Steve Jobs 1955-2011

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Woke this morning to hear that Steve Jobs had died at the age of 56 after his long illness.

Steve was a unique individual that has had a significant impact on our daily lives. The company he founded has brought technology to our homes that just a few years ago would have been regarded as science fiction.

Thank you Steve you will be missed.

T hero

Don’t rush through extreme internet laws

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It’s at times like this you really wish you had political representation, however in my constituency the responsible MP has “stood down”. If you still have representation at Westminster it’s maybe still worth taking a few minutes to email your local MP.

Peter Mandelson is rushing to force the Digital Economy Bill into law before the General Election.

The draconian law is opposed by industry experts, internet service providers (like TalkTalk and BT), web giants including Google, Yahoo and Ebay and even the British Library. Despite all this opposition, the Government is trying to rush it through quietly just before the election without proper debate – without a chance for us to voice our opposition. Email your MP now and urge them to stop the government rushing this law through.

There’s plenty to oppose in the Digital Economy Bill, it gives the government the ability to disconnect millions. Schools, libraries and businesses could see their connection cut if their pupils, readers of customers infringe any copyright. But one group likes it, the music industry. In a leaked memo a few days ago they admitted the only way to get the bill through would be to rush it through without a real parliamentary debate. Let’s stop that happening.

All you need is your postcode.

One DAM to rule them all

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With the release of Aperture 3 I think I am back to where I was quite a few years back with one application I am happy to use for all my Digital Asset Management.

Many moons ago I was a happy iViewMedia Pro user, and then between iView becoming a part of the Microsoft Expression Media suite, and not really supporting Mac any more, and me moving to a Raw shooting workflow, we had to part company. I had period where I was in transition with Bibble Pro doing my RAW conversion, and iView for the DAM, but I was lured by the release of Adobe Lightroom. At the time I looked at Aperture, but it was too expensive, and my machine at the time couldn’t run it because of the GPU demands.
Over the intervening period I have been happily shooting most of my images in Raw, and using Lightroom to manage them.

Recently though I have been carrying a little Panasonic Lumix or my iPhone around with me for those quick images, and holiday shots. It’s just too much gear to lug the SLR bag around on a day out with a toddler in tow. The little Lumix does the job admirably, and really impressed me on the recent trip to Disneyland Paris. Problem with this little camera is that it’s JPEG only, and Lightroom is not so hot working with JPEGs. I had taken to managing the stuff from it in iPhoto 09, and the Canon SLR in Lightroom, but the photo library was getting increasingly fragmented, and difficult to let the rest of the family see it.

With this latest revision of Aperture I think I have found the “One Ring”. I can store my Raw, JPEGS & Video in one application, which is happy enough to keep it all referenced from the NAS drive. It does a very capable job of organizing the library allowing me to have it the way I want it, and has powerful correction tools meaning fewer trips needed to Photoshop.
As a bonus I can sync stuff easily to the Apple TV to make it accessible to the rest of the family.

Without taking into account the integration of Places and Faces into the app I think we have a WINNER!

Life without TiVo

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Well I have taken the plunge and retired my much loved TiVo. The old workhorse was still going strong but showing it’s age compared to current PVRs. (well the UK model anyway that has seen no updates in 8 years).

In comes a Humax PVR 9300T which gives me 90% of the same functionality. I’ve been running them side by side since Christmas, and discovered that I just wasn’t wanting to use the TiVo, so its out with the box, and the DVB set top box too – Leaving me with a much slimmer little box with 320Gb of recording space and 2 tuners. And it’s clever with those 2 Tuners. You can do the usual with 2 tuners of record 2 things and watch a third already recorded thing. However there is a trick up the sleeve with the Humax you can record 2 things, and watch a third broadcast thing provided that the channel is also on one of the Muxes being used for recording.

So cool 2 plugs freed up although I can see some of the rats nest of cables now (time for a cleanup methinks).

A downside is no really reliable season passes that just start recording again when a favourite series comes on again. Another missing feature is the thumbs functionality and TiVo’s Suggestions (which I didn’t really use anyway)

The Hummy is a slave to the vaguries of the DVB EPG when it works it works well, and gets the EPG live OTA rather than once a day. An upside is when all the metadata is working well I no longer need to pad BBC and ITV recordings as they just start on time :) , however some of the broadcasters need to pull their fingers out and send sensible EPG data – Virgin 1 are you listening? Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles is a series – set the flaming series link flag – I have to keep remembering to record it every week

The picture quality is better too as the Hummy seems to record the DVB-T stream straight rather than re-encoding the decoded analogue.

Its also greener in standby too powering right down (even the RF passthru) unless there is a recording going on. Another upside is the hummy has a 576p/720p HDMI output for when I get round to upgrading the telly to something Full HD

Another bonus I have found with the hummy is the ability to queue up a playlist of shows to keep the little one amused while we do something. Hats off to whoever designed that feature. They must have kids – it’s just genius.