Jamie’s Weblog

Or: how to do in 2.5hrs and €20 what a 10 year-old Indonesian child could do in 20mins for €0.50 — but you get a much greater sense of satisfaction and a lot less exploitation.

My new camera bag has quite generous-sized compartments which I’d occasionally like to double up to hold two smaller lens. To prevent the lenses knocking against each other, it’s prudent to have at least one wrapped in a cloth. Now, I could easily buy a lens wrap but my go-to places for cheap goods (eBay) or handmade items (Etsy) failed me. So I decided I could make my own with a bit of effort and some long-forgotten sewing skills.

I found a nice soft fleece material to line the inner, and a tougher cotton material with a cute bird motif for the outer (Vibes & Scribes in Cork is a treasure-trove of crafty goodness). I also found a thin sheet of foam material to provide a bit more cushioning. Ideally the fleece material would have been a microfibre to prevent fibres from getting on to the lenses etc but I’ll give this a shot.

So, here’s the brief steps:

Materials: patterned cotton, yellow fleece, foam filling, paper for patterns and adhesive velcro squares

First hurdle: threading the bobbin

Trying out the stitches and seeing if I can manage a straight line (err... not quite)

Cut out a "pattern". In this case, a 30x30cm square

Cut out the inner and outer material using the paper pattern

Tack the pieces together with the pattern facing inwards

Sew three sides of the square together and cut the corners off (I always tidied up my edges)

Fold back the remaining edge at the top, pin and tack to create a hem

Turn the pocket you've created inside-out so the pattern is now on the outside

Stuff the pieces with your foam material

Hand sew the top edge (crocheters, knitters and other crafty types will laugh at my attempt but it's functional)

Stick or sew velcro hook-and-loop fasteners onto each corner. Put the hook (rough) pieces on the outside

The finished article

I rescued this link from my abandoned “ReadItLater” list and finally sat down to watch Bret Victor‘s amazing talk “Inventing on Principle”. You should watch it too, ideally now:

I promise that this will change how you think about programming, animation, creation of ideas and the potential future of computers. If you don’t like computers, he’ll show you interfaces that you’ll love. If you program computers, he’ll show you how you could be doing it better. And beyond that, how you can structure your life towards a core driving principle.

Watch it. Now.

I’ve recently started listening to quite a few podcasts, particularly at work or in the car using my fancy iPhone dock. Here’s my favourites:

Ruby Freelancers: I’m not a freelancer (yet, maybe) but this podcast is full of really good information. How to find clients, manage with clients, contracts, expectations — all good info for any freelance developer, not specifically Ruby. The guys also have a good banter and their “picks” would be interesting for anyone.

Ruby Rogues: This is another podcast in the Ruby / Ruby-on-Rails ecosystem but it’s a lot more technical. There’s probably not much that a non-Ruby programmer would get out of it but I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I’d probably get a bit more out of it as get back to using Ruby more often.

Startups for the Rest of Us: I’ve listened to this for about 2years now and it’s really good, particularly for anyone who’s thinking/trying/actually starting their own business. Very practical, very actionable, very down-to-earth (this is not about your pie-in-the-sky VC-funded bullshit business). It’s also good to hear how Rob and Mike and making progress on their businesses

Circle of Confusion: Unlike the previous podcasts, this isn’t particularly actionable but it’s interesting to hear what Roger, Peter and Neil are working on. It’s also useful (to me) to hear the views of professional photographers on recent photography news and developments. Roger also has a new podcast which is just in it’s infancy but got off to a good start.

There’s more than twice as many podcasts on my list but these are the stand-out ones so far. Hopefully I’ll be able to add to this list as others prove themselves useful/interesting. Any other recommendations?

Addendum: I’d been using/suffering with the Instacast app on my iPhone for a while but I got sick of the odd sort ordering. I just couldn’t make it play the oldest episodes first and then play the next one in order. I’ve since switched to Downcast which is much better. Downcast has the concept of playlists so I can assign all my Ruby podcasts to one playlist and just listen to the one subject. The interface doesn’t look quite as polished as Instacast but it works much better.

Many moons ago, I used to hang out on The Business of Software forum and one question kept coming up again and again: “How can I stop pirates stealing my software?”. Software has a long history of using licence codes, dongles, licensing servers, online registration, phoning-home activation, obfuscation and many other security techniques to ensure only those people who had paid for the software could actually use it. There’s an entire industry built up to soothe the fears of software authors and protect their applications from pirates. Likewise, there’s an underground industry methodically and efficiently defeating those security methods. It’s an ever-escalating war and the pirates will always be ahead (it’s a conflict fundamentally skewed towards the pirates who can make “class breaks” in security technologies).

But the responses that the worried software authors received were typically not what you’d expect. They were generally much more pragmatic in nature:

• “Why are you worrying about illegal users when you haven’t yet got legitimate users?” It’s a waste of your time to fight an imaginary threat when you could instead be marketing your product and building your business.It’s a form of procrastination quite common to programmers because we like deep technical challenges. Unfortunately, the time spent implementing (and maintaining, and supporting, and updating) software license systems never pays itself back. It’s far more profitable to spend that time marketing to potential users.
• “Software licensing schemes inevitably inconvenience your real users”. This is familiar to anyone who has had to search for a long-forgotten licence code. Indeed, I encountered it this weekend when trying to revive a 5-year-old backup:

I’d been a long-time user of TrueImage and I figured that this backup file was made by TrueImage 10. So, I installed TrueImage 10 and it prompted me for the licence code. Ok, I dug that out of my 1Password wallet. Then the installer wanted the previous licence code because I’d upgraded from TrueImage 8. Ok… after much searching of Gmail and email archives I found it. The backup wouldn’t restore so maybe it was a TrueImage 8 archive? I tried installing TrueImage 8, typed in the licence code and—yep, you guessed it—it needed the licence code for TrueImage 6 which I’d upgraded from. Sigh… more searching. I gave up after a few minutes and spent 30secs Googling for a TrueImage 6 licence code and used that. As a long-valued and generally happy customer of Acronis I felt hugely frustrated that I couldn’t easily use the software I’d paid for. If I’d used a pirated version of the software all that licensing junk would have been disabled — a much more pleasant user experience.

• “Making your customers feel untrusted is not a good business strategy”. A simple licence code might be expected but the more invasive (and therefore complete) your software protection is, the more your legitimate customer has a negative feeling from your business. “Why doesn’t this company trust me?”, is not something you want your most ardent fans to be thinking!
  
• “Your real customers are not pirates, and the pirates are not your customers”. This was a persistent theme and I think it shows a pragmatic approach to business. It refocuses the debate from theory to practical, from whining about broken laws to concentrating on profitable business decisions. A user of pirated software is not lost revenue — they didn’t intend to pay you anyway!  So, instead of focusing on the people who don’t value your software, concentrate on delighting those that do.

How does this apply to Photographers?

Well, let me first state two things: Photographers own the copyright to their images; and they have a right to make a living from them. But I get increasingly frustrated by photographers who obsess over trivial copyright infringements instead of, you know, actually making money. I really don’t want to see the photography industry take the same path as the tv, movie and music industries have done (The Oatmeal has a pretty good overview of the problems). For one thing, those industries have much bigger wallets than the photography industry… and they are still losing.

Are professional photographers worrying about theoretical threats from IP infringements instead of focusing on providing real value to their true customers? Are they inconveniencing and disrespecting their genuine market? Are they confusing pirates with their real market (and vice versa)? I’d say yes, on all three counts.

The current furore is about Pinterest, which is a social networking site that allows users to compile visual bookmarks of their favourite things. It does this by clipping an image from the bookmarked page to which the user can add a comment. When the user (or one of their friends) clicks-through, they will get to the original page. Some photographers are going absolutely ballistic that Pinterest is storing a copy of their photos. Sorry, let me rephrase that so you can understand the absurdity of it:

Some photographers are going batshit-crazy because their fans want to favourite their images and share them with friends.

This is the point where technical transgressions of copyright laws need to be ignored in the name of pragmatic business decisions.

Why would you discourage your most ardent fans?
I’m not a big user of Pinterest but I could see myself using it to “pin” my favourite images which I’d look back through for inspiration on techniques or location. A bride searching for a wedding photographer might “pin” numerous photos while she works out which one she’d like to shoot her wedding. And she’s sharing those images with her friends, and it all links back to your site. What’s not to love about that? Pinterest now lets you add a meta tag to your site to prevent users from pinning images on your site. I hope you have a really really good business reason for implementing that.

Your fans probably aren’t your customers anyway (but they might become one).
I enjoy taking landscape photos myself so I also spend a lot of time looking at the  work of others for enlightenment, inspiration, motivation and just to practice “reading” photographs. Consequently, I could see myself pinning (or infringing!) lots of photos but a landscape photographer will have a tough time selling me one of his prints (I have enough of my own). But, offer me workshops/ebooks/seminars? Now you’re talking! I think it’s very important to define your products and your customers and focus on them. Relax your grip on the big red IP infringement button and start focusing on delighting your genuine customers.

Where is the lost revenue to the photographer?
Having said all that, there are times when it makes business sense to prevent copyright theft and to chase after infringements. If a company has used your image without permission in an advert? That’s lost revenue. Invoice them and start up the lawyers! If a kid has reposted your image on Tumblr? That’s not lost revenue, even if he has advertising on the site. Stand down the lawyers. Send him an email or comment thanking him for his enthusiasm and asking that he credits you and links to your sales/gallery page. That’s a smart business decision. The photographer should be in the business of photography, not strict IP enforcement. Found another photographer passing off your images as his own? I expect you to fire off a cease-and-desist to the bastard, and his service provider, and starting warming up those lawyers again!

If there’s one thing I wish could make photographers understand, it’s this: Copying happens. There is no if’s, but’s or maybe’s. It happens. And it will always happen. To prevent copying is to completely change the nature of the Internet and you really really don’t want that. The Internet presents photographers with much greater opportunities than it takes away. So, there are really just two options: accept that what you put on the Internet will be copied (usually without malice); or you can take all your images offline. The latter path is a sure-fire way to a change of career. A sensible precaution is not to put full-res images online (but be sensible and don’t feed your fans minuscule thumbnails).

Watermarking is another popular way to mitigate against copying. A small signature, name or web address placed discretely in the edge of the frame (or, ideally, on a border) lets anyone who sees a copied image know exactly where it came from. It’s advertising and it makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, like the escalation in software licensing, some photographers fear that their subtle watermark could be cropped out and so engage in bizarre behaviour: after spending considerable time and mental energy composing and processing their photos to perfection, they emblazon a giant distracting watermark across the middle of the image or an eye-bleeding repeating texture across the whole thing.

I really hope they objectively considered the business impact of ugly-fying their work like that.

In short, I want professional photographers to survive by focusing on their business instead of fretting away time, money and energy on to-the-letter-of-the-law IP enforcement.

Sick of trying to find a CD to play in the car? Tired of listening to your spouses music on long drives? Wish you could listen to podcasts from your iPhone on the drive to work? And control the iPhone from the car’s steering wheel controls? Yeah, me too.

I recently discovered that this wasn’t just a dream but actually quite possible. Head over to iPodCarKitDirect.co.uk, choose your make and choose your kit. I went with the Dension Gateway Lite because it would charge the iPhone.

Installation was surprisingly easy.

First, remove the radio. You’ll need a pair of radio removal tools, which are easily found in Halfords or other auto shops. I didn’t bother disconnecting the radio completely, just pull it enough to get at the leads.

Pull the radio out and plug the Dension into the back

Now, pry off the panel holding the gear lever with a screwdriver (it’s really easy).

Pry off the gear lever panel with a screwdriver

Move this out of the way and thread the dock cable through the corner and up into the radio compartment. Connect it to the Dension Gateway and stuff the Dension into the space at the bottom of the radio compartment.

Thread the cable through the edge of the panel and up into the radio compartment

This is the cable coming up into the radio compartment

Now, test that the car still starts and see if you can change the source to a CD changer. Connect your iPhone and you should be able to hear the music. If it doesn’t play automatically, and if the next/previous controls don’t work, then it’s likely the iPhone isn’t seated correctly (I had to remove the hard case I keep mine in).

All done and mounted

I got this email at work today…

Note: If a SEMP UI/Common Dopo deployer must consciously choose to use/leverage TOM, then make sure you have both a DEU with SEMP UI/Common Dopo as well as a DEU with TOM.

* acronyms changed

What?! It’s like a rejected scene from Office Space. Please shoot me if I ever write like that. I haven’t a notion what this guy is telling me (and from subsequent emails, neither did anyone else).

I’ve joined the exclusive Leica club!

Some people lust for months, years or even decades over a Leica camera due to the huge expense involved in buying into that system. The idea of getting a Leica occurred to me in town on Saturday and today, Tuesday, it was finally in my hands. What’s more, it took just a minute to convince Hilary about the Leica idea. Most spouses would resist the Leica move, put up huge roadblocks or threaten all manner of dire consequences but — all credit to Hilary — she was the main facilitator in the Leica acquisition!

Here it is…

Ain’t it a beaut’? And, in fitting with the high-end Leica brand, the case is made from 100% natural silk yarn. Hilary has made a few of these iPhone “socks” at this stage (a strawberry, teddy bear, etc) which you can see if you’re on Ravelry (she’s ‘hilser’) or an early one in this Venture Beat article. If they wasn’t so labour-intensive I’d convince her to set up an Etsy shop… especially for the Leica version as Leica-owners probably have more money than sense and that’s exactly the sort of people you want as customers

Thanks Hilary, you’re an absolute gem and a very talented lady. I love you!

I’ve been using the beta version of KISSmetrics on Shutter Scouts to track conversion rates. Frankly, this was more of an experiment as the site hasn’t really been promoted and opened up yet but I wanted the get the analytics infrastructure in place first. KISSmetrics allows you to track events in a user-specified conversion funnel with simple charts showing (for example):

KISSmetrics got a lot of publicity around the startup and web development blogs/news sites so it was understandable to have assumed that startups were their target market. This month, KISSmetrics came out of beta and announced their pricing:

• $149 / month: 1m events tracked
• $399 / month: 5m events tracked
• $699 / month: 10m events tracked
• No free plan

W…T…F?! Frankly, I was gobsmacked and shocked when I received the pricing announcement. What the hell was all this? Were these annual prices? Nope. Who was this service being aimed at? Certainly not any sort of bootstrapped startup business. I don’t mind the lack of a free plan (in fact, I think it’s a good move) but where’s the $10-20/month startup plan for < 10,000 events? And then I got angry. I’d liked KISSmetrics. As the name implied I thought it was simple. I wrote a Rails plugin for the service to help rails developers easily send events to KISSmetrics. I spoke about the service at my local Ruby developers group. I recommended the service. Now I have to go and retract that recommendation. Even on the “small” plan, KISSmetrics would need to give you insights that save your business at least $200 every single month and all within 1m events. I wonder how many other people will retract their recommendations for KISSmetrics?

If I put my cynical hat on, I wonder if KISSmetrics’ business plan is actually about extracting large wads of cash from the bank accounts of venture-backed startups… because that pricing is far too rich for anyone else. Though I can’t help feel that for every $149/month plan they sell now, they could have sold more than 15 $10/month plans. It also means I’ll be staying well away from their KISSinsights product (and anything else that team may produce) and we should all be more wary about using pricing-unannounced-beta-products in the future.

This is my 2nd year of taking part in the Solo Photo Book Month (SoFoBoMo). This year I chose the topic “Broken Houses” — a look at the abandoned houses on the Co. Clare coast. You can download the low-def book PDF from the SoFoBoMo site, or view the flash version embedded below.

Alternatively, you can watch the slideshow with some appropriate music I selected:

NEX-5

Just a quick note that I’ve started a new blog about Sony NEX cameras, called NEXtended. I’ll be concentrating on the various unique aspects of these cameras as well as the general aspects of photography. Hopefully, I’ll make it a regular publication and a lively community.