Saturday, January 07, 2006

The Photoshop CS2 Book I actually have been trying a variety of digital photo-editing tools for my pictures, including Microsoft's Digital Suite 2006. But since I eventually want to get some professional-quality prints done, large enough to hang on my walls, I coughed up the money to buy a copy of Photoshop CS2. As most people know, this program is immensely powerful, and nearly indecipherable. Since my free time tends to come at weird hours, taking a class is not really an option, so I've been trying to find good books on Photoshop to help me along. One I picked up is The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. First of all, kelby is a smart-ass, and his sense of humor might not match yours; I certainly didn't think it translated well into print. Lots of little side comments to try to keep things light-hearted, and I found it a bit grating. This is not a book to help you make sense of PhotoShop; instead, it's a cookbook. It's more of a cookbook, with specific recipes on how to do very specific things. They are all very useful things, and some absolutely necessary. And Kelby gives very clear, easy to follow instructions on how to do them. If that's what you need, fine. But it won't help you to build a mental model of Photoshop, or to make any real sense of the "workflow" for how to use the product to get the pictures you want. This book will be a very handy reference for me as the definitive guide for how to solve specific picture problems; but I'm still on the hunt for good books on actually learning Photoshop. Recommendations welcome. 10:34:05 PM    comment []

Mastering Digital SLR Photography Another good book I read, and will continue to re-read in pieces, is Mastering Digital SLR Photography by David Busch. Since picking up a Canon EOS 20D digital SLR camera in September, I've returned to my shutterbug roots. I had a Canon AE-1 35mm SLR when I was in high school, a very long time ago, and loved it. Since then I've been a point-n-shoot kind of guy. But having a real camera, with interchangeable lenses, just rocks. It feels good in your hands, and with the 20D you can control everything, nothing, or lots of levels in between. This book was a really good refresher in a lot of the basics of speed, aperture, focus, depth of field, etc. It says up-front that it's NOT a Photoshop book, and it isn't; it's about how to use the camera to get the shot right in the first place, and not how to touch it up later. Of course, that isn't an either-or thing; you want to get the shot as close to right when you shoot it, but then digital photo editing tools can not only fix mistakes but also add all sorts of cool effects. (more on that some other day) This is a really, really good book. I've found it super helpful. Even if you're just using a digital point-n-shoot, I'd recommend this book as you will learn a lot and improve your picture-taking ability. But for someone with a digital SLR, it's almost indispensable as a how-to and a reference. 10:24:18 PM    comment []

Freakonomics One book I did manage to read over the holidays was Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Levitt is a practical economist -- he likes to dig into data, and apply statistical tools to understand the underlying drivers behind larger patterns we see in society. And he relates them back to economics by presenting them as insights into the "incentive systems" which in the end are really the things that drive behaviors. It's an interesting and thought-provoking read. His mantra in the book is "if morality is how we want the world to work, economics is how it really does work." This keeps coming up as he discusses socioeconomic disparities between classes, parenting, the drop in crime, the real effect of legalizing abortion, and many other topics. It's not worthy of the title; this isn't some new grand theory of economics, and in fact most of what he does and discusses has more to do simply with statistics than with economics (since statistical analysis is a core tool of economists). But it's refreshing to read discussions of important social topics that use real data, rather than simply talking in vague terms or hurling mud at the right or the left. 10:16:53 PM    comment []

Google's CES Keynote I wish I could have seen Larry Page's keynote at CES, instead of just reading about it. I'm a big Robin Williams fan :-) Seriously, though, is anyone going to ask the hard questions about their two announcements? First, the Google Pack non-announcement: they're making a bunch of free downloadable software, well, um, more free and downloadable? And if Eric Schmidt and Scott McNealy are such good lava-lamp-swapping buddies who signed a partnership deal, why is Sun so conspicuously absent from Google Pack? And who do you call for tech support if something goes wrong? And where is the Mac support? And the screen saver that shows... pictures? Isn't there one of those in Windows already? At least the MSN screen saver (free download) will also show you news, weather, and RSS feeds. And why is there no privacy policy for the screen saver -- is that just a dumb mistake or does the screen saver phone home to Google with some information about my pictures or activity on my machine? Second, the video service, which admittedly sounds cool on the surface, until they threw in the thing about using their own proprietary DRM, which means it won't work with iPods or Portable Media Centers (or any other device in existence other than PC's as near as I can tell), or for that matter with the RealPlayer which they just announced is included in their spiffy cool Google Pack... Was this really the best that they could do? 10:07:34 PM    comment []

Socialist Latin America In case you haven't been following these things, Bolivia just elected a new president, Evo Morales, a Socialist and former coca farmer who is vocally anti-American. This in essence creates a new "axis of evil" in Latin America with Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Fidel Castro (Cuba). The three of them are becoming fast friends. It's no secret that Chavez is siphoning off profits from the state-owned Venezuelan oil industry and using them to prop up socialist movements and buy influence throughout Latin America and the Cuban government in particular. Chavez is particularly scary because he has control over so much money from the oil business. The Economist has had a couple of good articles on chavez lately; here's one on Chavez and one on the elections in general. (sorry it's pay-to-view). Here's a thought exercise: suppose Chavez decided to arm? With the money he has, he could certainly aquire nuclear weapons -- an easier than either Iran or North Korea. And then send them to Cuba. Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0? Another thought exercise: Castro is 79 now. He can't live forever. What happens when he dies, if Chavez has his tentacles that far into Cuba? Now imagine if in the last five years we'd softened our strict embargo against Cuba, so that we had some actual influence there. 9:40:39 PM    comment []

Censorship There have been a number of articles published in the last week alleging that Microsoft censored the blog (hosted on a Chinese MSN property, in China) of a Chinese dissident at the request of the government there. First of all, I should say that I have no inside details whatsoever about this. The only things I know about this case are what I've read in the press. Most of the blog commentary on the incident have followed along the lines of Dan Gillmor's which blindly ignore the realities of free speech around the globe. We here in the United States assume nearly unlimited free speech to be a basic human right. However, most of the world does not have the same free-speech guarantees that the US has. That includes many nations with strong democratic systems of government, such as the UK and Germany -- who have chosen through their own elected lawmakers to pen laws that limit what people can say. Even here in the States speech isn't completely free; there are laws against giving out classified information, against libel, and against obscenity and child pornography, to give some examples. Every single country on the planet picks some set of things and makes it illegal to discuss them in public. Now Microsoft (this time it's Microsoft, but all the big companies take turns) is being criticized for following the laws of the nation of China. On that point, I completely and utterly disagree; there is no room for companies to decide which set of laws they will follow and which they won't. That's how you get Enron. You can't be a fan of the antitrust case against MS in the '90s, and then pillory the company today for obeying the law in China. And you can't seriously argue that companies should be performing acts of civil disobedience -- particularly in countries like China, where employees of a company can be imprisoned for the policies and acts of the corporation. (actually, that's true here now too, for financial malfeasance). Microsoft, and every other company, only have two choices: do business in a country and obey its laws, or don't do business there. It's the same situation as with South Africa during apartheid; engage and try to influence change from within, or shun them. But while South Africa was a small, geographically isolated and economically limited country, China is huge and powerful and essentially impossible to isolate. There's only one real option: engage and influence. But let's go back to the earlier point: the laws protecting speech vary widely around the globe. One could make the argument that Microsoft, and the US, pressing its particular interpretation of free speech upon the rest of the world is another form of American imperialism. Who the hell are we to say that we have it right and they don't? You could certainly make an argument that in China the one-party system and the lack of rule of law limit the legitimacy of the government that wrote those laws, but as I said before there are plenty of self-governing nations that have more restrictive laws on free speech than we do -- by their own choice. All this boils down to: free speech is very complicated, and be very careful in what you ask companies to do. 9:21:06 PM    comment []

Creative Commons An interesting note from Larry Lessig: Microsoft donated a hefty chunk of money to Creative Commons (the organization) to help them reach their fundraising goal and help reinforce their legitimacy as an organization. A lot of people misunderstand Microsoft's view on intellectual property, and think that the company just wants everything to be proprietary. That's absolutely not true. Having an intellectual commons is a strength of our culture, and Microsoft actually contributes to it (and I work in the division that probably contributes more than any other division). But the company believes that authors should have the ability to control the terms in which their creations are distributed and used, subject of course to fair use. An author can decide to contribute something to the public domain, or to retain copyright but license it for free, or to charge for certain (or all) uses. As that principle applies to "open source" Microsoft is generally against licenses like the GPL which mask themselves in propoganda that make it sound like they are free and open, when in fact they pass on a heavy burden to licensees and in that way restrict choices more than they create them. If your spoken intent is to give something away, you should just give it away, without any catches. The Creative Commons licenses iare a great thing because it makes it very easy for content creators to know how to release something that they want broadly available. They do have a "share alike" version which in a sense is viral like the GPL, but the great thing about CC is that they are trying to provide a whole menu of choices (including "freely available" with or without attribution, as well as "no derivatives") so that authors can make informed choices. I'm kinda disappointed by a lot of the comments at the end of Lessig's blog entry though. There are a lot of facets to this, and it isn't something that you can really boil down to "us vs. them." We do everyone a disservice by taking that narrow an attitude. 8:52:59 PM    comment []

I'm Back I'm back now. -- or at least back blogging; I've been back in the Seattle area for a week now. Took a bunch of time off around the holidays, and spent some of it in Friday Harbor and some in San Diego with my daughters. I didn't do as much reading as I thought I would do. I did manage to take a bunch of pictures with my Canon EOS 20D SLR, which I've had since September and I'm getting better with all the time. Although I did manage to get the sensor dirty, so it's currently on its way to the Canon service center in Irvine for cleaning. I do have a bit of a backlog on stuff I want to blog about, so expect lots of bits and pieces over the next few days. 8:34:20 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2006 Kevin Schofield. Last update: 2/1/2006; 11:05:09 PM.