links-of-interest: November 2007 Archives

I cannot believe it has taken this long for me to figure this out:

Multiple identities in one account with Apple Mail.app (link)

I work with an average of five different email accounts to separate work from personal from junk. Essentially, all of the email addresses I use pour into one single account except for those associated with email lists (because of the sheer bulk of messages I would receive and can't process). The problem is that I thought Apple's Mail.app didn't have an easy way of sending from these "identities" unless you added the identity as another mail account. Not true. If you follow the instructions in the above link, all you have to do is take the one account you wish to change and add every email address (i.e. identity) you want to send from in a comma separated list in the Email Address field where you set up your account. I know this works on OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) and will test on 10.5 (aka Leopard) later. Props to Jonathan for finding this very simple solution.

I really want to understand what is going on when I fiddle with f/stops, increasing depth of field, but further limiting the amount of light that hits the film or sensor. I also was having a difficult time understanding the concept of focal length considering that a lens labeled as 300mm, isn't necessarily 300mm long. Somehow, this afternoon, I stumbled across A Tedious Explanation of the f/stop. What a godsend. For issues with depth of field (which has been hitting below the belt on a lot of my pictures) and speed of the exposure (heavily impacting the clarity of my pictures), Matthew explains:

"You need to know the doubling/halving relationship and how it works with shutter speeds in exposure. This is key since the shutter speeds and f/stops you choose have implications in how your final photograph will look in ways other than purely the amount of light on the film. You need to know that as you stop down you get more depth of field. You do not need to go around calculating aperture areas for your lenses and f/stops. If you're like me, it's worth doing it once to see that it works, then forgetting about."

Thank you, Matthew, for taking the time to write down your notes. After a third read, I think I finally get what I'm doing wrong and now know how to clear up many of the problems I've had.

For most, the issue with general warming of populated areas and the environment in general is a closed issue. You would think with all the scientific postulating going on, one would at least be open to debate. We debate everything except when people invoke think about future generations ad hoc arguments. Once I get permission, I'll post a graph I found intriguing. For now, here is a link of interest:

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

I happened across this device on some tech related weblog (whose name and url I can't remember) and had to give my opinion. I've been using WiebeTech usb/firewire "raw" drive connectors for a few years, but the solution was always a little cumbersome; unless using it in situations where portability is key. Most of the time, I'm not in one of those situations and I have popped a drive out of a machine whose power supply has gone (or some other relatively minor problem has occurred). Now that most of the machines I deal with are SATA, I was looking for a device that made quick, raw hard drive backups (or reads) easy, yet don't clutter my desk like the WiebeTech solutions do. Like I said, I happened across mention of this device and ordered two. The shipping is ridiculous; $50 because it is being shipped from Japan, but I because the cradle is $50, I figured $75 for each cradle wasn't half bad, as long as they worked as promised. (I've found that some caddies/adapters do not perform even close to USB 2.0 specs. One transfered data from a good drive at about 4mbps. Definitely not 480mbps or close to the expected rates of around 350mbps.)
Today is the umpteenth time I've used the cradle, but the first time for an "emergency." I arrived at work this morning with my Mac Pro turned off (I leave it on 24/7 because I access it remotely quite often). I figured the power went out last evening and I went to restart it. Nothing. I fiddled with the power button, unplugged the machine, plugged it into a different electrical outlet, used a different power cord, and ran through a few procedures you use for getting Mac Pros to start if it is a simple memory board problem. Nada. I do regular backups of my two main machines now (a MacBook Pro and the Mac Pro), so I wasn't all that worried... except I had written two letters last night that I needed for work today. I spent quite a bit of time composing them, so I didn't want to go through the trouble all over. After AppleCare Phone support provided more aggravation than help (buy the AppleCare plan and find out you still have to hand deliver a Mac Pro for service and deal with an agent who obviously hasn't listened to any of the attempts I made before calling to revive the machine), I popped open the case, pulled the main drive and plopped it in the cradle. I navigated to my home directory and mounted my FileVault image ('hdid ./.snfettig.sparseimage'; enter password; access files through finder...) and grabbed the two files I needed. Done.
I can say that from the numerous backups I've pulled off drives with this cradle, I'm extremely happy with the performance and size. The fact that it will accept both 3.5" and 2.5" drives makes it all the more convenient. If you're a tech who uses drive caddies for any reason - and find that you have a lot of SATA drives you connect to - I highly recommend the cradle. Despite the relatively high price, the cradle is solid and makes life oh' so easy on days like today.

Sowell on 'giving back' from Cafe Hayek

     Roberts comments remind me that all to often we view or are told things completely out of context. To play by my own desired rules, the context in which I view these statements relate to local political issues - of which I've suddenly become interested. We hear statements about our emotive state instead of the reality with which we are surrounded. Statements usually start out with, don't we want?... or it follows that... When looking at the context of the arguments made, we might not agree so readily with the speakers arguments.
     Anyway, Sowell nails it: we give back to society. We can't give back to people from whom we haven't taken a damn thing. (And we ought not be treated like we have by our friends on the neo-socialist right.)

One of the biggest rip-off markets I encounter every day has to do with home audio/video cabling. There is certainly a time and a place to purchase components with the highest quality standards (placing a 2 cent connector between two $2000 pieces of equipment isn't always the best idea). The problem is that in the home wiring market, there really is little difference between no-name well shielded cabling and those from manufacturers like Monster Cable. I needed 20 five component RCA style cables (two audio and three for component color) for getting rid of the cable clutter caused by rigged setups around my house. At an average of $25 per three foot segment, the price started to become a bit ridiculous ($500 for a total of 60ft of five component cable?) and I somehow, somewhere happened across a website called MonoPrice.com. Thank goodness. I was able to walk away from the purchase (including shipping) for under $100 for over 25 different cables. Not only is their cable pricing extremely reasonable, but they have miscellaneous components (USB, Firewire, Adapters, kvm stuff, etc.) for very good prices. If I hadn't found them, I would have bought all of the stuff in bulk and been left with building my own cables. I prefer this route...