Дон Андре's blog/

Pete Seeger and Lee Hays anticipated what would become the most feared tool in everyday office life in their famous song

"If I had a hammer"

And I am lucky that I have not. Windows Vista is Microsoft's most modern operating system and many have already fled to alternatives knowing well that modernity and intuitivity do not go well together. Whatever happens technology itself will be responsible for its demise. We should start thinking about a technology-after-life, about creating awkward cults with irrational belief systems... hmmm.... okay mark that done.

Whatever, this time it appears that my shiny matte black Dell Vostro 1400 laptop that runs Windows Vista stops making screenshots for no apparent reason. Part of my current work involves documenting the progress of an algorithm through several screenshots of the algorithm's graphical output which is where hitting "Print" to make a screenshot is not a nice feature anymore, but becomes really essential. But as simple as an operation like that, as obvious that in the end one must fail achieving this in Vista.

A small mathematical analysis: It is clear that the error probability for any real system is bigger than 0 for any given delta time greater than 0. Thus we can model the frustrating events as poisson processes with an interval that is indirect proportional to the error probability. An error probability of 1 for a time slot of epsilon that approaches 0 will however result in a division by zero exception, from which we can deduce the problem of Windows Vista: If we assume it has an error probability of 1, but want to keep living in our dreamworld where it is indirect proportional to the error probability of x we can calculate the time limit of successful and productive use of Windows Vista by creating the difference of assumption and believe, taking into account an unknown power that truly reflects the probability of error. In other and more mathematical words according to limit((1 - (1/x))^x, x -> infinity). The knowing reader probably already died of a heart attack (with probability P(X) = "very likely" [using Fuzzy logic]) grasping the consequences of this revelation! YES, the actual time limit is normal distributed according to the well known Euler number e! Who'd have thought such an "intelligent design"!?!

Update: It appears that only the screenshot of both desktops (dual monitor setup) doesn't work anymore, but somehow one can still create shortcuts of a single desktop using the magic hotkey Windows-Alt-Print!

Another Update: It works, it doesn't work, it works, it's playing games with me

ARGH!

Another one of those very nice Vista features is called User Access Control or UAC for short. For one it's responsible for the screen blackening and confirmation dialogs on a very basic task level already, on the other hand it's a big annoyance altogether. Improving computer security by annoying users is the wrong way.

Anyway, where UAC becomes really really annoying is when it denies my permission. For example today, I move folder Z in X\Y\Z into folder X, getting rid of folder Y. So I mark folder Z, cut it and try to paste it into X (copy&paste on folders and documents is a nice feature btw). So, vista asks for permission, because obviously even in my own documents folder it's not allowed to move things around without clicking a button first. I tell it that it's okay and the process goes on and just minutes later tells me that I don't have permission to do that. Sorry!? In my own user's documents folder I don't have permission to move things around!? Frustrated I turn to this place and put the story here which reminds me that I was in a similar situation already where I've found the solution: The problem really is that whenever Vista tells you this, it can't actually do it for a very different reason. In most cases there's a file open that's within Z which is how Vista complains about the impossibility to move it and while doing so blaming it on the user. I think in Linux it's possible for years to move open files around without even breaking the applications that have opened them. Microsoft was never able to do this and even in XP this had caused so much frustration when there was still an open file handle which prevented one from deleting a certain folder until the explorer was restarted.

I'm not going to chicken out this time and submit this story, even when i'm stupid enough to move a folder where there's a file still open (something which should really already work in 2008, come on!).

ARGH!!!

When I got the Zenit E from my father a while ago, I immediately began to search for some new lenses. The 50mm on it wasn't wide enough and lenses are quite cheap. So I bought a 28mm Robotar on ebay. While searching for it I also noticed a lot of people sold M42 lens adapters for Canon and there were even some for Nikon. I got curious.

After a while I picked up a cheap Revuenon 135mm f/2.8 lens for the Zenit (price was around 25€ including shipping) and I wanted to give it a try on the Nikon as well. I've always wanted a moderate but fast tele for my Nikon as well, but they're quite expensive and this seemed to be a cheap alternative. So when I received my adapter I immediately tried the Revuenon and it worked perfectly. There's no light meter and no Autofocus, but the AF dot indicator is working. I don't mind the light meter very much, I'm used to shoot in Manual anyway and that's exactly the mode you've got to use this lens in. It doesn't work in P/A/S or the vari programs.

First dissapointment was when I tried to screw the 28mm wideangle onto the adapter. I thought I was lucky and finally had a cheap and fast normal lens for the Nikon (the 50mm's field of view is too narrow most often). But the lens was too big and scratched the infinity correction lens on the adapter. I've now got a bad ring engraved in it. In the end, this is a "just for fun" solution anyway, so I didn't cared much and so far the pictures don't show any signs of this, but still as a word of warning: Be cautious when you get the version with the infinity correction lens and try a wideangle lens.

Here are some pictures that I shot with it.

Sheila II

Dona Kahlo

The last one I took with the Zenit on Ilford Delta 400

JKU

Firefox 3 was released just today and a great improvement for all photo enthusiasts. Previously only Apple's Safari browser respected the embedded colour profile within images and display every photo as intended. Firefox 2 as well as Internet Explorer 7 would always use the sRGB profile when displaying an image, thus photos that were saved with e.g. AdobeRGB looked flat and lifeless compared to what they looked like in Safari.

But not anymore! Firefox 3 has a neat option to respect the colour profile in images, unfortunately it's not turned on by default. There's an extension which enables this, but it's also possible to enable it by entering the mighty realm of the Firefox configuration. Type "about:config" in the addressbar and hit enter. In the filter textbox type "gfx" and look for "gfx.color_management.enabled" double click it to make it "true", restart Firefox and you're done.

It has not been enabled by default, because there's a slight performance penalty with this option turned on. Also it is said that plugins don't yet know about colour profiles which could lead to some visual artifacts... whatever... :-)

More on that topic here.

[DE]

Deutsche Übersetzung wie das im Firefox 3 zum Einstellen ist (danke Hannes Trapp):

Es gilt die selbe Warnung wie im englischen, angeblich wird der Browser dadurch etwas langsamer und es kann ein paar Probleme mit Add-ons geben. Ich hab davon allerdings noch nichts bemerkt.

1. "about:config" in die Adresszeile eintippen und Enter drücken.
2. den Eintrag "gfx.color_management.enabled" in der Liste finden
3. den genannten Eintrag doppelklicken, so dass dort wo vorher "false" stand dann "true" steht
4. Firefox beenden und neu starten
5. fertig

Adobe I mention and of course you think Photoshop! Cool! Great! Perfect! You think PDF and you think, okay it's worrysome that they keep such a tight grip around it, but still PDF great! Wow! Then, well then you probably also think about Illustrator and how the same company can create the best image editing software in the world and the worst vector drawing program in the world.

Macromedia Freehand was such a perfect to use program... WAS!! Intuitiv and easy to learn. Adobe Illustrator is such a pain to use, nothing is intuitive, you've got 3 different selectors and constantly something is marked in blue when you mouse over it. So, Adobe bought Macromedia and scrapped Freehand in favor of Illustrator. Oh no!!! I know this is not news anymore, but it's more than sad that I'll never forget this!

For example: To add arrowheads to a line in Freehand you select the line and then choose from the line endings in the object modifier box. EASY! In Illustrator you select the line and then search on the internet how to add an arrowhead because you can't actually find that option. You learn that you need to apply a filter/effect on it which adds the arrowhead!?!? I haven't yet found out how to change or remove it once it's added, but I guess that it's impossible. Who would need to do that anyway? I understand that Illustrator's way is more powerful, but it's horrible to use!

Next example: To cut a path, you select the cut tool in Freehand and a point at which you'd like to cut it, done. In Illustrator, you select the cut tool and then randomly click around until somehow, whithout knowing how, you cut the line.

Another example: To join a path, in Freehand you select the points and choose join. You even get to see the points which are selected. In Illustrator you don't see what's selected exactly and join doesn't even work.

Try to set the line and fill colour of differently styled objects... "mixed styles selected" or something like that is displayed instead of "stroke" and "fill" so that I could actually change it.

Why does Adobe scrap a completely perfect piece of software for such a big ARGH?!?!