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God Shot
The word “God shot” refers to the perfect, devine espresso shot. According to some it is the unreachable utopia, while others claim to be able to pull one or two for every hundred espresso’s they make.
Paolo, the Barista from that espresso bar, pulled me an absolute God shot yesterday.
If you want to know how to create a “God shot” then check out Brandon’s new setup. Mmmmm. Good stuff.
New Espresso Gear Trial Run: Take 1 from Brandon Bohling on Vimeo.
Posted by Mark Wallace 
Posted in: Random Stuff 
No Comments » 
January 2008
I’m A Goat!
I’ve been up in Oregon for the last 2 days. I was at a friends house tonight and was able to see his farm animals (don’t ask). These goat pictures cracked me up.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Travel No Comments » January 2008
Looking out the window
I flew up to Portland, OR this morning. Here’s a shot I took from the window using my trusty iPhone. I plan to head to Powell’s tonight and maybe even do some street photography.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography, Travel, iPhone No Comments » January 2008
MS Pro Photo Shoot
Cool new stuff from Microsoft.
Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is a new software add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook that allows photographers to add details of the client and equipment for a photo shoot appointment in Outlook. This allows photographers to greater leverage the power of Outlook when managing their photography.
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/prophotoshoot.aspx
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography No Comments » January 2008
CSS resources and tutorials for web designers and web developers
I stumbled on this site today. It’s a terrific resource for understanding CSS and standards based web design. And it’s free!!
css.maxdesign.com.au - CSS resources and tutorials for web designers and web developers.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Blogging, Useful Info No Comments » January 2008
iPhone is now Vista 64 bit ready!
Yesterday Apple finally released the 64bit vista version of iTunes. This is huge because I can (finally) sync my iPhone to my main computer. I installed iTunes 7.6 on my Vista Ultimate 64bit machine without a hitch yesterday. I was able to sync my phone (contacts, photos, videos, music) with ease. Way to go Apple.
64 bit Vista compatibility was at the top of my iPhone wish list but there are still a few things I’d like to see:
- Copy and Paste. What the heck Apple?? We’ve had copy/paste for over 20 years, get with the program.
- 3G. Edge is cool, but sloooow.
- More memory.
Some of the groovy things that Apple announced yesterday don’t work so well.
“Walk into Starbucks and buy what’s playing from your laptop, iPod touch, or iPhone.”
Well, I tried that this morning (sorry Brandon, I need my mocha fix). You can only download via iTunes if you have WiFi access. You can only get WiFi access at Starbucks via the T-Mobile Hotspot. That’s just stupid. Come on Starbucks, get with the program. Dump T-Mobile and give us free WiFi!! Paying for WiFi at a coffee shop is so 90’s. I’m guessing Starbucks will drop T-Mobile once McDonalds starts offering free WiFi along with their new coffee lineup.
I also tried to rent a movie via iTunes but couldn’t figure out how to do it. I saw plenty of ways to purchase a movie but saw no “rent” button anywhere in sight. I’m guessing this will be fixed soon. I hope so, I need to rent some good flix for my flight to NY in a couple of weeks.
Update: I just checked and there is now a “rent movie” button next to each movie in iTunes. Cool.
The new maps features are slick too. The “find my location” feature only works about 70% of the time. It’s not very accurate but at least it helps get you in the ball park. It’s something I could have used many times on road trips. A few months ago Diane and I were having a hard time finding our hotel in San Francisco. If we had our iPhones then it would have been a snap.
I’ll be in Portland, OR next week and NY, NY a week after that. I’ll give the map and navigation features a full road test and let you know how it works. I think the map is going to be extremely useful in NY. I’ll give it the ultimate test – a search for a good Mexican restaurant on Manhattan. 
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: iPhone 1 Comment » January 2008
iPhone vs 1D Mark III
Today I challenged my friend Craig to a friendly duel. He had his new 1D Mark III and was telling me that there wasn’t much to shoot. I told him there’s always something to shoot and told him to grab his camera. We walked outside to a dreary drainage area and I proposed the challenge: 5 minutes in the pile of rocks, my iPhone vs. his fancy camera, may the best man win.
The scene of the photo challenge, just a pile of rocks in a parking lot.
As we shot I encouraged Craig to look for pattern (that’s easy in a pile of rocks), unusual point of view, rule of thirds, texture, line, form, etc. Here are my results from worst to best. Remember, these were all shot with an iPhone in about 5 minutes.
My shadow. It’s not very original but I couldn’t resist.
Dried mud. It’s a bit out of focus but I like the texture.
Tree from below. Check out that blue! The iPhone doesn’t have great white balance.
Rule of thirds from a nearby wall.
This is my favorite. Some dead leaves on concrete.
Well there you have it. You can find a photo just about anywhere you look. Now it’s your turn, take the 5 minute challenge. Go out to your parking lot, back yard, park, etc and make some photos. Post the URL to your shots in the comments section. Let’s see what you’ve got!
Click here to see Craig’s shots and read what he had to say.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Photography 2 Comments » January 2008
Bucky Starbrite!!!!
About 10 years ago I worked on a project called Bucky Starbrite. I was hired by a company to produce some short inspirational stories for kids. The theme was stewardship; managing our time, talents, influence, etc. in a way that is wise.
I wanted to create a replica of an old radio show. I came up with the idea of using a hero, sort of like Johnny Quest. The hero would travel and do things with a gang and we’d learn from him along the way. The next thing I did was write up a short script for the first episode. It was about our hero getting help from a kid who gives up a prized possession. I pitched my idea to the company and they gave me the green light.
The next thing I did was hire my good friend Travis Hawkins to write and direct the episodes. Travis took my first script and changed about 90% of it. He was able to fill in the gaps with a cast of characters and plot out all of the episodes. He was watching a lot of Space Ghost Coast to Coast during that time so you’ll no doubt hear the influence.
Travis then hired a few others for voice talent. My good friend Davy Fisher became the voice of Evil Zarkon, another good friend Scott Ross became Bucky Starbrite. We added David Hammond as The Narrator. Ami Ross was the voice of Julie. Travis was the voice of Finster and Doughan and I was Gradoo. We all chipped in and did other voices as well (kids, computer, etc).
We rented a sound studio and laid down all the voice talent first. Once that was finished I spent about a week working with the studio tech, Blake, to edit the vocals and add all the sound effects and music. I found out that there was a problem with the budget and I had to cut out a lot of things that we’d originally planned for the episodes.
One of the big problems with the audio is the fact that Porpy (the P.U.R.P.O.S.E. porpoise) is very underrepresented by the sounds. Travis came in and did a few porpoise sounds but it’s very easy to miss Porpy as a character. I wish I had the time and budget to add all the water splashing and porpoise noises we’d planned.
These episodes were lost in time until a couple of weeks ago. I bought an ION Tape2PC cassette player and transfered them to my PC. These are from some very old tapes so the quality isn’t terrific. But I’m happy that I found them and can share some of the craziness with you.
These are in the order that they were written (I think). “Captured Bucky” is my favorite and “Lazy Bucky” is one that could have been better. Remember, these were created to be silly so don’t be too critical!
- Disco Bucky.mp3 (5291 KB)
- Captured Bucky.mp3 (5807 KB)
- Scatting Bucky.mp3 (5618 KB)
- Dreaming Bucky.mp3 (6253 KB)
- Lazy Bucky.mp3 (5605 KB)
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Humor, Random Stuff No Comments » January 2008
Please Welcome Craig Bolton to the Blogosphere!
My friend Craig Bolton is new member of the blogosphere. We spent a bit of time setting up his site this week. He’s using WordPress so it was a very easy setup. One of the issues that we had when setting up his site was that the RSS feed was not working properly. Craig did some digging around and discovered that his wp-config.php file had extra spaces at the end of the file. He deleted them and everything worked like a charm.
Here’s the breakdown of what how we set things up:
- First Craig had to get a hosting service. I highly recommend WebHost4Life. It’s the host I’ve used for years. Craig signed up and we had him up and running in a few minutes. WebHost4life is just stellar.
- Craig bought his domain name from Network Solutions. I also recommend using them because they have some great domain management features. They are more expensive than other providers but the administrative features are worth it.
- We used the control panel on Network Solutions and WebHost4Life to configure the domain to point to the correct servers. This took about 10 minutes.
- Craig downloaded the WordPress files and then we used the Famous 5 minute Install process to get things set up on WebHost4Life.
- We tested the RSS feeds and found that they weren’t working correctly. Craig found that the wp-config.php file had extra spaces at the end. He used a text editor and deleted the offending spaces and everything started working great.
- Craig got a free account a FeedBurner and then installed the FeedBurner FeedSmith plug-in for WordPress. This is very cool because you can take advantage of all of FeedBurners RSS formatting, statistics and other goodies. It’s all free too!
Craig is now up and running and blogging like a champ. Check out his blog for updates and experiences.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Blogging No Comments » January 2008
Stop WordPress From Changing HTML Tags
If you are a WordPress user you may have noticed that it always “corrects” your HTML code. Generally this isn’t a big deal but any time I try to edit a post that has a YouTube video or other embedded content (the TED videos) WordPress strips out the tags to make the video work. I have to go grab the embed code and paste it all over again. It’s a major pain.
I recently found this thread on the WordPress forums and am now able to edit posts without the problem of WordPress “fixing” my code. You simply have to go to your profile and uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing”. This should fix most of the HTML formatting issues.
Posted by Mark Wallace Posted in: Blogging No Comments » January 2008