Jeff Blogs

I am not sure how it happened but the amount of photographic equipment and accessories I've accumulated has blossomed like a mushroom cloud. I found myself carrying two or three bags of equipment with me when I went out on a photo shoot. This became cumbersome and frustrating. I decided what I needed was a bag that could hold my gear and keep it protected while I was out in the field. I looked at several before finally deciding on the Tamrac 5587 photo backpack.

I'm a total technology geek. I am always looking for a new toy or tool that will make my life easier or just plain more fun. It doesn't matter what aspect of my life I am talking about; I am always looking for fun new toys. This winter my son was selected to play on an AYSO tournament soccer team. As a former soccer player myself I was enthusiastic at this selection. As a nervous father I tend to pace the sidelines and overanalyze each moment of play. In order to keep my sanity and not get thrown out, my wife suggested that I take my Nikon D300 and D200 cameras and take pictures. She is now regretting that suggestion as I have filled hard drives with pictures and begun to make a list of camera accessories that I "need" in order to get the best possible shot.

Ok I will be the first to admit that when it comes to web development I am definitely old school. I have tried a multitude of code generation tools and every time I do I swear I will never do that again. Web code is equal parts science and art form. The problem is that most of those tools that create the code for you produce such bloated pages that they become nearly unusable. These tools rarely support all of the web standards you would like and in many cases they produce code that will not pass code validity tests. But while I like to write the code myself so that I know exactly what each line does, I don't necessarily like using a plain text editor to manage the task.

It is an inevitable fact that if you have an email account you are going to have SPAM. I have used the same email address for over a decade and as you might can imagine, I am now being inundated with unwanted email messages. I have tried nearly every tool imaginable to try and minimize the number of SPAM messages I have to deal with. This has included white lists, black lists, and several tools and appliances that will stop these messages from being delivered. The problem has been that while some of these solutions have eliminated the SPAM messages they have also deleted some of my messages that weren't SPAM. Even worse some of these have begun to filter out specific users and domains no longer delivering mail from some domains. These domains are not some small or questionable domains but rather some of the bigger and more respected companies on the Internet such as apple.com, mattel.com, or dbacks.com. Obviously this was unacceptable and I needed to make some changes so that I could continue to rely on email as a communications method.

My quest for comparable Macintosh software continues as I prepare for my migration to Macintosh. After finding an appropriate replacement for Better File Rename; I set my sights on finding an alternative to Beyond Compare. This is another one of those utilities that once you have it you wonder how you ever did without it.

Today I am continuing my assault on the Macintosh software list trying to match up software I will need for my upcoming migration from Windows. I've started my list of applications or functions I want to make sure and replicate after the move. Some of the categories were very easy to replicate while others are proving far more difficult than I had anticipated. There was one item on the list I was dreading as I was sure it would be impossible to find.

Yesterday I spoke about my desire to migrate from Windows to a Macintosh. This is not exactly a trivial decision nor is it one that you simply make then run down to the Apple Store with your fresh credit card. While that might work for some people; I just can't do that. No I am a little more meticulous than that. If I were going to make this migration I wanted to make sure that I had all the functionality I had in Windows or hopefully better. Since I have been out of the Macintosh arena for a few years this wasn't simply a matter of upgrading some of my old Mac software. The last time I used a Macintosh was in the pre-OS X days. Things are definitely different now than they were back then so I was going to need to do a lot of research to ensure a successful transition.