Speak Softly And Carry A Big Camera Bag

I'm leaving tonight for Australia on the Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop Adventure 2008: Tasmania! My good friend Mikkel Aaland, author of O'Reilly's Lightroom Adventure is leading another photo expedition; this time it's to Tasmania with a bunch of the world's top photographers for the next edition of his book and he invited me to come. I couldn't resist even though I'm no photo pro. (They're billing me as a "special media guest.") I do apologize to my friends on the mainland - the itinerary is limited to Tassie: A week in Hobart and a week in the wild. Our Qantas flight does stopover for seven hours in Sydney, so thanks to Aussie Mike, we'll do an impromptu meetup at the Starbucks at Terminal 3, Sydney Airport, 11a-1p on Tuesday. (It's a 12-hour flight and we cross the International Date Line so even though I'm leaving Sunday night I won't arrive in Sydney until Tuesday morning!) If there are any fans in Hobart who want to set up a meet up on Thursday or Friday let me know. I'll be doing my radio show from Sea FM/Heart 107.3 Hobart Sunday and Monday morning 4-7a local time (Tasmania is UTC +11 but it'll be live in the States). The following week I won't have access to a studio so we'll air two shows I've recorded ahead of time with all new material. I'm bringing enough gear to equip a multimedia army.

• Canon 5D digital SLR with 24-105mm, 50mm f1.2, 70-200 f4, 180mm Macro, and Lensbaby 3G lenses
• Pentax K20D DSLR (my backup camera, on loan from Pentax) with 50mm Macro and16-200 Zoom lenses
• The new Canon HV30 Vixia Hi-Def Video Camera with wide angle converter and Canon shotgun mic
• HHB FlashMic flash audio recorder
• Marantz PMD-660 flash audio recorder with Shure SM-58 mic (as backup)
• Apple MacBook with 250GB internal and a 160GB external backup drive, equipped with Final Cut Express 4, Amadeus Pro, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Lightroom

All this fits into my Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW backpack (it's huge) but I'm also bringing a Lowepro Slingshot 200 AW to carry into the field. And a change of underwear. Thank goodness I'm not going by ship. I think I'd sink it. There's a reason for all this gear. I'll be blogging the whole time I'm Down Under, including photos (on Smugmug and Flickr), audio (here), and video (on Smugmug and Viddler) so watch this space. Many of the other photographers will be blogging as well on the O'Reilly blog site.

Rain City Roundup

I'm in rainy Vancouver this week working on 15 new episodes of The Lab with Leo - these are the last episodes of 2007 but I'll be back at the end of January for another round. We've had some great shows so far, including visits from Frank Linhares of Digitalunderground.TV (who proved to me that 9-volt batteries just contain six AA batteries), social media guru, Stowe Boyd, Blogher founder, Elisa Camahort Page, and my old friends Steve Gibson, Alex Lindsay, Mr. Excel, and Ray Maxwell, who gave me yet another reason to spend money. Ray showed me his Canon HV20 with a wide-angle lens and shotgun-mic (there's a shoe on top), and once again I impulsively ordered an HG10 (the hard drive based version) for the trip to Egypt. The Panasonic SD5 I was planning to bring has two big negatives: you can't really shoot close-up or big objects because even at its widest it's a little telephoto and there are no wide-angle adapters available for it, and there's no external mic jack. The adapter and the mic have arrived, but the camera is backordered and might not make it before we leave for Boston on Monday. Drat. Getting back to the show, Cali Lewis even did two gadget segments via Skype - I'd prefer to get her here in person but travel budgets are tight and Skype works pretty well. I even got my muscle tension read via remote control using Skype and GoToMeeting. Tomorrow, Kristin Sanford is going to make oobleck and nitrogen ice cream. I can't wait to find out what oobleck is. Meanwhile I'm stuck in the hotel room with a bunch of spreadsheets trying to work out the TWiT payroll before the end of the tax year and wishing I could take some time to add dropdown menus to my blog. I've got the Son of Suckerfish code and Steve Gibson's all-CSS variant, but I really should be doing the books. Ah screw it, why think about money when you can hack code?

Still Amazingly Useful

Thanks to Ben Freedman of Neo-Fight.tv for sending this along (he's the guy on camera, by the way).

RIM Throws A Curve

I've been setting up my new Blackberry Curve 8320 and it provides a striking contrast to the iPhone, both positive and negative. The 8320 is a lot more complicated and harder to setup, but then it's much more functional. It supports third-party applications but so far I've only felt a need for two, Bee Jive - a multi-client IM program, and Google maps, both recommended by Dan Hendricks. It comes with a nice range of programs including a password vault, very capable voice dialing, it's own mapping program designed for use with a third-party GPS unit, and a Breakout game. There's an ok browser that's not as good as Safari and a media player also not as good as the iPod but with limited storage you're not going to be using this as a music player. Blackberry is a phone first, email and messaging device second, and media player/browser a distant third. It doesn't have a touch interface but the pearl trackball works nearly as well with Google Maps, and the physical keyboard is lightyears easier to use, and more accurate, than the on-screen keyboard. I do greatly miss the classic Blackberry thumbwheel. The pearl just feels cheesy and seems less practical even though it does give you a broader range of motion. The two-megapixel camera is not much better than the iPhone's although it does seem to offer better white balance and optics. It's too slow to use for anything but the occasional snapshot. Of most interest in the 8230 is Wi-Fi support. The phone comes out of the box with integrated VOiP (!) and will use the Wi-Fi for calls in lieu of the T-Mobile network when it's available. This is exactly the kind of thing AT&T must most have dreaded on the iPhone, but T-Mobile encourages it. Talk about different world views. The 8320 out-of-the-box experience is nothing near as slick as the iPhone's. If I hadn't had a lot of experience with Blackberries I'd be lost. It's pretty obviously intended for an IT department to set up. As it is I'm having trouble configuring email. T-Mobile doesn't seem to know I have a Blackberry and hasn't sent the needed software down. Beside the usual Blackberry corporate support, the phone also works with Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and other POP systems. It appears to poll these systems periodically for mail. Bottom line: The 8320 is a complicated device and there's a steep learning curve. It's not as beautiful as the iPhone, or as functional as a browser and media player, but it's many times more useful for email and messaging. I've always loved Blackberries, and the 8320 is the most elegant Blackberry yet.

Not Dead Yet

People seem to have misinterpreted my "dead cow" analogy and are assuming that I bricked my iPhone. Nope. I have both the original iPhone, upgraded to 1.1.1, and the unlocked iPhone still and forever at 1.0.2. I'm donating the latter to The Lab for further experimentation. I'll keep the locked phone around so I can continue to cover the platform, which was the reason I bought it in the first place. It's not for myself that I am whining, or even others I know whose phone were bricked. My point is that it's punitive for Apple to intentionally damage unlocked iPhones, and I believe that's wrong. To those who say we can't know Apple's intention, I'd respond that it would have been a simple bit of coding to checksum the modem firmware and refuse to update if it had been modified. In fact, that would have been a prudent precaution no matter what. By choosing not to do so Apple is making its intent clear, and absent any statement to the contrary from Cupertino I'm going to continue to think Apple wishes unlockers ill, no matter what Fake Steve Jobs says. To prove I still have a working iPhone, here are two pictures from my hotel window in Vancouver. One with the iPhone and one with the Nokia N95. You tell me which you prefer.

Nokia

Apple

Oh, and incidentally on the Nokia and the unlocked iPhone uploading these images in full quality to Flickr takes one click using third party apps (ShoZu on the N95 and Send Picture on the iPhone). On the locked iPhone I had to dock to my Mac, import the photo into iPhoto, export it, and then upload to Flickr. That's one of the reasons I want to be able add third-party apps to my mobile phones. Now I'm going to run to the Fatburger next door and have a veggie burger. No more dead cows for me. Good night.