Puffin

Puffin, originally uploaded by glenelg.net.

This was one of the most popular photos on my old site. It's about time I got it back up. Taken in June 2003 at Sumburgh Head in the Shetlands.

Pixmantec assets bought by Adobe

As a keen user of Pixmantec Rawshooter Professional, I can't help but feel disappointed to read the following announcement. Rawshooter is a fine, reasonably priced product and excellent competition for the expensive Adobe offerings.

However, kudos to Pixmantec, this is vindication that your algorithms were better than Adobe's. Good enough for them to buy and use in their own products. Praise indeed.

Also, kudos to everyone who saw that there was another path and chose to use Rawshooter Essentials and Rawshooter Professional during their short lifetimes.

Press Release

Adobe Acquires Technology Assets of Pixmantec ApS

SAN JOSE, Calif. — June 26, 2006 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced it has acquired the technology assets of Pixmantec ApS, makers of digital imaging software that provides advanced workflow management and processing capabilities for digital camera raw files. The acquisition strengthens Adobe's leadership position in raw processing.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

"With high quality digital cameras now within reach of every photographer, customers are gravitating to raw file formats that allow them to get more control over final results," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. "By combining Pixmantec's raw processing technology and expertise with our own, we're continuing to deliver on the promise that even your existing raw files can be processed with increasing quality as our software technology evolves."

Pixmantec is a privately held company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark and currently ships the RawShooter® line of digital photography software products. Adobe plans to integrate Pixmantec raw processing technologies into Lightroom™ and wherever customers will be working with raw files.

In preparation for this integration, the Pixmantec RawShooter Premium product is being discontinued, though the free RawShooter Essentials product will continue to be available until the Lightroom public beta program is completed. Existing Pixmantec customers will continue to be supported by Adobe and will be provided with an upgrade path to the Adobe digital imaging product family.

Adobe believes this acquisition will not have a material financial impact on the company.

technorati tags:adobe, pixmantec, lightroom, photoshop, elements, rawshooter, photography, photo, raw, essentials, professional, DNG, processing, press, release

Who needs Google Reader?

I'm a self confessed Google addict waiting with baited breath for every new beta, checking labs weekly for interesting new stuff. However, there is one Google feature that I just don't get. Gmail Web Clips. I'm afraid that silly ticker just can't cope with the number of feeds that I scan everyday. I think Google really needed to integrate the Reader interface with GMail to do RSS properly.

I used Google Reader for a while, and I grew to like some of it's features, especially the keyboard shortcuts. So, in the absence of Google integrating it with GMail, I decided to see what I could do myself, with existing technology.

It turned out to be extremely simple. The first thing you need is an RSS to EMAIL service. I opted for RssFwd based on the fact that I liked the simple layout of its e-mails. You could just as easily use another service.

Next, you need to set up a few filters in GMail. The first one, captures everything from rssfwd.com and labels it 'Feeds'. The others that I have, narrow the search to specific feeds giving then more meaningful labels, e.g. 'Lifehacker' or 'Flickr'. All these filters are also set to by pass the inbox.

When I have the time, I scan through everything in the 'Feeds' label, using 'J' and 'K' for next and previous message. If time is at a premium, then I can select the label for the more important feeds and scan them in the same fashion. If any article interests me, I star it with 'S' for future reference.

So, the result is that all my RSS feeds are neatly integrated with GMail and, best of all, I can still use the same keyboard shortcuts to scan through them that I would have used in Google Reader and, in my opinion, I have a slightly better user interface and one less website that I have to access every day.

technorati tags:gmail, google, reader, rss, lifehacker, simplify, integrate, rssfwd, filters, flickr, feeds

Why the text in a photo blog?

What's all this text doing appearing in a photo blog? 

Well I've become a bit of an RSS junkie of late devouring feeds from the likes of Lifehacker, Lifehacks and BoingBoing.

While I can comment on some of those on the parent sites, I've got ideas of my own that I'd like to contribute.  The best way to do that is to publish them here.  Maybe somebody will actually notice and read them. :o)

technorati tags:blog, text, photo, lifehacker, lifehack, boingboing

The Kiss

The Kiss, originally uploaded by glenelg.net.

I saw this a couple of years ago when I spent a weekend in Brussels.

Homebrew Desktop Airconditioning

This an idea that has been 'circulating' in my mind for a few days now. Basically every time I have to sit in the hot stuffy box that is my office.

I'm looking on my desk and I see the following:

• A spare PC case fan
• An empty 100 CD spindle and plastic cover
  
• Numerous unused USB cables

The case fan looks as if it would fit the end of the spindle perfectly.

So, my question is, how can I hack all these together to make USB powered desktop (or under desk) AC.

I can sort out the fan, spindle and USB but what should I use for a heat exchanger? I have a few old CPU heatsinks available but I'm not sure if they could be used.

Any ideas? Comments and suggestions welcome.

technorati tags:homebrew, air-conditioning, usb, desktop

London Panorama

London Panorama, originally uploaded by glenelg.net.

A panorama of London taken from the London Eye and made of three separate shots stitched together.