Rants and Revelations

I’m thinking of replacing my 17″ Powerbook G4 (aka “AlBook”) with a 17″ MacBook Pro (MBP), although I’m waiting to see if they announce something with the new three-touch touch pad like the MacBook Air (MBA). Rumour has it that they’re waiting for Intel to bring up production levels on a new chip before they do, and that’s why it wasn’t announced at the same time as the MBA.

The best feature of my AlBook is that I got a custom “skin” made featuring a picture of the Snowbirds in flight. I took it to the Wings and Wheels air show in St. Catherines last year, and got all the Snowbirds officers (including Snowbird 10 and 11, and their public affairs officer) to sign it. Several of the pilots expressed admiration for it, and asked where they could get one for their own laptops. The skin is made of vinyl, and the web site said you could peel it off, but I very much doubt it would transfer. And I don’t want to risk damaging it, especially since one of the pilots who signed it died in an accident this year. So it’s going to stay on the Albook. But I definitely want one for the new MBP.

I went to the Snowbirds web site and downloaded some of their high resolution promotional pictures, and their logo and wordmark which are available in EPS files, and played around in Photoshop a bit. I definitely wanted one with all 9 planes, and I think I like this one best, but I can’t decide on the placement of the logo and wordmark. First time ever I wished I’d installed that poll plugin, but please look at the following two pictures and tell me in the comments which you prefer. (As always, clicking the thumbnail will take you to a bigger version.)

Option 1	Option 2

And before you ask, yes, I am procrastinating. I need to re-engineer one of my tables and the classes that use it, and I don’t want to.

This photo blog of a flying trip into Alaska in a tundra-tire-equipped Piper Super Cub just has me in awe. The scenery, the photography, the fun of a gaggle of Cubs parked in that scenery… It’s all just too much. I read this and I want to immediately grab a Super Cub and head north.

I got a notice that Gallery 2.2 is out, and they recommend upgrading. So I thought I’d try. And it seemed straightforward enough. I did all the steps, and when it got to the part in the automated upgrade about updating plugins, it start spewing hundreds of errors, both database and file system. And any attempt to continue the upgrade without updating the plugins got me to a page saying the theme I’m using wasn’t present, and when I attempted to change the theme it booted me back into the upgrade process.

I deleted the entire php directory and restored it from backup, and deleted the database and restored it from backup. But it told me that I was using a newer version of the Gallery core module than the rest of the program, and said I couldn’t do that. I have no idea where this “core module” is if it’s not in the gallery2 directory. So I’ve blown away the entire gallery, including the g2data directory, and am restoring it from backup. That includes all the picture files, so it’s probably going to take hours. Let’s hope it works.

1. Rebooting my dom0 seems to have fixed the network stuttering problem, as evidenced by the munin graphs not containing gaps.
2. Removing ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe\ Photoshop\ CS2\ Settings/ has cured my Photoshop problems.

Yeah, me.

Yesterday I was editing a gigantic Photoshop file (100,000 pixels by 2500 pixels) that I’d put 48 shots from my 8 megapixel camera into, by opening the shots 10-20 at a time, going into each one and doing a select all (splat A) and copy (splat C), closing the file in question, then going into the big file and doing a paste (splat V). Along the way I’d saved the big file a few times. Along the way I’d also done some experimenting with cropping the small jpegs, and the big file, although I’d ended up rolling back all the changes.

This morning I decided I needed to crop some files and overlay them on the big file. First thing I did was flatten the existing 48 layers on the big file. Then I opened up 10 of the jpegs, just as I had before. But when I attempted to crop one of the jpegs, I got a message that I was out of swap space. Actually, I got two popup messages. The first looks like an OS message:


Your startup disk is almost full.
You need to make more space available on your
startup disk by deleting files.
[ ] Do not warn me about this disk again


The second came from Photoshop:


Adobe Photoshop
Could not complete your request
because the scratch disks are full.


At this point, I tried a bunch of things. I exited Photoshop, I rebooted, and I started up Photoshop. I opened only one jpeg. I verified that Photoshop said that the file took up 21 megabytes in memory and there were 30+gigabytes of disk space free. Then I tried the crop tool. And I got the same popups. Before I dismissed them, sure enough “df” and “Activity Monitor” both verified that all 30+ gigabytes of disk were gone. Other tests with other files have given exactly the same results. Even if I resize the file to half the size (and it says it’s only taking up 6 megabytes in memory) it still consumes all the memory when I attempt to crop it.

Can anybody tell me what would make Photoshop suddenly change so that cropping a file should cause it to use over 1000 times as much disk space as the size of the original file?

I just got home. I’m exhausted.

Mark managed to convince Curt at Aviation.ca to get us accredited as media to the Wings and Wheels Niagara airshow. Wings and Wheels is a very small show, but the Snowbirds would be there, and I’m mad keen for the Snowbirds. I haven’t seen them in a few years, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make the Canadian National Exhibition airshow next week. Besides, small airshows have a charm all of their own.

The media pass came with some nice perks. Access to the performers and planes. Entry to the “Evening with the Snowbirds” dinner at the “Oh Canada Eh?” dinner theatre. Maybe more - it was all being worked out between the organizers and Aviation.ca even as we were heading to the show.

I took my film camera instead of my digital. The digital has a longer effective zoom, but I don’t trust it as much for being able to get exactly what I want. Unfortunately that means I’m going to spend a fortune in developing, and I won’t have any pictures for several days.

The “Oh Canada Eh?” theatre was quite entertaining. Surprisingly entertaining even - I thought the concept sounded pretty hokey, but it was well done and fun. That’s where I got to meet Petra, the public affairs officer for the Snowbirds. She turned out to be extremely helpful today. They put all the Snowbirds at different tables, so there was one at each table. We didn’t get a pilot, we got the guy, Dan, who drives their big truck. But he was friendly and had some nice road stories. And he says he’s thrilled to be working with the Snowbirds and really hoping they’ll pick him for next year as well.

Today we got some pretty good access to the flight line and I think I got some good pictures. Unfortunately there were a few little mixups and miscommunications as to where we were allowed to go and when. I’m not complaining - you’ve got several conflicting groups who want to balance exposure and publicity against safety for both the performers and planes and the crowd. For instance, at one time we talked to Petra and Airboss, and they both said we could go to the end of this taxiway to take pictures of the Snowbirds taxiing out, and then retreat to the corner of a hangar once they were in the air. We were assured that this location was outside of the “aerobatic box” protected area. They even sent a security volunteer out with us. I think I got some great pictures, as the Snowbird pilots waved and saluted as they rolled past. But then after they took off, the organizers sent out a couple of more security people to tell us to move back to where the paying crowd was kept, because the Snowbirds were refusing to start the show until we cleared out. That was too bad, and I sorry that I am at least partially responsible for holding up the show. I wish things had been made clearer what zones we were allowed in and when. I would like to suggest that the organizers consider having a briefing on the media day to make sure the different people with the different requirements, from the airboss to the public affairs people to the security volunteers to the pilots and media people are all on the same page.

There were several modifications to the show. The US military people didn’t show up because something came up. The Canadian Forces parachute team showed up in a very strangely painted CASA because their normal Buffalo was having problems, and were only able to get a couple of jumpers through some holes in the clouds. (There is nothing more disappointed looking than parachute jumpers getting out of a plane on the ground.) The Sukoi and Julie Clark did pretty much their usual shows. The CF-18 did its usual good job, with without the trademark afterburner climb up out of sight. Well, he did but he was out of sight at about 5,000 feet. And the Snowbirds did their “low show”.

The “low show” maybe is missing some of the cool maneuvers of their “high show”. But because the planes make lots of low passes, it’s easier to get some good photo shots. At least I hope so - I’ll let you know when I get the PhotoCDs back. Like I said before though, I haven’t seen the Snowbirds in a few years, and I’d never seen them do opposing “duos” with two planes in each direction. That was pretty cool.

The Snowbirds show got cut short by a few minutes when they reported that Snowbird 1 had hit more than one bird. Sometimes when one plane hits a bird or has a mechanical, the pilot comes back and takes Snowbird 10 or 11 (depending on whether he needs a left handed or right handed plane). But as he was doing a precautionary emergency landing, along comes Snowbird 5 doing the same. In the autograph line afterwards, Snowbird 1 said that 1 and 5 weren’t the only ones who hit birds - evidently the combination of a show near the lake shore and a low show puts both the birds and the Snowbirds in the same airspace.

Until I get my pictures back, I have to say my best souvenir of the show is my laptop. My laptop has a custom vinyl skin I created by getting a picture from the Snowbirds official site and sending it to a site that creates custom skins from submitted pictures. I had a thought last night that I could get it signed by them, and so I dragged it all over the field today. And it was worth it. I got not just the 9 pilots who fly the shows, but also Snowbird 10 and Snowbird 11 who provide the ground support, and Petra their public affairs officer (who I believe is the only non-pilot who gets to wear the Snowbirds red uniform). A lot of them thought it was a cool idea when they saw it, and asked me where I got it. I’ll try to get a picture of it up later.

So in closing I’d like to say a big thank you to Curt at Aviation.ca, to the organizers, to the Snowbirds and especially for Petra, to the Airboss and security for putting up with us, and to Mark for suggesting this.

I took a bunch of photos, mostly of the planes. I put them in a gallery.

I took some pictures in the garden the other day. Lots of things peeking through. More pictures here

This morning I went to a Photoshop seminar presented by Vicki’s colleague Tom Policano. I learnt a bunch of useful stuff, but there was a problem with the pacing. The first 2.5 hours of the 3 hours seemed to go very slowly (mostly because Tom had to go around and re-demonstrate everything he’d shown on the projector on each person’s computer) and there was more time to practice each technique than I really needed. And then when we reached the last half an hour he realized we had a bunch of stuff to cover and so he just wizzed through it so fast I didn’t catch a few of the things I wanted to learn.

Fortunately he’s got a blog so I’m going to see if I can get him to explain a few things on there.

(Disclaimer: I’m working at Kodak, but not with anything to do with Picture Kiosks. I’m not privy to any discussion of new technology or upcoming enhancements to the Kiosks.)

If I ran Kodak, I’d connect all those Picture Kiosks up to the internet with cheap DSL. Then, after you’d uploaded your pictures to OFoto (sorry - “Easy Share Gallery”, I think), you could say “Print this picture to the nearest Kiosk”, and it would tell you where the Kiosk was (and give the option to choose a different Kiosk if that one wasn’t good for you) and give you a PIN. You’d go to that Kiosk and enter your PIN, and out would come the pictures you’d sent to it. Much handier than having them mailed to you, or having to go to certain participating stores.

I took some pictures at Oshawa Airport last weekend. You can find them all here. The airport has a bunch of old classics hanging around.

oshawa_airport/DSCN0382This DC-3, and another that has the Bassler turboprop conversion (which was in the hangar with one engine off), are used to fly cargo down to research stations in the Antarctic. I beleive they also fly cargo for the local GM plant.

oshawa_airport/DSCN0383There are two AN-2s there. I don’t know what they are used for.

oshawa_airport/DSCN0391This is the other one.

oshawa_airport/DSCN0390A Beaver. On floats. It doesn’t get any better than this. Unless it were mine.

1. Got the UPS software working again, after I converted from using the mge-utalk driver to the mge-shut driver. No idea why the other driver, which has supported this UPS just fine for years suddenly started having trouble. Oh well. Such is the world of open source software.
2. Our company photo contest results were announced today. I didn’t win anything. I guess at least part of the problem was that I ignored all the advice I got from my friends and submitted the pictures I liked best. But because of my wrist problems I didn’t have as much time to work on them as I would have liked. Oh well. Not to sound like sour grapes or anything, but the guy who cleaned up in several of the novice categories takes pictures of bicycle races and sells them at the race, which make him more than a novice in my book. Most of his pictures, though, were really good and would have won in the advanced categories as well, and my favourite one of his didn’t win anything. Actually, all the competition was really good. Of course it doesn’t help that there were three other people submitting pictures from Alaska cruises, and one person who went to Antartica.
3. My SafeType keyboard was acting a bit weird. Every now and then I’ll be typing away and suddenly all 4 LEDs in the middle (caps lock, num lock , scroll lock and one other labelled “W”) all come on for a second or so, and a whole bunch of typing gets missed. I’ve seen this about two or three times a day at work, but when I brought the keyboard home for the weekend, I was seeing it about once a minute. Mildly annoying. I moved it from my powered USB hub to plugged in directly to the Powerbook, though, and I haven’t seen the problem since. Must be some sort of timing thing.
4. I worked hard this week to provide a new architecture for dealing with encryption keys for our digital cinema product. Today the guy who has to use these keys comes over and starts talking about unresolved issues and use cases. My thought was why didn’t he think through these issues and use cases before he asked me for this new architecture? The upshot is that I have to totally redesign the architecture again, back to something a little more complicated than the original, but much less complicated than the one I did this week. And since development has to be finished by the end of next week, I guess I’m going to be billing some hours this weekend. Normally I’d be really annoyed at the wasted effort, but I enjoyed the intellectual challenge of that code I wrote this week.

Half of our group was off playing golf on company time, so the rest of us figured we deserved a break too and went to Hooters for lunch. Last time I was at one of them was coming back from Oshkosh 2003 when I got weathered in at Muskegeon. Nothing’s changed, except the age dispartity between me and the hot young waitresses is now a few years greater.

I managed to get to UPS to pick up our new iPod Shuffle, but of course being Apple they had to do something wrong and they left out the cable to connect it to our stereo. At least I’ll have something to listen to at work until my new photo iPod comes.

Also, I finally got the FedEx shipping information so I could ship my broken iPod back, so I got to the FedEx Kinkos store and got that shipped off.

And then when I got home with the Shuffle, I find two packages, one my hotly anticipated copy of Bone Wars, the Game of Ruthless Palentology from Zygote Games, and the other my slightly but lightly used new camera, a Nikon Coolpix 8800. Unfortunately it was already nearly dark by the time I got it unpacked and the battery charged, so I didn’t get any pictures to show off yet. But it’s a very nice camera.

I’m trying to get some entries ready for the Entertainment Imaging employees photo contest. The entries I’m considering are at Gallery :: Photo Contest.

The contest categories are

• Nature
• People
• Photojournalism
• Architecture
• …uh, there are one or two others, I think
• Open

Open is used for things that don’t fit other categories, but it’s also supposed to be where we put pictures that have lots of effects applied. You’re only allowed two entries in each category, so you have to be careful that the ones you enter are the best ones you have in each category.

photo_contest/whale_jump_sharpenedI’ve got this one as a pretty strong entry for the Nature category. The only problem with it that I can see is that it’s a small picture - the judges like pictures that take up most of an 8.5×11″ page. I worry that blowing it up will make it too fuzzy.

photo_contest/baiyunAnother candidate for the Nature category is this picture of Baiyun. Yes, they specifically cautioned that pets go in Nature not in People. I took this picture of Baiyun in direct sunlight with the room behind him normally bright, so in contrast it came out very dark. I actually manually darkened a bit of the background where some light splashed in, and when you look at it in full magnification it doesn’t come out very well - I’m going to have to fix that, I think. I was using the “Clone Stamp” tool I think it’s called. But it would be better to select that area and just paint it black, I think.

photo_contest/kayakI had this picture that I like, but I wasn’t sure it was photo contest material. So I played with it a bit, and came up with this somewhat surreal picture, which I think I could enter it in the Open category. I like the idea of masking out Vicki and the kayak, and doing something with the rest of the picture, but I’m not sure that this “something” is the right “something”. I kind of liked it when I inversed the colours instead. Maybe I’ll put that up in the gallery and let you decide.

photo_contest/007_4ASince I have what I think are two good candidates for the Nature category, I’m not sure what to do with the remaining pictures, except this sculpture, being man made, could go in the Architecture category.

Another great Canada Day weekend in Ottawa. We wandered around in the crowds, saw some busker shows, watched boats go through the locks, paid way to much for lousy “Canada Day Special Menu” meals at restaurants and saw the fireworks. I loved every minute of it. Sunday for a change of pace we took a canal tour boat, something I never felt the need for when I lived there. It wasn’t all that exciting, but the tour guide was pretty funny.

The flight back was good too. Same problem with the push to talk switches as we had on the way out, and I forgot to have Vicki fill out the customs form while we were flying so the customs people had to poke around the plane and ask for all the paperwork (and I forgot where the registration is stored on the Lance, so that took a bit of time to find).