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February 16, 2005
Digital Photography Hacks
Digital cameras are getting better and cheaper all the time. They’re even embedded in phones these days. So now that we’ve all get one, or are drooling over the latest to hit the market, what do you do once you’ve broken down and have on in hand?
Enter Digital Photography Hacks: 100 Industrial Strength Tips & Tools, by Derrick Story, part of the O’Reilly series. $29.95 list, $18.87 at Amazon.com (see link at bottom). Derrick Story is a longtime photographer and writer for O’Reilly and for the MacDevCenter (www.macdevcenter.com). In this volume, he’s compiled 100 hacks from himself and those submitted by others.
The first thing to mention is the breadth of the book. It covers tricks on camera functions, tools, computer software, pantyhose and overcoming problematic exposures and circumstances.
The first “hack” in the book is something simple, that many camera owners probably already know – the utility of carrying a portable tripod. They’re small and light, and will probably do the trick in a pinch.
The book moves along, explaining more difficult issues, such as removing red eye, lightening teeth and correcting for flash fall off in an image. There are chapters covering camera attachments, working with flashes, computer connections and software, plus a few others. You might be surprised that a book aimed at photographers and shutterbugs has an entire chapter devoted to camera phones.
As I’m just learning to use Adobe PhotoShop to retouch and adjust images, I’ll probably spend a good deal of my time in the chapter dedicated to using these tools.
The book contains a very wide range of ideas and therefore, most people will think that some of the hacks are trivial, while some are complicated, but that’s a reflection of our own knowledge of the subject. The good news is that the majority of readers will find that the majority of the hacks are interesting and should serve to improve our photo skills, as well as our creativity.
Overall, the book is easy to read and is written in such a way that you don’t need to read it from cover to cover. You can move to the chapter or “hack” of interest and it is self-contained, not requiring the reading of several other hacks to understand. So feel free to scan the table of contents and start exploring.
You’ll just have to read the book to learn why you should keep pantyhose in your camera bag.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596006667/qid=1108580736/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-1453886-4587332?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Posted by at 04:13 PM | Comments (0)
February 15, 2005
Accessing ASUMac Warehouse
It seems that Mozilla based browsers including Mozilla, Firefox and Netscape do not know what to do with afp:// links like the one we are using above to mount the ASUMac Warehouse server volume. Safari and Internet Explorer both handle these links without issue.
For those of you who are using Mozilla browsers, you will need to "Connect to Server", enter asumac.asu.edu/asumacwarehouse and login as "Guest".
For those who are not familiar, we have placed a variety of applications on this network volume for convenient downloading by ASU Mac users. If you think we are missing something, please let us know.
We will address this issue in the near future by turning the webDAV service on which should allow Mozilla browsers to mount the volume.
Posted by snelson at 09:22 PM | Comments (0)
February Meeting Notes
Great turn out today with some good prizes. Thanks to everyone who took a couple hours out of their day. I promise to tell our contact at O'Reilly to not send any more history books.
The discussion of Entourage and Exchange covered the basics of what does work (namely email, calendaring, directory services and not much else) as well as what is definitely not functioning...delegates, managing distribution lists, many functions related to Public Folders and viewing other user calendars. Microsoft has announced a second half of 2005 upgrade that promises to address many of these issues. The Microsoft Office 2004 Resource Kit provides a wealth of information related to Entourage's current Exchange support issues.
Thanks to Joe Williams of IT for his "Cool Tool" presentation of Carbon Copy Cloner. While demoing the software, Joe highly recommended using the ASR option as a way to save time and suggested that you use a destination drive that is a minimum of 2.5x the size of the source volume.
If you have an indespensible mac tool that you use, please consider presenting it at a future ASUMAC meeting.
Thanks to Al Teran from Apple for his recap of recent Apple product announcements. Al also mentioned two nifty "hacks" to increase the functionality of your Mac. iScroll2 adds the ability to scroll using your Powerbook Trackpad just like the latest model from Apple and Screen Spanning Doctor provides the ability to extend the desktop to multiple displays on Macs that don't typically support them. (Disclaimer - ASUMAC is not endorsing either product...just passing along these system hacks for those interested in trying them. We do however highly recommend reading any associated readme files prior to installation.)
Finally, Thanks to Guy Mullins of DMIT who showed us why there is so much buzz aboout Podcasting. This session was packed with useful information so if you missed something or weren't able to attend, I highly recommend perusing the handout that accommpanied the presenation. Podcasting looks like a great way to offer course lecture material to students.
That was it for February. We are tentatively planning our next meeting for March 22. More info will be posted and annouced on MacHelp in the coming weeks.
Posted by snelson at 08:51 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Check Point VPN for the Mac is now available!
The Check Point VPN client for the Macintosh is now available. The installation document and software is required for installation. It can be downloaded from ASU IT Security web site by clicking on the Software and Tools link. Users can now access all the Check Point firewalls and the border VPN as the Windows client.
Questions about the Macintosh VPN client can be directed to the IT Help Desk or email sent to comm-q@asu.edu.
Posted by snelson at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)
February 03, 2005
February 15th ASUMAC Meeting
Our first meeting of 2005 is scheduled for February 15. And yes, we will have some door prizes!!!
Promotional Poster
CPCOM 120
10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Topics include:
Macs @ ASU - Working with Exchange using Entourage 2004: What works and what doesn't.
Cool Tools - Spotlight on Carbon Copy Cloner
MacWorld Recap - Al Teran from Apple will provide a recap of the recent Macworld announcements and possibly show off some new "small" Apple products.
Podcasting - Guy Mullins from DMIT will tell us everything we could possibly want to know about Podcasting...including what it is!
Hope to see you all there.
Posted by snelson at 02:01 PM | Comments (0)
February 02, 2005
Apple Online Training Seminars...Free!!
Apple has been posting free online webcasts covering many different topics. I have watched a couple of these and they have been very informative and well worth the hour or so. I highly recommend that you take a look at the currently available seminars.
Apple is also conducting two live webcasts in March...
March 10, 2005 10:00-11:15 am PST - Maximizing Mac OS X Application Performance: A webcast for scientific developers
March 29, 2005 10:00-11:15 am PST - Third-party HPC Solutions for Mac OS X
Did I mention that they are FREE?
Posted by snelson at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
February 01, 2005
University of Illinois gets an Xserve cluster
The Turing Cluster at the University of Illinois is the latest university owned Xserve cluster.
More information regarding Xserve clusters including a fairly informative webcast and many links to additional resources is available at Apple's IT Pro site.
Posted by snelson at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
