It never ends. Now folks are spoofing the HTTP “referer” field so that links to their sites show up in log reports. Here’s an example from my log report…

A fella could get tired of dealing with this after a while.

I’ve been using MarsEdit 1.0 for posting here recently, but my demo just expired. It’s worth the $24.99 but before shelling out the cash I thought I’d give Ecto a shot. Nothing to report yet as this is my first post, silly.

I was lamenting the fact that I missed being able to middle-click a link in Firefox on OS X and have the link open in a new background tab. You know, like it did on my Windows box. Dan overheard this and told me about customizing the button behaviour using the Microsoft (yes, Microsoft) mouse control panel. Sure enough, I added the Firefox.app and assigned the middle button to Cmd-Option-Click. All better now, thank you.

In order to give my new scanner yet another test, I grabbed a random slide from the pile I’d scanned some time ago. This one happened to be of my dad in France during his Navy tour in something like 1961. I posted a side-by-side on Flickr, but here are a couple of crops demonstrating the difference in scans between the Nikon Coolscan V with Digital ICE and the Minolta Scan Duel III without. It’s pretty dramatic.

My GTD implementation wouldn’t be complete without something to capture all those little to-do items on. I was trying to use a mini Moleskine for that but the thing is just so nice that I can’t stand the thought of writing “throwaway” stuff in there. And there’s no way I’m tearing any of the pages out. My solution to this was to use a scaled back version of the Hipster PDA by slipping a dozen or so 3×5 index cards under the elastic band. This way I can jot down a quick note or reminder on the top card and slip it in the back of the Moleskine for retrieval later. The upside is that the pages of the Moleskine are then still available for “important” and more permanent things, like… uh…, well I’m sure I’ll think of something. Mine looks like this…

That is indeed a Fisher Space Pen there on top of it.

One of the few complaints I have with OS X is that it seems to deliberately thwart the use of the keyboard for anything other than text entry. What I didn’t know was that there’s a little checkbox in System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts that says “Turn on full keyboard access”…

This, although still not quite there, is a huge improvement.

After becoming completely disgruntled with the process of scanning my film negatives, I decided to do something about it before I went and did something crazy like sell my Leica and stick completely to digital capture.

Many hours of research later, I picked up a new Nikon Coolscan V. Oh man, what an improvement from my Minolta Scan Duel III! Here’s why…

• 4000dpi very clean and sharp scans in about one third the time of my old 2400dpi scanner

• No clumsy film holder - just slide the negative in and off you go

• Digital ICE

• One more time - Digital ICE

I used to spend hours scanning, then spotting each frame in Photoshop. With this latest version of ICE, dust and scratches just magically go away, with only the tiniest hint of softness as a penalty. I’ve been rescanning all sorts of old negatives and it’s quite simply a whole new animal. There’s so much to learn, but at least this makes the curve infinitely more enjoyable.

The Leica forum on Photo.net is a hoot. Although there are a number of retired dentist equipment fondlers who bore me to tears, there are also quite a few fun, smart and generally helpful people.

Today there was a discussion about why the glass used to make Leica lenses is (it is said) superior to most others. One response stated, in all seriousness, that it was “Special glass made with rare earths from the Carpathian Mountains.” Another post chimed in and claimed that it couldn’t be, since “…rare earth elements are often radioactive.”

Then, almost immediately, this…

“FYI this statement is basically wrong. There is one naturally occuring isotope of lanthanum (La-138) that has a 110 billion year half-life which makes it essentially not radioactive for all but the most sensitive physics experiments. Its half-life is 100x longer than potassium-40, which we ingest in large amounts whenever we eat sources of food rich in potassium such as bananas. I have personally measured radioactivity in bananas and it is detectable.

Radioactive lenses contain thorium which is an actinide, not a rare earth (defined as lanthanides + scandium & yttrium). Thorium decays in a long cascade before reaching a stable isotope of lead. This chain results in a multitude of radioactive emissions including energetic gamma rays.”

Did you catch that? “I have personally measured radioactivity in bananas and it is detectable.”

How can a fella not want to read every single thread, when there are people like that about?

It had to happen sooner or later - trackback spam. I’ve had to disable trackbacks since there’s no good defense that I’m aware of for this nonsense.

Someone could’ve told me. A new season of The Family Guy is in production and is likely to air this year. Freakin’ Sweet!