Jamie’s Weblog

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.

I discovered Sugru just before Christmas and immediately jumped on the preorder queue hoping to nab a great present. As it turned out, lots of people did the same thing and they needed to ramp up production, so it was only recently that I finally received my pack.

Sugru is awesomeness disguised as plasticine/playdoe/Mála/exercise putty. It’s a sticky putty substance that air-dries into a solid, hard (non-tacky) surface that remains stuck to whatever you stuck it to. If you can’t think of a million uses for something like this (shame on you!) then the Sugru blog has some ideas.

My immediate idea was to fix the ergonomics of my Sony a200 DLSR. You see, camera manufacturers think that cheap cameras should only be bought by people with small hands and the rest of us can just upgrade to their pro range of cameras. Or, you could sugru-ify your entry-level camera! I decided to improve the finger grip (particularly around the little finger) and fill out the palm rest to provide a bit more stability — I’m even more concerned about the ergonomics since my wrist is only out of a cast since last week.

Problem #1: Not enough support for the little finger

Problem #2: Space between the camera and palm

Stage 1: The hand grip

Stage 2: The palm rest
I left enough space to ensure that the battery and card compartment doors still worked.

“But… but… why did you use those colours? Didn’t you just ugly up your camera?”

Well, I could have used black but there’s no point in hacking something unless everyone notices it. I’m sure it’ll make a good ice-breaker at a photo walk (it also makes it damn obvious which camera is mine!).

Bonus Hack #1: The AF/MF button is waaayy too fiddling for a cold, dark night in the middle of a field.
I added a blob of sugru and made the grip surface using a cocktail stick

Bonus Hack #2: Replaced the missing feet off my laptop battery

In all, I used 20g of green sugru and another 10g of orange… so there’s still plenty left in my 75g multipack. I’ll be testing the durability of my hack over the coming weeks to see if the sugru starts to come apart, detach or get very marked but so far I’m really pleased. In fact, I think I might add a further piece around the thumb grip and base of my hand.

I can’t impress on you enough how much this resonates with me. Gabrielle can put it better than I can… but even then I don’t think you’re truly going to understand.

Git, in case you don’t know and haven’t met a recent Git zealot, is the latest/greatest/coolest/funkiest SCM ever invented. Personally, I think Subversion still has a lot going for it for individuals but I’ve moved two project to Git for the following reasons:

1. Heroku (a Ruby on Rails host) uses Git as its deployment mechanism
2. Git supports branches as a more native concept than Subversion

Here’s a few things I’ve noticed about Git:

1. The wording seems off:
   • git checkout <mybranch> is used to change between branches in your working copy. In Subversion, checkout is what you do to get an initial copy of the repository. git switch <mybranch> seems like a more accurate command.
   • By default, Git doesn’t commit the changed files. You need to call git add <my file/path> to add those files to the commit. If you delete a file, you call git rm <my file> to add the removal of the file to the commit. To remove the file from the commit, you call git checkout… it just seems quite confusing. I like the way this prevents files being accidently committed but I think it could have been made clearer. If you want Git to behave like svn, you call git commit -a
   • git branch <my branch> actually creates the branch rather than changes to it.
2. Because Git is a distributed SCM, the branches you create locally are not necessarily present on a remote copy of the repository. Likewise, if you git pull a remote repository, you don’t automatically get the branches. The worst thing is tagging. This is very useful for marking releases but tags are not pushed to a remote repo unless you pass an optional flag. This seems dangerous because if you forget this flag the tag only exists on your computer and not the master repository.
3. Also, it’s worth remembering that Git isn’t during a remote backup of your code until you actually do a push to a remote server
4. Annoyingly, when you switch branches using git checkout, it doesn’t seem to warn of uncommitted files (or, as is Git’s way, it might warn but does it anyway). This has led to some unintended contamination between branches and is just something to watch out for.
5. Unlike Subversion, the cmd-line really is the best way to experience Git. I used the nbGit plugin for Netbeans but found it incredibly slow and clunky. Perhaps better tools will arrive.
6. The main hosting site for Git is Github which is great for open source projects (social forking!) but I’ve chosen Codebase as I can host Git and Subversion projects, along with their associated tickets and milestones. Codebase can also do an automatic push which I might use to ensure each push to the production repository is pushed onto Heroku.
7. Worryingly, I have managed to corrupt my local repo though it might have been due to a power failure

I was putting Norah to bed this evening and she was giggling away at me as we played. And then I realised something… that little baby giggle is what life is all about. I could be free-and-single with no responsibilities or in a dual-income-no-kids situation with money to spare but that giggle gives me more motivation that you’d believe existed.
 
Without that girly giggle, I wouldn’t have the motivation to build Shutter Scouts or work hard to develop my photography skills, and instead retreat into buying pointless gadgets which would sap even more time from my glass (I’m thinking of you, computer games). I’ve learnt that time is more important than anything else and this tweet still sums it up for me: http://twitter.com/JamesKennedy/statuses/1285107644

Another thought: After 2-3 manic days doing too much, Hilary asked me if I was ready to go back to work on Monday (after my gallbladder operation last week). My response, as always, was:

“If I start work on a Monday morning all bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed then I know I’ve wasted my weekend. If I’m completely
fucking exhausted, I know I’ve done my best to cram 7-days of life
into a 2-day weekend. I’ve lived“

Along with thousands of other photographers across the globe, I participated in the Worldwide Photowalk by joining the Cork photowalk organised by Donncha O Caoimh. I’ve never participated in one of these walks and street/city photography is way outside my usual subject matter of landscapes, coastline and wildlife.

First stop was Cork’s English Market which was pretty much a trial-by-fire for me. Firstly, I had to find something to photograph and I tried to recall photos I’d liked from more exprienced street photographers. Also, there was no hiding and discretely snapping away — everyone could see exactly what/who you were photographing and I get pretty self-conscious photographing other people. I ended up mostly focusing of the food or engaging in some meta-photography — photographing photographers taking photographs.

Once out on the Grand Parade I was feeling a lot more comfortable and could start using subjects/styles I was more comfortable with. In this case, slow-shutter speed and panning with the traffic.

Lastly, I indulged in some more meta-photography as everyone was lined up along the bridge to see the last of the Lee Swimmers home.

I shot about 180 photos (making me very conservative compared to others), edited it down to 75, and I’ve published 30 on my Smugmug gallery. I’ll be sharing them on the photoblog during the week.