dispatches

Climate change anyone?

I have lived in the Pacific Northwest for thirty years. I have a little perspective. My considered, anecdotal opinion: it's hot.

Now we don't really have the right to whine about heat, considering what the rest of the interior West is going through right now. Ellensburg, just over the mountains, had a record setting 110° F yesterday. People are dying from this heat wave. It won't be long now before the fires start. On the wet side of the Cascades we think it's a hardship when it hits the upper 70s. I adapt by exercising in the early morning and hiding in my cool basement studio for the duration.

The lawns are turning brown early this year (it's a mark of good citizenship here to not water them), and I'm drip irrigating all my stressed trees. I remember when it didn't used to be like this, when we had "5 o'clock" summers, which was about when the sun burnt through the marine stratus layer. This, now, is our second heat wave of the season, and it's only going to get hotter next week. Seattle is going to see temps in the lower 90°s.

I wonder what we'll see after another decade or two of this?

The right monitor

Monitors are in such a flux these days (just like all computer hardware I suppose), and we don't have an ideal solution for photo editing for under $6000. I have been using a 19" LaCie CRT for years, and it still profiles well, but I know that it's approaching retirement age. So I've ordered a replacement.

I know a lot of people are happy with the Apple Cinema displays, but I decided not to go that route based on Will Crockett's review at shootsmarter.com

For years we have been strong advocates of Apple computers for sheer ease of digital workflow in a studio, but we never found an Apple LCD screen that was accurate enough for professional screen to print match, and our testing here supports that.  This is a really cool looking screen with lots of real estate and mediocre color.  Sorry in advance to the Mac faithful, (please keep the unpleasant emails amongst yourselves this time?) but we believe this screen is waaaay overpriced for what it is.  There are much better choices for screen to print match. Expect the other size versions of this monitor to score the same ratings at a lower cost / screen size.
PROS: Great looking design, nice USB ports on the rear.
CONS: It has it’s own power supply on the floor which means it actually takes 6 (yes, 6) connections to make this screen light up.  It will not work on older Macs.  Monitor controls are limited making it very tough to profile accurately.

I've been looking at the NEC monitors for some time, and based on a review at X-bit labs, I got a LCD2190UXI. The tech details in this exhaustive profile are mostly over my head, but it sounded convincing to me, given I was already predisposed.  I'll use a cheapy 15" for a second screen for my Photoshop tools. At 21" it's not a big monitor, but given what I've been using it'll feel like I'm moving up. I'll let you know what I think when it arrives.

How I made the Drobo work

In preparation for the arrival of my Mac Pro desktop machine, I moved the Windows box to another part of the office. I counted ten USB cables that once were plugged into it. I decided to try an experiment. I plugged only the Drobo box in to the computer, and fired it up.

Windows loaded. It took its time, but it loaded.

I typically have plugged into my machine: four printers, two scanners, two monitors, two to three external hard drives, a card reader, a monitor calibrator, and a couple of loose cords in case I want to get fancy. It seems like my Windows machine said, Enough already!

I can't say that the Drobo box is the reason I'm switching to Macs. But it was the straw that broke this camel's back.

So that there's no confusion

I have not joined the cult:

Opus