Over the week-end, there were 2 announcements made that deserve a quick mention.

Apple have upgraded Aperture to version 2.1

This is a quick update after the recent launch of version 2.0 and not only includes a number of bug fixes and performance updates but also adds a new plugin architecture. To demonstrate this, a dodge and burn tool has been included.

If you already have Aperture 2 installed, it is well worth hitting the ‘Software update’ button for this!

Adobe announce Lightroom 2

Hot on the heels of Aperture 2, Adobe have made the Beta version of Lightroom 2 available. This worked well for Lightroom 1 as the feedback from users prior to launch really helped focus the development based on feedback from ‘real’ users. Initially, the Library module has been redesigned and includes most of the features you can find in Aperture such as multiple monitor support.

I have seen a lot of information lately on various websites and in the photographic press about the Police and their ignorance when it comes to the rights of photographers and the law in general with regard to photography.

I find it amazing that the officers of the law themselves have been known to actually make it up as they go along. Interestingly, these guys/gals are actually opening themselves up to prosecution. Even those security guards that come along and tell you photography is not allowed could just be harassing you. Any attempts to take your camera or delete your photos is criminal damage and theft.

I like this information a lot. Having the upper hand when landing in these situations has to be of benefit to the photographer. Although different areas will certainly have different laws, this page has details on the UK law and even provides a PDF overview. I will be keeping one of these handy in my camera bag next time I travel away!!

UK Photographers Rights

I was chatting with Damien a couple of days ago about Aperture and photography in general. One of his comments about Aperture referred to the loading notice you get whenever you switch view to a new image in the viewer. I have been playing with this and although it is still quick to change, it can get a bit bogged down if you have a lot of images to skip through. I then experimented with the Quick Preview mode… what an amazing difference it made to browsing.

Press ‘p’ whilst in the Aperture browser and you will find that ‘Quick Preview’ is displayed underneath the picture.

With this on, try skipping through pictures and check the speed difference. As soon as you want to slow down again and begin working on the images, press ‘p’ to toggle quick preview mode off.

My copy of Aperture 2 arrived this week-end and it has been installed and the sample projects imported.

I downloaded the demo about 2 minutes after it was released and not being one for impulse decisions, about 2 minutes later I decided that I will move my workflow from Lightroom to Aperture! Within those 2 minutes I discovered that the performance, tools, integration and overall feature set will suit me more. Lightroom is a great application and I have nothing but respect for it but when I used Aperture to very quickly add images to my gallery then access the photos from Pages, I realised I had already saved a lot of time compared to the equivalent Adobe workflow. A few more tests along these lines and I was confident that Aperture is the way forward!

When I have finished ruining the sample photos, I am going to look at importing my 8,000 images as referenced files. I plan to keep all the original images on my external drive and the library file on my Macbook Pro. This gives the benefit of being able to access the library when travelling but also saves HDD space which is starting to get quite low! When I originally moved to Lightroom, I lost all the keywording I had done on the PC but luckily I manage the files in a logical way which helps me find the images I need. I know there are a lot of rubbish images in my library so I may take this opportunity to tidy things up a bit. From there I will decide if I am going to keyword everything again. At some stage in the near future, Aidy and I are going to design a keyword tree for the images on Encaptured. I will recreate this tree in Aperture and ensure that I use it as I go so that when I get round to uploading images, everything is cohesive.

I’ll report on my progress as I get round to each part of the transition as I am sure there will be other users out there that may make the same move. With any luck, my experiences will provide some guidance!

I just used Monolingual to recover nearly 4GB of space on my Macbook Pro’s HDD. I am very tempted to try the option that removes the PPC elements as it seems to be quite safe. The application’s FAQ says this;

You can use Monolingual to remove non-Intel architectures for your installed applications (even if some of the applications are PowerPC-only; Monolingual is smart enough not to remove PPC forks if those are the only ones in the universal binary). However, you should not strip the System frameworks if you want to use Rosetta.

I have no idea how much space this could save though. For some reason the main OS X Library directory is huge so I need to find out more ways to regain some space. Got any ideas?

Phrixus.co.uk has just had quite a lot of updates over the last week.

• • My theme has had a few adjustments to keep it up to date.
  • There are more navigation options.
  • The archives page has been rewritten.
  • My very customised Gallery 1 installation is now gone and has been replaced by a more integrated Gallery 2 version.
  • The Travelogue no longer links to a separate blog. I could never be bothered to apply updates etc. Now it is integrated into the main site using Google maps rather than the custom flash map I used previously.
  • The photoblog image on the homepage is now a random image from the photoblog album.

I have now been able to ride a motorbike for a couple of months. In that time I have probably only covered about 100 miles due to the weather but I can feel my confidence and ability growing each time I go out. The Suzuki Bandit I am riding is fantastic, though this can only be compared to the Honda CB250 I used for myCBT. On the whole, I am comfortable riding the bike and have no problems with it’s performance. I am most likely riding it too slow in fact but I will walk before I run!

Aidy (Whose bike it was originally) has been helping me learn a bit about the bike to. He has kindly shown me the basic maintenance tasks that need to be done, so in effect, we have given it most of a service. We installed new brake pads (Kindly sponsored by Gringod .com!), changed the oil/filter and tensioned the chain. Doing these jobs is great as it helps me get familiar with the technology. At this stage I would need the Haynes manual close at hand for any major repairs but I plan to learn as much as possible about the mechanics. I think this is vital for me as I plan to use the bike for travel much as Aidy did before me. In fact, he has just posted some videos I sent him links for on this subject. If these dont inspire you and give your wanderlust a kick start, I dont know what would!

2008 could be a very interesting year for me. It seems that everything that I am involved with is moving towards some kind of junction. If everything that I do has a big change applied, it is likely to shake up a few things here and there. I certainly feel that things are going to be different a year from now. Perhaps it is this uncertainty about the future but I can almost feel my priorities changing. Things I desperately wanted to do a few months ago are slowly descending in the ranks as I modify my needs based on my theories and new ideas are creeping to the surface. Only in writing this is it apparent on how many levels this is true. I don’t wish to give any details on these things as it could be the lack of daylight affecting me but I am certain that things are going to change. I am not going to actively change anything, I will go with the flow and see where it takes me but I am conscious that I need to be careful when making decisions to ensure I follow the right path.That’s enough philosophical babbling, I have more exciting things to write about!

I am pleased to announce that my photography website, Encaptured Photography, has just been updated. Along with a minor update to the style, a lot of the code behind has been made more standards compliant. Along with this have come a few areas that need to be tweaked for various browsers and I expect to have this completed over the next few days.

New features include:

• Updated system to order custom ICC colour profiles for your home printer.
• Full text, keyword searching with boolean (and/or/not) operators.
• Image colour searching.
• Integrated system for searching for related images by keyword.
• Simple, in window (AJAX) slideshow for quick and easy browsing.
• PDF contact sheet download from lightbox view.
• Share photos in your Facebook account.

Feel free to head over and take a look around. If you notice any problems, please comment here or use the contact form on the site to let me know! Watch out as we hope to start adding more images and categories over the next few months.

Just a few days after installing Leopard I have been going through my system and updating various bits of software. One of the apps I updated was MAMP, the excellent server I use for local testing. My document root is outside the main directory so I didn’t think about the mysql databases that are still held within the directory. Needless to say after updating the app, all of the existing databases were lost. After a few seconds of panic I thought about Time Machine. Navigating to the mysql root in the new directory and hitting the TM button brought me into the past where I found all of the db’s… one multi select later and they are all back in the present. I don’t care about the other 299 improvements, Time Machine alone is worth the cost of the upgrade! I’ve become such an Apple fanboy it scares me!

Leigh popped round for some beers and entertainment! From a few hours browsing the web, this was the highlight!

This might be easier than I thought. 10 minutes at our licence office during lunchtime has put me one step closer to my goal! With very little drama (none actually), they happily granted me a provisional licence for Category A (Motorbikes). Hopefully it will all come together this quickly… what’s next on the list?!?!

Well, now I appear to at last be building momentum towards my goal for 2007. My resolution for this year was to try and get my motorbike licence. As I had done nothing to progress towards this goal, other than pick up a form for the licence, I did not hold out much hope on actually achieving the goal! However, a couple of weeks ago, Aidy decided that he was going to look for a new bike! He has settled on a rather cool BMW R1200GS that would be my ideal bike one day too! He did suggest that his Bandit 600F would be ideal for me to use as a starter bike. The bike has had a very interesting past, but at least I know it’s history! Other than working out the finer details down at the pub, I think we have made a deal!

Now it is time to…

1. Get licence sorted
2. Buy helmet and other gear
3. Organise some insurance
4. Convince Aidy to show me how a bike works!
5. Book myself on the CBT (Compulsory Basic Training)
6. Rent a bike to use on CBT as 600cc is too much
7. Read more magazines so I can say biker stuff - like the vindaloo comment (private joke)!!

Since I have not posted for some time, I figured a bit of humour might not go amiss!! Here is a great insight into what it’s like when we get into some real manual work! In this case back in 2004 when we first renovated the boat! Click below to see it… or go to the media page to see this and more!
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For my first YouTube video upload ever, I have one of the funniest things I have seen in a long while… not for CS who is undoubtedly the star, but he survived so all is well! The Video shot on Brooky’s phone and quickly edited on my Mac… Click through to watch and be winded yourself by the “Ultimate Belly Flop”!!
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