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Even the Batman requires some respite every now and again…

via Geekologie

After submitting my certified identification information, Apple yesterday finally permitted activation of my iPhone developer account.

We are following up with you regarding your recent iPhone Developer Program purchase.
Your order information did not sufficiently match your enrollment information and as a result the ability to activate your Program was placed on a temporary hold. We have reviewed the issue and have removed the hold on your Program activation. At this time, we ask that you please refer to the original activation code email that you received and click through the link once again.

What information didn’t match up, I have no clue as I provided everything that was requested. USD 99 down and it’s done. Now, to get the latest SDK which runs about 800MB as a download…

I’ve been watching a number of DVD’s related to photography and the EOS 5D Mark II. Most of the titles I have purchased so far are published by Blue Crane and are of a very high quality with regard to content and instruction. As the 5D Mark II is suited to high definition video capture, I recently ordered the title Learn 5D Mark II Cinematography with Philip Bloom. Bloom is an accomplished cinematographer who has recently switched to the EOS 5D Mark II for commercial work. Like Vincent Laforet, he is trying the camera out quite extensively to determine how best to capture the content he is after.

The title is rather interesting and worth a look if any kind of digital video capture using a DSLR is of interest to you.

That said, the Canon 5D Mark II seems to be an almost incidental actor in the multi-chapter DVD Bloom presents. My assumption that the presentation would focus at least in part on some of the mechanical aspects of how to capture video using the camera was wrong: other than showing the most basic technique of how to enable video capture on the 5D Mark II, Bloom spends very little further time discussing the actual mechanics of how to interact with the camera. Important topics that include how to focus are almost completely left out and never discussed in any great detail. Though one could argue that these topics can easily be found in the camera’s manual, the title of the DVD suggests that these aspects would be covered. As a comparison, the free-to-view video by Tyler Ginter goes into a lot more depth with regard to the technical aspects of how to use the camera to capture video, including what to look out for when focussing and re-composing.

The main title runs for about one hour and comprises 24 chapters. An extra 17 minutes of workflow-related content is also provided on the DVD.

That’s not to say that Bloom’s DVD is of no use. There are plenty of tips and tricks provided that are highly useful. A great explanation and practical example of the rolling shutter issue plaguing CMOS sensors and how to avoid issues with banding caused by electrical lighting are included. Audio synchronization and capture using external audio devices instead of the camera’s inadequate microphone is another example of valuable content. The extra section on workflow regarding the editing of video on a computer is somewhat confusing, consisting of screenshots with too much clicking without sufficient information on why certain selections are being made. Probably a no-brainer for video-savvy users, but not so for the novice.

One last comment: the inclusion of Bloom’s company logo on every frame and every free space surrounding him is unnecessary. Having purchased the DVD and being an avid reader of his blog, I’m aware of his company and accomplishments.

That’s something one would never see on a Blue Crane title, for example.

In many ways, the DVD misses its mark, specifically because it seems to promise more than it delivers. There is no way anyone will learn cinematography with the 5D Mark II after watching this DVD. Instead, certain concepts may make more sense and certain explanations will assist with further understanding and self-study. The omission of actual camera handling techniques is serious, though plenty of other information is provided that is useful to the aspiring 5D Mark II cinematographer. I suggest the DVD to anyone who has an interest in DLSR video capture. The content is specific to the 5D Mark II only in the sense that Bloom uses that camera as a capturing device.

Whilst Apple’s products are amongst the best-designed and most stylish in the world, that company’s interaction with its developer community is rather archaic and worthy of being called dictatorial. The process I followed to be registered as an iPhone developer started innocuously enough: log on to the developer website and start entering details. But whilst every other process of purchasing goods on the Internet permits immediate purchase by credit card, the Apple iPhone developer program stops its web workflow and requires a form to be printed out, signed and faxed to developer central. I am generally not interested in faxing anything and I initially attempted to mail a scanned copy of the completed form to Apple. No response. So, I went the way of the 1980’s and reticently faxed them the piece of paper.

A fast turnaround time, to be fair. I had a confirmation of my enrollment within a few hours, but attempting to activate my paid-for membership resulted in another disappointment: a request for identity verification, no less!

Once again, I need to print out a form and complete it. Attach a certified copy of a passport or similar identification document and then fax it off to Apple. It’s as though I’m trying to gain access to CERN’s LHC complex instead of wanting to potter around developing an iPhone application or trying to see what options there are for iPad development. Requesting identity verification for a developer program is a joke, specifically if my payment has already been completed and accepted. Why not request identity verification together with the payment if that’s so important? The fact that the enrollment procedure doesn’t take place completely electronically is an inconvenience. The fact that Apple requires identity verification for the download and use of an SDK to support their products is an absolute disgrace!

Whenever I install all my collection of favourite software on a Mac, I have the same  conundrum to solve: connecting an iPhone results in the following notification:

Regardless how often I’ve managed to find out what is happening, I seem never to remember for too long… The issue with CameraWindow appearing has to do with the installation of the Canon EOS Digital Solutions software. That CD contains EOS Utility and Digital Photo Professional, amongst others. Since certain cameras don’t trigger the automatic launch of iPhoto or similar software on the host machine, Canon provides this utility to assist. Unfortunately, the software is installed without question and is not immediately easy to disable. Instead of living in the System Preferences, CameraWindow can be disabled only once iPhoto has been launched and its preferences examined.

Selecting a different action to occur when a camera is connected gets rid of the annoying CameraWindow notification. Now I remember. Again…

The replacement for the two-year old Asus G2S has arrived.

Though there’s little doubt that Apple will announce the new i7 MacBook Pro lineup soon, the current generation machine is nothing to sniff at. Great performance and a sleek design. Best of all, decent screen resolution!

In my move to make a Mac my permanent computing solution, I am busy investigating various solutions and applications I’ll need to be free of Windows. No native port of the SAPGUI exists for Mac OS X, making access to SAP systems potentially problematic. Instead, the Java version needs to be used and this has been updated by SAP about one month ago. The 720 release of the PlatinGUI for Mac OS X can be found on SAP’s ftp server. In comparison to the Windows native software package requiring at least 500MB of storage space, the PlatinGUI package is exceptionally light, requiring only the download of a single 32MB file.

There are a few base requirements that need to be satisfied before attempting the installation. A Core 2 Duo processor and 1GB of RAM is required in the target machine. From a software perspective, either Mac OS X 10.5.7 or 10.6 has to be loaded and an updated Java SE. Below Mac OS X 10.5.7, Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 is required, whilst the Java SE 6 is already present in Mac OS X 10.6. The installation was rather uneventful, creating a program icon in the Applications folder. I find the creation of new connections to be simplest under the Advanced tab with the Expert mode enabled.

Create a direct connection to the SAP system using the connection string

conn=/H/<IP Address>/S/32<Port>

The Java GUI supports almost all functions provided by the native applications. There may be one or two complex, modern transactions that may be hamstrung, but in the technical area, everything I require works without a hitch.

No trouble getting to SAP from the Apple…

Apple today released the latest version of their photo management application, Aperture. Aperture 3 closes the gap that made many users, myself included, very keen to move to Adobe Lightroom. With the new release, Apple has crammed over 200 enhancements and features into the existing product. Most significantly, face recognition is now built-in, working in a similar fashion to the same feature in iPhoto. Geotagging of photos is also supported, as is digital video importing directly from capable DSLR’s.

By far the most important technical reason to upgrade is the fact that Aperture 3 is a native 64-bit application. A huge number of photo adjustment options are available in the application, too. Taking a hint from Lightroom 3, the new Aperture integrates very nicely with photo sharing sites like Flickr.

As with all technology, a recent purchase of a modern DSLR is likely to result in quick disappointment as a newer model is announced, in increasingly shorter timeframes. To update the 350D, I bought a Canon EOS 500D in December. It’s an excellent camera with some fantastic features for the price. Yesterday, Canon announced the imminent arrival of the 500D’s successor, the Canon EOS 550D. That camera is also known by its other moniker, the T2i.

The obvious focus of the new 550D is video capture, something the 500D already handled with aplomb. The camera is capable of 3.7 fps and an ISO range of 100-6400, expandable to an unusable 12800. Borrowing from its bigger EOS brothers, there’s a 63-zone metering system and 18MP image sensor backed by the DIGIC 4 Imaging Processor. Full 1080p HD video capture is possible, backed up by an interesting new feature for standard definition video recording: Movie Crop is capable of providing an almost 7x zoom into the field of view without any loss in image quality. Movie Crop is similar to the older digital zoom function found on cameras, though the difference is in the way the image is processed, being cropped and captured directly from the imaging sensor instead of a magnification of individual picture elements.

The Canon EOS 550D should be in stores in the USA within the next two months or so, costing about the same as the EOS 500D. More information can be found here.

I wasn’t an early adopter of the new Apple Magic Mouse. Overall, the Mighty Mouse with its single trackball in its wired and wireless variations has served me well. Though there is a lot of criticism leveled at that peripheral, I was quite comfortable using it and was even adept at left and right clicking at will. I found the shape quite comfortable and something that accentuated the experience of working with a Mac. Since my current black MacBook doesn’t have a multi-touch trackpad, I grabbed a Magic Mouse on a recent flyby of the local Apple store.

The Magic Mouse is sleek and attractive. Boxed in a clear perspex container, it exudes the charm a gadget costing more than ZAR 800 should. There are no unsightly wires and absolutely no button or trackpad to be seen. The smooth, curved surface contains a discreet Apple logo. The mouse is satisfyingly weighty and slides quite nicely on a smooth surface.

Setup on the MacBook running Snow Leopard was extremely simple: unpack the mouse, switch it on (batteries are already installed) and let the Bluetooth stacks communicate.

I was a bit apprehensive about the use of the touch interface on the mouse. Within minutes, I was scrolling easily through documents in Pages and web sites in Firefox. It’s an incredibly intuitive way of working. A brief stop in the Mouse preferences pane to change the function of the secondary button is the usual configuration change I make for every Apple mouse.

Moving the index finger across the length of the mouse enables scrolling top to bottom. Left to right scrolling is achieved by moving the index finger along the width of the mouse. A nice feature is the ability to zoom into the screen by pressing the ctrl key and scrolling upward. A sideways two-finger swipe assists scrolling through iPhoto libraries, for example. When not in use, the mouse powers down to help conserve the batteries – hopefully, these won’t need replacing too often.

The Magic Mouse enables an intuitive interaction with the Mac. I took to it without a minute’s hesitation and already find myself trying to scroll without using the scroll wheel on the G2S‘ Logitech mouse. Most certainly pricey, but an absolute joy to use. I’ll have to think about replacing the iMac’s mouse next…