Category Archives: Mac

Supercomputer

The 2012 Apple Mac mini

Many of the tasks on my big list involved finishing up the remodeling of my office that started about a year ago, including getting a better photo processing solution. I’ve been getting further and further behind in editing my pictures, which decreases my desire to go out and take new ones. I had four options and gave them each a lot of consideration but in the end settled on Apple’s adorable Mac mini. I’ve had a soft spot for them ever since the first model was introduced but never had a use for one until now.

Aperture runs much better on the mini than my laptop, which was a bit of a shock as the mini is made out of similar laptop parts. There are several big differences, the first the amount of RAM (the mini has 16 GB, twice that of the laptop). The second is the storage, the mini has Apple’s new Fusion drive that seamlessly combines an SSD and hard drive, the laptop a traditional hard drive. Regardless of the reason, I love the results.

I took advantage of the new USB 3.0 ports to get a faster card reader from Lexar, it downloaded my images so quickly that at first I thought something had gone wrong.

My biggest criticism is I wish it was slightly larger so it could house the bigger 3 TB Fusion drive that the iMac gets, letting me eliminate the hassle and clutter of my external drives. All-in-all though the mini has been a delight, greatly exceeding my expectations.

My Home

The Map View in iPhoto 11

One nice feature in Apple’s latest update to Aperture is that iPhoto and Aperture can now share libraries. Which means that if I should switch away from Aperture to one of its competitors, or if Apple should stop development of Aperture altogether, I could still use iPhoto to see all of my old edits.

To see how well it worked, I fired up iPhoto and loaded my Aperture library containing all my pictures from this year and sure enough, all my photos showed up without any fuss. But I was a bit shocked when I clicked on the map view as only two locations were showing up.

Where were the others?

Slowly it dawned on me that I had only taken pictures in two spots this year: my home in Portland and my home-away-from-home in Ridgefield. I sometimes think my obsession with this little refuge borders on the unhealthy and that I need to get out more and explore the rest of the Northwest. But oh this refuge, my refuge!

Where else can I sit in comfort and watch a little marsh wren raid the cattails for building material? Watch it build and repair its nest? Hear it sing? Despite the heavy rain, despite the marauding blackbirds that drive it from its nest. Even then it sings, hidden down low in the thick of the cattails.

I’ve seen more majestic sights, but none more beautiful or inspiring or humbling than these irrepressible little brown birds.

A marsh wren gathers material for its nest from a cattail

A marsh wren gathers material for its nest from a cattail

A marsh wren sits in its nest

WWDC Postscript

Our cat Emma resting in her heated bed

I loved watching Steve give Apple’s keynotes, even if I wasn’t interested in the products Apple was introducing, as it was infectious to see the enthusiasm he had for the company he founded and the direction they were taking the industry. So hats off to Tim & the team from Cupertino, for while no one on stage today could replace Steve, their love for what they were doing was obvious and I enjoyed the show from start to finish.

What I hoped to glean from the day was what my future computing setup might look like. I’m about to start on the second half of renovating my office and wanted to know what sort of desk arrangement I should plan for. I had been thinking that a MacBook Air / iMac setup might be better for my photography work, but after today I’m not so sure that an iPad / MacBook Pro solution isn’t a better bet.

The biggest surprise from the week came not from Apple but from Emma. She normally likes sleeping on the floor so I’ve kept a bed there for her, but lately she’ll only use the beds of Sam and Scout up on my desk. So I need to make sure my new setup has room for the cat tree, my TV, three cat beds up high, a couch with room enough for Ellie & me, and a desk for my computer.

A tall order for my little office, but I’m not complaining, I love snuggling with the little ones.

Moving in the Right Direction

A screenshot of Aperture 3.3.2 using GPS locations

For many years I’ve dreamed of having location data attached to my images so that I could see where I took my favorite pictures at my favorite places. Unfortunately none of my cameras have had GPS either built-in or as an attachment. My iPhone has the ability to do it but sadly it wasn’t until recently that I figured out how. I decided to take advantage of my recent renaissance and assigned myself the task of learning how to do it while visiting a super secret location over the Christmas break.

And so on a visit to Ridgefield (oh what a giveaway!) I fired up MotionX-GPS on the phone and had it keep a running tally of my travels around the refuge, then emailed the data file to my laptop. It took me a couple more weeks before I sat down to learn how to import that data into Aperture, and it’s a bit fussier than I hoped, so I also learned how to do it with a little command line utility called exiftool. Photo Mechanic can also do it, and did it quickly, but the locations weren’t right so I have a little more learning there.

I do wish my camera could do this natively, not just because of the extra steps required to add the data later, but because it requires that I remember to start and stop the GPS tracking. And anything that requires that I remember to do something, well …

This screenshot shows an example of how the GPS data looks when imported directly into Aperture, in this case it was my visit to Ridgefield on January 15th. The purple trace shows where I drove around the auto tour, the pins where I stopped and took pictures. Currently selected is a spot beside Rest Lake where I photographed a coyote hunting voles as the snow fell gently down.

On the map you can see the Columbia River running to the left of the refuge, and a little offshoot that comes by it on the right, plus the numerous sloughs that run through the refuge. Lewis & Clark visited Ridgefield but apparently Clark wasn’t quite as impressed with this blessed little place as I am, for he wrote,

“Opposit to our camp on a Small Sandy Island the brant & geese make Such a noise that it will be impossible for me to sleap.”

His prediction proved true, as the following morning he added,

“rained all the after part of the last night…I slept but verry little last night for the noise Kept up dureing the whole of the night by the Swans, Geese, white & Grey Brant Ducks & c. on a Small Sand Island they were emensely noumerous, and their noise horid…”

I’ve not seen brant at Ridgefield but the rain and swans and geese and ducks, those I know quite well, although in much smaller numbers it seems than William Clark once saw (and heard).

The Third Carrot

Our cat Sam sleeps beside my MacBook Pro

The next motivational carrot is my computer setup. Which is a bit strange because my 15″ MacBook Pro combined with my 27″ Thunderbolt display is hands down my favorite setup of all time. But the carrot isn’t upgrading the computer itself.

It’s the iPad.

I don’t have an iPad but after playing around with my wife’s iPad 2, for as much guff as he took for saying it, I side with Jobs in calling it magical. If the rumored iPad 3 launches with the rumored retina display, rumor has it I will buy one. This would motivate me to update my web site and probably the blog as I suspect they are hard to navigate with fingers. It’s a bit embarrassing but I write them largely for myself and am by far their most voracious reader, so I would adapt their design to whatever I’m reading them on. And if I’m doing a major update, I might as well add in some much needed features (for example you can search the blog but not the main site, understandable when I launched it in the 90′s but rather shameful in this day and age).

An iPad would also be useful on the MAX, where lately it has been harder and harder to get a seat where I can use a laptop, but my MAX riding is likely to falloff steeply this year. My real motivation is to try it out for home use, as I think I’d frequently use it when I’m not at my desk, freeing up the laptop to spend most of its time hooked up to the big display for photo editing but still able to tag along with me when I need it.

There’s another motivational aspect to all of this, which is that with my current office setup I can’t work on that big beautiful display and watch TV at the same time. Plus the big desks, built when dinosaurs and giant CRT’s roamed the earth, limit what furniture I can put in my little office. Currently I have a recliner that I love, but while the cats can sleep atop me, there’s no room for Ellie to get in on the snuggling. I’m hoping a smaller desk and love seat would remedy the situation, but I’m not sure I can make it work.

Regardless of what I do or don’t do, the Great Snuggler has staked his claim to his semi-permanent position on my lap.

Our cat Sam sleeps beside my MacBook Pro