Langester

Quite the morning today, spent about 5 hours trying to resolve database connectivity issues with our hosting provider. Through a series of seemingly unconnected events our shared web server networking layer got corrupted, not the databases! While working with the support manager he mention another site on our server was attacked this morning and they took the server network offline, but that couldn’t be the issue… with some persuasion he reboot the web server and viola everything is fine.

There are valuable lesson in there somewhere I suppose. 1) shared hosting is cheap for a reason, 2) always look where you least expect something FIRST and 3) Email or Forum only tech support only go so far, for really problems a live person (via phone or IM) is the only way to go.

For anyone interested in how our logo contest is doing: http://99designs.com/contests/6623.

Today Apple brought their Aperture World Tour to town and its be a long time since the last time Apple stop here. David Morrow, Apple Canadian Photo Market Manager, gave did 3 hours presentation that was really 3 hour clinic of how to use Aperture to save those poorly executed photos. In fact I think there was only about 15 slides in the deck and that only took 5 minutes to blow through. My kind of presentation: talk the walk, walk the talk.

One of the things I liked in windows Photoshop was the Album but the speed of large library as not so great, importing was a bit of pain and revisions of photos always required new files to created. I used about 8% of PhotoShop Elements, to do corrections, cropping, healing and exporting. I also found photoshop pretty clunky to use and always felt like I was using a creative tools first rather than a corrective tool which is really what I needed.

Aperture is a corrective tool and the correction abilities are staggering. Since it was built with input with the top pro’s in the world it also have pretty darn good workflow. The import and selection process can be extremely fast with lots of nice goodies, like being able to batch set photo meta data on the way into Aperture. One of the best innovations is you never touch the original photos, but rather make a receipt on how to alter the photo which is only applied with you need to output the photo or view it. This means you always have access to the original without having to create files all over the place, and when you do make a duplicate its just another receipt. Aperture is really worth a look!

Perhaps the best thing is the price point, $199 CDN for a pro level product, fantastic. I’ll be picking up a soon, just as soon as my free trial expires

(as describe by Apple)

Business week posted an interesting article on Apple’s design process as described by Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple at SXSW this year. The most interesting to me was paired design meetings, sort a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one to go crazy in and then one to follow up on the feasibility of the craziness. Not totally new, but what is “new” is these are regular meetings. Meeting outside of the box.

OK, maybe riding season is a couple of weeks away. Yesterday I pulled the Vespa out of the shed and did a mechanism inspection. Today I took it for a spin to get gas and drop off some materials for my wife. I need to seriously consider investing in some good riding gloves and a good turtle neck base layer. Its a bit nippy when your zipping along at 70 km/hr and its only 1 degree Celsius…

This evening I attended the Edmonton Journal Indoor Games help at the University of Alberta Butterdome (part of the Van Vliet Centre). My wife coach’s her elementary school running club and one of the coaches couldn’t make, so I help out (a little). What a great event for these kids (Grade 4-6), it was fun, competitive and very supportive atmosphere. All the coach were great, very supportive and proud regardless of their kids results. The parents where wildly supportive of their children and surprising of others! I remember a moment in one of the first girl’s 200 meter heat. 1st place had already finished 25 meters ahead with 2nd and 3rd coming for a photo finish, the crowd erupted into such a cheer while these two girls battled out the last 20 meters, it was just awesome. It just nice to seen an even where winning is the only thing happening. And I guess that’s what I remembered most 20 years ago when I ran in my final games: the exciting, the thrill and the support. I never finished first in any of my heats, but I still felt like a winner for having tried.

Smashing Magazine has some solid content for the web design audience, which should include all of us!

Here are a few of the more appealing articles:

• 60 Elegant and Visually Appealing Designs
• 50 Beautiful CSS-Based Web-Designs in 2006
• 80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding
• 10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of

So Halo 3 went for sale Monday @ midnight and the fan fair was enourmous. I didn’t attend nor do I see myself purchasing the game but I could avoid the media reports, the hype, and the stories of being “sick” the next day!?!?. This caused me to reflect on the 7th Harry Potter book release, which I did attend and purchase. What an impressive achievent J. K. Rowling! I say this, why? Because in an age when kids skip school to line up to buy the newest Air Jordans, iPods, xBox 360’s, Nintendo Wii’s, PlayStation 3’s, and video games, this IS a enormous achievement to be able to captive that audience with a book! The audience was a mix of adults, teens and kids, but I’d have to say the bulk of the attendees were teens. Perhaps the movies play a part to introducing some readers to the series, but the point is they bought a book and some stayed up all night to read it. I guess all I’m trying to say is its nice to see something that promotes reading in young people.

The current generation of kids life through the web, facebook, blogs, life casts, etc. Their lives are completely exposed, hence the term “The Naked Generation”. This CNet article give a bit more insight.

Article on how to be a more effective with the web “stuff”. webworkerdaily.com