Jeremey's Weblog

TypePad Mobile

I haven't used typepad's email interface before, so this is a quick
test. I wonder which blog this will end up on. :)

Sent from my iPhone

Iron Man!

Iron Man was awesome! Great story, great technology, very funny, etc. If you go see it, STAY THROUGH THE CREDITS.

Gabriel... On The Field!

Gabriel went to a baseball clinic on the field at Minute Maid Park (home stadium of the Houston Astros, just in case).

Video made using Animoto, which is pretty cool.

Technorati Tags:
animoto, baseball

Best Startup Talk I've Ever Heard

This is the best talk on building a startup I've ever heard, by a very long shot:

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/97862/DHH_Talk__Startup_School_2008

Technorati Tags:
startups, business, web

Worst... Video... Ever.

I apologize in advance if you watch this, but you really must.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU&fmt=18

Excuse me... I think my stomach doesn't feel very good...

Technorati Tags:
video, pr, microsoft, fail

Professional Barista's Handbook

Go buy this book! (If you're interested in coffee and espresso and proper technique and such)

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coffee, espresso, barista, book

Microfoam!

I successfully made microfoam tonight! WOOHOO!

(microfoam is the very finely textured "liquid foam" required for latte art and really any good espresso drink)

Technorati Tags:
coffee, espresso, microfoam

It's HERE!

The angels are singing...

Technorati Tags:
coffee, espresso, machina

Evangelizing Twitter, Pretty Much Exactly

This pretty much exactly sums up my experience telling people about Twitter

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twitter

My First Video on Flickr

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flickr, video

Flickr Video!

VERY cool!

Technorati Tags:
flickr, video

Python Tips: Parse HTTP in One Line

I love asyncore and asynchat. They do protocol engine grunt work for you. But they won't parse your protocol beyond finding the end of a message, so here's a quick tip for parsing an array of disorganized buffers into a dictionary of headers (for HTTP/SIP-style protocols). Remember that the first line is the command, not a header.

lines = "".join(buffers).split("\r\n")
command = lines[0]
headers = dict(map(lambda x: x.split(': ', 1), lines[1:]))

Thar ya go. So it's not one line... it could be, but it would be much uglier because the first line of the protocol is unique.

Technorati Tags:
python, tips

Lightroom 2 Addendum: Details

I wanted to follow up on my Lightroom 2 first look post with some additional details and screenshots.

A word about the screenshots... the full shots are reduced from my full screen size to 1500 pixels wide. Each 500 pixel image in this post is linked to the full version, click it and it'll open in a new window. The sharpening comparison shots are PNGs so that JPEG artifacts won't fool with the results. Apologies if you have a braindead browser (older IE) that doesn't handle PNG properly. The 3-up images are JPEGs, linked to 100% crop PNG versions (not all that much larger, but without any artifacts from resizing or JPEG compression)... again, click on them for a new window. The 4-up PNG of the 640 pixel output is small enough to fit on this page.

First, here's a screenshot of the develop module:

Second, the selective editing user interface, the white circles on the image represent handles to separate selective edits, in roughly the vicinity that they were made... very nicely done:

You can click on a circle to select that edit and hitting Delete will delete it. Nice! When you do mouse over a circle (with a delay) or click on one, you see the mask you made:

For grins, here are before and after images showing some dodging of the head, light burning of the eyes, and clarity added to the eyes. The left image is before, the right image is after.

 

Switching gears a little... one of the more interesting features of Lightroom 2 is output sharpening on any export, as part of the export dialog:

Here are some comparisons of the output sharpening results... first, Judah's eye, exporting to JPEG, 80% quality, sRGB, full size... left to right you see Low, Medium, and High sharpening (click for 100% view):

Second, Judah's sleeve, same as above:

Lastly, here is the sharpening applied to a 640 pixel export (i.e. exported from Lightroom at 640 pixels). Upper left is NO sharpening, upper right is Low, lower left is Medium, and lower right is High:

Cool stuff!

Technorati Tags:
photography, photoshop, lightroom, lightroom 2

Lightroom 2 First Look

Adobe released a beta of Lightroom 2 this week, and it's very cool. The Develop module just keeps getting better and better. A few highlights of the new/fixed stuff:

• Non-destructive dodge and burn
• Other non-destructive brushes like clarity (!)
• Much better Photoshop integration (you can open the RAW file as a smart object to allow for later re-editing of the RAW settings)
• Post-crop vignette tool (finally)
• Smart collections

I imported the images from my "6 months old" shoot w/ Judah as a test. Lightroom doesn't have a managed library concept like Aperture does, so I have to get past the less abstracted file management model... so initially, as is always the case with Lightroom, I'm a little irritated with the import process. I REALLY like the project model in Aperture, and after importing into Lightroom, I don't feel like I know where my images are.

Projects make sense to me, why Lightroom has yet to have a mode where you work with projects and not folders on a disk (even if they are folders on a disk) I don't know. I'm fairly certain that I could make the folder model work like projects, but I think I'd be spending a fair bit of effort to do so.

Lightroom's Develop module is fabulous. It is definitely the strongest piece of the application. The non-destructive selective editing brushes (dodge and burn, clarity, etc.) are excellent, and fact that they're non-destructive is a big win over Aperture 2.1's dodge and burn controls (though Aperture's mechanism is generic and extensible by third parties, I'm not sure that Lightroom's is... but Photoshop is Lightroom's extensible editor anyway).

The quality of the RAW processing is excellent... I probably have a hair-thin preference for Aperture's renderings, they're better in the red channel IMO, but the difference is slight.

The other feature I've tried (so far) is the web gallery. I like Lightroom's HTML web galleries (the Flash galleries are unusable, IMO, because Flash itself ignores ICC color profiles). However, I want some kind of permanence to a gallery. I want to create it, name it, and keep it around, to add to later (or whatever). Aperture handles this very nicely and Lightroom doesn't handle it at all. I can cobble together the same effect from creating a collection for the gallery, and then also creating a web gallery preset so that I can reproduce the settings later... but this is hardly "creating a gallery" which I can later modify.

I guess it boils down to web galleries being one-offs in Lightroom, and an integrated feature in Aperture. I prefer the Aperture way by far.

Overall, Lightroom 2 is very compelling as a digital darkroom, but a bit disappointing as a workflow tool IMO. I admit that I may not be "getting it" and I can do everything I want, but it isn't clear to me and because it isn't clear, it doesn't work for me. But I know Lightroom works for a lot of people, so it's more a matter of workflow taste.

Having said that, the new develop features are so compelling that I might consider buying Lightroom anyway, especially if they price it at $199 (where Aperture is).

This is really a 'first look' review... I'll follow up when I've had a lot more time to spend in the app.

Technorati Tags:
lightroom, workflow, lightroom 2, adobe, photography

Pogue on "Blogger-Bashers"

Interesting post from David Pogue about the success rate of people bashing new Apple products.

[from @steverubel]

Technorati Tags:
apple, pogue, technology

6G FTW!

So... I upgraded the RAM in my Mac Pro from 2G to 6G (for $157!!) and the difference is incredible. Aperture used to be pretty lame on the performance front, now it screams (upgrading to 2.x helped some too). Really, it screams... the extra 4G totally transformed the experience of using my machine.

I'm running all of my normal apps, plus Aperture, plus Photoshop CS3, and I don't notice any sluggishness.

RAM is cheap. Go buy some!

Technorati Tags:
aperture, apple, photography

Brothers

6 Months Old!

Judah turned 6 months old this past Thursday. He's huge!

Delicious

My latte this morning at the fabulous Catalina. Just wanted to share.

Technorati Tags:
coffee, espresso, latte art

The Flap Over Starbucks and Clover

So Starbucks bought Clover (err... the company that makes the Clover, anyway...)

A very interesting development. First off, let me recommend the latest coffeegeek podcast. Mark discusses the Clover situation in the first segment of the show, and provides some insight and details that may not be immediately obvious (such as Starbucks shutting down services and training that were an important component of a Clover purchase).

So on the one hand, I can understand the feeling of betrayal from the indie cafes. A lot of time and energy went into helping Clover achieve a good product, and to lose almost all of the services and support from the company is a pretty bitter pill.

I also have to mourn what is probably the loss of a "hand-crafted" product. If Starbucks is going to use the Clover in a significant percentage of its thousands of stores, it will probably need more production than can be mustered by the folks at Clover. If they're going to mass-market it as a consumer product, same thing.

But... I also have to celebrate the success of an entrepreneur. You believe in something, work your butt off for it for years, and finally you get bought by a mega-corp for hopefully some significant cash. I can't fault the Clover guys for that at all. Congrats to them! Let's enjoy some clever coffee entrepreneurs making a financial success of their efforts.

As for the indie shops refusing to use the ones they already have... I dunno. That smacks of elitism for its own sake, but at the same time, you can't build a Clover into your business as a core offering now, because you won't be able to get any more of them (i.e. for other stores/locations).

Technorati Tags:
coffee, starbucks, clover