momusradar

Michael Reichmann posted an interesting video revealing some of Leica’s quality control and assembly practices. To bad the audio doesn’t match that of Leica’s technical standards. Also, I’m fairly certain the camera being assembled is the M8.

Apple Inc.’s latest iPod nano has the capability to record H.264 VGA video, which is ideal for the YouTube & video on Flickr crowds. Cisco Systems, your Flip is on notice.

It appears the recent rumors proceeding today’s Rock & Roll event didn’t see this coming. Such speculation reminds me of the only time I entertained the idea of making an Apple event prediction. In February of 2006, I wrote:

But if it does turns out to be a revamped iPod then I can only hope that it’s a real Photo iPod. Think of it: iPod with a built in iSight. They’ve already made the iSight ridiculously small, the iPod can already display images, and the scroll wheel has been dying to be used for something other than simply sifting through menus. By adding iSight to the iPod you can not only carry a ton of pictures with it, you would be able to take them too. It’s a feature that most users would actually use, definitely more useful than watching a movie on a two inch screen.

At the time YouTube was only a year old & video sharing was something with which I was not interested. In hindsight, it was not such a bad forecast.

A row of such little consequence, it gets covered at Time:

They went cheap, in other words,” counters Bucharest designer Iancu Barbarasa, who blogged about the font change on his website. If he sounds somewhat bitter, there’s a reason. With its attention to the curve of even a $9 lampshade, Ikea has become renowned for its understanding of good design. “Designers have always thought of Ikea as one of their own,” Barbarasa notes. “So now, in a way, the design community feels betrayed.”

I never thought of Ikea as some sort of bastion of high design. Rather, much like Verdana, Ikea and its offerings are safe and chintzy.

InDesign Secrets’ comment on Adobe’s open letter:

I do have one niggling complaint. The PDF was created with Microsoft Word, not InDesign. What gives?

Right. Nor was it distilled with Acrobat Pro. Perhaps Adobe should apologize for this as well.

Scum dots are small points of ink (typically cyan) that appear in areas of a print that should be completely white. These imps can manifest themselves during image compression within the creation of a PDF file.

In Adobe Creative Suite (CS through CS3—I can’t speak for CS4 as I have yet to use it) the default image compression, for both color & grayscale images to be included in a PDF, are set to JPEG. This seems to be where the problem lies.

JPEG is a lossy compression scheme. If you compress a raster graphic that contains a large area of white using JPEG, it can introduce small artifacts into those areas that are not visible to the eye. When a PDF containing JPEG images is sent to a printer, the file is translated by a RIP into data that the printing device can output. The humanly imperceptible artifacts are quite obvious to the RIP and, depending on how it is configured, can be sent to ink resulting in scum dots. To be fair, many printers set their RIPs to hold back such artifacts to prevent scum dots, but there may be one day that you have to work with one that hasn’t taken such precaution.

Fortunately, changing the image compression for both the color & grayscale images to be included in the PDF to None will help you from falling prey to this problem. Simply put, None will not compress the images at all; at least not any more than they have been already (You are using uncompressed images to make your print-ready PDFs, right?).

As for compressing monochrome images, the CCITT, Run Length & ZIP options are all safe since monochrome by definition is only one color; although I also set it to None for consistency’s sake.

addendum July 10, 2009

I should emphasize that the suggestions noted above will only minimize scum dots; not eliminate them completely. In order to do that you need to disable dithering in the conversion options of your application’s color settings. The caveat with leaving this option turned off is that images with gradients could then suffer from banding.

More perplexing than the theory behind the knife are the slew of comments about said knife. Such as:

Tell me, please… what will you do when a criminal breaks into your house and points an illegal gun at your child’s head?—Carrie, Virginia, USA

Really? Are there hordes of armed criminals entering homes in Virginia & taking children hostage of which I am unaware? Assuming she has planned for such an event, what exactly would Carrie do in that situation?

The real problem is the cost of living is so high that people have to work so much they don’t have time to raise their children, who grow up without values and commit crimes.
Fix the real problem not the symptoms.—Mahhn, Nonevyourbiznes, usa

One could write a sociology thesis based on this comment.

The scenario: You need to send a PDF of the project so you select Export from the File menu—or use the keyboard shortcut ⌘+E—and InDesign CS3 unexpectedly quits.

The reason: It most likely is an issue with Leopard’s Navigation Services (NavSvcs) as noted at Tim Cole’s InDesign BackChannel.

The workaround: Before attempting the export, select Print from the File menu (⌘+P) and click on the Printer… button at the bottom of InDesign’s print dialog box to invoke the OS’s printer dialog box.

Select Save as PostScript from the PDF drop-down button, enter a name in the following dialog box, navigate to a desired location, and hit Save. I usually save the PostScript file to my Desktop and name it blah.ps. This will return you to InDesign’s print dialog box where you can then select Print to complete the Save as PostScript process.

Now you should be able to Export without getting an unexpected quit.

The caveat: This workaround is only good for the session. You will have to do a Save as PostScript every time you start ID CS3.

The credit: It must go to Dennis Quant who posted the workaround at indesignsecrets.com

addendum July 12, 2008

Apple’s Mac OS X 10.5.4 update addresses the NavSvcs crash issue, as noted at Tim Cole’s InDesign BackChannel:

…contains more fixes for the Nav Services crash problem that manifests itself most frequently in InDesign. It also contains a fix for the file corruption problem that occurs when saving files to a remote server.

Tim also heeded that if InDesign continues to crash after applying the 10.5.4 update:

… please continue to send [Adobe] crash logs. Adobe also recommends the following workaround:

• Before opening an existing document, open a new document (initializing the open/new dialog for the app)
• Invoke the Place dialog (initializing this dialog with no contents to resolve), then cancel out of it

While the main characters are only eight pixels high by eight pixels wide and game play lasts just five minutes, Jason Rohrer’s Passage is quite possibly the finest video game I have had the fortune of playing to date.

As he so eloquently notes on the download page:

If you don’t get the point at first, please keep playing.

I “got it” about three minutes in. It is simply touching.

Having been able to sleep on it—the idea, not the actual device—I realized that the MacBook Air is the antithesis of Apple Inc’s three big products: iMac, iPhone & iPod touch. And that’s what makes it a fine product.

Where the aim of the “i” products is to have all the desired features wrapped tightly into a small convenient package, the MacBook Air does the exact opposite by shedding nearly everything and persuading you to access whatever features you need wirelessly. It seems users have been keen on sharing just about everything else, now it’s time for them to share hardware.

There are two things that I don’t care about with the MacBook Air. The first is its price; compared to the base-model MacBook, you’ll pay more to get less on many levels. Second, and perhaps most important, there is the problem with it not having a user replaceable battery. Like it did with its original iPod, it appears Apple would prefer that you trash the Air when the battery dies and simply buy another. While it makes financial sense for them, it makes very little sense for the consumer. Especially at that price point.

addendum May 1, 2009

I no longer have an issue with the batteries in any of Apple’s products, let alone the MB Air. They can be replaced by the user if they are so inclined to do so & they have the option to pay Apple to change it for them as well. There are really no reasons for the devices to be discarded at all.

Relying almost completely on 802.11n for connectivity, along with its small screen, sparse collection of ports and no optical drive, it appears as if the MacBook Air was made specifically to be used as a blogging tool.