Jaharmi’s Irreality renewable hyperlinks with 0% transfat since 1999

I’ve now spent just over one year with my EVIL (electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lens) DSLR-like camera, the Sony Alpha SLT-A55V. It has been a rewarding year for me photographically.

I can’t express how much more fun it is to use this camera compared to anything I’ve had earlier. I was in the land of point-and-shoots (including a “super zoom” of its time, the Olympus C-750UZ) before the SLT-A55.

There isn’t much I don’t like, and most of that is simply comes with the territory of a DSLR-like camera. The extra expense and bulk and even uncertainty (which lens should I take?) of having interchangeable lenses could be a drawback. All things considered, I am a happy and satisfied SLT-A55 owner, nothing more.

But beyond that, I have found this camera very freeing. I worry less and less about the pictures I take. I love the camera’s:

• fast startup time
• focus and depth-of-field
• fast shot-to-shot time and rapid-fire shooting
• automatic GPS tagging (although for best performance, you should keep the GPS Assist data up-to-date; I Download Sony GPS Assist data automatically when a memory card mounts with a LaunchAgent)
• 1080i movies that I can play on my flat panel TV
• availability of Minolta lenses on eBay (I wish I’d known more about this up-front), as well as new Sony lenses (online and in a more limited fashion at retail)

There’s certainly more, but this camera has removed so many barriers for me. I’ve taken at least 17,375 photos with it in a year, and I haven’t counted how many video clips. The best part is that I think a higher percentage of my images have been good than ever before.

The camera has gotten some press but I’m continually surprised that I don’t see it advertised more or presented in the weekly sales circulars (where it’s all Canon and Nikon, predictably).

Brix Anderson’s post about Downloading Sony GPS Assist Data Manually includes a Perl script that downloads the GPS Assist data for Sony cameras.

The GPS Assist data is stored on the memory card. When a memory card with GPS Assist data is inserted into a compatible GPS-equipped Sony camera — like the awesome Alpha SLT-A55V I got a few months ago — the camera has much faster lock-on times when searching for its location. The lock-on may take 10 seconds instead of requiring minutes.

I had been working without GPS Assist data since I bought the camera. I didn’t understand its value, but then I had captured photos where most of the shoot was incorrectly geotagged. After investigating this, I found the GPS Assist data should help, but that it required software on the desktop to update that data. Sony did not supply the relevant package for Mac OS X to do this.

Since I wanted to make sure I got updated location information on my photos, I did some searching and came across Brix’s page. I was honestly surprised to find that the GPS Assist data was written to the same memory cards as the photos, but it does make sense after some more thought.

Brix’s Perl script there certainly did the trick; my SLT-A55V picked up on the new GPS Assist data on the first card I tried it with. I have a limited number of cards, so I wrote a wrapper shell script that would run the Perl downloader script if certain volumes were present in /Volumes. I control the names of the cards, so I also control their paths.

I then call that wrapper script via a LaunchAgent. The LaunchAgent is triggered via “StartOnMount,” so it watches for new volumes to be mounted by Mac OS X. When a volume is mounted, the LaunchAgent runs, calls the wrapper script, the wrapper script checks for volume names, and if there is a match, runs the GPS Assist Perl script.

Now, every time I insert my memory cards to download photos, I get freshly-updated GPS Assist data for my camera.

Jesper Noehr explains why {l,r}strip are considered harmful for removing extensions from filenames with Python. I think he’s absolutely right on that score, and I would agree. The lstrip() and rstrip() methods shouldn’t be used for this purpose.

However, like the only commenter on that post, I’d also recommend os.path.splitext() as the proper tool for the extension-removing job.

Let’s take some example filenames you might come across on Mac OS X Snow Leopard:

If we had a list of filenames (or file paths) like this — perhaps created by os.walk() or some other generator-based process — we couldn’t easily use Jesper’s recommended solution. The replace() string method would give us a much harder time dealing with the range of filenames and extensions in that list. In the case where you don’t know the filename extensions in advance, replace() breaks down. The replace() method would have to be looped with many possible filename extensions.

What we need is a way to split filename from extension, even if we don’t know the extension beforehand. The os.path.splitext() alternative does just that, returning a tuple. Here, I’ll import the os module and then use a list comprehension to run os.path.splitext() through every filename in the list above.

It becomes a simple matter to get just the filename from the tuple, as I do here by modifying the list comprehension to just get the zeroth item from it:

Note that several interesting conditions are handled by os.path.splitext():

• long filename extensions, including “.pages” and “.networkConnect”
• spaces in filenames, as in “Property List.plist”
• parentheses, as in “VPN (Cisco VPN).networkConnect”
• periods within the filename, as seen in “Dated Spreadsheet 2010.02.17.xlsx”

After the news hit about Time Warner Cable’s intent to charge different rates for tiers of monthly data transfer — and an enormous $1/GB fee for overages — it seems eminently sane to consider the competition.

In Rochester, that competition is Frontier DSL. For a long time, that basically meant there was no competition, I’m very sorry to say.

However, the changes to TWC’s fee structure may be so extreme that even that level of competition is good. While I don’t think our household monthly data transfer is excessive, I’m reasonably sure (based on what I’ve seen from the data I’ve collected from our broadband router) that we’ll blow right past the 5 GB/month tier and maybe the 10 GB/month one. We would have to — and by that I mean, I would have to, really — develop some more austere usage of the family Internet connection that we’re accustomed to. Thus, I’m examining the pro and con positions for Frontier’s high-speed Internet service.

Pro

With Frontier DSL, my family should:

• Not have to deal with the stress of the upcoming 5/10/40/100 GB-per-month tiers from TWC, which will reportedly take effect in Rochester in November 2009
• Get to send a clear message to TWC that metered Internet access is a terrible idea
• Get the peace of mind that unlimited, unmetered Internet access provides — but only if Frontier’s existing 5 GB-per-month transfer cap is eliminated
• Benefit from the refer-a-friend affiliate program — both parties get the $20 referral credit
• Be able to combine the billing with our Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS).

Con

However, there are some drawbacks to Frontier DSL. My family would be concerned about:

• A potential monthly DSL modem rental fee
• A two-year commitment with a $200-300 (I’ve see both figures!) early termination fee
• The 5 GB-per-month unenforced data transfer cap (but that cap may be dropped entirely in an effort to better compete with TWC)
• Blocking port 25 — while there are workarounds, this is just aggravating
• The unknown quantity of Frontier’s technical support, whereas TWC’s has been reasonably good over the years.

Anyway, while we’re mulling this over, the news is playing out on sites like StopTheCap and StopTWC! Meanwhile, I’m more than a little annoyed at the traditional news media avoiding some of the other angles surrounding this topic — the pricing change as a way to protect cable television revenues, the local monopoly (and how cable infrastructure compares to its telephone equivalent), the impact on increasingly Internet-dependent households during a recession, how this might change the habits of people (including employees working at home), and so on.

Yesterday, I traded in “Fighterjet.”

I feel pretty raw about signing away the title for my 1998 Subaru Legacy GT 2.5 Limited. (Frankly, I’ll never remember the correct order “GT,” “2.5,” and “Limited” are supposed to go in, even after 10 years — 3273 days, to be exact — of car ownership.) Looking back, I took delivery on July 1, 1998.

What do you say about a car you owned for 122 months? A vehicle that was there to transport you through the highs and lows of life?

Well, the brochure for our new car says, “Few things connect to your life at more points than your car.” Amen. I’ll take a stab at a few notes in haphazard arrangement, below.

This will all seem melodramatic, and it is. There are, I’m sure, people who don’t get attached to their cars. My wife and I are not those people. However, I am beginning to realize that you can only really get attached to one car, and thereafter you realize you simply can’t do that again. This is my struggle this morning, and my usual tendencies to hang on are amplified by how long I had that Subaru.

Fighterjet was the first car I ever picked out and bought myself. The two cars before it dropped into my lap, by the generosity of my family, and being young, I did my level best to destroy them quickly. The Subaru had 40-some miles on it when I bought it, partly because I drove it a few times and partly because the test drive area around the dealership was so large.

Every girlfriend I had in my adult life rode in Fighterjet. One of them helped me choose it. The car outlasted all but one of them.

My wife and our first son rode in Fighterjet. In fact, it was the car that Aaron and I had to rescue from the snowy parking lot at work — its door had been jammed open by ice so the alarm was sounding — so that I could collect the bags we’d left at home and return to the hospital with them. The baby was born a day later, and perhaps we’ll be more prepared in the future.

Fighterjet didn’t have LATCH anchors. Oops.

When I bought Fighterjet, I didn’t have any music in MP3 format. Having an iPod connection was unheard of, because the iPod wouldn’t ship for years yet. But it had a CD player and a tape player, not to mention weather band radio. (Weather band radio is really dull.)

Luckily, I had obtained my first digital camera nine months before Fighterjet, so I was able to document the car pretty well.

The month I brought Fighterjet home, I went to Macworld Expo in New York City. It was the first of five such expos in New York (and that was a particularly whirlwind trip), but it was even more memorable for a big product introduction: the original bondi blue iMac. Fighterjet, meanwhile, was “Rio red.”

Hearing about the color of my car, Kristi laughed and said, “Oh, it’s pull-me-over red!” I got exactly one ticket with Fighterjet.

The Sabres had only been to the Stanley Cup Finals once in their history when I started driving Fighterjet. Now, they’ve been there twice. And had a few conference finals appearances, too. (Did Aaron and I drive Fighterjet to that playoff game with Philly? The one that created the wall of sound in the atrium of HSBC Arena? Correction: Aaron says it was this game against Ottawa.)

I drove to a lot of Ultimate games in Fighterjet. Cleaning it out, I had a regulation Frisbee in the trunk. Along with a wiffle bat and some wiffle balls — you never know when an impromptu game would break out.

I spent one long day in Fighterjet, stuck on the New York State Thruway (I-90) for about 15 hours, one winter. There was a big snowstorm. Some of you lived through it with me, and others have probably heard me talk about it, so I don’t think I need to say more. At least that time, I was prepared.

That incident taught me that if you can’t tell your car from other snow-covered cars in the vicinity, you should probably stay home.

Fighterjet drove through a lot of snow, and barely broke a sweat over it. There were a few close calls, though. Once, I hydroplaned through the turn from 96 onto 332 — no wheels gripped, they only slipped. There was one Christmas morning, driving to Cuba, where we spun 180 degrees together; thank goodness the next car was so far behind us. Another morning, going to work and sliding slowly, sideways, into and kissing a (thankfully) snow-packed guardrail.

I didn’t have a cell phone when I bought Fighterjet.

Baxter was in Fighterjet when I hit my second deer with the car, and, as a dog, he was pretty freaked out by the sudden ordeal. I really thought that was the end of the line, but the insurance didn’t total the car. I haven’t taken Baxter with me to get take out since, as I recall.

The car got its name from the view I got sitting in the driver’s seat, looking back through my regular and oddball lane-changer mirrors. It reminded me of the rearview cameras you see in fighter jet films on TV, looking back on the tail of the plane. Dumb, yes, but I couldn’t think of a better name.

I can’t remember how many sets of tires I put on the thing. The first one involved a lot of anxiety while reading reviews on the Tire Rack Web site. The Dunlop Sport SP2s, later, were utter flops.

Fighterjet helped me move between apartments and houses. Thrice. And, I think it helped move Lloyd’s family once, and maybe others. I forget.

I drove it to Pittsburgh and the Adirondacks and other places, but I also think of destinations I never went.

After giving up this car, I wonder how many cars I have left in me. How many more will I own? My sense of mortality is briefly heightened.

I miss Fighterjet, but it was time to move on. I feel like I’ve abandoned a friend — but that’s silly. Hopefully that feeling will fade, because, after all … it was just a car.

I had an interesting problem with a PowerBook G4 connected to a Verizon DSL connection. The Verizon DSL line had a Westell 327W (specifically the A90-327W15-06 model) gateway, which appears to be a combination DSL router, switch, and wireless access point. The PowerBook, which was running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.0 and then 10.5.1, would not connect. The network was an open one, so neither WEP nor WPA were involved.

Meanwhile, a MacBook Pro sitting next to this computer could connect the first time, every time.

Instead of a successful connection on the PowerBook, I got “connection timeout” errors and the following in /var/log/system.log (which you can view with the Console utility):

Nov 22 07:42:13 localhost airportd[120]: Error: Apple80211Associate() failed -6
Nov 22 07:42:13 localhost SystemUIServer[138]: Error: airportd MIG failed = -6 ((null)) (port = 65811)
Nov 22 07:43:42 localhost airportd[230]: Error: Apple80211Associate() failed -6
Nov 22 07:43:42 localhost System Preferences[206]: Error: airportd MIG failed = -6 ((null)) (port = 53899)

The PowerBook would not associate with the access point. Using the /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -I command line tool didn’t show an associated network.

I found, after some Google sleuthing on a working computer, that there was a firmware update for the Westell gateway. In my experience, if you have problems with a consumer grade router or gateway, one of the first steps you should always take is checking on the firmware version of the device and updating it if there’s a newer version available.

You have to download the firmware update for this particular Westell model from Verizon. I found that the downloadable Windows installer didn’t work in this situation; multiple attempts to run it resulted in failed upgrades. (Thankfully, the gateway still worked afterwards.)

The downloadable version for Macs (and presumably anyone else not running Windows) — which to me looked more like the more-traditional “download the firmware image file and upload it in the Web interface of the router” — worked fine. I found that one at the end of this thread at MacRumors and there’s also some useful information in this thread at DSLReports. The gateway updated to version 03.02.01 successfully using the downloaded upgrade file.

I need to point out that navigating the Verizon site (or sites) was horrible and didn’t get me results when seeking the firmware upgrade; only Google searches did.

Reading the Macalope’s ACME Pundit Saws post — wherein he skewers David Berlind about his ZDnet post, Is Apple getting dragged (kicking, screaming, or suing?) into licensing OS X? — I haven’t written down my own thoughts regarding the sale of Mac OS X to regular PC owners.

I think this is a situation where Apple could get in front of the market. Even though their sales are booming, Apple has taken a few risks that might have eroded their position. There was a quote where the company’s CEO said that if someone were to make their products obsolete, it should be them. I think this is telling — to get on top, you make risky moves like replacing a successful iPod mini with the iPod nano, or the iPod nano with a wildly different model. Living where I do, I can’t help but contrast this to a company like Kodak that practically begged everyone to take its core business away by not reinventing itself and its products. A cash cow product like film photography can go out to pasture more quickly than you think.

I’m not sure Apple has made this kind of move for the Mac, at least not yet. In fact, ever since the Intel transition, they’ve mostly sat on their Mac lineup. The MacBook was brand new, but derivative, and has seen several updates. The MacBook Pro is very close on the outside to the PowerBook G4, and has also seen several updates. The iMac, Mac Pro, and Mac mini have been quite static.

To get back to licensing, one area where Apple could do the unexpected would be to sell Mac OS X for generic PCs. I think to offset the potential for considerable support costs, it could be a separate edition of the operating system that sells for a higher price — maybe on the order of the current Mac OS X Family Pack or Windows Vista Ultimate at retail. This extra cost might also cover some aspects of software piracy, even to the extent of a system to attempt to lock the OS to a specific PC, similar to Windows activation.

The benefit, I think, of having Mac OS X on more generic hardware is that this might create a larger Mac community. I don’t think it would create a majority, by any means, but it would tap users who wouldn’t have run Mac OS X otherwise. And, it would allow those people who kitbash computers together some leeway in building their own systems.

Give customers one more reason to choose your system, because people who choose computers seem to be choosing Macs in increasing numbers. I don’t see Apple winning the managed IT space where computers are selected for the users, but I do see Macs being chosen by more people for their own purchases.

As long as Apple provides some compatibility information on what is known to work, this could effective get Macs into form factors where Apple isn’t. The mid-range headless desktop is one such place that the company fails to address, and yet I know many people who stress over the lack of hardware in the $900-1500 price range. In my observation, there is overlap between the people who don’t use Mac OS X today, UNIX/Linux users, and people who build their own systems.

New hardware options might also spur developers — and the community of users that surround them — to create drivers for the hardware that currently lacks it and improve existing drivers for everyone. This may be especially true for open source drivers.

One way to limit sales while tapping this homebrew market would be to require even a free ADC subscription (and the concomitant NDA) in order to buy through that non-retail channel. You can already buy upgraded ADC accounts there — and discounted developer hardware, if you have that option on your account — so why not sell Mac OS X for regular PCs there? Give it a trial run and see what happens.

I have long hoped that Apple would someday embrace people who build their own systems — I wrote a position paper about this for a marketing class back in the 90’s and my thoughts haven’t changed much on that score since then. I believe that selling Mac OS X to at least a section of the PC market makes sense. Given Mac OS X’s broadening appeal and its apparent reach into the power user and alpha geek markets, it may even cement Mac OS X as the operating system of choice.

MacNN notes Apple’s CEO in Decade of Mac OS upgrades likely (it’s easier to link to MacNN than the original NYT article), commenting that Mac OS X Leopard will form the basis for the next ten years of operating systems upgrade. I remember Mac OS X being announced — not sure if this was at a WWDC or Macworld keynote — as “the next twenty years” of Apple operating systems. We’re basically ten years out from the NeXT acquisition of Apple acquisition of NeXT.

He says “I’m quite pleased with the pace of new operating systems every 12 to 18 months for the foreseeable future,” wherein we see again that Apple considers the Intel version of Mac OS X to be a major release of Mac OS X. That’s fine, I’m sure it took a lot of effort and it has definitely had an impact. Otherwise, accounting for the 910 days between the debuts of Leopard and Tiger would mean that Apple isn’t sticking to a 12- to 18-month release schedule.

I think, by this logic, it’s entirely reasonable for Microsoft to consider Windows XP SP2, XP 64-bit, XP Tablet Edition, XP Media Center Edition, and all of Windows Vista to be major releases. It’s only fair. Sure, it took them a long time to release an upgrade to the original Windows XP, but it’s not like they’ve sat idle without releasing anything new at all between 2002 and 2007.

Now, after class action lawsuits regarding the iPhone’s tie to AT&T, I totally wish I’d sued PalmOne and Sprint about tying the Treo 650 to the Sprint CDMA network.

I wanted it on Verizon Wireless, but it didn’t arrive until almost a year later, in May 2005! During that time, I must have read everything about hacking the Sprint version to run on VZW. The sheer nerve of these companies, to make me waste my time like that! I’m sure many others would have joined with my righteous crusade!

Now that the Amazon MP3 Store has debuted, I’ve decided to make it quicker to search by adding it to my LaunchBar configuration as a Search Template. Quick and easy, just replacing my search term “blah” from a sample search with an asterisk. Maybe this will give me added reason to try it out, since it will be so quick to call it up for searching.

Also, in the ensuing discussion, I found out (via Daring Fireball) that eMusic does have browsing/searching for non-members. I’d hit the eMusic brick wall mentioned by John Gruber, too, and because I can browse/search as a non-member thanks to that tip, I am glad to see that I can now add it as a Search Template, too.

Now, I’m a Command-Space and another Space away from searching for music at those stores. (Searching in the iTunes Store is already in the default LaunchBar configuration, I discovered while adding these items. Unsurprising, given the general URLiness of iTMS.)

I like Search Templates. Ah.