iLife09

I've been able to put my hands on iLife09 less than a day after its formal release. During the month of January we've seen most it could do in those detailed video tutorials in Apple's site but it's an all different ball-game to get to test the soft on your own gear. I must admit, I take extra pleasure in using iLife in general as it works superbly together with my AppleTV for clips, slideshows and more, in HD Ready quality, which is all I care about, really...

What's my verdict you may ask... I tried iPhoto and iMovie first. I'll deal with iPhoto some other time, since I'm not a big fan, as I use Aperture and Lightroom for my photographs most of the time. 'Places' and 'Faces' is fun but it's more the kind of thing for my bride... I'm much too advanced prosumer to seriously fall for it. I tried geotagging for kicks and it seems to work fine. Books are fun too but far more expensive than the equivalent from Blurb. Facebook works... except, I'm not too regular facebooker... So, whatever...

I liked a lot iMovie though... Watch this clip above and try to see through a number of its functions. Of course, the clip's original quality is severely damaged by the Adobe Flash format conversion on Youtube, but anyways... it still shows you the good parts. I shot the footage with a HDD AVCHD Sony camera, relatively new. Upon connection with the Mac via USB iMovie recognized the footage in a heartbeat and allowed me to select the scenes I wanted.

I tried movie filters, slow-mo and image stabilization. I was amazed by how stable, relatively speaking, the resulting scenes were rendered after a slow-mo filter and image stabilization were applied. Not to mention the speed by which these conversions took place. People are really going to enjoy these functions. Watch the scenes as I was moving the camera around... you might have the impression I was carrying a Steadicam! The slow-mo was also extremely smooth. For kicks, try to figure out which scenes I put on slowmo. Hard to find out if you don't know. As for the titles and transitions, cool and smooth too. More than you'll ever need.

I know most serious amateurs 'hate' iMovie. I don't. I loved it from day one. I can do a quality video in terms of resolution, transitions, titles, etc, in fractions of the time I'd need with FCP, AE or Premiere, not to forget Sony's Vegas on Windows. No way I'd ever go back to those. Most reasonable amateurs prefer to pay a lot of attention during shooting and follow some best practices so that their footage won't need too much fiddling around. Then, with a package like iMovie you can do miracles within minutes that you can then show off to your neighbors to make them die of envy...

The final fun part in my case is the interoperability between the Mac and my AppleTV. Once the clip is ready on my MacBook, wifi takes over and the clip is played with impeccable (HD) quality on the Bravia flat screen via the AppleTV box. Wunderbar. No need for copying over, or burning DVDs for that matter. Environmentally friendly as well, so to say...

GOP Partisanship

Republicans must really be very 'bad losers'. They can't handle loss even if their opponent happened to be someone unusually superior and practically unbeatable, like Barack Obama. They nowadays appear to 'pretend' supporting him in his bipartisan policy while he tries like a modern day 'Bluetooth' Viking King Harald to unify his tribes over the entire country. One one hand they grilled Treasury Secretary nominee Geitnner for days because of a 50K debt he 'forgot' to pay to the taxes but on the other hand, with grandpa American hero McCain risen from the dead and waiving the flags, they are looking to create more jobs by lowering taxes and extending Bush&Co special tax cuts to the super rich. How do you reconcile this? They critisized heavily Obama's extra spending on helping local States in Police Force and Schools related spending and prefer tax cuts as a tool to just benefit the upper middle class and the mega rich instead (5% max of US population). What world do these people come from, honestly! Which schools did they attend? What were they told when they were children? Do they still believe regular folks live in a Doris Day and Rock Hudson ecosystem? Do they care about anything else than themselves? At all? Really!

At the end of the day, I believe Republicans viciously pay lip service to 'helping Obama succeed' whereas the only honest among them, Russ Limbaugh, at least publicly admits he wants Obama to fail. What a bunch of useless freaktards... They won't go away from their libertarian ideas that markets will eventually regulate themselves (in the meantime we're all dead) without intervention from a central authority while all we saw their Bush@Co policy of laisser-faire did the last eight years was to create more greedy Wall Street sharks who'd sell their own children just to make another billion, and bring everyone else down the drain.

I am not an economics expert but I'm only trying to use some logic and grasp a bit of the situation. Democrats want more spending in government led infrastructure projects in many areas of the American landscape and of course much lesser tax cuts. Also, tax cuts, if any, should benefit the mass, not the few who already have plenty of money to feed a few generations of siblings of their own. Makes sense. By spending money domestically, most of it is going to construction and engineering companies that are bound to create new jobs domestically too, without the shadow of a doubt. Who's gonna do the construction? Imported Chineze workers? Forgetaboutit! Illegal Mexicans? OK, maybe some. And by the way, those illegal immigrants live in the US, that means they buy products locally, they go to the movies locally and they spend most of their money locally (some they send back home, fine!). The more jobs are created domestically the more money is earned to be spent and the more taxes go back to the government for future spending and/or repaying the debt. In the meantime infrastructure works (roads, bridges, schools, energy, ...) improve conditions for future prosperity and growth of the local economy. The more jobs are created, the more demand for products and services grows, as more and more people earn more to spend on food, clothes, houses, leisure, cars, health and new taxes. Some of these newsold products may still come from China, certainly, but in the meantime the local economy has had a boost and a jumpstart. And probably, as the American economy gets stimulated and innovation flourishes, leading to better quality and productivity, it is quite likely that domestically manufactured products get eventually more competitive than those 'made in China' labels.

Now, what happens if you don't do much of that government spending but give cash back to the masses thru tax cuts instead? You'll then hope that this will create more demand because you'd believe people will get out immediately to go spend it on US products and stimulate demand! F@ckin' daydreaming. In the current climate, every penny anyone from middleclass gets in his/her wallet, he/she puts aside or spends it on cheap products from Asia, as most Americans already lost confidence in their system. And, BTW, if you got millions of folks on unemployment benefit, it won't do any good to cut back taxes since the unemployed and homeless have got no job or related income to pay taxes on anyway. Republicans do believe that if more money comes to the pocket of Joe the plumber he'll rush out to buy 'American' which will then create more jobs for his fellow neigbors. What a naief bunch of idiots.

'I won' said Obama to them as a joke, the other day. He better stop then that silly bipartisan approach and go ahead with his spending plans with or without them, freaks. Because the rich always had two main goals in their miserable lives. Power, and money. But just for them... them alone... and bleedin' no-one else.

Baba O'Riley and House MD.

Not only the acting, scripts and cinematography (loads of 3D modeling to animate medical incidents) of this TV series are unquestionably the best Sunday evening entertainment money can buy but also the series makers' taste of music is exceptional too. Scores of The Who and Massive Attack! Wow! Sounds like a rock music wet dream!

A stunning Hugh Laurie (my Goad, remember him as a comedian in Black Ader?) acting in US English accent as Dr. House, probably in his best role ever, with such a convincing performance that makes Medicine students worldwide consider him the greatest champ and a role model, a sort of Barack Obama for Hospitals... Enjoy the YouTube clip; it's good fun and has been already watched by more than 1.1 million people by the time I found out. I was actually looking for the title of The Who's song and accidentally fell upon the House pot-pouri on YouTube. BTW, I have just watched the episode shown in the clip's opening scene where House is playing the B.O'R keyboards on a imaginary piano, while the fatso Chairman of the clinic's BoD enters his office... to cut his pleasure short!

The story of Ron Wayne...

As I was surfing the web I came across this article which basically repeats old news but still makes it worth to pause for a second and think about it.

In a few words the story is about Ron Wayne, the third founder of Apple Computer from Atari who joined the 'partnership' in the spring of 1976 by getting 10% of Apple (in today's depressed rates still more than 7 billion dollars worth, and more than 12 Billion under 'normal' market rates); but then he decided to leave the company to the two Steve's (Jobs and Woz) because of fear that he'd lose all his money in the partnership... he returned his 10% and received 800 bucks, a part of the profit Apple had turned around by then.

Reminds me of Forrest Gump who received a few shares of a 'fruit' company by his partner with the money they made in fishing and selling Baba shrimps! That company was Apple... mind you!

I've been searching on the net to find out more about this genius Ron... only historians, quiz masters and some romantic technology reporters talk about him nowadays. Anyways, he appears to have written Apple's first manual and he invented that Apple's first and quite funny logo with an apple falling on Newton's head that made him 'think different'. I wonder whether that was the reason they called the company Apple... not thinking of the troubles they'd get with The Beatles shortly there after...

Oh, the good ol' times!

Eyemade

I came across this technology almost two years ago when I was asked to assist in the development of a proposal for EU R&D funding about personalized spectacles. Long story short, we eventually won an RTD funded project that will produce some stunning results in the next four years. One of the key technologies that we shall use is presented in the clip above. It's been called eyemade by its inventor, Catalan company Indo. As it is explained in the infomercial, lens geometries for progressive lenses, destined to aid complex eye deficiencies (quite common in older age demographics), are typically based on some half a dozen standard lens designs. What Indo together with IBV, a Research Institute in Valencia, discovered five/six years ago is that, via the combined head and eye movements, each one of us has a unique way of looking at objects, literally! That's what they called a person's 'visual strategy'. Visual strategies, depicted by what Indo baptized 'visual maps' are found to be as unique to each one of us as our fingerprints. In the clip it is shown how a typical map looks like. Based on that information, Indo R&D engineers managed to create progressive lens design methodologies that create 'personalized' lenses (eyemade: made for your eyes, that is) mapped one to one with a person's unique visual strategy. The result of this invention not only yields broader and sharper visual fields but also shortens immensely the period a person needs to adapt to a new pair of personalized progressive lenses. Indeed, end users of conventional progressive designs have a tough time during a considerably long initial period to have their eyes adapt to their new lenses. Dizyness and vomitting are common phenomena during this time. This all seems to go away in a heartbeat with the 'eyemade' personalized lenses. Cool, innit?

I am not that 'blind' to need such lenses yet but I had the testimony of a great friend of mine whom I'd trust with my life. The poor sod has got combined myopia -6.5 with presbyopia +5 and some serious degree of astigmatism for a very long time. For many years he's been using all sorts of designs and spectacles with average to low level of satisfaction. Then he tried the eyemade line. He told me that the first time this happened it felt like 'I saw the light' all over again. So, folks, this thing seems to work as specified.

There's a problem though... there's always a problem. If you decided to go to your local opticians and talk about this technology next time you'll need progressive lenses you are likely to find them totally unaware of the technology. Indo has done very little investment to launch this outside of Spain. Here and there you can find some opticians who seem to have heard about it. I am talking about Belgium, that is. Thankfully, I was lately told that this was about to change. There's been a recent management overhaul that put some new general management and marketing mavericks at the steering wheel of the company. These new kids seem to be quite seasoned marketeers. I've already seen a major improvement on their homepage, which is by all means worth a visit if you are interested in the subject matter. I always argued, if 'eyemade' was invented in some big shot place, like Stanford or MIT, the entire planet would have known. I don't get it why we have always been so modest and low key marketeers in Europe!