NEW YORK PHOTO BLOG

It’s been about two months since I did any regular shooting.  The Christmas rush is over.  I’ve managed to re-arrange my drives so that there’s a backup drive.  And I’m starting to carry the 40D around with me again. (As far as the picture above, it gives me certain associations… any for you?)

I had two dead external drives (different brands) so I’m going to go for a halfway measure and pick up two LaCie 1TB d2 drives and if I can find it, the holder they make so they’re stackable.  This should keep me hold me over until I decide on the new system (and these drives as well as my other drives) will work with the Mac, whichever one it is.  What I really need is for FiOS to come to my neighborhood.  But okay - whatever.

* * *

I came up with a cheap but interesting Christmas gift idea.  I bought about $175 worth of chocolate.  The best stuff I could find.  I wrapped it all up, and then put it out in front of all the people at the Christmas get together.  The game was to choose the most expensive chocolate without taking the gift wrap off.  Whoever chose the most expensive chocolate would win a grand prize (which turned out to be my Canon 620 P/S).

Whoever picked the cheapest chocolate would get the most expensive chocolate from the winner.  Great fun was had by all (we are at this point mostly adults).  Unfortunately, my middle sister J. won the camera and it turned out that her husband had also bought her a camera.  So she ended up giving the 620 to my neice.  Perfect camera for her.  And all was right with the world.

The most expensive bar of chocolate turned out to be some handmade chocolate in a strange wrapper (American) with violet colored rice embedded.  We all passed it around, it had that taste of bittersweet chocolate with that Violet tasting rice.  Very strange.

I had to do a lot of scary things today - making the move from the shared server to the VPS server with name address and domain thingies - and frankly, I won’t really know whether it was done properly until the name and IP etc. propogate.

At that point, it’s possible that users will just get a screen saying that CPANEL is installed.

Or it will be a smooth transition and I’ll be able to reboot my virtual server etc.

I’m just posting this so that if you wake up wanting to see what’s going on in beckerman world and you see a green screen with instructions - uh - you know I screwed up something.

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I also noticed this morning that the domain DAVIDBECKERMAN.COM had been freed up (it wasn’t when I started all this nine plus years ago) which is how I ended up with DAVEBECKERMAN.COM.

Anyway - what the hell - I bought it.  So now if you type DavidBeckerman.com it will also take you to this site (at least if it’s propagated to the DNS you’re using).

I don’t know if there’s any point to collecting these names; maybe there is.

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Every year, the Christmas House (as it is known in the Bronx) on Pelham Parkway gets more elaborate. These shots are from a few years ago in preparation for a very strange Christmas. Michael Jackson and the Rockettes perch on the roof. There are marines and cherubs everywhere. Such an odd mixture of old-time religion and pop culture that as you drive by - you’ve pretty much got to pull over and have a look.

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Some dreamy Mac Pro Configurations:

• Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
• 4GB (4×1GB)
• None
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
• One 16x SuperDrive
• None
• None
• Apple Mighty Mouse
• Apple Keyboard + User’s Guide

$5000

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With RAID card:

• Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
• 4GB (4×1GB)
• None
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
• One 16x SuperDrive
• None
• None
• Apple Mighty Mouse
• Apple Keyboard + User’s Guide

$5750

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(The maybe machine)

Mac Pro Without Screen, only one hard drive but

• Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
• 4GB (4×1GB)
• None
• 1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• None
• None
• None
• ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
• One 16x SuperDrive
• None
• None
• Apple Mighty Mouse

$3600 (of course it has three empty HD bays and tons of USB AND FIREWIRE outputs)

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The affordable machine:

MacBook Pro 15 inch screen

• 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2×2GB
• 320GB Serial ATA @ 5400
• SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• None
• Backlit Keyboard (English) / User’s Guide

$2500

String together my hard drives  with the MacBook Pro - or maybe end up with drive array (though that puts me back into the price range of the Mac Pro)  and I’m in business.  Memory goes up to 4GB.  Right now I’ve been running 2GB on the PC.

* * *
BTW. My WD MYBOOK is dead (that happened to be my backup drive). I didn’t lose anything since now I’ve copied over essential stuff to another drive… still. In the last two years I’ve had 1 ONE-TOUCH DRIVE FAIL and now 1 WD MYBOOK drive fail. When I say fail, I mean that windows sees them - but tells me that there’s something bad about them. I tried to repartition, and re-format - but nothing doing.

You know - in all the years I’ve been messing with computers, I can’t remember an internal drive ever failing. I suppose it must’ve happened, but if it did, maybe once in 20 years. These external things have a high failure rate.

I also have everything backed up on DVDs; the best ones I could find. Though I know they have reliability issues. Though if one of them goes, it’s not like the whole freakin’ big drive going… And if something is really important, I’ll make two DVD copies.

While all this is going on, I’m slowly being set up on a Virtual Private Server. I have control now to start and shut off the CONTAINER as it’s called; as well as run repair programs; and of course restart and a lot of other neat things. The site hasn’t been ported yet to the new server, but it should be soon. If I could get FIOS then I would have a real backup. At this point, I’m still moving files around from one drive to another like a guy bailing water out of a sinking life raft.

More digital infrared from warmer times.

* * *

That adjustment brush in LR is a real pisser in 2.2; at least on my machine.  I’ve seen that a lot of people - often with the same configuration as me - are having issues.  It just runs out of memory.  Even if I put the photo into its very own catalog, within about five minutes of adjustment brush - it crashes - though if you are quick enough to switch from the develop view to the library view you can escape in one piece.

* * *

Other stuff.  I’ve read and seen a bunch of articles (and Canon has said there will be a firmware fix) about the dreaded black dots with the 5D II under certain circumstances.  Circumstances seem to be when highlight priority mode is on, a night shot with specular highlights; and a bit of those specular highlights will have black dots on the right side.

Since I can’t even find the camera for sale, it doesn’t matter much; plus I’m still not really doing much shooting since there is a continuation of the holiday rush even though the holiday - at least in my world - is over.

I am impatient to get my infrared thing going again - and I might just go a bit off the deep end and send in my 40D to be modded before I have a “normal” camera to work with.  I probably won’t do it - but I might.

And anyway - who shoots with infrared in the winter anyway…

Today I finally had enough down time to start paying bills and taking care of other web related business.  I put in the order to have the site moved from my shared server at midphase.com to a VPS server - i.e. better burst rate and more control over the virtual server.  That’s no big deal, I was paying $50 / month before with web.com (ISP) for shared server; and this should be much more responsive.  I also switched my domain name from Network Solutions to Midphase so that everything is being taken care of in one place.  I like them that much.  Really great support, and there’s still a personal touch which is long missing with web.com

So if nothing else - if you’re looking for a place to host a wordpress blog - I do recommend midphase.com

I know I haven’t written much in the blog lately - but I’m just doing all this tech stuff that I don’t know if anyone is interested in - though it’s a big part of the business now.

And yes, I’m beginning to research macs which is another good project.  Lots of stuff on Butzi’s site about his switch to the Mac.  All very encouraging.

*** More Other Stuff ***

Oh - and one other thing.  After doing so many prints with on the Epson F Gloss paper, I decided that I’d switch completely to it, even for the larger prints.

• Fiber Photo Paper Base
• Acid & Lignin Free
• 325gsm / 13ml

Which is to say, that I stopped offering prints that won’t fit on their largest sized paper (24 x 30) sheet.  I couldn’t get used to the Crane/Museo after getting used to the Epson paper.  The Epson paper is just sharper; and has better blacks.  It may be too bright for some tastes - but I’ve come to really love it.  I’ve read that it probably has optical brightners  (the review at Luminous Landscape) - although I don’t see anything in Epson’s specs about it.

But it probably does otherwise it couldn’t be that bright - could it?  And so then there’s the whole thing about the Optical Brightners fading.  I guess that’s just the way it’s gotta be right now.  And not to mention the cost.  The 24 x 30 (25 sheets) street price: $300 / box.  That’s  g $12 a sheet.

They do have a rebate out - until the end of Dec. where you can order four boxes of the stuff at various sizes and get two free (of the smallest size in the order) and I’ve done that.  (You can find the rebate coupon at shadesofpaper.com and I guess at other places.

Had some snow this morning.  Perfect thing to get me out of the house.  There are two things that will always get me to take the camera out: snow & rain.  Not just any snow, but one with good blowing flakes; the larger the better.  Camera: the wet 40D with the wet 30mm lens.  Not a super-keeper but it feels good to get out again after a long hiatus.

(Though I just got an order for three large prints for xmas, and an order for seven 5 x 7’s. )  I keep thinking I should remove those 5 x 7’s but when I do - the other sales seem to suffer.  I don’t get that at all.  One day I’d like to have someone with an MBA go over my site and explain a few things to me.  I don’t think I ever got anywhere near a business course.  Whatever I’ve done has been pure trial and lots of error.

Oh, and I got another kid “tasting snow.”  I guess that’s not as unusual as I once thought it was.  That makes three tasting snow shots.