SSD Upgrade
For the past few months, Tim has been trying to get me to upgrade my Hard Drive to a Solid State Hard drive. I’ve resisted only because I need the storage for all my photos/videos and SSD’s of that size cost around $1000+. I found a work around with the MCE Optibay, which allows you to replace your DVD drive in your Macbook Pro for an additional hard drive. So now I could buy a 60 GB SSD and run my OS off of it and still have my 500 GB drive for storage of my Users folder. I got both the SSD and the Optibay in yesterday and proceded to make the switch. After I got everything up and running, the results were pretty amazing.
Boot time went from 44 seconds to 38 seconds. Opening 5 programs at 1 time went from 36 second to 5 seconds. Opening Aperture 3 went from 28 seconds to 14 seconds. I’m not sure why boot times didn’t have a huge impact but the major difference is the time in loading applications. I used to never auto-load apps at login because it’d take so long. But now I have 5 apps that open at login and it takes about 4 seconds. Aperture 3 has a much faster response time while editing as well.
As for the DVD drive, they also shipped me a USB enclosure to put my drive in so I can use it when I really need to. I’ve also enabled Remote Disc on my Macbook Pro so I can use my work iMac to load CDs/DVDs if I need to at work.
So at this point in time, I don’t think SSDs are for everyone. If you have a laptop and need the storage space and the optical drive, SSDs are still too expensive to replace your one system drive. I am really looking forward to the future where I can run everything off one SSD and not have to have a separate spinning hard drive for the storage of my user data. I think it’ll be a few more years til the price of flash memory comes down enough for mainstream adoption to occur. But if you’re a power user and you want a faster computer, a SSD is probably the best upgrade money can buy at this point in time.
Geotag Stats
Now that I have the ability to filter through my photos via places in Aperture 3, I’ve compiled some interesting stats.
Total Photos – 31,274
Geotagged Photos – 29,780 (94%)
Geotagged in Texas – 23,754 (63%)
Geotagged in Austin – 18,873 (60%)
Geotagged at UT – 4,806 (15%)
Geotagged at DKR Memorial Stadium – 801 (2.5%)
iPad Reaction
I’m writing down some of my initial reaction to the new Apple iPad for posterity.
- I liken the iPad to the 1st Gen iPhone. If you think back to how the 1st Gen iPhone was and what the 3GS is now, there was a ton of growth both from Apple and from 3rd party developers. I think the iPad has a ton of room to grow as far as productivity and usability.
- They hit it right on with the price. $499 entry for this device silenced a lot of the haters. Usually it’s the innovation and design that drives Apple to sell units but this time it’s going to be the price.
- The iPad won’t replace your computer. Hell it won’t even replace a laptop. Unless you own a desktop and have no laptop, I can’t see the iPad replacing my Macbook Pro. You still have to sync this to a computer to get the full functionality of it.
- The iPad would be amazing for photographers and videographers to bring around to client meetings. Being able to show your portfolio on this beautiful device would add to the selling of your services.
- I think the hackintosh community will end up making the OS even better for techies to use. Let the competition begin for who can make the best 3rd party iPad OS.
- The iPad would make a great travel companion. If you’re going on a trip you can just activate the $30/month 3G plan just for that month then deactivate it when you’re done traveling. They even offer a SD card reader to dock connector adapter so you can upload your camera’s photos onto your iPad and then onto Flickr. Probably won’t be able to read RAW files just yet though.
- The Amazon Kindle is in a world of hurt right now. $260 for a monocrome E-book reader? Or $499 for something that can do infinitely more.
3 Months with the GF1
So I got the Panasonic Lumix GF1 a little over 3 months ago. I think initial reviews are good but you don’t get the full picture of how you really like the camera until you live with it and shoot with it for an extended period of time.
In the 3 months I’ve had it, I’ve brought my GF1 to all different kinds of events; weddings, bike rides, football games. That brings me to my favorite aspect of the GF1, the size. The size of the GF1 + 20mm lens is just perfect for bringing around with you. I actually keep it in my laptop bag so I have it with me at all times. Sporting venues that ban SLRs don’t even blink when they see me walk in with the GF1. I’ve also bought the 45-200mm lens which is the size of a SLR kit lens. I can usually get that into games with no problem as well.
The build quality of the GF1 is another thing that I’m a big fan of. I brought the GF1 with me to go on a bike ride and take pictures. During the course of the ride I fell and the GF1 hit the pavement with me. There only ended up being two small cosmetic scratches on the corners but the camera itself still worked like a champ.
I’ve flirted with the idea of possibly ditching my whole Nikon outfit and use the GF1 exclusively but after using both, I can’t bring myself to do so. The two reasons being, the high noise levels above ISO800 and the quality of lenses available. Right now there is no zoom lens for the Micro Four Thirds system that has a 2.8 aperture throughout. Granted, the 20mm 1.7 is a nice low light lens, sometimes you need the length of a zoom as well. Keeping my Nikon setup allows me to shoot at high ISO and a wide open aperture that you just can’t get with the current GF1 system. I’m pretty sure the 4/3’s system sensors will improve in the future but right now it’s not quite there yet.
Overall I’m very happy with my purchase of the GF1. I’ve probably used it 90% of the time these past few months. If you are interested in breaking into photography and thinking about buying an SLR, I would definitely recommend you try out the Micro Four Thirds system first.
The New Hotness
This is the hot new camera on the block. The Panasonic Lumix GF1 using new micro four thirds technology. It’s basically a mini Digital SLR without the bulk. The image quality is pretty amazing for a camera that size. I’m thinking of replacing my TZ5 and also selling off my old D80 to get this camera. Then I’d have a nice quality camera to carry around in my bag whenever I wanna take some pictures. The D90 and lenses would still be kept around for more heavy duty shoots I’m sure.
Morning Commute
I downloaded a GPS mapping program for the iPhone called MotionX GPS. I tracked my commute from my house up North down to campus so I could compare it later on to the commute I’ll have at Mueller. Here are some stats from the commute:
Distance: 12.8 miles
Elapsed Time: 29:57.7
Avg Speed: 25.6 mph
Max Speed: 64.0 mph
Avg Pace: 02′ 21″ per mile
Min Altitude: 470 ft
Max Altitude: 728 ft
Start Time: 2009-04-07T12:34:40Z
Start Location:
Latitude: 30.432204º N
Longitude: 97.690687º W
End Time: 2009-04-07T13:04:37Z
End Location:
Latitude: 30.280581º N
Longitude: 97.736584º W
My Tag Cloud
2404 AIM airplane airport apple apple store baseball basketball bible birthday camera car cbs computer concert did you know dkr flickr football grill hockey india intramural Isaiah jester jetta liquid ltc macbook pro powerbook restaurant sanchez snow boarding softball space12 sunset traffic travel UT vox w151 webcam website wedding xbox360
Switching to Canon
For my point and shoot at least. My Panasonic Lumix TZ5 has served me well, but I feel it’s time to move on. While the HD video on the TZ5 has been great, I’ve never been fully satisfied with the noise levels on the still photos. The new Canon PowerShot SX200 IS is coming out next month and it has full HD video and also full manual controls. Panasonic only left their manual controls to their LX series so this is a really good compromise. The SX200 has basically the same specs as far as the lens goes and a few more megapixels. Another big plus is being able to use this camera with the gigapan system that I’m thinking about purchasing as well.
Nikon GP-1
I got my Nikon GP-1 unit in today. It’s a gps unit for Nikon SLR’s that automatically geotags your photos for you so you can see exactly where you took a picture. This is a great feature for when you are traveling and taking a lot of shots in different places. The new iPhoto 09 already has a places feature where you can view all your geotagged photos on a map. Hopefully there will be an update for Aperture soon. The next trip I’m taking will be to Toronto so I’ll be sure to use it when I walk the city!
Video Tagging
People have gotten used to the idea of tagging photos with keywords in order to easily search for them. But most people don’t know that you can actually add keywords to videos with iMovie 08 and 09. I’ve been doing it for a while and it’s actually a very cool feature. In the past, I’ve put up statistics on how many photos I have or a person. I thought it’d be interesting to do the same thing except with how many minutes of video I have. It’s all calculated in iMovie09 after you keyword your videos.
1. Isaiah Atkins – 23:57
2. Enoch Lai – 14:51
3. Peter Tam – 5:48
4. Kev Chen – 4:36
5. Harmon Li – 3:36
6. Gideon Tsang – 3:34
7. Sam Lee 3:19
Apparently I have a lot of footage of Vox staff due to Ping Pong videos.
First Impressions
My first impressions of the new Macbook Pro
- Very solid unibody enclosure, there’s no more bending when lifting it with one hand
- LCD is really really bright at the highest level which makes the glossy screen manageable
- New trackpad feels great but I don’t like the loud audible click so I just use a tap to click
- Aperture runs so fast on this new machine
- Still would rather have ports on both side instead of just 1 side
- New speakers are a lot better and a lot louder
- Overall a very good upgrade
PicLens
I recently tried out this new firefox plugin called PicLens that allows you to do immersive 3D media browsing on websites such as Flickr and Youtube. It really lets you scroll through a large volume of media, really quickly. I’ve found it to be the best way of viewing all your contacts photos on Flickr in a really efficient and elegant manner. Try it out at, http://www.piclens.com/.
Nike+ Idea
I just thought of a random idea for a new iPhone Nike+ application. Without adding any existing hardware, they can make a Nike+ Ride application for Bicyclists. When you run the application, it would track your distance and speed via GPS data over time and graph it just like Nike+ Run. Get on this Nike.
Mobile Me
In addition to announcing the new 3G iPhone, Apple announce an upgrade to .Mac which they’re now calling “Mobile Me.” I’m actually seriously considering purchasing the service and forwarding all my email addresses to it. Right now I have 5 different email address that I check. I could consolidate it down to 2 with Mobile Me with just a work exchange account and then have all my other personal addresses forward to enoch@me.com. The only downside would be having to pay another annual fee, but I feel the service just might be worth it.
Vimeo has HD
I’ve been looking around for a good HD video hosting site ever since I got my TZ5. There were some places that were charging extra in order to use their HD video service but most sites didn’t even support HD yet. Flickr’s video is pretty decent quality but the 90 second limit is a bit restrictive. Finally, today, I rediscovered Vimeo. I had used it a few years ago when it first came out but had forgotten about it since. They’re offering the HD video service free. I’ve uploaded my Snow Boarding video to test it out. So far so good. One of the best features they have is that they allow you to download the original source of the video if you want. So I uploaded the original as a 28 MB Quicktime movie file which u can download via a button on the bottom of the video page. The only problem is their servers are getting pounded now so it takes a few hours for them to process your video. If anyone else out there has a camera/camcorder capable of HD video, try it out!
Justin.tv
I signed up for Justin.tv a while back. It started out as a proof of concept website where a guy named Justin would wear a mobile webcam on himself 24/7. People would watch him and talk in a chat room while watching. They opened it up a while back to users to stream their own webcams onto the website as “channels.” Now you can view a bunch of other people’s live webcams. I’m going to test this out for a bit and see how I like it.
Google My Maps
Google maps just released a new feature called “My Maps.” It lets you customize a map and save it. So I created one for fun called, “Places I’ve lived.” This map shows all the places I’ve lived and the years that I lived there. Check it out.
Apple Product Cycles
A new 8 core Mac Pro came out this morning. Since a lot of people ask me for advice about when to buy a Mac, I found this site to be very useful. It has the previous release dates of all the Apple hardware products and whether or not it is a favorable time to buy that product. It also has data on average days between new product releases. I’m looking to upgrade my Macbook Pro and according to the site, it’s been 162 days since the last Macbook Pro update and 182 day average between updates. Hopefully they’ll release one 20 days from now 
.
Powerbook Surgery
So The Reading Center had 4 laptops of which they thought were broker and they asked me to confirm it. Turns out that one of the powerbooks they asked me to check had a bad display and another powerbook had a bad logic board. Since they were both out of warranty, I got permission to swap the displays. It was a pretty easy process except for the fact that the airport card antennae cord wouldn’t reach to the airport card. This is the picture of the bad display and the bad logic board.
Xbox Sent In
My 360 had been acting up as of late on certain games. It would freeze on NBA2k7, Gears of War, and sometimes on NCAA College Football 07. My warranty originally ended only 30 days after I purchased it, but just recently Microsoft extended that warranty period to a year. Good thing I called into get it repaired on Wednesday of last week because the warranty ended 2 days later. Whew.
iPhone
June can’t come fast enough. I’ve been waiting for this to come out for a while now. Hopefully the camera phone has good optics. Thanks Apple.
Wikimapia
I found wikimapia today while bored at work. This kept me busy for most the day, mapping out what I know of the Austin Area. Check it out and add onto to the cities that you know.
EnochLai.com
I helped Jeff set up JeffreyMa.com the other day and I realized it was dirt cheap to get another domain and make it redirect. It was only $3 through iPowerWeb to buy a domain for a year. So just in case I want to start using EnochLai.com in the future, I have purchased that domain. For all you Xanga users, I don’t think it’d be a bad idea to buy a domain name that you may want and just redirect it to your Xanga. A while back I had toyed with the idea of getting i.com so I could get the email address, enochl@i.com. That would’ve been great.