Saturday, August 30, 2008

Jim Henson's Fantastic World


On Wednesday, my sister and I took my niece down to Washington, D.C. to the Jim Henson's Fantastic World exhibit at the Smithsonian's International Gallery. Having grown up watching Jim Henson TV shows such as The Muppet Show and Seseme Street, and enjoying Henson movies such as The Dark Crystal, The Muppet Movie, and Labrinth, the opportunity to see an exhibit of Henson's work excited me.

Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in the exhibit. I was disappointed by this, but respected their wishes and didn't try to sneak any shots with my iPhone (my DSLR would have been less than conspicuous).  That said, I have found a few photos on Flickr that show a few of the displays. You can also listen to the official podcast (very informative) which is meant to be listened to as you walk through the exhibit.

As you enter the exhibit, you are immediately greeted by Kermit the Frog sitting on a log inside a display case. It is really interesting to look at these puppets (err Muppets) up close and being able to walk around the display case 360 degrees to view all sides. The only area that you can't see is the area where the hand is inserted. I never realized this, but the blacks of the eyes are made of a fabric (probably felt). I had always assumed that they were painted on.

Other Muppets on display include Rowlf the Dog, Bert and Ernie, Wilkins and Wontkins, King Goshposh and Featherstone, and Mahna Mahna and The Snowths (I may be missing a couple others). I don't know anyone who doesn't know or has never heard the Mahna Mahna song. It's a classic!



Other displays included props and clothing worn by the puppets in The Dark Crystal. There were also wall displays with original drawings and storyboards, as well as a wealth of information and behind-the-scenes photos. One photo showed Jim controlling a Muppet outside that was as taller than the building. They also had several videos on display.

My sister and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and everything kept the attention of my 16 month old niece.

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October 5, 2008 is the final day of the exhibit at the Smithsonian. I highly recommend checking it out if you are in the D.C. area! I may even go back a second time before it's gone. The exhibit will be traveling to several other cities around the U.S., so check out the tour schedule to see if it is coming to a city near you.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Lightroom HDR simulation and desaturation templates

In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned a quick and easy way to simulate HDR from a single image in Lightroom. That post was a popular one, and I have had a few requests for the preset, so I have decided to post it here.

I am also including a simple desaturation preset to give you one-click desaturation of an image to give you a base for a black and white photo. This is one of my most used presets. I don't know why Adobe doesn't include this as a standard preset.

HDR simulation preset
Desaturation preset

Matt Kloskowski has an excellent video on installing presets over on his Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips site.

Comcast instituting a 250 GB bandwidth cap

Just a few days ago, I posted about some online data backup services. These services allow you to back up unlimited amounts of data for a single computer. I also mentioned how my ISP, Comcast, was in the news recently for throttling traffic.

Well, yesterday Comcast announced that starting October 1, they are implementing a bandwidth cap of 250 GB/month for residential customers.

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis. Currently, the median monthly data usage by our residential customers is approximately 2 - 3 GB. To put 250 GB of monthly usage in perspective, a customer would have to do any one of the following:
  • Send 50 million emails (at 0.05 KB/email)
  • Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song)
  • Download 125 standard-definition movies (at 2 GB/movie)
  • Upload 25,000 hi-resolution digital photos (at 10 MB/photo)

Not only are they implementing a 250 GB/month bandwidth cap, but they don't provide you with the tools to monitor your own usage!

Obviously, that can greatly interfere with online backup services such as Mozy and Carbonite if you have a lot of data to back up.

But it also hinders digital distribution growth for things such as: music, movies, TV shows, video games, and software. Digital distribution helps the environment because it eliminates the need for the plastic and cardboard boxes that the retail products are sold in. Digital distribution also does not rely on fossel fuel for shipment/delivery of these items.

So by instituting a bandwidth cap, Comcast is basically saying that they aren't concerned about the environment or growth of digital distribution.

Now, I want to be very clear on one thing... I do not download illegal files (copyrighted music, movies, software, etc.). As far as I'm concerned, that is stealing because you are taking something without permission or payment. But I do prefer to obtain as much as possible digitally rather than purchasing the physical product in a store. In this digital era that we are entering, 250 GB can be used up in the blink of an eye.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

My Fantasy Football Team

We had our draft for my Fantasy Football league last night. I've got to say, while functional... I was not impressed with the official NFL Fantasy Football draft website. It was very bland looking (there were two colors... black... and you guessed it... white) and the chat application had some lag and really tiny text. I think next year I will try one of the other fantasy football sites, like EA, ESPN, or Yahoo. I want something

Now, I present to you... the Crazed Meerkats:

Brett Farve (QB) - Jets
Clinton Portis (RB) - Redskins
Kevin Smith (RB) - Lions
Santana Moss (WR) - Redskins
Chris Chambers (WR) - Chargers
Lee Evans (WR) - Bills
Chris Cooley (TE) - Redskins
Josh Brown (K) - Rams
Patriots (DEFENSE)

RESERVE
Philip Rivers (QB) - Chargers
DeAngelo Williams (RB) - Panthers
Vincent Jackson (WR) - Chargers
Owen Daniels (TE) - Texans
Chiefs (DEFENSE)

Even with the disappointing site, I had a lot of fun picking my players. I'm looking forward to the coming weeks to see how my team does.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Backing Up Your Data Online

Do you back up the data on your computer, such as your photos, music, and documents? If so, you deserve a gold star!
But here's the more relevant question... do you have an offisite backup of your data? If your home burned down, or your computer was stolen, or even if the hard drive in your computer went bad, would you lose years of precious unrecoverable memories and hard work?

So many people simply do not back up their data. Many of the backup software options out there are simply too complex for the average user, and they involve purchasing yet another expensive box to sit on the already crowded computer desk.

I back up my Mac Pro to an external hard drive using Time Machine. Macs are known for their simplicity, and Time Machine is no exception. You just attach a hard drive and click the Enable button for Time Machine and it does the rest for you. This is a great local storage option for any Mac user. But Time Machine doesn't store data offsite/online, and there isn't a PC version.

I was looking for an online backup solution to back up the data on my computer, as well as my sister's and parents computers. While I am proud of my parents for learning to use a computer for email and Internet, setting up and maintaining backups is not something they would be comfortable with.

There are two online backup solutions that stand out as the leaders which I would trust with my data... Carbonite and Mozy. Each will run you about $50 per year, which is much cheaper and less frustrating than purchasing an external hard drive and backup software.

I chose to subscribe my parent's computer to Carbonite. And as with most technologies, I went with the wrong one first (yes, I picked HD-DVD before Blu-ray finally won the HD format war). No, I'm not saying that that the service is bad. It was simple to set up and my parents aren't even aware that it's there. One thing that sets Carbonite apart from Mozy is that Carbonite adds a little green, yellow, or red dot on each of your file icons. This is a good visual indication of which files are included in the backup and the color indicates if the file has been successfully backed up or not. But I also find those dots to be a bit distracting. I wish there was another method of viewing the files included in the backup and their status. If you are a Mac user, you're out of luck. They claim to be working on a Mac client and allow you to email if you want to be included in the beta. I sent in my email about three months ago and haven't heard from them since.

After waiting not hearing a peep about the Mac client beta, I decided to give Mozy a try since they DO have a Mac client. It installed on my Mac Pro and told it what files I want backed up (I just selected my entire home folder, but you can choose individual files and folders if you choose) and it started backing up immediately.

Security: Both Carbonite and Mozy provide a security encryption key, but Mozy also provides the option to create your own key at no additional cost. It makes me feel good knowing that if my data were ever stolen from Mozy's datacenter, or if Mozy had to provide data to another party access to their servers as a part of a legal issue, that my data is encrypted with a unique encryption key that only I have access to decrypt. Choosing your own encryption key is simple. You just type some characters that you won't forget, and it uses that simple word or phrase to generate a key. Make sure that you don't forget that word or phrase though, because unlike using the Mozy provided key, they can't decrypt the files if you happen to forget your key information.

Speed: Now one thing that you will find with either service is that it can be a slow process. If you have less than 10-20 GB to back up, it can take anywhere from a few days to a 1-2 weeks. But my photos alone are 85 GB (I shoot in RAW), and my music is another 83 GB. Add in my documents and other information i wanted backed up and it came out to about 210 GB. Carbonite can handle this, but it takes an eternity to complete at approximately 350 Kbits/sec. It's currently been about 3 weeks, and I'm only up to 36 GB backed up. I think that part of the problem is that I have Comcast, who is known to throttle the speeds for high usage customers. FIOS is about to become available in my neighborhood, so that should help.

Website: The Mozy website is hands-down easier to use than the Carbonite website. The Carbonite website doesn't show you how much data you have backed up, so you can't monitor your usage or identify if the backup has stalled on one of the computers on your account. Mozy lets you see how much data has been backed up for each computer on your account. I also found that it was impossible to open a Carbonite account from a Mac computer. It kept telling me that my computer was unsupported (since it was a Mac), but all I wanted to do was open the account and pay for the subscription for my parents account, so that it would save some time when I went to install it on their computer. However, once the account is created and paid for, you can log into the account on the website from a Mac.

I installed Mozy on my sister's computer too. She doesn't like to have to worry about things like backing up her data or keeping her virus scanner up to date. I set these things up to be as unobtrusive as possible. I was also able to password protect Mozy's settings so that she doesn't accidently get in there and change the settings. I disable all of the notifications to make it less obtrusive. If I hadn't told her that I installed backup software on her computer, she would never know its there. Once my parents Carbonite subscription runs out, I'll switch them over to Mozy too.

Bottom line... I recommend Mozy over Carbonite for two reasons. Mozy has a Mac client, and they allow you to use your own encryption key. However, if neither of those concern you then you can't go wrong with either one. At $50 per year (Mozy also offers a $4.95/mo payment option) there really is no excuse not to back up your data!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Joined A Fantasy Football League

I was invited to play in a Fantasy Football league with some friends at work. I've never played Fantasy Football, so I decided to give it a shot. Sounds like it will be fun! The draft is this coming Wednesday. I'll post updates on my progress. I'm such a newb!

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Switched From Wordpress To Blogger

Google sure doesn't seem to want to make it easy for Wordpress users to switch to Blogger.

I just went through the tedious process of copying and pasting all of the posts from my self-hosted Wordpress blog over to this Blogger blog. As expected, several posts will need to be fixed where a Wordpress plugin was used, but I've got the frustrating part done now by manually copying all of my posts over.

Google really needs to make it a high priority to create an import tool that imports blog exports from Wordpress, TypePad, and other competitors if they want people to switch. I have read comments from several others wanting to switch from Wordpress to Blogger, but Blogger's lack of a tool to import Wordpress exports is preventing them from doing so. I should be able to export my blog from any blog service and import it into any other blog service. It should be portable and easy to switch. Instead, it is anything but.

I will probably point my personal URL to this blog in a week or so and then get rid of Wordpress and cancel my hosted service.