LensWork Technology Blog

Ethernet plug success — at last!

As a publisher and software user, I try to fastidiously hold the line between being a technology user and technology installer. I'm not always successful.

A few days ago we rearranged some of our offices and Maureen moved into a room that had previously not been used as an office. Fortunately, it was wired for Ethernet connection, but both ends of the cable were unterminated. I should have called our technology guy, but was in a hurry and decided to do the job myself. How hard could it be?

The receiving plug in her office was easy enough and took only a few minutes to install. The plug at the other end of the cable — the one that's supposed to plug into the switch — was a different story. I scoffed when the guy at RadioShack sold me the package with the five RJ-45 plugs. Typical retail, I thought, to sell me five when I needed one. Two hours later I was back at RadioShack to buy another packet of five because I screwed up the first five.

I have a newfound respect for people who wire Ethernet plugs for living. It's a big enough challenge to get all the little wires in the right order. They ought to pass out certificates just for doing that successfully. But then, to require that you insert them into the plug so they slide into the right slots, crimp that puppy down, and do all this lying on your back in the poorly lit crawl space where the hub is located — this is a sadistic technology designed by Nazis.

I am proud — more proud than you know — to report that I successfully wired plug #9 and Maureen's Internet connection is working perfectly. I am not proud to report the language I used in the completion of my appointed task. Needless to say, I have terminated my first and last Ethernet plug. I retire with an 11.1% success ratio that does not qualify me even for the AA farm clubs.

Premiere Pro CS5.5

There are probably not many applications that will test the horsepower of a computer system like video editing. I've been frustrated with Premiere Pro throughout my relationship with it because of frequent hangs, crashes, jumpy rendering, interminable waits for video output — you name it.

Of course, I blame Adobe and Premier Pro, but it turns out it was my underpowered computer. (Sorry, Adobe.) My new Yippie Skippy super-fast Dell runs Premier Pro CS5.5 like nobody's business.

Yesterday, I edited video. Actually, I edited three videos — in one day! That's unheard of in my world. One of them was a 30-minute, three-camera shoot of my interview with Doug Ethridge. It was downright easy and the software did precisely what was supposed to do handling the multi-camera edits, when it was supposed to do it, with no lag, and not a single hang or crash. And I might add, I don't even have the recommended, super-expensive video card that can do GPU rendering of video on the fly. I can only imagine how this machine would perform far were willing to spend another $3000 for the video card. But, I'm not and am happy to report that — at least for my needs — I don't need to. I guess the 64-bits in combination with 16 GB of memory is enough to least justify paying for the upgrade to this latest version of Premier Pro.

Installed

I'm back from vacation and have spent the last few days catching up — including the installation of my new computer. Yes, it's a screamer. Here are a few comments about the process.

• Installing software is easy; what takes time is reestablishing all the configurations, panel layouts, personalizations, and the fussy little stuff that makes your computer yours.
• Windows 7 is very impressive operating system. I have no idea what's going on underneath the hood, but there are a lot of little tweaks that already seem indispensable. I know it's fashionable to rag on Microsoft, but in spite of that they make one hell of a product. In combination with this 64-bit operating system, the 16 GB of memory, the SSD drive, this puppy scoots right along.
• Just like the frog who doesn't notice the water in the pot getting warmer and warmer, it's easy to overlook how poorly one's old computer is working until it's compared to the efficiency of brand-new machine. My old machine took 15 minutes to reboot; the new one takes about 60 seconds.
• I'm on my computer all day, every day, so my computing needs are not typical. All the more reason for me to have a machine that is a solution. I've often said that the best cameras are invisible, ones that you are hardly aware of in the process of making photographs. I suppose the same could be said of any technology, especially computers. The closer I can adapt the computer to work the way I think, the more transparent it will be. That is always my objective in searching for software and configuring it to my needs.
• Getting a new computer up and running is never a flawless project. That's why it takes me a week from the moment I start the project until the moment I'm really back to work again. With this new computer I was doing work within an hour, but still spending 90% of my time installing and getting things set up. A week later and I'm spending 95% of my time doing work, but they're still 5% of my time fussing to get things just right. As a friend of mine puts it, "fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle."

All in all a fairly painless process and so far, I couldn't be happier. Thanks again, Dell.

My Road Computer

As I prepare to head out on the LensWork Road Show, I must tell you about my computer. The magic key to my being able to go out and spend so much time away from the office is because of my road computer. Essentially, I need to be able to keep everything going in terms of production of LensWork and LensWork Extended, even if I'm not in the office. The computer is the key. So, what computer will I be using on the road? Answer: the computer at my desk back home in the office. Literally.

Because of the Road Show needs, I learned about "Remote Desktop Computing." Surely this is not news to some of you, but to me it was a revelation of almost biblical proportions. (How else could I describe technology that set me free?) With my small and highly portable netbook, I can now login to our server back in at the Galactic Headquarters and logon directly to the computer at my desk. The actual computing, connecting, file stuff, and applications are actually running on my desktop computer in my office, but the video information is being pumped to me over the Internet so I see the output on my remote netbook screen. What a fantastic trick! My keystrokes and mouse clicks from my netbook in the hinterland are sent back to my computer via my Internet connection. I can be anywhere in the world that has Internet connection and work on my computer back home. Amazing. I'll even have a dual monitor setup with a 24" monitor just like I have back home. Smokin'! I used it extensively last week while I was in Carmel teaching a workshop at CPA. I was able to login back home and didn't miss a beat while I was away. A trifle weird, but very, very cool.

How does it work? Haven't a clue, but my IT guy does and with his help it worked flawlessly. If you need it, ask someone with an aura of geekness about them to tell you about setting up for Remote Desktop Computing. In my case, it's a Window 7 Professional thing that works and talks with our Small Business Server and Exchange things. Somebody somewhere will know what that last sentence means, but surely don't. Then again, I have no idea how the microwave oven makes things hot but that doesn't prevent me from enjoying the popcorn.

Life, Upside Down

Never take your access to email for granted. This advice comes from one deeply immersed and just pulling above the surface in a month-long conversion from POP3 email accounts to an Exchange Server. Wow. Who knew? For those of you who might look to me for some sort of explanation about the above sentence, I am sorry to disappoint you. I barely understand the principle, let alone the implementation.

Which brings me to the issue at hand. We are gearing up big time for the Road Show. Part of that is an issue of remote access so I can continue to produce our publications while on the road. That required a new server. That implied an update to a new server operation system. That resulted in Exchange. And all of that resulted in me saying goodbye to my role at the IT guy here at LensWork Publishing. For 18 years now, I've known everything. I installed our systems, I configured our systems, I fixed our systems, and I knew our systems. I had knowledge and power. With the new server and Exchange, I have a phone number to call when something doesn't work. I am adrift in a vast ocean without a compass. No wait, I do have a compass — on my new Android phone. I have no email on it, but I do have a compass.

The supposedly "seamless conversion" has been full of seams. Bounced emails, new passwords, shaky implementations, broken routines. For three weeks now we (okay, they) have been tweaking and fixing, adapting and fussing. We see the tunnel and perhaps the light at the end of it. I hope. Some things are now working perfectly, even better than before. Some things are lost in the woods and we miss them terribly.

I was prepared for some rough spots. I was prepared to be patient. I was not prepared for the helplessness of not being able to jump in myself and fix something when it doesn't work. My staff, who have always looked to me for solutions, now look at me with pleading eyes while I stare back blankly. I am not used to this. I will need to learn a very valuable new thing. I will need to learn to let go. I will need to learn new routines and new procedures. I will need to appreciate the opportunity to enjoy the quiet drone of crickets when something doesn't work. Most importantly, I will need to memorize our new IT guy's emergency cell phone number. Life moves on.

UPDATE:
OMG!!! OMG!!!! While I was typing this, I just got email on my new phone!!! The new IT guy gets a cookie. Things are looking up.

Voice Recognition on the Sony Vaio X

Installed Dragon System NaturallySpeaking voice recognition (version 10, I haven't upgrade to 11 yet) and did the minimum training. Fired it up and . . . well, you can judge for yourself . . .

This is what I actually spoke:

This is my first test using voice recognition software on the Sony VAIO. So far, so good. It does seem to recognize my voice and use the built-in microphone effectively. This will really change the dynamic of typing on this undersized keyboard. I'm actually sort of amazed it is doing so well. More typically, when I start dictation after a new installation of the software, I find it a little rough and it mis-registers a number of words at the beginning until I do a little refined training. This very first paragraph, however, appears to be just excellent. I have no doubt that I'll end up using voice recognition a great deal with this laptop so I can avoid typing and, while I'm on the road, respond to e-mails and make field notes without having to struggle with the typing aspect of a netbook.

Read back by me for voice transcription:

This is my first test using voice recognition software on the Sony VAIO. So far, so good. It does seem to recognize my voice and use the built-in microphone effectively. This will really change the dynamic of typing on this undersized keyboard. I'm actually sort of amazed it is doing so well. More typically, when I start dictation after a new installation of the software, I find it a little rough and if Ms. registers a number of words at the beginning until I do a little refined training. This very first paragraph, however, appears to be just excellent. I have no doubt that I'll end up using voice recognition a great deal with this laptop so I can avoid typing and, while I'm on the road, respond to e-mails and make field notes without having to struggle with the typing aspects of a netbook.

Accuracy: 98.7% accurate, 162 words/punctuation with 2 incorrect. [I'll take that any day.]

A bit more rigorous of a test. I'll read (with punctuation) three opening paragraphs that might be familiar:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the Up of belief it was the talk of incredulity it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way --- in short, the period was so far like the present period, but for some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

There was a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large job and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the boards of the state reserves of moves and fishes, that things in general were settled forever.

It was the year of our Lord 1775. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England that favored., as at this. This is South cup had recently obtained her five and 20 blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the lifeguards have heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the cock Lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after wrapping up its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out pairs. Near messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English crown and people, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the cock Lane. Perhaps, less favored on the whole to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and Trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness downhill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements in sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, as Tom torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honor to the dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some 50 or 60 yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, fate, to come down and be song into boards, to make a certain movable framework the sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough townhouses of some tumors of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, they were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude cards, be spattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the farmer, death, had already set apart to be his tongue Bruins of the revolution. But the Woodman and the farmer, though they work unceasingly, works silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be a theist will and traitorous.

Accuracy: 96.24% — and this with minimum training.

And, is it really fair to dock its accuracy for missing "Mrs. Southcott," "sawn," "bespattered," and "tumbrills"? What the hell is a tumbrill? [Encarta: a cart used to carry prisoners to the guillotine. Well, now I know.]

In general, the accuracy of my manual typing: less than 40% — and I am pretty sure I'm not kidding about this. Because I know you think I'm kidding, behold — and remember that the software is trying to correct my typing as I proceed, so there were actually more mistakes than you see here.

It was the best of times, it was the worsot of times, it was the age of widsong, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epock of velief it was the ppoci of incerdulity itw a the eseasong of light, it ws th eseasong of darkeness, it was the springt of hop, itw was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing beofre us, we were all going direct to Heave,m aw were al going diredt the other way --- in short, the period was so far elike the present period, bifor some of its noiseiest authoristies insiste don its being received, for good orfor evil, in the superlative degree od comparison only.

So, Dragon Systems NaturallySpeaking gets, ahem, ten thumbs up from me, even on the Sony netbook. I trust this puts your ppoci of incerdulity to rest.

Sony Vaio X

Here is my initial report on the Sony Vaio X netbook, er, laptop. (Sony may be watching.)

Wow.

Did I say, "Wow"? I meant . . .

WOW!

I really wanted the iPad to be my choice for this upcoming trip to Xiang Sha Wan. I could taste it — that slick presentation screen, the 1.6 pounds that is as close to antigravity as you can come, the eBooks/music/audiobooks/email. I really wanted it to work. After weeks of fretting over this, I've decided it is simply is too much of a compromise when I can take the Sony Vaio at 0.55" thick weighing in at just 1.5 pounds. Including a keyboard, Lightroom, Skype video, etc. Sorry, iPad, you were close but no cigar.

   

   

I've loaded all my software into the Vaio and it is simply amazing. Sure, it's a "netbook" in spite of Sony's insistence that it is a "laptop." It's running an Atom Z550 processor and any way you slice it and dice it, it's a netbook. Even so, the 2GHz speed is noticeably faster than my 1.6GHz ASUS even though it's an N-series processor. It's not going to smoke in a multi-multi-task environment, but that's not what I do on the road. Two, maybe three apps at a time, it does just fine.

The Vaio may be a netbook, but — and this is no small matter — it runs Lightroom much faster than my ASUS netbook did, has a higher resolution screen, and is simply the perfect sweet spot of functional power at minimum weight.

My first real-world test was to fire up Lightroom (3.2) and OneNote 2010 and flip back and forth. Even when Lightroom was exporting a bunch of JPGs, OneNote skipped right along as I took notes and even recorded audio. I simply don't need anything more than this when I'm traveling — but it is sure nice to have both. Unfortunately neither of these things were possible with the iPad.

I assumed I'd use the (included) larger and heavier 12 hr battery for most of my needs. But, then it dawned on me that a couple hours is all I ever actually need for most uses except the actual plane flight. For meetings, for use with a projector during my talk, for taking to breakfast and catching up on the news — the 3 hr (more like 2+ hrs) is sufficient and so light weight. Again, I think the folks at Sony must have talked to real world users. They got it right.

Windows 7 (my first experience with it) is a winner.

The 128GB SSD solid state hard drive is fast, quiet, and efficient.

The Vaio took some heat in the reviews for it's smallish keyboard, but it's essentially the same size as the one on my ASUS netbook. The ASUS is 9.75" and Sony is 9.5". I can't tell any difference between them as I type except that they are both smaller than a regular sized desktop keyboard. That does take some getting used to. I think I'm going to try loading up Dragon Systems Naturally Speaking and see how well it does with voice recognition. I use this so extensively with my desktop, it would be great if the Vaio X has enough horsepower to run this software. I'll let you know.

Decisions over. I'm all set.

Sony Vaio X

The internal debate continues. Today I am popping into the Sony store for a hands-on look at the Vaio X series laptop (i.e., netbook). If I can have all the convenience of a laptop but at the weight of an iPad, that's a seductive combination. Maureen is eager to inherit my ASUS netbook for herself, so I might be more serious about this than I would have guessed. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been eagerly anticipating the release of iOS 4.2 today, but it looks like it's not coming until sometime next week. If it doesn't solve some of my PDF creation issues with fonts, I would be very disappointed. I have to guess that Apple is motivated to fix this, but with the Jobs/Adobe thing, who knows?

Paranoia is starting to influence my thinking, too. If, for whatever reason, I cannot connect via Wi-fi with the iPad, I'd be sunk. In Mongolia. For two weeks. With a netbook, I'd at lease have Ethernet capabilities as a fall-back position.

Here is a comparison I've been working on.

	ASUS Netbook	Sony Vaio X	iPad
Processor	Atom N280 1.66 GHz	Atom Z550 2.0 GHz	Apple A4 1 GHz
Screen size	10.1" 1024x600 Not quite 16:9 (15.3:9)	11.1" 1366x768 16:9	9.7" 1024x768 4:3
Email	Outlook	Outlook	Mail
Skype	Video	Video	Audio
Can upload audio from the Olympus	Yes	Yes	No
OneNote	Yes	Yes	No
Email images	Yes, via HTML (and from OneNote)	Yes, via HTML (and from OneNote)	Via PDF From Notability
Lightroom	1024x600	1366x768	No
SD Card slot	Yes	Yes	Yes Requires Camera Kit Adapter
Hard drive memory	140 GB ATA	128GB SSD	16GB Flash
USB port	3	2	Adapter, limited application
External VGA output	Yes	Yes	No Yes, via Apple iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter
Need to take an external drive for backup?	Yes WD Passport 500 GB	Yes WD Passport 500GB	Nexto M1, 111 GB and another Nexto eXtreme
Wi-fi	Yes	Yes	Yes
Ethernet	Yes	Yes	No
Bluetooth	Yes	Yes	Yes
3G	No	Yes	No
Mouse	Bluetooth	Bluetooth	No
Track pad	Yes	Yes	Touch screen
Battery life	9-10 hrs	2 hrs (small battery) 10 hrs (large battery)	8-9 hrs
Weight	3.14 pounds	1.5 pounds (2 hr battery) 2.4 pounds (10 hr battery)	1.6 pounds 2.4 pounds with keyboard
Thickness	1.25"	.55"	.57"
Dimensions	10.47 x 7.53 x 1.12-1.50	10.95 x 7.29 x 0.55	9.6 x 7.5 x 0.5
Audiobooks, music player, headphone jack, speakers	Yes	Yes	Yes
Pre-Mongolia out-of-pocket expense	$0	$1300	$444

What to take?

I'm headed off to inner-Mongolia for a photo event and some shooting in late December. Last year when I went to China, I took my ASUS netbook and was thoroughly thrilled with it. Reflexively, I added it to my travel list for this upcoming trip, too.

And then I got to thinking. What did I actually do with the netbook and what if instead I were to take the iPad this year? Could I get by with the iPad and cut down on weight even more?

Well, what an interesting train of thought this has turned out to be.

What I actually used the netbook for last year:

• Email and voice email
• Internet stuff
• Skype (video) back home
• Upload camera cards to clear them out for use the next day, which meant . . .
• Lightroom
  • Reviewed images of the day
  • Organized my files into folders
  • Added key words

What I did not use the netbook for last year:

• Ebooks (used the Sony Reader instead)
• Music (used the Sansa Fuze instead)
• Take to breakfast with me so I could read eBooks (used the Sony Reader instead)
• Use it to show anyone LensWork or LensWork Extended (I never had it with me)

Can I do the things on the iPad that I actually did last year with the netbook? Well, . . .

• Email, yes
• Access the Internet, yes
• Voice email, yes
• Skype, yes, but audio only
• Show samples of LensWork and LensWork Extended, yes

In addition, I'll be able to:

• Upload and review images from the day's shooting
• Email review images back home
• Use the iPad as my eReader du jour
• Audiobooks
• Music

Although battery life doesn't compare to my MP3 player or the Kindle, it is comparable to the netbook; the iPad has a more portable form factor than the netbook; it's lighter weight than the netbook. In fact, even adding the Apple blue tooth keyboard, the total is still lighter weight than the netbook.

So that just leaves the primary reason I took the netbook: uploading the images off my camera cards each night in preparation for the next day's shooting. This trip I'll take my Nexto M1 image tank for that purpose. I'll have more to say about this device in later post.

So here's the total weight analysis:

Last year:

• ASUS Netbook
• Carrying case
• AC adapter
• Bluetooth mouse and batteries
• External backup hard drive
• Sony eReader, cover/case

  Total weight: 6.39 pounds

Proposed for this year:

• iPad
• Carrying case
• AC charger plug with USB connection and USB charger cord
• Camera Connection Kit
• Bluetooth keyboard and batteries
• Nexto M1 image tank and USB cable (will charge with the iPad AC plug)

  Total weight: 3.64 pounds

  (Only 2.94 pounds if I leave the keyboard behind and just use the on-screen keyboard.)

So, as surprised as I am, I think the netbook and the Kindle stay home this year. Wow, who'd have thought?

Which has led me to a bunch of research in iPad APPs I'll need . . . which I'll tell you about in my next post.

Increasing our storage capacity

I've been using Network Attached Storage for some time now for all our accumulated LensWork files and my photo file storage. NAS units offer the advantage of low cost, high capacity, networkable, RAID 5 redundancy. We currently have 10 terabytes, but we've been approaching capacity. Time to expand.

Well, prices keep coming down and down. I needed some more space, so I shopped around and found a sale at Amazon.com. A couple years ago, I added 4 terabytes and it cost me $1,800. I'm now adding an additional 4 terabytes to our system for $575, delivered. And these are the fast SATA 7200 rpm discs. That's $0.14 per megabyte gigabyte (damn those zeroes!) — less than a third of what I paid the last time. For even more capacity, an extra $140 will double that to 8 terabytes.

Here are the details:

Netgear NAS no-disc box for $299. This is our third Netgear NV+ NAS and we love them.

By going the no-disc route, you can add discs that are bargain priced. I added these Seagate sale priced discs at just $65 each. I've used these before, so I have confidence in their reliability. You could use others, if you choose to from this list of compatible drives. In my case, using 4x1TB drives nets 2.77TB of useable storage in the RAID 5 configuration. I could have used 4x2TB drives and had 5.4TB of storage, but we can always upgrade to the larger discs down the road if we need to.

By adding four discs to the NAS, the RAID 5 offers redundancy so that any single disc failure does not loose any data. Simply replace the disc and you're good to go. For those of you who need large storage capacity in a data-safe RAID system, these NAS units are simply a joy.

• Hot swap plug and go discs
• Easy Ethernet configuration using browser-based configuration software
• Incredibly reliable
• Massive storage capacity

If you are new to RAID and NAS systems, here is a good explanation of why RAID 5 is such a good choice for data reliability in particular, and here is more background information on the concept of NAS. The Netgear site has some good information, too.