Author: shun

A Self Reminder of Why I Don’t Like Microsoft’s Software

I came across this article and realized another reason why I despise Microsoft and most of its software products — Ads, and lots of them.

The most obvious comparison is Microsoft’s MSN Live Messenger and Apple’s new iChat 4.0. The differences in the interface design is stunning. Notice how Microsoft tries to show off all those features that it has on the UI of MSN Live Messenger! Are they supposed to compensate for something else that’s lacking? And notice the ad at the bottom of the contact list — how annoying! I guess they just can’t stand giving something out free for nothing… When I installed it to play with, I had to download a third party app (MSN Live! Plus) to “clean up” the UI to get rid of 90% of the UI clutter.

MSN_Live_chat

Now compare that to iChat since 1.0…. Ah~~ clean and soothing… Elegant.
ichat4_chat

There’s something about the way Microsoft’s applications operate and how things are integrated that seem so… repulsive. It’s like they are begging not to be used. I don’t mind ads as long as they are not in my face like most of Google’s.

Another thing about MSN Live Messenger is the lack of tab support. I mean, Apple itself is late to the “tab” party, but through a plugin, its previous version was able to have tabs for multiple chat sessions. And the latest iChat also has a great way to support tabs. Looking at MSN Live Messenger though… If you are unfortunate (or fortunate?) enough to get hit up with more than a few simultaneous chat sessions, you can say goodbye to your spacious desktop real estate…

Shooting Star Sighting

I saw the first shooting star today on my way to pick up some In-n-Out takeout since we moved to California. The last shooting star I saw was probably back in undergrad while hanging out with some friends on Tybee Island (Charles, Michelle and Darren). Ah~ the college days. It was surprisingly easy to see shooting stars on Tybee; maybe it was the geography.

Another Inspirational Speech

A friend from college sent me a link to Professor Randy Pousch’s “Last Lecture” about play, work and life. Considering he’s literally dying of cancer (he was given 3 – 6 months to live in August, 2007), he seemed incredibly cheerful and upbeat about everything. It’s a great and very gravitating speech that just sucks you in. Even though I only got to see it online, his “full-of-life-ness” and positive energy are hard to ignore.

If you are short on time, skip all other parts of the video until you hit his speech. This is the 2nd best speech after Steve Jobs’ at Stanford. Love it!

Some similarities:
1. Both men had pancreatic cancer; though Steve Jobs survived his, Randy Pausch’s is terminal;
2. Both men delivered basically exactly the same messages — they both believe in Karma, paybacks, something greater than self; follow your heart in doing what you do;
3. Both men used stories from their lives to make outstanding points about life and everything else that matters;

Some differences:
1. Steve Jobs is a lot more serious and “corporate; Randy Pausch is the exact opposite;
2. Academic v.s. Corporate America;
3. Steve Jobs’ speech was short and sweet; he gets to the point and basically delivered what Randy Pausch did in 15 minutes; but Randy’s speech was just as unforgettable but it takes a lot to go back and dig out the “good stuff” buried in all those jokes and stuff;
4. Steve Jobs’ speech could’ve affected the stock market if he hadn’t made it clear that he was cured from his cancer!

Using Adobe Lightroom

I finally broke down and gave Adobe Lightroom a try. The verdict? It’s better than “Bridge + ACR”, but it’s still got some UI issues it needs to address to compete with Apple’s Aperture. However, it does have a few more controls that I liked to really fine tune each image and tweak it until I like it. And the RAW conversion seems to be much smoother and of better quality than Aperture as did Aperture.

So I guess I am ditching Aperture for now and going for Lightroom as much as I despise its badly copied Aperture UI. Finally, I’ve found my workflow! Hurray!

Sick Kitty

This past weekend was pretty eventful… One of the things that took place was Baobao, one of our cats, and her increasing difficulty in breathing. Grace started noticing it last week. But it was barely noticeable. And the symptoms took place rather irregularly and resembled coughing for hairballs. So we didn’t think much of it. Then came Sunday when she was breathing rapidly at twice the rate of our other cat. So we decided to take her to one of the emergency pet care vets around town.

Of the two possible causes for her rapid breathing, it turned out that the cat has, get this, asthma. I sure hope she’s not allergic to her own dander! (That’d be tragic if that were the case)

So I got some prescription pills and paid the hefty ER bill and was happy everything was much better (and cheaper; but not that cheap) than I thought. They tried to keep her in an expensive H2O chamber for 7 hours for observation (almost $200 just to breathe that pure oxygen; yummy). But Grace was like… “Um, thanks. But no, thanks.”

All in all, I still highly recommend the staff and Doctor David Novotny of Emergency Animal Clinic of San Jose. They are very friendly, communicative and very understanding. For example, when the staff at the front desk saw how Baobao was breathing, she immediately took her to the back of the clinic for treatment even before I filled out and signed any form!

The admission fee was slightly higher than another emergency clinic that we researched. But in comparison, the other clinic got plenty of bad reps for its staff’s indifference to the pets and their rude behaviors towards the owners. Also, I didn’t think the fees were too outrageous given what I’ve read online with some of the other ER vets.

It’s all good.

Bending Reality

Brian and I used to talk about how toddlers would distort reality in their own minds and become obsessed with this one thing that s/he really wants at that very moment. And for that moment, and in that moment only, the notion of reality is just him and the action/item — nothing else matters. And some adults sometimes are quick to dismiss and discourage that altered reality.

I’ve come to find that the theory is also quite profoundly true when applied to adults. The notions of fate, faith and reality get all twisted and intermingled that sometimes it’s impossible to tell which is which even when the adult is at his most capable mental moments. We all bend realities in our minds to suit our circumstances to some extent — let it be fantasies, make-believes, wishful thinking, dreams, illusions or just blind faith. But sooner or later, all these altered realities have to land at some point. And the higher we spring above reality in hope to reach possibly the impossible, the harder we land when the indifferent gravity that is reality yanks us back to earth. We can always dust ourselves off and try again, but sometimes the collateral damages are too great when the landings make too big of splashes.

Now, some people may attempt it again and again until even the collateral damages are internalized and calculated as part of “doing business”. But others may be so timid at going at it again that they are fixated only on the tangibles.

I am sure I had a point when I started writing this. But now it’s all just an idea with which if I ever get locked in in a conversation with Brian, this topic would be discussed and debated for hours on end while dueling on few games of chess.

Why Apple Aperture Kicks Adobe’s Butt

I’ll keep this short and try to be as objective as possible…

I’ve used Aperture for quite sometime and loved it. The problem with Aperture, though, is its inability to interpret certain RAW files produced by my camera properly. It got me to question whether RAW conversion should have been done somewhere else, which led me to looking into Adobe’s solutions — Adobe Bridge + Adobe Camera RAW.

A few problems with Bridge:
1. Unintuitive interface — a lot of assumptions were made on that you understand what each feature does; I literally had to force myself to stop using it and hop on lynda.com to take a quick tour before all the other stuff even made any sense! Adobe, this is NOT how you design great software! Take a chapter from Apple — the way features are laid out and structured should be self-explanatory!
2. It relies on other Adobe software titles to do the heavy lifting; Bridge is really just an asset management and grading system. For RAW conversion, I have to launch ACR; for basic book layout, launch Illustrator or InDesign… etc. Aperture, on the other hand, has a straight forward built-in support for some of those features in ONE place.
3. I can’t grade images while viewing them in full screen mode! What gives!?? How else am I supposed to tell if an image is sharp? Through the stupid tiny, pathetic, inflexible magnifying glass provided by Bridge? That feature is a joke compared to Apple’s solution!
4. Grading has to be done by 2-key combos — a rating of 2 has to be done via

1
command

+

1
2

where as in Aperture, my fingers are a lot happier with just hopping through the numerics. No combo keys!
5. I can’t see the rating in the main preview image or window like I can with Aperture! So if I want to know what rating I gave to an image, I have to peer elsewhere on the convoluted UI! It’s extremely inefficient.
6. If I want to play with the potentials of an image, I am forced to launch ACR, but even then I can’t just make a new version of the image and play with it until I am happy with one version like I would in Aperture (without having to make a copy of the image, that is). I literally have to stop doing one thing just so I can do something else. In Aperture, editing, grading, cropping, keywording… etc can all be done simultaneously without forcing user to “switch mode”, or so to speak.

That said, there’s ONE advantage that Bridge has over Aperture, that is its “labels” feature. Besides grading images, I can label an image with a color for any purpose. But this is such a trivial feature that I wouldn’t switch my work flow just for that.

Now, the reason I am REALLY doing this is for Adobe Camera RAW. It’s a lot more flexible and can really sink its teeth into the wide dynamic range that my RAW files give me. The color adjustments made with ACR are also a little more pleasant and more flexible to control. But besides that, there’s really no way in hell I’d continue using this system once Aperture 2 is released with matching abilities in RAW conversion. And since Aperture has this great feature that allows me to two-way an image version with Photoshop, I really see no reason why I’d use any of those other convoluted and useless products Adobe has launched!!

So my struggle continues as I try to find a good work flow for digital photography. I’m a little frustrated with Adobe in that with its 20+ years of experience in making graphics software, its softwares still can suck so badly compared to a less-than-two-year-old Apple software! Yes, you can call me an Apple fanboy. But that’s just the harsh truth about Adobe.

Now I know I won’t even bother with LightRoom, Adobe’s answer to Aperture AFTER Apple launched Aperture (how embarrassing is that for Adobe having to catch up to Apple!). All the reviews about how LightRoom forces users into using “modularized” approaches is exactly the feeling I am getting with the Bridge + ACR combo. To that, I say “Thanks. But NO, thanks.”