices, people in their drive to get it all NOW become indebted to their second mortgages and credit cards. At some point, the reckoning will become due and with the imploding home mortgage and credit crunch situations in the economy, I think the time has already come.
So we keep throwing out perfectly fine items or fail to repair the items we now because we need to spend more on items we should not be able afford but we get them anyways. When we moved into our new home, I cleaned up the garage of all of the old items we did not need anymore. I think I threw out 5 personal stereos, 2 televisions, 3 VHS machines and 2 DVD players. None of it was very expensive when we bought it and to us it was not worth the while to have it repaired.
I can not begin to think how much we have spent in the past several years on items we keep replacing over and over. We do not save for future needs nor do we consider what to do with all of these things. Goodwill has done quite well by us in the past few years.
Perhaps with this recession we are now in, we can take a breather on our rampant consumerism. If something breaks or becomes damaged, just let it go and do without it for awhile if it is not that important. Perhaps by doing without something we can discover something else which we may have forgotten. We neeed to take stock in what we have. Indeed, by any criteria, even the poorest of us now have items that our parents and grandparents could only dream of having. perhaps we should consider ourselves fortunate that we are so rich as a society that we can dispose of such things that others in the world could only dream of.
So much waste.
Barack Obama is coming to Winston-Salem to campaign for the North Carolina Primary. The particulars of the event is :
Town Hall with Barack Obama
Joel Coliseum Annex
300 Deacon Blvd.
Winston-Salem, NC 27105
Tuesday, April 29th
Doors Open: 9:30 a.m.
Ticket quantity is set at 2500 but they are expected to go fast. This may be his only stop in Winston and is my luck, I am just too tied up in my work to get away for the rally. That is a pity for me.
So if you are unable to attend, then go to http://nc.barackobama.com/winstonsalem and sign up to volunteer or contribute to the campaign and help make the effort to ensure a real change in this country.