3 posts tagged “review”

A little over a year ago, I underwent an utterly hellish process to stay loyal to Sprint and get a Motorola Q.  One day, I may document this on the blog, but not today.  I have all the e-mails saved, and the memory of the multitudes of phone calls with incompetent, undertrained, ineffective "customer" "service" "agents" will be forever seared into my memory...  I imagine that if I ever get Alzheimer's and forget my own name I will still remember the pain that this process caused.

You would think that enduring that kind of pain would net something worthy of the process.  Unfortunately, after a long year of continued frustration and just astonished, flabbergasted bewilderment, I now find it necessary to document all the ills of this phone.  I don't know if these problems are Motorola's fault, Sprint's fault, or Microsoft's fault, but frankly, I don't give a damn.  The phone is the technological equivalent of equine excrement, and every day it surprises me in some new way.  90% of the stress in my day comes from traffic, but the remaining 10% comes from my having to use the Motorola Q.

• First off, the hardware...  about the only good thing I can say about this phone is that it is built fairly solidly.  I've dropped it a couple of times and it's held up well.  Plus, the sexy black rubberized-for-your-pleasure finish is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functions to assist in grip.
• There is a set of maladies which I would like to characterize as "poor battery life," but that doesn't even begin to tell the story.  In fact, it's kind of misleading, because on a brand new battery, it was acceptable.  That is to say, on a full charge when the battery and phone were brand new, I could go an entire day with a little surfing, a little talking on the phone, and some SMS messages without having to worry too much.  Unfortunately, within 6 months, the battery life began to drop noticeably.  I am a fucking battery hound, period.  I am so anal about my batteries that I have a spreadsheet to track the charge that goes into each and every NiMH battery that I own (I have a special charger that lets me cycle each battery fully on every charge and track the energy put into every individual cell).  So don't tell me about how to properly take care of batteries.  My last phone, a Samsung Palm device, was still holding charge on its battery at a level indistinguishable from brand new 3 years later.  On the Q now, if I make it through a whole day without getting a low battery warning, I go and buy a lottery ticket because it's my fucking lucky day.
• What's even more frustrating is that the phone will literally turn itself off as if the battery died for no reason whatsoever, randomly.  I can be sitting there with 3 bars (out of 4) on the batt indicator, and five minutes later, I look at my phone, and it's fucking taking a personal day.  When I power it back on, it comes up with a random number of bars.  Sometimes, it's 3 like before it turned itself off, sometimes it gives me a low battery warning with 0 bars.  What a piece of junk.  I'd pick up a spare battery, but I refuse to give Motorola more money for a defective product.
• The "flash" on the camera must be short for "flashlight" because it is not a "flash" in the photographic sense of the word.
  
• Software-wise, it's just unbelievably buggy.  They couldn't even get something as fundamental as dialing right.  When you're on the "home" screen and press a number, it is supposed to put you into dialing mode.  The numbers you press show up at the top, and simultaneously, it brings up possible matches for the letters underneath out of your address book.  This is pretty standard for any mobile phone since, oh, I dunno...  1990?  But no, not on the Q.  Right now, as I type this rant, if I hit any number or letter from the "home" screen, what do I get?  My fucking calendar.
• Also, there is an entire friggin' qwerty keyboard on this phone.  You'd think you'd be able to dial 1-800-MOTO-SUX but no.  You have to translate the letters yourself and then dial the numbers.  How hard would it have been to include some "letter dialing" mode?  I mean, I don't even need it to be automatic.  I'd be fine with having to press alt- or shift- or whatever.  But no.  Nothing.
• Don't even get me started on IE.
• ActiveSync is neither active nor does it sync.  It is a royal pain in the ass to use, and frankly I doubt that 99% of people who don't have professional IT support have ever sync'd their Q's to their Windows machine.  And if you want to sync over Bluetooth, you might as well hit any number or letter on your Q to bring up your calendar so you can cancel your appointments for the next three days because that's how long it'll take you to figure that shit out.

I'll continue to post the misadventures I have with this phone, which I am convinced must be standard issue in Purgatory.  After all, I am locked into this contractually for another year thanks to the orifices which are the telcos.  But as long as I have to put up with this crap I might as well get my word in edgewise on it.

Anticipation

Went up to Vancouver for what is becoming the annual gluttony festival this weekend.  It was a great way to relax after months of training for this Rainier thing and just eat like there's no tomorrow...  because hey, we'll probably burn something like 15,000 Calories next weekend!

The first stop, right after we crossed the border, was at a gas station and adjacent Tim Horton's.  40 Timbits and a bunch of non-US snacks later, we were back on the highway.  Timbits are yummy donut holes that are leagues better than the comparable Munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts.  As for the snacks, I don't even want to get into how bland all the foods are in the US by comparison.  On this trip, we had Caramilk candy bars, ketchup flavored as well as jalapeño and cheddar flavored potato chips...  and all of these were purchased at convenience stores, not some specialty store.  I don't doubt that you can find this sort of thing in the US if you really looked hard, but the fact that they have this variety in just any old store in Canada is another indication of how boring the average American palate is.

Okay enough raggin' on America, onto the glories of Canadian cuisine.  Our first proper meal was at Hapa Izakaya, a Japanese fusion tapas style restaurant on Robson Street, the main shopping drag of downtown Vancouver.  Just a few blocks from the hotel.  On arrival, there was a crowd of people waiting outside and our hearts sank while our stomachs groaned in complaint at the impending wait.  To our surprise, though, the staff managed to get everyone taken care of rather quickly and we were offered a table on the patio, after only a wait of about ten minutes.  My overall impression of Hapa Izakaya is that the food is good and the service was pleasant and timely.  However, I didn't really feel like there was anything special about it.  It is on the expensive side, with each tapas plate being in the range of $8-20.  Our table of six went through about 12-15 plates and all of us agreed that we could go for another round (so we did, but more on that in a bit).  The memorable dishes included an excellent, delicate beef tataki with a just-spicy-enough sauce.  The tuna tataki was probably number two in my book, but after that everything else we got kind of melted together in my memory.  The $72 bottle of sake was also lackluster overall.  Good, but nothing close to a showstopper.  Basically, what Hapa boiled down to was a great place for young hip people to hang out and grab a bite to eat to start the night.  The food is decent, but I didn't get the feeling that the food by itself was worth going out of your way for.  People seemed to be there to be seen being there, if you know what I mean.

So with our stomachs barely satiated, we headed back to the hotel for a round of Scotch and Canadian whiskey obtained earlier at the duty-free store.  Then, it was off to #9 (九龍) in the Lansdowne Mall in Richmond.  This is one of my favorite eateries in the world, because it is great food, cheap, and open 24 hours.  What's great about #9 is that even though the place is always packed, the service is always attentive and fast.  Just about everyone picked up the can't-go-wrong-with Chinese BBQ pork with rice dish, but I opted for my usual Szechuan Beef Noodle Soup.  The total bill was less than the sake at Hapa, by far.  Quite the contrast.

The next day, we headed to Feenie's for the incomparable Feenie Burger.  We'd tried this last year, and it was definitely worth a second trip.  Once again, they did not disappoint.  The only problem with Feenie's is their lack of vegetarian lunch options.  Well, actually, their lack of lunch options, period.  I likely wouldn't have noticed this at all if we didn't have a vegetarian among us, but it's true:  if you don't get the burger, there's not a lot left on the menu that isn't breakfast food.  But if you are a meat eater (and I most definitely am) then the Feenie Burger is worth going out of your way for.  Get it with the poutines.  $17 total.

Dinner on Saturday was the big spending meal.  West is world-famous and has won every culinary award in Vancouver.  Last year, we did the West Tasting Menu and accompanying wine flights.  This year, we found no reason to deviate from perfection.  Selva has posted the West Tasting Menu so that I don't have to repeat it here.  The food was once again excellent, with an emphasis on locally available ingredients.  The main lamb course tasted perfect (though on the small side for my big appetite), the scallops were amazingly good in the mango salsa, and the foie gras was also a highlight.  The only thing that wasn't perfect about the meal was that because of the summer menu (West is "true to the season" as well as "true to the region.") being lighter fare, all but one of the wines paired with each course was a white wine.  They were all great white wines.  But one thing I think I'm definitely discovering about myself as I get older and my tastes get more defined, if not refined, is that I am not a fan of white wine.  Sure, there is a time and place, but if I'm really spending money and focusing on the wine as a major component of an event or meal, I'm going to stay away from whites.  The one red wine that we did have made up for this, though.  The Errazuriz Max Reserva, a Chilean cabernet sauvignon, caught my eye as I went through the wine list because it is grown in the Aconcagua Valley.  As any mountaineer can tell you, Aconcagua is one of the Seven Summits and is the highest point in the Americas as well as the highest mountain outside of the greater Himalaya.  How could we not have this wine?  The sommelier was awesome, and suggested that we substitute for the red in the main course without our even asking.  We liked it so much that we got another bottle and had seconds.  The total damage came out to nearly $300 per person, but it is worth splurging on something this good every once in a while.

The final meal was dim sum at Kirin on Sunday morning.  Well, sort of morning.  We'd originally planned a 1 PM meal, but then moved the reservation to 11 when we decided that we didn't want to then have dinner at 8 and get back home at 1-2 in the morning.  This was before we knew Kirin would end up being the final meal.  See, the original plan had us going to Vij's for dinner, but as you'll soon see, it was just one good meal too many...  In any case, after drinking the night away following our wine flights, there was no way in hell we were going to make the 11 AM reservation.  It's a miracle we even made it at 11:40...  but to my utter surprise, the staff was actually apologetic that they'd given our table away.  Hey man 40 minutes late and you're apologizing to me?  I was speechless.  They had us at a table meant for 6 (we were a party of 7 at this point) in about 10 minutes.  A little cramped, but hey, 40 minute late beggars can't be choosers, right?  The dim sum was its usual goodness, though I didn't feel like it was eliciting the same responses that I'd experienced before.  I figured out not too long into the meal that I just wasn't into it...  I was indeed, "fooded out."

So after grabbing a not-so-small dessert at Maxim's Bakery next door, we headed back home, opting to save Vij's for a time when we could truly appreciate it.  The wait at the border was...  almost insurmountable.  Thank God Almighty the three people in our car had Nexus...  we breezed through what must have been a 90 minute line in about 30 seconds.  I'm all for "trusted traveler" programs if I'm one of the few man...  hahaha.  I think the Nexus pass cost me something like USD$60 for a five year period.  Man, one trip like this one and I've made up the cost in time savings alone.

Well, I found out that you can have too much of a good thing this weekend...  I seriously don't want to have anything above the level of junk food for a while.  Fine dining has its limits...  and apparently for me that's two straight days of culinary bliss.

I have been beta testing Adobe Lightroom for about 3 months now, since beta 2 went public and anybody could download it.  Prior to this, my photography workflow used Extensis Portfolio for file management and Adobe Photoshop for processing and editing.  I've played with Apple's Aperture a couple of times, but the system requirements are just astronomical, so I was unable to run it on my "humble" 1.33 GHz PowerPC G4.

Executive Summary:  Adobe Lightroom is good, so far.  But there are a lot of things that I hope are better by the time final comes out.

Switching from the separate file management and processing applications into a single application that handles both takes a major paradigm shift.  It took me weeks upon weeks to commit to this.  A little background on how I shoot and process needs to be inserted here...  I am a "RAW only" photographer.  This means that I spend a lot of time in processing, but it's time well-spent, in my opinion.  The pros and cons of this vs. RAW+JPEG or JPEG only is a discussion unto itself, and beyond the scope of today's article.  What shooting RAW meant prior to Lightroom, was that I had to import all of my RAW files from the camera into Portfolio, and then use the viewer included in Portfolio to decide which photographs I wanted to process in Photoshop.  For the photographs that I processed, these were saved in Photoshop as either JPEGs or TIFFs.  I then used Portfolio's "watch folder" function to automatically pick up these new files for cataloging.  Once cataloged, I could use Portfolio to view, export, create web pages, etc. from these JPEGs and TIFFs.  Portfolio would keep track of the locations of all of the RAW as well as finished files.

Okay, so now you know how I was working.  The viewer left quite a bit to be desired in Portfolio 7; for example, there was no option to automatically recognize and rotate vertically oriented shots.  My understanding is that Extensis improved the viewer for version 8, but at $100 for the upgrade (vs. $200 for the full version) it was expensive enough to encourage me to take a look at other options.  I figured, if I'm going to be spending $100 I might as well check out what I can get for $100-$200 more if it's going to really whip things up in my workflow.   So Adobe comes in with the beta test of Lightroom.  Perfect, because, hey, it's free (for now) and I might even be able to influence the product's development!

Lightroom is a workflow manager rather than a file manager.  I hope that in the final incarnation, Lightroom will do everything that Portfolio can do in terms of file management, while integrating a photo development platform with that.  My workflow with Lightroom goes something like this:  I import the RAW files into the Lightroom library.  I view and compare as many photographs as I can fit onto my screen.  I choose which photo(s) I want to further process.  There is a "quick develop" as well as a more detailed development panel, allowing me to tweak a very, very large number of variables.  I can even mix channels into a greyscale output right there within Lightroom.  All of these changes are made in "as close to realtime as your processor allows."  The original RAW file is never modified.  Instead (this is my theory, I haven't verified this with official sources), it appears that Lightroom records your actions to a file, and every time you view the photo henceforth, those changes are re-applied to the original RAW from scratch.  It receives help by creating a low-resolution thumbnail of the processed image, so that it has something to show you the moment you open up the photo, but going anywhere near full resolution takes a few moments for it to render the image.  What this means is that I no longer need Photoshop to process my RAW files into JPEGs or TIFFs.  I do all of my viewing within Lightroom, and it renders directly from the RAWs every time I hit a photo.  Nobody said Lightroom wasn't a processor hog.  In fact, if they were in their right minds, they'd probably slap on system requirements similar to Aperture.  But if you have a little patience, it runs fine on even my paltry G4.

The develop module is the heart of Lightroom.  In it, you have controls for everything.  White balance, tone, hue, contrast, brightness...  all the standards.  Then, you can fine tune your colors with the HSL color tuning panel.  And you can separately adjust hue and saturation for highlights and shadows.  Add to this the lens corrections (vignetting, for example), and even a tilt adjuster, and you have probably the most complete RAW processor out there.  I haven't had a chance to test the processor against Nikon Capture, but it's probably better than the Photoshop RAW processor in terms of image quality.

Now what this means in terms of my workflow is that it just got a lot simpler.  I now have one app that handles everything.  And because it was designed from the ground up as a RAW workflow manager, everything is kept in RAW until you absolutely have to commit to something else.  Say I see a blemish due to sensor dust on an image, and want to go into Photoshop to touch it up.  I can do that by telling Lightroom to send the image to Photoshop.  When I make this request, it usually takes a while because what it does is it creates a 16 bit per channel RGB TIFF with a ProPhoto RGB color profile, and opens that sucker up in Photoshop.  My ~6 MB RAW just got transformed into a ~32 MB TIFF.  When I'm done in Photoshop, I simply save the file, and it is already located in the same directory as my original RAW.  I can now manage this TIFF file like any other file in Lightroom, as far as file mangement capabilities go.  The only problem with this (and this is the same problem I had with Portfolio) is that Lightroom has no idea that this new file is a version of another file.  There needs to be some sort of "version mangement" where I can click on a file and say "see versions" and Lightroom would be able to show me every iteration of that file that I've created and cataloged.  This was an even larger complaint in Portfolio, because every JPEG or TIFF file was a version of its corresponding RAW file, but the only way I knew this was because I happened to keep their names very similar.  The application should be able to handle this aspect of file mangement without the user designing their file naming scheme around it.

Like any good file management application, Lightroom imports by "shoot," which I organize by date.  You can use whatever naming scheme you want.  You can also create "collections" to better organize your photographs.  Of course, any given file can belong to as many collections as you please.  What I'd like to see is a more robust way of keeping track of files that doesn't require you keep everything in the same directory.  Portfolio allows you to burn an archive CD and reference the files on that CD from your library.  Every time you click on a photograph that is on another drive, it asks you to mount the disk.  Lightroom, on the other hand, just looks in the last place it found the file and gives up, asking you to locate the file.  There are no means to move the files within Lightroom so that it knows where you've moved them to.  If you move something in Finder, you then have to tell Lightroom where the file is next time you try to view it.  More cross-disk file management capabilities is a definite must for final.

So now I want to export my files to a web page.  Portfolio gives you the controls to do this, but I get the feeling that they are "dumbed down" for the beta.  You have control over a small number of file formats, JPEG and TIFF included, and you have control over a "quality" slider for JPEG compression.  You can also choose a color space, which is good.  But you can't choose how it translates into that color space.  I presume, but am not sure, that it uses perceptual intent.  I hope this is expanded to include absolute and relative colorimetric intents for final.  I should note here that there is a web module in Lightroom that creates your web pages for you and all you have to do is just choose the photos and the layout and voilá! you can publish a web page directly to the web.  I haven't played with this module much, but it seems to do what it needs to do.  I'm more interested in the file management and development modules.

Same with printing.  The options that are given seem a little handicapped compared to the print preparation dialog boxes in Photoshop.  Again, this is hopefully just a beta vs. final thing, but this does need to be addressed for me to take it seriously.  Also, I cannot get Lightroom to print to my non-default printer.  Basically, it always prints to the default printer set in the system preferences, even if you select another printer in the print dialog.  This is probably the biggest bug I've encountered.

Lightroom beta 3 is good enough that I've started using it for my main photography workflow.  If it's priced at $300, I'd definitely buy it.  At $400, they'd better have improved it a lot since beta 3.  Any more than that, and it's getting unreasonable.  And now there's a Windows beta as well.  I'd encourage any photographers out there to at least take a long look at this application for your workflow management, especially if you shoot RAW.  And right now, you might still be able to influence the development of the final application.