Attention Deficit David

I'm on the (digital) radio, woo ooh.

Here's a link to a radio show I was on recently, talking about Aperture. I'm on the second half.

http://www.insidedigitalphoto.com/radio-programs/idp-radio-apple-aperture-21-aupn

iPhone to the stars

This week I'm in Washington, on the Microsoft campus for the second annual Professional Photography Summit. (Marking air mile 56,000 for the year, for those of you playing the home version of Frequent Flyer Hell.) Microsoft brought a bunch of actors in to talk, part of a group that are lobbying for different rights for celebrities who are photographed. Don't ask. Really.

Anyhow, mind you I'm at the Microsoft Campus at a Microsoft event, and while I'm standing in the hallway putting away my iPhone, actor Joe Montagne's daughter comes up and takes a look at the phone. (She's, I think 16? Perfect market for a device like this, right?) "OH MY GOD" she says, "is that the iPhone?" which precedes the request for a demo, as always. So I'm showing off the iPhone to her mostly, but also to Ernie Hudson, Joe Montagne and Joey Pants. I show off a movie, scrubbing through it, changing the volume. I switch to photos and show her flicking through photos and then pinching to zoom in. Which is the point at which she squeals with surprise. (That demo on the Apple video was actually the same thing that convinced several people I know to get the iPhone.)

One of the Microsoft guys running the show comes over and says, jokingly, "what's with this Apple product at a Microsoft event? "Yeah," says Joe Montagne, "it's like looking at bar mitzvah pictures at Hitler's house."

That's one hell of a good line.

Climbing the Hill

Climbing the hill, originally uploaded by davidjschloss.

I'm in California working on something for the new project I'm rolling out in March (I still can't talk about it officially until all the papers are signed) and I'm having an interestingly great time.

Years ago I launched a dot com, an online publishing company that was centered around a mountain biking website that was launched very early in the dawn of the 'Net. For a long time I spent my warm-weather weeks driving or flying to mountain bike races all over the continent and reporting on them in real-time. The site was called GearHead.com, (later sold to a bunch of asses) and we were one of the first sites to ever to live race reporting, and we pioneered things like getting digital photographs up to servers from dial-up lines in West Virginia.

Yesterday I landed in San Francisco with Wil, my friend/coworker and we set out to the city to prepare to do some race coverage and media support and suddenly I was transported back a decade to the days when I'd travel with the media caravan from town to town, taking over an area for a few days and moving on.

This trip so far has been strangely emotional for me. It's great to be launching a new part of my life with cycling as the backdrop (and indeed I chose this race because it fits both into my new job and into my favorite activity) and I've fallen right back into the fold. There have also been some nice perks.

Yesterday, for example, I had the privilege of having dinner with the famous photographer Graham Watson and Darach McQuaid (brother of UCI president Pat) at a great restaurant where we downed a good bit of wine. This morning I got up to head over to get credentials and hit the course, shooting from the starting block and then catching a ride in one of the team cars up the hill to Coit Tower to walk up the remaining 800 meters to the finish. Some great vantage points, although the misfiring shutter on my camera is really causing me some issues. (I can't shoot above 1/500th of a second).

Not everything is cycling though. On the way back from Coit Tower, I passed by a woman sitting at the Fog City Diner having a meal who was applying makeup from a gigantic compact with the words "Lauren Hutton" on it. It was a truly large compact, the largest I'd ever seen and in fact I'd say it was pushing the boundary of the very term. Then I glanced up to see what sort of woman would be applying makeup from such a large object, and realized it was actually Lauren Hutton.

Yesterday, Wil and I were out walking to dinner when we stumbled upon several dozen of the wild parrots of Telegraph Hill, out for a jaunt, I suppose, away from their famous perch. A few dozen people were hanging out around the trees, many with food for the birds, including apples on long sticks, nuts, and more. The parrots, hung from trees, landed on shoulders, dropped onto people's heads, etc. It was really a surreal and beautiful experience. Dozens of people astounded by the colorful birds that just happened to be in a park in the middle of a city.

It's a terrific trip so far and bodes well for the rest of what I've got planned for the next years of my life. More on that in March.

My Steve Collection Is Complete

Yesterday I was riding my bike in San Fran, when I rode by YAFGOAS (Yet Another Fucking Guy On A Segway) and as I did a double take I thought that dork looks like Steve Wozniak.

I sort of shrugged it off—while I'm here for Macworld, Steve Jobs and Woz aren't exactly the best of buddies.

Today I read a Gizmodo post with a shot of the same hefty dork on the same Segway at Macworld, and lo-and-behold, it's Woz.

You sort of need to be a geek to appreciate this.

A Very Obsessive Thanksgiving To You

I'm not often obsessive, thankfully the gene that turned the houses of my parents into dueling junkyards usually only appears in me as a desire to get things done right fucking now when they're bothering me.

On Thanksgiving though, that approach doesn't usually work, resulting instead in a big pile of food that's ready at the wrong time. So for the last few thanksgivings I've turned to computer assistance to help plan my meals. It's been excel the last few years, but this year it was iCal.

Behold! A day's worth of cooking in order, timeline based! Now you too can play along with our home cooking game, Schlanderson Thanksgiving®

Want To Run Windows On Your Mac? No Problem

Crossposted from my entry at musings.bluepixel.net

From PDNOnline.com

Apple announced Boot Camp, software designed to allow owners of Intel-powered Macintosh computers to run Windows XP on those machines. Apple's software solution will allow users to create a Windows partition on their drive, which the user can boot into at startup time.
The software requires that the Boot Camp Mac be running OS 10.4.6 (released today) and walks installers through the creation of a driver disk, allowing Windows on the Mac to use Bluetooth, Airport, and other Mac-specific hardware.
Boot Camp is free, and is still in beta. It can be downloaded from Apple's Boot Camp page.

This is huge. Not huge for many dyed-in-the-wool Mac users mind you. But it's cool for the Mac platform. See, I've spent decades helping everyone from creatives to IT folks buy Macs, and one of the things that's come up often is the ability to run Windows on the Mac.

Now personally I want my Mac to run Mac OS, and I'll let my Windows box run Windows. But for people in corporate environments, those in some finance and accounting, heck even my Mother-in-law, the ability to run the occasional Windows software IN WINDOWS is huge.

For years Virtual PC ruled the roost, allowing a Windows emulation mode on the Mac, but after Microsoft bought Virtual PC it sort of lost some steam in the development area.

Now, Apple's got a crop of Macs powered by Intel and will have many more by the end of the year. Not only are they speedy as hell, but they're also now able to run two operating systems. That's a heck of a value.

You'll need to go through an installer process that includes creating a driver disk so that the Windows on a Mac solution can do things like run WiFi and such. But it's a pretty straightforward process and shouldn't take long to do.

Of course you'll need a valid install of Windows XP SP2, but you'd need that for any machine running Windows.

Zap Your Apps

There's a sweet little application called AppZapper for the Mac that removes all traces of an application. Thanks to the Unix nature of the Mac, this is sometimes hard to do. This program looks for all the application files hidden in the myriad install directories and removes them.

MacZot a website that hopes to be Woot! for the Macheads out there is doing an interesting thing today, where the price of AppZapper is reduced for every blog that mentions them. So, I'm mentioning them.

If you want AppZapper, it should be free after about 5pm PST.

I wish I'd thought of it myself.

Last night I got out of bed and on my way to the bathroom tripped right the hell over my laptop cable. Now, normally I'd have broken the computer, the force with which I tripped over the cord would have launched it.

Instead, the cable, a MagSafe cable just disconnected. My new Apple MacBook Pro has a power cord that connects magnetically to the chassis, instead of inserting via a plug, and its designed to just come off without damage.

I've given MagSafe a bit of shit for coming off too easily, but since it just saved me more than $2000 in a new computer (or whatever the repair cost would have been) I'm pretty damn thrilled with it.