ericd.net blog

Aperture 3 versus Lightroom 2

2010-02-25T23:11:00.000-05:00

I'll start off by stating without hesitation that I am an Apple Fanboy. This cannot ever come into question. I really, really wanted to like Aperture 3 more than Lightroom 2. Yes, I have a lot of Adobe tech flowing through my day to day and Flash has made a lot of great things possible for me. In my mind Apple comes first. Except for now.

Aperture 3 has added many features of iPhoto to it's mix... and that's all well and good except now Aperture doesn't feel like a professional tool anymore. Maybe that's what they were after when they decided to migrate a lot of functionality. But it feels dumbed down, more accessible, less professional now.

Both applications are good at what they do, no doubt. Personally I like the way I can organize in Aperture better than Lightroom, but everywhere else LR is a better app for me. The panels getting out of my way, two stages of fullscreen, decent editing tools, etc. Aperture has better sharing tools (me.com) and the whole ordering books thing is pretty awesome too.

I'd almost like to have the two have sex and give birth to a über photography tool. I just imported a bunch of RAW into LR and it's pretty blissful in there.

Photography Questions; it's all a matter of coin

2010-02-22T18:33:00.000-05:00

I have been really becoming a photography nerd lately and I love it. I believe my aspirations have stretched beyond the capabilities of my current set of photographic gear however. I am looking for some experienced advice.

I currently own a Canon EOS Rebel XS with the stock 18-55mm kit lens. I have borrowed a Canon 50mm prime (which I love) and also a Sigma. I am getting pretty good results with the borrowed lenses - much better than the stock lens. I prefer to shoot without a flash whenever possible as I abhor what a flash can do to most shots. So quick lenses suit me well.

I was thinking about upgrading my camera body to an unreleased T2i (550D) or perhaps something else. I certainly don't have thousands of dollars to spend on a body because I'd like to get some lenses someday as well. It's a nice balancing act. Photography is so expensive, but my kids are growing up and I don't want to miss any moments. The clearer and sharper the shots, the better. Great bokeh. Etc. I know those are lenses... and maybe that is where I need to concentrate?

Someonen once told me to get the cheapest body possible because all the magic happens in the lens. I'd like to know how true this is. Should I just keep the XS and get some great lenses? Or do I need to up the anté on the body to make the lenses stand out even more?

Accolades to NHL.com

2010-02-19T22:38:00.000-05:00

Just the other night I placed an order online with NHL.com - a Sidney Crosby Canadian Hockey team shirt as well as a Russian logo shirt. However a day after placing the order I discovered that the card I had used was no longer valid, as a new one sent long ago was now in effect.

I figured this meant that the order was pretty much invalidated since the card would not be able to have been charged.

Tonight a few fire engines passed our house and travelled half way down the road. Being a concerned and curious neighbor, I walked outside to see what was happening. I nearly stepped through a package sitting at our front door.

I immediately thought to myself, "There is no way that order was processed, much less have it delivered here already." I was wrong on both counts. I did not pay for overnight delivery, but yet here it was. I didn't even think it would have ever been processed and that I would need to recreate the order.

To those at NHL.com, the order went through by a whisker, but your delivery was outstanding. Kudos to you, I very much appreciate your efforts.

Help: 2 AIR apps to use localConnection?

2010-02-17T14:07:00.000-05:00

I have 2 SWFs that I converted to AIR applications so I can get a transparent background and run like real apps. However, the localConnection they were using STOPPED when I made them AIR applications. Communication is bi-directional.

I have no clear idea what I am doing wrong. In each app for the identifier I have goes something like this:

app 1: com.ericd.television
app 2: com.ericd.iPod

When I create the apps (AIR file) and sign it, I DO NOT see anything matching in my Users/ericd/Library/Preferences folder. I think I am supposed to. Note: I am using Flash CS4 to create these AIR applications.

If I dig into one of the installed apps, I can see in it's plist file the publishID created from my desktop certificate.

In my television app:

receive_conn = new LocalConnection();
   receive_conn.allowDomain('*');
   receive_conn.client = this;
   try {
    receive_conn.connect( "_myConnection" );
   } catch (error:ArgumentError ){
    trace("connection already used by another SWF");
   }
...
public function receivedCommandObject( msg:Object ):void {
    ...
}

Now, in my iPod app I attempt to call that method in the television app:

send_conn = new LocalConnection();
send_conn.addEventListener(StatusEvent.STATUS, onStatus);
...
private function onStatus(event:StatusEvent):void {
 if(event.level == "error"){
             message_txt.text = "error";
        } 
}
...
private function onClick( e:MouseEvent ):void {
 send_conn.send( "app#com.ericd.ipod.B580921C0EAF398616B741BB087C41342441EB50.1:_myConnection.", "receivedCommandObject", {type:"playVideo"} );
}

I always get an error. I've tried to change the send to use com.ericd.television too, no dice. I always get an error.

How the hell can I get this to work?

Our Keurig has replaced (and upgraded)

2010-01-14T09:10:00.001-05:00

I must first announce to the world what a great customer service experience I had last night with Bed, Bath & Beyond. The woman working behind the customer service counter (she might have been a manager) could not have been nicer.

I brought our defective unit in with the receipt (it was a gift, but we managed to obtain the receipt just in case). I quickly explained the problem and the situation and I was told to go back and just grab another one.

They didn't have the same model (it was sold out), all they had was the Platinum version. A much larger water reservoir, four cup sizes plus another for iced brewing, etc. So we were upgraded.

The whole experience took about five minutes at the most and last night it was christened by producing a fresh brew of the Donut variety coffee.

By the way, I had emailed Keurig through their contact form on their website when the first machine broke. They promised a two day turnaround for a response. A week later (just before I left to go to BB&B) they replied simply asking me for the serial number of the unit. Not sure what that was going to tell them... I expected they wouldn't care and simply offer to replace the unit. Well, it never got that far as within 30 minutes total a brand new, upgraded machine was sitting in the kitchen ready to go.

A quick glimpse of Glimpster

2010-01-13T10:45:00.002-05:00

The Keurig: dependance is terrible

2010-01-05T23:26:00.000-05:00

We received a Keurig Special Edition for Christmas this year. Because it's limited to one cup brewing at a time (although it's pretty quick so brewing twice can work) I never thought I would like the thing. We considered getting one a few times, but my insatiable need for ample amounts of coffee throughout the day (even late into the evening) had me thinking this thing couldn't deliver the goods.

I was wrong. It rocks, or rather, it rocked. After about thirty brew cycles or so it stopped working.

It would come up ready, we'd chose a size (amount of water), and there would be gurgling for a little while and no brewed liquid would release from the cup. Then the pump would chug a few times, the water would slosh around a little in the reservoir and it would stop. The cup would have a little bit of water in it.

We became dependent on the thing (no more needless runs to Dunkin' Donuts or Honeydew or even Starbucks) but now we're stuck. I've contacted Keurig about it and I hope we get a new unit - or we just take it to Bed Bath & Beyond or something since it was a gift.

Do these things have $0.04 pumps or something?

EXC_BAD_ACCESS. WTF!

2009-12-23T15:35:00.000-05:00

I've been battling a stupid bug for hours now... calling an AppDelegate method from a UIView subview. I was getting crashes like mad & wondered what was happening. After tear downs and build ups and tossing code around like a dervish, it all came down to a NSLog statement that was malformed? WTF. I'm done for the day. Have a good one.

PSA: Charging & Food. Unrelated to one another.

2009-12-22T20:05:00.000-05:00

Charging:
It's nearing Christmas and while you might be racking up shopping miles in preparation, don't forget to charge your devices. iPods, iPhones, video cameras, Digital SLRs, 360 wireless controllers, PS3 controllers, etc. Just saying, I almost forgot about some of these things last year and right now my kitchen is a sea of status LEDs.

Food:
If you're looking for decent Polish or Russian staples and you're near Natick, MA, I have it under good authority that a certain delicatessen might pique your culinary interest. Culinary Delights is located in Natick, MA - 229 North Main Street, 01760. Call them if you're interested in a certain item: 508-653-5553. I'm curious if they have zurek or decent kielbasa there. Else it's off to Golemo's in Worcester again. Love that place.

iPhone Development: My struggle with the distribution provisioning profile

2009-12-18T21:38:00.000-05:00

In the end my solution to building an app bundle the iTunes Connect application would accept for upload would be a head scratcher yet simple enough. It took a long time getting there.

It began with a simple distribution provisioning profile creation and installation. I cleaned my targets and ran a build. No problems. I zipped up the bundle, uploaded it & got a signing error. Hmm. I googled about it and found tons of information about the problem - all with different solutions - some very labor intensive.

I checked my project build settings - I was setting to iPhone Distribution: Eric Dolecki. I then checked my target build settings - it was set to iPhone Developer (Eric Dolecki). Aha I thought. I changed the provision to distribution. Same error on upload.

I revoked the previous distribution provisioning profile and generated a new one. The expiration date was Saturday December 18th which was wrong... but whatever. I installed that and tried again. Same error.

I then changed the settings to iPhone Distribution (without my name trailing the title) & bam! It linked my name with the distribution profile and thus I was able to upload my bundle! Yay!

This didn't make a lot of sense to me (why have the generic distribution profile work & link up and the one with my actual name in it not work). I'm glad I finally figured it out & now await my approval.

My malloc double free errors and the solution

2009-12-14T16:43:00.000-05:00

After some time developing, I decided to check the debugger panel. And noticed that I was receiving several malloc double free errors in my iPhone application. Oops. They were not crashing the application, so I didn't notice them.

My problem:
I was calling up a view, and the logic to close the view after a method call providing an animation was the culprit. But I wasn't exactly sure why.

- (void) killMe:(NSString *)animationID finished:(NSNumber *)finished context:(void *)context {
    [self.view removeFromSuperview];
}

I had methods creating objects using init and I was releasing them in the view after use. However, that removeFromSuperview was cleaning up everything for me and thus I was receiving the double free errors. All I did was comment the releases out, let the removeFromSuperview do it's thing, and no more errors.

Oakley customer service rocks

2009-12-12T23:55:00.000-05:00

Last week during a school drop off my son snapped one of the temples on my Oakley sunglasses. I am quite addicted to sunglasses (I have sensitive eyes), and this pair was premium and thus would not be pleasurable to replace. My wife was out Christmas shopping today and I thought it might be a decent try to see if Oakley would sell new temples for the my model.

I received a text message from my wife during the afternoon saying that Oakley just hooked me up with a brand new pair and that they were free. My wife made a donation to a vision charity Oakley supports as thanks.

That's pretty awesome customer service. The pair that broke were not new by any means. Thank you very much Oakley. I love your products and your gracious demeanor only strengthens my brand loyalty.

Apple temporarily approving applications using private APIs?

2009-12-11T09:15:00.002-05:00

I read an article this morning where a developer received this communication from Apple in regards to their submitted application:

Thank you for submitting your update to iSimulate to the App Store. During our review of your application we found it is using a private API, which is in violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1; “3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.” While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to resolve this issue in your next update.

While Apple has taken it on the chin to a degree in regards to it's approval process, I actually think that this approach to the private APIs is a bad thing.

If a developer bases a core bit of functionality in their application using private APIs, their only course of action is to either replace it with something else or try to perhaps try and recreate (if possible) the functionality provided to them by the private APIs in the first place. Who loses there? The user of the application.

From one version to the next something is going to change - potentially dramatically. Which means usage will probably change, GUI or UI interactions with change. Resulting in confusion or a lesser experience.

I think Apple should either make public some of the more interesting private APIs or be strict about them. It's like telling your kids if they don't behave they won't get dessert. And then you end up giving them a little dessert anyway. Not a great thing.

Google Chrome for OS X

2009-12-08T16:09:00.000-05:00

I really don't like adopting new browsers all the time, but after using Google Chrome for a day on OS X I might need to put Safari down for a while until it catches up. What do I like?

No status bar on normal pages. Roll a link and you get a tooltip window at the bottom. So it frees up space down at the bottom.

Download history displayed in a bar at the bottom of the page. I like it.

Tabs are displayed by default. I like Chrome's and Safari's handling of tabs a lot - but Chrome presents the ability to make a new tab easy and in your face from the beginning. Safari hides that until you create a second tab. I know why Apple does it (saves space and it's cleaner) but I don't think it helps tab usability.

Themes. They are cute, but welcome.

New window adapting a page history/most visited page UI is very welcome. It's not as beautiful as Apple's implementation but it works almost as well. No stars for updated content, but shows recently closed, etc.

Overall Chrome is sweet. The Developer stuff is pretty nice too. Well done Google.

I am now a swedish hero as well

2009-12-02T12:20:00.003-05:00

I found the destination thanks to ActionScript Hero.

a few mw2 observations

2009-11-29T09:54:00.003-05:00

A few Modern Warfare 2 observations:

Update:

I unlocked the holographic sight and I have to say that I am no big fan of it yet. It's probably okay for close fighting, but for medium to long range that extra ring around the dot gets in the way in my opinion. Is there extra zoom? Maybe a HAIR, but the framework for the sight blocks a lot of peripheral in my opinion.

If you kill someone, make sure you move immediately because chances are good he's going to spawn and come looking in that same spot, esp. if you're in a nice spot to nail people from.

In my opponents' killcam I see that I die almost exclusively when I am on the move. Crap luck sometimes as they are behind me and I don't sense them (I have to play late at night with the sound a bit down -- which doesn't help much). However, you certainly can't move like you do in Halo unless you are very quick and accurate with your weapons. If you miss your target by even a little bit, you're going to be hosed down by a crouched or prone dude.

If you're injured, go prone. Someone may think you've been dunked. Then you can pop them as you heal up. Proning on a capture point isn't a bad idea either but you sacrifice mobility if you see a few enemies approaching.

I think that moving a bit, hunker down and look for targets, and then move to another point generally works. I just got the Scar H with dot and it's a pretty fun weapon for now. I'm only a level 13 so I have oodles of unlocks to go. The recoil on the weapon isn't great, but at least it's auto and it has decent stopping power at range. I have run out of ammo on occasion though.

MW2 MP puts Halo to shame. Shame. I can go from a cold 360 to running around on a map in under two minutes. Much more tactical. No spray and pray.

I have yet to be in a group online that talks much which is weird. With a game like this you need to communicate what you're doing. Maybe because it's not been party groups and people don't care so much - they just want to basically rambo.

This game is awesome - even if you have a few crap matches in a row you're going to get some points for something. So you don't go away feeling awful and put the game down for a while. My KD ratio is getting better, but in the beginning I was getting destroyed (I had to learn the maps, I was coming off a lot of ODST, etc.) Because of the scoring system I stuck with it more and it's becoming even more fun.

If you're up for running around on a map sometime, look me up: edolecki on the PS3 and on the 360.

Robotlegs releases v1.0.0 - AS3 micro-architecture.

2009-11-26T08:52:00.003-05:00

Robotlegs is a pure AS3 micro-architecture (framework) with a light footprint and limited scope. Simply put, Robotlegs is there to help you wire your objects together. It provides the glue that your application needs to easily function in a decoupled way.

Through the use of automated metadata based dependency injection Robotlegs removes boilerplate code in an application. By promoting loose coupling and avoiding the use of Singletons and statics in the framework Robotlegs can help you write code that is highly testable.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T00:08:00.000-05:00

If you're in Canada or the United States of America and celebrate (I think somewhere in the Netherlands does something for Thanksgiving too), I would like to extend my wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving to you. After the festivities wrap up it's time for some MW2. Of course.

Fortran stinking of fudge

2009-11-25T21:50:00.000-05:00

The FORTRAN code used for mathematical models by the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in eastern England was leaked along with the emails. This is the code used to create the infamous hockey stick that started the whole global warming climate change fraud. Many pundits claim the attempts to silence dissenting views and violation of British FOIA laws are the most damning information in the leaked emails and files. Programmers are working their way through the messy code used by the CRU. They have found a smoking gun of fraud.

From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.

;
; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,'Oooops!'
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s -- see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

Short animation

2009-11-25T10:29:00.003-05:00

This is a sponsored guest post written by Matt Kelland on behalf of Moviestorm. Post powered by Sponzai.

Moviestorm is enabling a new generation of amateur film-makers to realize their visions. It offers easy, affordable animation tools that can produce sophisticated high-quality films on practically no budget. After several years in development, Moviestorm has demonstrated that home movie-making needn’t be limited to cheap hand-held cameras and clips of the kids goofing around. Its virtual movie studio allows users to break free of the limitations of the real world, and allows them to direct, film, edit and distribute 3D animated movies without any knowledge of animation techniques or 3D modelling. And best of all, it's free, and comes without any copyright restrictions.

Iain Friar, known as IceAxe, is one of Moviestorm’s many successful film-makers. His short film, Clockwork, a dystopian vision of a totalitarian Britain after a Soviet invasion in the 1980s, is winning accolades and awards around the world, most recently the audience prize at the Atopic Festival in France and the Grand Prize at the Machinima Expo. Clearly influenced by both 1984 and A Clockwork Orange, with a visual style that evokes both Communist era propaganda posters and more recent animated movies such as A Scanner Darkly, it is a stark, powerful film that belies its modest origins.

Iain, who's 42, works in marketing, and started making movies just 18 months ago. “I’ve always been a hands-on person, in music, sport, and everything else,” he says. “I thought it would be fun to shoot a music video, but I’m not the most technical of people, and it seemed extraordinarily hard. I remember when computer games started using in-game animation to tell the story instead of video clips, and this interested me, especially now that game technology has become so sophisticated. So I bought a book, Machinima for Dummies, which had Moviestorm on the CD, and I was hooked. I liked Moviestorm because it did what I was looking for, even though I didn’t really know what I was looking for at the time, and the Moviestorm community was very supportive. I initially made comedies, but I could see that the movies people respected were more dramatic, so it seemed that was the direction to go in.”

He spent four months working on Clockwork, and then the same again on his next short, Cloud Angel, a steampunk thriller set on board an airship. Apart from the voice acting, he made the entire film himself at his home in Basingstoke, England. “I'm lucky that my friends are so willing to step up to the mike and read my silly scripts!” he laughs. His next film is Gridlock, a science fiction comedy which he is co-producing with another successful Moviestorm director, James Thorpe. For this, they’ve stepped up the production costs a notch: they hired a recording studio and got the local amateur dramatic group to do the voice acting.

Iain is realistic about his future, though. “Am I ambitious? Yes. Do I want to keep it as just a hobby? Well, probably yes, because I imagine that if it became a full time activity, the fun might go out of it. I make movies as escapism. That said, I think that this industry would be really interesting to work in, because it's embryonic; I'm not sure what direction it will go in. It's exciting!”

Moviestorm’s CEO, Jeff Zie, is hugely enthusiastic and supportive. “Iain and the many other Moviestorm users are an inspiration to us all,” he says. “We’re really proud that we’re giving talented people like this the tools they need to unleash the creative potential they never knew they had, and to produce these wonderful films.”

Try it and see!

You can download Moviestorm for free: Windows and Mac versions are available. If you want, you can expand your virtual film studio and buy extra costumes, sets, props, and sounds in their marketplace. If you've ever wondered whether you might be the next Tarantino, Ang Lee, or J J Abrams, now's the time to find out!

stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString

2009-11-19T10:27:00.002-05:00

Objective-C: stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString is the BOMB. That is all.

A redesign is indeed in the works

2009-11-14T08:03:00.000-05:00

This site has been around for over seven years and it has served many purposes. It has enjoyed various degrees of informational relevance. It has displayed many designs - some decent, some awful. In it's present state, I side with awful.

As it happens with some projects, one gets overly excited about getting something live, when it wasn't quite ready, or when it ends up being something cobbled together in patches on the fly to fix things because it went live too soon. This site suffered this in version 8. The really wide column was intended for code blocks (AS3 and Obj-C)... however it makes all normal posts suffer. So I'll just let code scroll if it needs to and that will be that. Etc.

So version 9 is being coded at the moment, and it's looking good. I will give the initial skeleton a week's rest and then a review to see if it still holds up. If it does, I will flush it out, and then tag it up. And test. And re-test. And then give it another week to settle before inspecting again.

It's not a redesign for the sake of it being stale... I just don't think it works that well.

New site should be a lot better and hopefully something I can be proud of. No deadline, it just needs to happen.

IDE Flash Player Weirdness

2009-11-13T11:22:00.000-05:00

I am curious if others have been seeing behavior like this when compiling using Flash CS4 IDE. I publish a SWF and sometimes certain assets declared on the stage simply never make it to the SWF itself. They don't exist.

When it happens it's always the same asset. Recompiling a time or two will result in the asset to make it and display in the SWF. It's rather strange and only appears to happen in the Flash IDE player. It's annoying and I hope this will be remedied in the next release.

I should probably Google for this problem or report it, maybe I will in a while.

Solidarnosc

2009-11-13T00:10:00.002-05:00

A test twitter search widget

2009-11-11T21:16:00.000-05:00

I am a little tired of going through all the APIs and doing everything myself, so I thought I would check this widget out.