Recently in Raves Category

On occasion you see something so breath-taking you don't have adequate words to describe it.  It's jaw dropping.  Stunning.  I had that experience when I first saw the HD series, Earth, on Blu-ray. The photography was beyond anything I had imagined before.

Well, I suspect that Tom Lowe's (@timescapes) time lapse project, which he has been working on for some time, is going to be another of those stunning visual experiences.  Below is a teaser he posted on Vimeo.  There's time lapse, there's astro time lapse, and there's Tom Lowe's time lapse.  I can't wait to see this finished work.

Also of note, Tyler Ginter (@TylerGinter) who spent some time with Tom helping with a shoot in the fall and learning more about time lapse, has posted a really excellent piece about the art and science of time lapse.  He includes a growing checklist, links to Tom Guilmette's (@TomGuilmette) tutorial on setting up the Kessler Cineslider, Philip Bloom's (@PhilipBloom) tutorial on post, and a behind the scene shot of setting up Tom's Natural Bridge time lapse sequence.  It's really a great post.  The checklist is awesome.

When you watch the time lapse below, which is a teaser for his upcoming film, be sure to go into full screen mode.

In her latest exhibit, The City, artist and fine-art photographer Lori Nix designed a miniature, detailed, deserted world being reclaimed by nature.  I've never seen anything quite like this before.  Each miniature 3D diorama took between 2 to 15 months to create in all of its painstaking detail.  Each was created to be photographed or filmed in such a way as to make them look virtually life sized.

The collection, for some reason, reminded me of my visit to Pompeii—peering into a far off world that once was but is no more. It's a bit eerie and unsettling to consider what our world today would look like as ancient ruins. Her exhibit brings us to that place.

View photos of her exhibit at the link above; or, click on the image below to watch a video of  her diorama, The Map Room.

Could you walk right up to the edge?  Heights make me start spinning.  But heights don't seem to bother these kids.  Would you let your children stand this close to the edge?

Oh, OK.  I get it now.  Clever.  (It's a brilliant marketing campaign for a book.)

Source:  Damn Cool Pics

Tip of the fedora to Dan for this great idea.

Do you ever get tired of hearing the same music over and over again from your iTunes library?  Here's a possible cure.

Select all of the music in your music library.  Right click on one of the highlighted items and select "Reset Plays" to make the play count for each item "0." Create a smart playlist based on whatever criteria you want.  As the final criteria, add Plays is 0.  Click OK.

Now, once you have listened to an item in the playlist, it drops out of the playlist.

Dan syncs all of his music library to his iPod.  Every time he listens to a song the play count goes to "1" for that song.  When he re-syncs his iPod to his computer, that song drops out of the play list.  At the end of the year, he starts over.

Related articles

• Making the most of the iTunes Column Browser (macworld.com)

iTunes Home Sharing
With five computers in the house with two distinct music libraries among them, and with two AppleTVs on the network connected to sound systems, and with the new Apple Remote app for your iPhone or iPad (way cool app!), iTunes Home Sharing is really convenient and easy to setup.  With home sharing turned on, you can play music from any computer on any computer or AppleTV on your local network.  Even more:  It's a great way to have an additional backup of all of your iTunes media.

This post will overview how to get started with home sharing. It looks like it has a lot of steps, but each step is really easy.

1.  Click on the [iTunes] menu and select [Preferences].  (Windows users, I assume your preferences are in the same place as they are on a Mac.)

2.  In the Preferences window that comes up, under the [General] tab, make sure your iTunes [Library Name] on this machine has a name that will make sense to you when you see it on another computer.  If all of your iTune's Libraries have the same name, you will have no idea which one belongs to what computer.

3.  Under the [Sharing] tab, make sure sharing is turned on by checking [Look for shared libraries] and [Share my library on my local network].  Click OK.

4.  Click on the [Advanced] menu and select [Turn On Home Sharing].  (Once iTunes Home Sharing is turned on, this menu item toggles to [Turn Off Home Sharing].

5.  You will be prompted for your iTunes account information.  [Yes, you must have an iTunes Account to do this.  You can click on "Need an iTunes Account?" to learn more about setting up an iTunes Account.]  After entering your account information, Click on [Create Home Share].  Adding your account information does not make it possible for someone on another computer to use your account to purchase media from iTunes.  It just sets up the sharing feature.  I assume that you could have multiple home sharing networks if you used different iTunes accounts for each.  But a single computer could only be a part of a one network at a time.

6.  The screen then shows you some important information.  You must use the exact same iTunes account information when turning on iTunes Home Sharing on each of the other computers in your house.  And, notice that Home Sharing is only for personal use.  Now click on [Done].

7.  Now the computer you just shared appears in a Shared list on the left column in iTunes along with all of the other computers as you turn on iTunes Home Sharing on each computer you wish to share.

8.  The name of your computer's shared iTunes music library will not appear on that same computer, only the other computer's music libraries you are sharing on the home network.  Click on the name of one of the libraries under [Shared] in the left column to see some other really convenient options.  These options will then appear at the bottom of the iTunes window as shown below.  If you leave the [Show] drop down on [All items] you will see all of the items in the selected, shared iTunes Library.  If you select [Items not in my library] only the items that are not included in the music library on the computer you're sitting at will appear in the iTunes window.

9.  If you click on the [Settings...] button, the window below appears.  By selecting any or all of these media types, any of those items not found in that computer's iTunes library will be automatically transferred to the computer you're sitting at.  If your hard drive is large enough, this is a huge convenience for making certain you have an additional backup of your iTunes media files.

10.  Maybe you don't wish to automatically transfer all of a particular media type onto your computer, just a selected group of songs or movies or TV shows, etc.  By selecting [Items not in my library] and then [Command] clicking or [Shift] clicking on the items you wish to import to highlight them, the [Import] button grayed out in the screenshot in step 5 becomes active.  After selecting the items you wish to import, click on the [Import] button to add them to the library of the computer at which you are sitting.

There are many little apps for the iPhone that come in very handy for traveling, but this one really caught me by surprise!  The app translates printed text on the fly in real time.  It substitutes the words it sees in print with the translation.  It's rather remarkable, really—a new breed of language dictionary is born.

Check out Word Lens at the iTunes Store.  It's advertised as free and then works in demo mode.  You must purchase translation "modules" which are $4.99 and currently limited to English to Spanish and Spanish to English.  It really works!  I'm assuming other language modules will be released.

Related articles

• Word Lens: the iPhone app that will change travel (gadling.com)
• Words Lens For iPhone Translates Spanish To English (informationweek.com)
• Word Lens Translates Text With Your IPhone Camera (pcworld.com)
• Word Lens: Augmented Reality App Translates Street Signs Instantly (wired.com)
• Word Lens translates text with your iPhone camera (macworld.com)

Do you know who this is, filming a movie in Dublin? Check out this link for more info and a picture of the character versus the actual person playing the roll. You will be surprised, I think. One of my favorites. And I had no idea!

Hint: 63 years old!

The Sistoid Unit, my sister, called me today.  (That isn't what horrified me.)  She asked about some footwear you wear over your shoes so you can walk easily on snow and ice.  I had mentioned them to her when I traveled in the Canadian Rockies back in April of 2009.  In Banff I had to purchase them at the hotel to be able to walk at all!  Record snow falls and ice made walking treacherous, for a southern boy. The problem when the Sistoid Unit called:  I couldn't remember the name.  I could only recall "crampons."  These were not exactly crampons.

Since I couldn't remember the name, I did a quick search on my blog.  I was horrified to realize that I didn't blog about that trip!  Only one post, some time later, which features a pano made up of 16 photos (4 gigapixels) I shot of a beautiful scene?!  Fortunately, I at least published a couple hundred pictures from the trip, which was gorgeous, in an album here at tt.us.

I knew I had shot a picture of the Yaktrax, their name, when I was hiking in Johnston Canyon.  (The top picture is what the lower waterfall looks like when it's not frozen, as it was when I visited.) Those who hadn't worn any special footwear found walking in the canyon so precarious that they were sliding along, holding on to the rails.  When no raise were present, which was most of the time, they would slide along the ice on their rear ends.  Quite the sight!!

So, for my future state of deeper senility, here is a link to the Yaktrax, pictured below, at REI.  I loved them, and they were reasonably priced.

I love time lapse photography!  This time lapse by twin brothers Dan and David Newcomb has some spectacular shots in it featuring HDR as well as some awesome dolly and pan shots!  (They design and build their own rigs.) The undulating fog is spectacular! When you watch it, be sure to click on the full screen mode in the player window.

YouTube link (time lapse above where you can select full 1080i HD) Dan and David's YouTube Channel Their website link YouTube link (time lapse below where you can select full 1080i HD)

This time lapse below, of the frenetic energy of the Vancouver Olympics, is also stunning and uses crane and dolly shots.  When viewed at 1080i in full screen, will tax the dickens out of your internet service or Google's servers, or both.  (The size included below should play fine.)

Link to other posts @ tt.us featuring and about time lapse photography.

I try to walk along the Pacific as much as possible since I live less than a mile from it. (If it weren't such an elevation change, I would walk to the ocean, but the walk back up would be brutal for an "old man.") I love the Pacific because it's always in a different mood.

This afternoon's walk was hotter than any of the times I spent sitting by the ocean this summer (all wrapped up in a blanket, might I add!). It hit 83º here in December! But, on the flip side, the air was completely clear. I could see great detail in Santa Monica and Palos Verdes. Even the tip end of the north bay past Malibu and Catalina to the south were clearly visible!

The sun is now starting to set and wash everything in the warm light of magic hour.

Lovely.

I've blogged about my recent encounters with @Verizon when upgrading the TiVo with the Fios service here at the house.  In addition to the Twitter replies to me from Verizon following up, today I got a followup phone call from Ralph, the technician who installed the M-CableCard and got everything working wonderfully.  He wanted to be sure everything was satisfactory.

Since I groused about my really, really bad customer service experience, I feel equally compelled to rave about my current really, really good customer service follow up experiences.   OK, so Verizon and I have kissed and made up.  This was really pretty easy for me to do because I do so love their Fios* service and my MiFi card that I use all over the country.

Also of note:  loving the new high capacity TiVo Premiere XL in HD!

*According to an independent report that has nothing to do with Verizon, here in Manhattan Beach we're in the top 1% of household internet access speeds.  It just rocks my world since I do so much work on the internet!!  And I'm reading that Verizon just announced a whopping 150 megabit up and 35 megabit down upgrade from our supposedly current 15 up and 10 down!  (Our actual speed just clocked in at 30.54 Mb/s up and 22.51 Mb/s down.) My God, that's fast!  This makes cloud computing a bit more realistic.  Their goal:  10 gigabits per household in a few years!  That's just insane.

Related articles

• Verizon FiOS Readies Super Fast 10GB Per House Connection (beet.tv)
• @Verizon Customer Service Is Horrendously Wretched! (timtyson.us)
• Corporate Offloading (timtyson.us)

I've been frustrated for several weeks (months?) over a neutral density lens filter on one of my Canon lenses. It was stuck, and I really mean stuck! I haven't a clue how it got welded to the lens, but I simply didn't have the strength to twist it off to clean a spot on the inside.

I hit the internet.  I wanted a free solution.  Some good ideas at this link.

I pulled out an old mouse pad, flipped it over so the really rubber side was face up.  Placed my lens flat on top of it with even pressure—that's the key, and twisted while pressing down.  Keeping the mouse pad from bunching up occupied my other hand.

Tah Dah!  It came off!

It's the simple things in life.

Boys and their toys!  Of course, I can't complain.  I would be up their with them if this were my church.  While not particularly musically gratifying, this is certainly clever, creative and fun.

North Point Community Church's iBand.  (YouTube Link)

It's pretty simple, really.

I can not imagine a United States in which women were not allowed to vote, in which they were considered more as a man's property, his birthright, his just reward for manhood.  I can't imagine a United States in which black people were considered property, slaves, people owned and bred for the profit of white men.  I simply can not imagine a United States in which entire nations of people, the American Indians, were exterminated because white men wanted what was theirs.

And to do these things in the name of a god, a deity, a faith practice that holds to some ancient tenets most of 21st century civilization finds barbaric and so out of touch with present reality as to be rendered irrelevant superstitions is appalling, oppressive, and the very definition of evil.

Now don't misunderstand, I think people should be allowed to practice their chosen faith but within constraints that will be the content of the upcoming post on faith practice.  Denying the civil right of marriage to inter-racial couples is the stuff of antiquity.  To deny same sex couples the right to marriage is also the product of a similar hate-filled thinking process.  To deny gay men and women from serving in the military is just as ignorant, intolerant, and, like the aforementioned marriage issues, the product of forcing a narrowly defined faith practice on people who do not hold to the teachings of that ancient religious belief system.

Additionally, the whole marriage concern poses another interesting issue.  The church claims that they must "defend the traditional definition of marriage." That tradition is, of course, born in the very religious intolerance of which I've already written.  In other words, marriage is a curious legal and religious institution in which church and state are not separate. The founding fathers built as a major and fundamental tenet of this nation the separation of church from the state.  They, after all, had fled the religious tyranny of the protestant British Empire, though Sarah Palin might think it was the North Koreans.

I strongly, adamantly advocate for the separation of church and state.  Obviously, in the context of marriage, we need, as a nation, to explore this intermingling of the two.  The two must be separated!

As I have written before, if a church does not want to "endorse" or participate in a same sex couple's marriage because that marriage is inconsistent with the ancient teachings of their church, teachings to which they choose to adhere [are any of them out there still doing blood sacrifices?], then they should not be required to.  But for any religious body to try to inflict their faith practice on others is unacceptable and completely out of touch with the fundamental and founding tenets of this nation.

I frankly am glad that the religious front organization, the bogusly named Family "Research" Council, was labeled a "hate group" the day before yesterday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Indeed, they are a hate group.  They are trying to force their hate-filled beliefs about a minority group on the nation as a whole.

Their activist agenda is immoral. Their activist agenda perpetuates a culture of hate and intolerance that continues to encourage and even endorse violent words, verbal assaults, bullying, taunting, physical assaults, murders, suicides, verbal abuse, distrust, and hatred. This can not be tolerated by those who value the separation of church and state, who value tolerance, understanding, civility, and who aspire to live by the golden rule. Their activist position is the antithesis of American values, is the antithesis of who I believe God to be and what God wants of people.  And while this post will not be popular with some of my very conservative friends, I believe in my soul that my position is the moral and just one that will stand the test of time.

People can oppose marriage and military service equality and not be a hate group.  I can respect that.  And for those who find the notion of same sex marriage and inter-racial marriage something loathsome, then I invite them to live by the simple words Whoopie Goldberg recently said, just "Don't get one.". It's pretty simple really; isn't it.  In the land of the free and the home of the brave, no one will force them to.  They simply must stop trying to force their chosen, narrowly defined, religious beliefs on those who do not accept them as the teachings of a loving, relevant God.

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Now, before you think I'm just in a bad mood (though @Verizon certainly has put me in one!), I think Verizon's cell service and Fios service are completely awesome.  But their customer service is the worst of the worst.  In my opinion, the senior level executive in charge of customer service and retail should be fired immediately!

Today I completely wasted about 4 hours dealing with Verizon.  I had a simple objective:  replace the two cable cards in my old Series 3 TiVo with one multi-stream card in my new TiVo Premier XL.  The new TiVo will only accept one cable card, and it must be multi-stream.  Easy.

WRONG!!!!!

I thought all I needed to do was go to the nearest Verizon store and swap the old two for the new one.  When I arrived at the store near my house, I learned that most of the wireless stores have nothing to do with the cable stuff.  I needed to call an 800 number, and they would tell me where the nearest store is that could solve my problem.  How is one supposed to know which stores are which?!

I sort of remembered the location of the Verizon store where I picked up the first cable box when I moved here.  So off I headed in that direction while calling the number.  I waited on hold, to get to an agent, for about 10 - 15 minutes (after wading through their insufferable phone menus—every time I called).  She then asked in what city the store was where I had gone before.  I told her:  Venice Beach.  She said she would "get them on the line."  The ringing began.  After another 15 minutes or so of ringing, AT&T, in its inimitable way, dropped the call.  I called Verizon back and was dropped, after waiting about 10 minutes, before I even got an agent.  At this point I passed the place where the Verizon store had been.

It was gone!  The security guard didn't know where they went.  I called Verizon again.  (Menus, Wait, Wait, Wait...) We talked forever.  The agent told me the nearest store that would have the cable card I needed was in San Fernando.  What?!  I would have to go there to exchange the wrong cards for the correct card.  Good grief!  Well, ok, off I went.

When I arrived at the San Fernando Verizon store, you have no idea where to go once inside the store.  It looks worse than security at Southwest Airlines in LAX, literally!  Ropes and barricades everywhere.  But, unlike LAX, not many people.  You have no idea at all where to go in this maze!  Finally, I just walked around the maze of barricades and up to a person that appeared to fain being busy but had no one standing near her.

When I told her what the Verizon guy on the phone had said, she was flabbergasted.  She looked up my record.  Why would they send you here?  We don't have any cards at all of any kind!

What????!!!  You're kidding me!  I drove an hour for nothing?!!!!  She gave me a different 800 number to call saying they would order the card for me.

I went home.  Called.  (Menus, Wait, Wait, Wait...) Was sent to support.  (Wait, Wait, Wait...)  Support only replaces what you have, if it is broken, with what you have.  Support sent me back to customer service.  (Wait, Wait, Wait...)  Customer service then said they didn't understand what I wanted and HUNG UP ON ME!

I called back.  To this point I had been patient, but I was now furious.  This person told me immediately that they didn't have multi-stream cards.  They don't use them.  Their service is incompatible with them.  Instead, I could get one of their DVRs.  I told her that TiVo said, before I ordered the new TiVo, that Verizon Fios did have them.  She said she had had this issue before, had researched it, and that Verizon did not have nor support multi-stream cards.  She didn't know if they ever would.  Verizon only had the old cards that I already have that will not work in the new TiVos.  I asked her why any of the other people I had talked to today at Verizon had not told me this to begin with!

I then called @TiVo support to see if there was a work-around or if I was going to have to return the TiVo.

TiVo customer support rocks my world!!!  They are awesome!

The TiVo dude said Verizon absolutely does have them.  They are required by the FCC to have them.  He said we would have a three-way phone call with Verizon and resolve this.  Suddenly this new Verizon agent couldn't begin to understand why anyone at Verizon would have told me they do not have the multi-stream card.  She set up a day/time when they would come out to the house and take care of it for me.  The TiVo dude documented the Verizon case number and agent's arrangements.

What crap!  Verizon probably wanted me to rent one of their boxes.  This reminds me of back in the day when the cell phone companies would suddenly switch your service without you knowing until you got a bill from another company.  If I knew how to contact the head of Verizon's customer service and the head of their retail stores, I would tell them what a horrible job they are doing.

Related articles

• TiVo Unveils Its Own DVR-Controlling iPad App (gigaom.com)
• TiVo outs iPad remote app for Premiere DVRs (electronista.com)

Healthcare
I saw Keith Olbermann's show (see the clip at this link) where he hosted Michael Moore, producer of Sicko, and Wendell Potter, former Vice President of corporate communications at CIGNA, one of the United States' largest health insurance companies, and author of Deadly Spin. Potter apologized to Moore for his massive, industry-funded, carefully-crafted efforts to discredit him and his movie. Potter goes on to say that Sicko is indeed factually correct, and the insurance industry feared that the movie would create a populist uprising against the detestable insurance industry whose practices actually kill tens of thousands of decent, hard working Americans every year.

The fact that the insurance industry has been so successful in keeping Americans from embracing substantive, deep healthcare reform in this country astounds me beyond belief.  It's not even healthcare.  It's a gravy train for insurance investors.

This fabricated bogus label, "Obama-care," is such a farce!  Obama's successful healthcare initiative didn't go far enough!  Currently "Super Wealthy (and they're republicans as Deadly Spin reveals) Capitalist Assholes Getting Even Richer While You Die-care" is what we actually have until the healthcare reform kicks in.  The industry maximizes profits when they deny your claims.  And the loud-mouthed Tea Party wants to give these fat cats what they want?!  Another well-funded farce front group for monied interests.

What of the deficit? Fix it on the back of those making the most money.  Oh, but wait!  They will start squealing about losing jobs?!  What a hoax!  Always calling it anything but what it really is.

America needs a massive, populist movement that demands we balance the budget, not by hurting the average guy on the street, but by reeling in the defense department's out of control spending, among other "security" budgets, farm corn subsidies (which are wrecking the health of this nation!), etc..  Interestingly, this is exactly what a huge percentage of people on Twitter actually think according to this non-scientific survey by the New York Times on what Americans think we should do to balance the budget  (source:  link).  Click to enlarge.

Real people all over this country are sick of capitalism running out of control and hurting the good, common people of this country.

Update:  Michael Moore published this (in part) to his blog on Thanksgiving day.  I don't know Michael, but I think he would be a fascinating person with whom to chat.

All that money spent smearing me because they thought you would get up from your theater seat and start a revolution.

It's a great compliment to you. They fear the power you have. But that's 'cause they're good at math. They know there will always be more of us than there are of them. And unless they can repeal "one person, one vote," they know they are doomed. In the meantime they will try to maintain the power they have by buying off politicians, dumbing us down, distracting us with Dancing/Ice Skating/Drinking with the Stars and getting us so scared we'll acquiesce to having naked pictures taken of us at airports this Thanksgiving weekend. Over the river and through the body scan, to grandmother's house we go...

So let us give thanks tomorrow that the richest 1% begrudgingly know that we are still, on paper at least, in charge. It is, I believe, a glimmer of hope of what we could possibly accomplish in the coming new year.

Source:  Last Thoughts Before the Turkey Comes Calling

In the next day or two I'll publish another "We the People...".

Related Posts at tt.us

• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 1: Healthcare (this post)
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 2: Governance
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 3: Civil Rights
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 4: Journalism
• We Need a Populist Movement-Part 5: Faith Practice

Related articles

• Countdown Introduces Michael Moore to the Health Care Voldemort Who Came in From the Cold (mediaite.com)
• Wendell Potter Apologizes to Michael Moore For His Part to Discredit "Sicko" (crooksandliars.com)
• Michael Moore: They Said They Would Push Me "Off a Cliff" (huffingtonpost.com)
• Wendell Potter: My Apologies to Michael Moore and the Health Insurance Industry (huffingtonpost.com)

Mike Davidson (of Mike Industries) created a blog documenting his "first-hand chronology of the design, planning, and construction of a modern home in Seattle."  He leaves no stone unturned as he presents the cost of every aspect of the project, frequent posts throughout the project from planning to tear down to completion, complete with a time lapse of the entire event.

This isn't just a blog.  It's a journey! It's massive — lots of great pictures (fixtures, wiring...), lots of granular detail.

I've followed his journey on and off over the course of the year.  Now he has a gorgeous home in Seattle, with stunning views, and he let the world follow along.  Thinking about building?  You'll want to explore his blog, "A House by the Park."

Awesome!

Everyone knows that in 10.6 you can do a Quick Look on most files without opening them in the application that created them by simply selecting a file (one click) and then touching the spacebar. I love this feature and use it all of the time.  It was first introduced in 10.5.

But I didn't know that you can use the [Option] key to zoom in on the Quick Look and the [Option] + [Shift] keys to zoom out on a Quick Look and can even move around in zoomed images during Quick Look using two fingers on the Trackpad.

Nifty

My hosting service is MediaTemple. They have 24 hour phone support. They are awesome about helping the techno-illiterate, like me.

When I was in Budapest and Prague last week, I published 61 pictures, and my blog publishing platform on the MovableType side went berserk! Every time I would attempt to do anything, MT would log me out. I had never had this happen before and was clueless.

This morning, in my jet lag induced quasi-stupor, I decided I had to fix this problem. O horror!

Amazingly, I was able to determine that a specific table (mt_session) in my mySQL database for MT4 was corrupted and needed to be repaired. But I have no idea to repair a mySQL database table. In desperation I called MediaTemple.

As I feared, this was "outside the scope of support," but the guy did it anyway and walked me through what to do if (when) this happens again.

Awesome!  Now I can publish some of the pictures from Prague!

Related articles

• Hosting Company MediaTemple Gets an API (programmableweb.com)
• Web Hosting with Great Customer Support (bloggingtips.com)
• 22 New APIs: Personal Information Management, Web Hosting and IP Geolocation (programmableweb.com)

/div>

 

Nostalgia.  The good old days.  The old ways.  Back in the day.

We tend to remember the past all packaged up as warm and glowing.  This morning, for no discernible reason at all, I had a flash back memory from my childhood.  I was a young child visiting my great Aunt Hester—my mother's mother's sister.  My great Aunt Hester had very poor eyesight and had also had cataract surgery.  In those days, the result was very thick glasses that made your eyes look like saucers!  My Aunt Hester, as was so frequently the case, was sitting on the sofa (with the omnipresent National Inquirer at one end) in her den with a flaming wall heater, leaning forward, offering us something good from the kitchen.

While my mother, sister, and I were visiting my great aunt during the day, it was dark outside.  I then recalled that we frequently visited Aunt Hester and Uncle Shelley when it was storming outside.  My mother has had a lifelong fear, no phobia, of lightening.  Most of the visits to Aunt Hester were during thunderstorms.  My mother can't stand to be alone in a thunderstorm.

My great Aunt Easter, the other of my mother's mother's sisters lived too far away to go visit her during a thunderstorm.  My mother wouldn't drive that far—keep in mind it was probably less than 5 miles.  We frequently visited my Aunt Easter and Uncle Frank (pictured to the right), but my father had to drive us that far.

Then I recalled that we would also visit my cousins during thunderstorms, until they moved from up the street to Gulf Breeze.  Naturally, Gulf Breeze was too far to drive, and you had to drive over the 3 mile bridge, which, of course, my mother considered an utter impossibility in those days.  When my cousins lived up the street, several times a summer we would all pile into the car and drive over to the beach.  But Aunt Helen had to do the driving.  It was even further than Gulf Breeze and required traversing two bridges!

How quaint:  not driving too far.

Then I recalled a trip we took with my grandparents.  We had to drive through Atlanta.  Talk about traumatic:  four lanes of cars on I-285 in those days.  Every time a car passed us, naturally my grandfather drove slower than the flow of traffic, my grandmother, sitting in the back seat, would brace herself for a wreck while running her hand down my mother's leg with a sharp inhaling sound.  My mother's leg was raw by the time we got to the hotel in Atlanta.  No, our final destination wasn't Atlanta.  We were heading to South Carolina to visit my great, great Aunt Sophia (pictured to the left wearing a sweater with my grandmother), but the trip from Mobile to Atlanta was a huge journey to us back in those days.

My final morning recollection of the good old days was the fact that my grandmother, who lived to be 92, my great Aunt Easter, who lived to be 77, and my great Aunt Hester, who lived to be 99 (may all of their completely beautiful souls rest in peace) never drove a car, not even once, in their entire lifetimes.  So I guess it shouldn't be considered too odd that my mother never really drove very far.  She was adventurous because she actually would drive!

How quickly times change.

On Saturday, October 23, 2010, I walked nearly 18,000 steps!!  Yes.  Yes, indeed!  I walked all over Atlanta!

Tragically, since I didn't travel with my computer, just my iPad, my Fitbit didn't report this on Twitter!

I was traumatized by the fact that this enormous record (for me anyway) went unknown, uncelebrated, without the ceremonial distinctions it truly deserved!!!

But now the world knows!

I was just in Atlanta.  On the long flight I read Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America.  Now, before my conservative friends go off the deep end, this is not a book about left or right, about Democrat or Republican.  This is a book about the assault on the middle class from both parties.

This is a must read for conservatives, for liberals, for members of the Tea Party, for libertarians, well, for every American.  (If you're in the top 1% and are making millions of dollars, you might want to skip this one.)

I admit that at times the numerous examples in the book become a bit tedious, but they do move the story forward by illustrating her points.

Rarely do I read a book in which I think the author just hit the larger issues spot on.  Arianna hits issues spot on.  What she writes resonates with what I have mentioned several times on my blog about my own experiences with the death of the American Dream. The last chapter in her book offers some ideas about how to keep America beholden to "We the people...".

My only point of contention with her book:  She takes an amazingly optimistic view about our capacity as a nation to undo the horrific damage that has been done to the middle class.  I honestly have come to think that, if our nation can be repaired at all, it will not happen in my lifetime.  I do hope I'm wrong.

Here is your link to purchase the book at Amazon.

Related articles

• Arianna Huffington Sees A 'Third World America' (npr.org)
• Arianna Huffington Talks 'Third World America': We Have A 'Surplus Of Talent' That's Not Being Used (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)

Well, yes.  Naturally I watched Steve Jobs emcee Apple's Back to the Mac event yesterday.

Now, I must confess that when Apple first introduced the huge change from iMovie HD (version 6 in 2007) to iMovie (version 7 in 2008) I made no secret of my utter disgust.  It was a huge, enormous step backward.  Apple quickly responded to the extreme customer dissatisfaction, because users were in an outright uproar, by almost immediately, within days, releasing an update with added features.  Everyone who had used iMovie HD continued to use it.  I don't know of anyone who actually used iMovie 7, which was less than featureless, even with the immediate update.

iMovie (version 8 in 2009) was a big step forward, though previous users of iMovie HD, myself included, had a difficult time getting into the new interface. which was conceptually nothing like iMovie HD (version 6 in 2007) and every previous version of the software.  Previous users generally didn't like the new interface introduced in 2008.  New users were not so encumbered.  Ok.  With this new version in 2008, there seemed to be some hope.  Maybe Apple hadn't made a huge mistake with this new GUI.

Yesterday Apple introduced iMovie (version 8) in iLife '11.  (Isn't all of this year versus version number thing so damned confusing?!  And then you have the suite numbers and version numbers for the pro products...  Jeeze!)  The new version now, in my mind, officially rocks my world.  So, from where I'm sitting, it took Apple 3 to 4 years to release a product that is absolutely better than iMovie HD.  You know, I guess I just wish this had been the version they released back in 2008.

iMovie '11, as I'll call it to minimize confusion, appears awesome.  I should be getting my hands on a copy of it today.  I suppose what I found most fascinating, even tantalizing about this newest version, is the movie trailer templates feature--a virtually bullet-proof way to make nothing less than stunning movie trailers.  From an educator's perspective, I see this a an excellent way to teach students to better articulate their quasi-innate understanding of the language of film production.  (The quality of the video footage used in the demo didn't hurt any, of course.)  But I will be interested in seeing how this actually takes off out in the field for common users and, more importantly, for students.  I see enormous, enormous, enormous potential here.

The new MovieMaker in Windows 7 is just about where iMovie HD was in 2007, although the interface, like most of Windows, in my opinion, is just flat out ugly as hell and grotesquely stark—the last thing a person who is being create needs or wants.  Now the latest version of the Windows movie production software appears to be in the stone age once again, eating Apple's dust.  Can't Microsoft do something innovative rather than just copy everything Apple is doing?!

I've been hearing the rumor mill whispering about a complete remake of Final Cut Pro, Apple's pro level movie-making software.  I immediately thought that if they did such a thing, I wouldn't even consider upgrading.  Now, having seen where Randy Ubillos has taken iMovie '11, I'm a lot more open minded.  This could be really interesting.

Oh, and sure, the new features in iPhoto '11 and GarageBand '11 were cool as well, but iMovie '11 was the product that just blew me away.  (I don't know what the new features are in the other apps in the iLife '11 software suite.)  Of course, iLife comes free on every new Mac purchase.  Existing users can upgrade, and Steve Jobs is right:  for $49, iLife '11 is the best software value on the planet!

What Apple has done in the past decade is nothing short of a miracle.  My heart is actually warmed by the fact that the marriage of brilliant engineering, meticulous design, and creative genius has produced the spectacular contribution that is Apple, Inc. And I want to further note that Apple is now a blistering financial success, with stunning sales records and profits in everything they are doing, even in an extreme depression—an American economy that is utterly in the toilet because of America's complete lack of creativity and innovation in everything except blowing things up and killing people.  The bulk of Apple's revenue is coming from completely new and innovative products that didn't even exist much more than 3 years ago.  Apple is a model for what America can do, what America can be.  It's about leadership that carefully nurtures the marriage of engineering, design, and creative genius!

Related articles

• iLife '11: The Best New Tricks in iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand [Apple] (gizmodo.com)
• Apple announces iLife '11 with new iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand (venturebeat.com)
• Apple Announces iLife '11 With New iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand (nytimes.com)
• Apple unveils iLife '11 with significant updates to iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand (edibleapple.com)
• Back to the Mac: GarageBand and iMovie '11 (nytimes.com)

Aside from the dreadful bondage of my being chained to my computers as I rebuild hard drives, the weather here in Manhattan Beach has been a delightful change:  heavy overcast, cool, and a steady drizzle!  I love it!!

I've really been fortunate to live in and around very beautiful areas.  The South Bay area is quite lovely.  Last weekend was so typical:  gorgeous sunny weather on the coast.  Saturday featured a day trip to Palos Verdes and Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Manhattan Beach.  Sunday featured a day trip north to Malibu.

So here are some photos (shot by the HU) and a brief video (shot by the iPhone 4 in HD!).  Clicking on any of the photos will open slightly larger versions of them. (Many monitors may be too small to seethe video in HD. Just scroll to the right. Mouse over the video and click on the "Play Full Screen Button," which looks like a tiny square on the extreme right above the word "Close." The button does not appear until you mouse over the video.)  Holding the iPhone steady in the wind is a huge challenge!

Enjoy!

My main computer has had its 1T startup disk fail.  After nearly 24 hours of working on it, I at least have it running again.  I've had to take another 1T internal drive and make it the new start up drive with OS 10.6.x.  So far, I've had success getting all of my document files, my upgrades and installs files, and numerous supplemental system files off of the bad drive and onto the new startup drive.

I have now successfully copied the movie files folder, the music and pictures folders over to the newly purposed drive.  These contain literally hundreds of thousands of files representing hundreds of gigabytes.  Fingers crossed:  I don't think any of the files I copied over were corrupted.

The final step is reinstalling all of my applications.  I've reinstalled all of the smaller, simpler applications.  Now I've tackled the enormous applications that take hours and hours each:  Logic, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop Extended, etc.  This entire process will take at least a week!  Then I can have Apple replace the bad hard drive.

What a mess!  But again, I am soooo thankful for Backblaze, which is my off site backup service.  I know that even if I can't get all of my files off of the bad drive, I can get them from Backblaze.  I also have to extol the virtues of my password and serial number management system, 1Password.  I would be considerably more frustrated with the reinstallation of all of my software if I had to go digging around for my over 500 serial numbers.

And, as if fate has it in for me, my iTunes 500 GB music library drive, which had given me problems earlier and lost all of its data (and had to be restored from Backblaze!), is having issues again.  I just replaced it with a 1T drive, as it was almost full, which may have contributed to its issues.  So, while I've been reinstalling software on my Mac Pro, I've been painstakingly making certain that all of my iTunes data is recovered and properly installed through iTunes so it plays correctly.

Even with excellent backup strategies and serial number management, this has been a week in technology hell!  The silver lining:  my system folder has accrued a massive amount of needless, useless clutter through about 10 years of migration from older machines and upgrading the operating system and software.  Now it will be vastly less junked up with useless files.

Related articles

• Backblaze vs. CrashPlan: Mac Backup Smackdown, Round 2 (nytimes.com)
• Backup service Backblaze almost acquired by ... someone (venturebeat.com)
• Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage (backblaze.com)

Over the past 6 months or so, I have been getting more and more spam email at my main email address from Apple's MobileMe service.  At 6:00AM I already had 16!  Within 1 minute of deleting them, another arrived!  @Apple needs to get with the program here!  When the subject line has every pharmaceutical name in it, it should be too difficult to ID it as spam!  And I've forwarded as an attachment to spam@me.com enough of these things to fill up a server.  But the problem has gotten worse and worse.

I am so fed up with it I was ready to discontinue my main email address, which I've had for years and years and years!

Then, I had a bright idea.  Gmail has excellent filtering!  I have a Gmail address I have never made public.  Tah Dah!

I've set up a new email rule.  Now, until @Apple gets their act together with spam filtering, every time an email comes in to my main MobileMe email address, Mail automatically forwards it to Gmail and deletes the original from my Mail application.  I never even know the original arrived at my MobileMe email address.  Gmail filters out the spam, thank you Google!, and sends the real email back to my Mail application!  Now only the real, properly filtered email arrives in my inbox!

No more spam from the assholes that troll the interwebs!  The voices have stopped!

Related articles

• 11 Tips To Effective Email Management (celestinechua.com)
• Top 4 Freeware Spam Blockers That Actually Work (makeuseof.com)
• Gmail Filters Email Beyond Spam (webpronews.com)
• When did you last see SPAM in your inbox? [MakeUseOf Poll] (makeuseof.com)

Working in the yard this morning, trimming back the bougainvilla, a neighbor walked by and said her children couldn't wait to return to the haunted house at our house again this Halloween.

Little do the tiny preci know:  this year's Haunted House will even be more terrifying than last year's!

I recently was at a conference for and by artists:  dancers, visual arts, musical arts, and educators.  Naturally, such an eclectic group is a tremendously fun energy.  One of the ladies shared an unusual web site, an interactive film based on the address at which you lived as a child, called, "The Wilderness Downtown."  She just sent me this link to the film generator.

You enter your address, and out pops a movie featuring an interactive experience with google maps for that address.  This isn't just unique.  It's totally awesome!

The music, "We Used to Wait" by Arcade Fire is also something worthy of your time.  Here are  the lyrics:

I used to write
I used to write letters
I used to sign my name

I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain

But by the time we met
By the time we met the times had already changed

So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart,
I never wrote it down

So when the lights cut out
was lost standing in the wilderness downtown

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

Now it seems strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive

We used to wait
We used to waste hours just walking around
We used to wait
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown

We used to wait
We used to wait
We used to wait
Sometimes it never came
We used to wait
Sometimes it never came
We used to wait
I'm still moving through the pain

I'm gonna write
A letter to my true love
I'm gonna sign my name

Like a patient on a table
I wanna walk again
Gonna move to the pain

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

We used to wait
We used to wait
We used to wait
Sometimes they never came
We used to wait
Sometimes they never came
We used to wait
I'm still moving through the pain
We used to wait
We used to wait
We used to wait

We used to wait for it
We used to wait for it
Now we're screaming "sing the chorus again!"

We used to wait for it.
We used to wait for it.
Now we're screaming "sing the chorus again!"

I used to wait for it
I used to wait for it
Hear my voice screaming "sing the chorus again!"

Wait for it!
Wait for it!
Wait for it!

You simply must experience it!

Related articles:

• Arcade Fire, Colin Stetson: Concert Review and Photos (beatcrave.com)
• Arcade Fire Interactive Video (jambase.com)
• The Wilderness Downtown: Chrome experiment by Chris Milk and Arcade Fire (boingboing.net)
• Arcade Fire at the KeyArena: Whoa (seattlest.com)
• The Wilderness Downtown (asourceofinspiration.com)

From Bert P. Krages II's web site:

As the flyer states, there are not very many legal restrictions on what can be photographed when in public view. Most attempts at restricting photography are done by lower-level security and law enforcement officials acting way beyond their authority. Note that neither the Patriot Act nor the Homeland Security Act have any provisions that restrict photography. Similarly, some businesses have a history of abusing the rights of photographers under the guise of protecting their trade secrets. These claims are almost always meritless because entities are required to keep trade secrets from public view if they want to protect them.

He provides a downloadable PDF entitled The Photographer's Right at this link.