Happy Landfill

This Is Hot

2009-03-04T20:36:00.002-08:00

Have you seen my friend Joe Lifrieri’s new website?

2009

2009-01-29T12:28:00.002-08:00

Wow, it’s been a while.

Well, see you in six months.

Hopkins

2008-07-05T21:06:00.004-07:00

If you’ve not checked out Hopkins, a new six-part series on ABC, I highly recommend it.

Good Things Are Happening

2008-06-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

The More You Know (About Color)

2008-04-28T22:23:00.008-07:00

I find it perplexing that Apple still ships notebooks with default color profiles that are absolutely horrendous. This is especially apparent on recent MacBooks; the displays on those machines are bad enough, but they look like hell with the incorrect default color calibration.

I wonder if Apple knows about this issue, or if they just don’t care. In their product literature, they always mention how “gorgeous” the displays in their notebooks are, but have they actually taken a look at any of their shipping products?

This issue appears to be the result of having multiple suppliers for a single component: the LCD panel. These panels can come from a number of different OEMs (many are sucktacular) and there may even be significant variations from panel to panel within the production run of a single model. Trying to use a one-size-fits-all color profile for these displays can lead to a wide range of results. Lately, it seems, the results have been all bad.

The sad part is that most Mac users don’t know about color calibration or realize that the colors displayed on their screen are distorted, or that there is a way to correct it.

Luckily, there are numerous ways to correctly calibrate your display’s color, such as the built-in calibration tool Mac OS X offers or third party applications such as SuperCal. Then there are the pricey software/colorimeter packages.

That said, I’m still using the default color profile that came with my MacBook Air. The display on this machine is one of the hardest I’ve had to calibrate. In the several times I have tried, I always wound up with mixed results. It’s been so difficult, in fact, that I keep switching back to the default “Color LCD” profile. It’s passable for the interim, even if the display does look somewhat faded and warm.

Untitled

2008-04-13T21:50:00.001-07:00

During my daily commute on the subway, there is often someone near me listening to headphones with the volume turned all the way up—enough so that I can actually hear their music when I am listening to mine. I wonder if they realize that they are killing their hearing, or if they just do not care.

Enjoy your tinnitus, kids.

I think I caught myself just as I was spiraling into another rant about how stupid kids are these days. That post will come later in the week or day.

Good Job

2008-04-05T11:15:00.002-07:00

http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/3461

iTunes Tip o’ the Week

2008-04-02T23:01:00.006-07:00

One way to rediscover your music from the past: set up a Smart Playlist in iTunes that automatically populates and refreshes itself with songs you’ve added to your collection exactly three years ago (or any other time period of your choosing).

In iTunes, select “New Smart Playlist…” from the File menu, and enter the following:

Just Another Day at Work

2008-03-28T20:28:00.003-07:00

Safe Sleep

2008-03-26T21:55:00.006-07:00

When I purchased my MacBook Air less than two months ago, I immediately noticed a feature called Safe Sleep. It’s not a new addition to Mac notebooks; it’s been present on every model with an Intel processor, as well as the last generation of PowerBook G4s.

When you put a Mac notebook with this feature to sleep, instead of immediately powering off all components (with the exception of the memory and a few others), it will enter into a limbo state that lasts anywhere from 10 seconds to over a minute. During this time, the screen turns off and the system is unresponsive while the contents of your computer’s memory is written to its hard drive. This is to ensure that in the event the battery drains completely while the Mac is in sleep mode, you won’t lose any unsaved work. The state of your computer at the time it was put to sleep will be restored from the data on the hard drive once it is plugged into a power outlet.

On older Mac notebooks (and all Mac desktops), the computer would enter sleep mode almost immediately without caching the contents of your memory. If one of those computers lost power during sleep, any unsaved work would be lost.

Safe Sleep seems like a good idea. Seems. It turns out, at least for me, that it’s not a very useful feature. Usually using a notebook on the go is a constant repetition of 1) turning it on, 2) using it for a few minutes, 3) closing the lid/putting it to sleep and go. The problem with this feature is that when putting my MacBook Air to sleep, I can’t move the machine until the hard disk spins down and it fully goes to sleep, resulting in a frustrating wait before I can throw it into my bag and be on my way. Any substantial movement when the hard disk is still active—especially when writing data—can result in data loss and damage to the disk. Now, hard drives are usually pretty resilient, but this isn’t something I want to risk on a regular basis. Furthermore, I’m not sure how effective the Sudden Motion Sensor is when dealing with constant, violent movement (like running to catch a train), or if it even works when the computer is caching to disk.

I think a smart solution (for users who want the feature, and those who don’t) would be to have a checkbox in Mac OS X System Preferences that allows Safe Sleep to be disabled. In the meantime, there’s always the command line that allows one to manually turn off the feature.

The MacBook Air is my first Mac notebook in almost three years. It seems backwards that I can’t put my new machine (in its default configuration) to sleep in less than 3 seconds like I could before with my old PowerBooks.

One thing I’ve noticed is that batteries in Intel-based Mac notebooks drain faster in sleep mode than PowerPC ones. My old PowerBooks discharged only 3% or so per day when sleeping, while my MacBook Air would discharge more than 10% in the same amount of time. Perhaps the Intel-based chipset is more inefficient—necessitating Apple building in Safe Sleep into their Mac notebooks to compensate.

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

2008-03-18T21:28:00.002-07:00

I miss Arthur C. Clarke already.

Album Cover of the Year

2008-03-12T14:44:00.011-07:00

A design triumph. Really.

I especially love the circa-1994 children’s sing-along album cover aesthetic of the typography.

Vantage Point

2008-02-25T20:41:00.005-08:00

I saw Vantage Point over the weekend. If you have not seen this movie and are considering it, I recommend spending your money someplace else. Like saving towards a root canal.

Vantage Point was one of the more tedious cinematic experiences I’ve endured in recent memory. It was awful. Sitting through it was not unlike experiencing the five stages of grief:

Denial: “I can’t believe I just paid ten dollars for this. What? There’s another hour left to this?”
Anger: “How was this movie greenlit? I want my money back. Fuckers.”
Bargaining: “If I don’t walk out of this movie, can I get a consolation prize, at least? Like a ticket to another movie that doesn’t blow?”
Depression: “I bet someone in the audience is enjoying this movie right now. And that makes me really sad for the human race.”
Acceptance: “I guess I’ll sit through the rest of this. But I won’t like it. And I’ll write about how awful it is.”

There were just too many things wrong with Vantage Point that I wouldn’t even know where to start. Almost every minute felt forced and was completely unrealistic—so much so that the suspension of disbelief usually required for something like 24 or Lost did not suffice.

Perhaps there was a silver lining to the 90 minutes I wasted on Saturday. Matthew Fox’s attempts at Spanish dialogue were hilarious.

On the WGA Strike

2008-02-19T19:57:00.006-08:00

I know I’m a week late, but I must say that I’m ecstatic the strike is finally over.

Now there’ll be real programming to watch soon. Instead of Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann. Seriously, what the fuck was that? Worst show ever.

The Wow Starts Now

2008-02-09T19:35:00.001-08:00

It’s about time I started making use of the $17.99 I pay monthly for hosting.