All Posts by ‘George Chen’

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Adobe Lightroom Beta 2

February 15, 2006

Adobe Lightroom Beta 2 is out. I haven’t spend much time with Beta 1 yet, but in case you want to try it… here’s the download link. Right now, RawDeveloper still works better for me. What’s new in Beta 2:

  • Now a Universal Binary—this version runs on Apple’s latest Intel-based Macs.
  • Crop and straighten your photos with new tools in the Develop module.
  • Add music to your slideshows.
  • Create nested keyword sets for easier organization.
  • Import and export XMP metadata (*please see the Known Issues list for
    details).
  • Try out the improved Edit in Photoshop capabilities.
  • Take advantage of better metadata handling.
  • Utilize new white balance support for the Nikon D2X, D2Hs, and D50 cameras.
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Saint Etienne @ Fillmore this Fri.

February 15, 2006

Saint
One of my fav. band Saint Etienne is coming to town. They will be performing at the historic Fillmore this Fri.

Arr, the Fillmore… once I was there backstage and hung out with Ryuichi Sakamoto… but that’s a different story.

I will be flying to Hong Kong fri. night, so I’ll miss the show. 😦 If you have nothing to do Fri. night check them out! The new Saint Etienne album is actually very very good – if you are into sweet Brit Pop, dance, and electronic music… Sarah Cracknell (the lead singer) is nice to watch too. 😛

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Quick thoughts on Adobe Lightroom

January 10, 2006

Downloaded it Sunday night and had about 2 hrs to play with it. Over all my impression of it is good.

I use D2Hs 4MP RAW so the performance is not a huge issue to me, but
it does run slower than "advertised". Converting NEF to DNG file is also a long process. For the record, I use a 1.25Ghz Ai Powerbook with 1GB of RAM.

I am not a pro, so the organization part is not too useful to me (plain
old folder will do just fine). On the "develop" part of the work flow, I feel
Adobe spent too much time on "pretty up the UI" rather than making it
feature packed and easy to use. I can’t seems to find the crop tool, am
I missing something?

For pure developing and touch up, I’ll stick with RawDeveloper right now to output JPG and Tiff which is very very fast.

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Mr. Kojima’s Weblog

January 8, 2006

It’s amazing this guy can keep it up. He blogs like a banshie. Does he has a real job? Like, running one of the world’s hottest game development house?! /laugh

Anyway, check out his English Blog which you’ll find some interesting thoughts on creativity and his daily life. It’s neat to find out he is a fan of 安全地帶 – and indeed that’s something not cool to admit if you are under 30. He likes Peter Saville’s album art too. The English version is 2 months behind the JP version, but since he’s pretty dedicate to it so you’ll find a lot of stuff to catch up on. Good stuff.

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Digital Photography Woe

December 30, 2005

One of the very few internet application that "changed my life" (I know, so over used) recent is Flickr. I’ve always a photographer which I spent 2 years as a college paper photographer (which I, proudly, got beaten up by some gangster during the Rodney King Riot). I’ve also spent my share of time with the oh-so-hip Lomo camera and took a tone of saturated blurry pictures and they are crappy. Not to mention, during my Cal Poly days I also spent more time hanging out with photo majors rather than the fellow design majors. Don’t know why.

I’ve finally got the Nikon D70 during April of this year. I mean, it’s ok… but since then, I have been slowly buying more and more photo equipments and eventually got the pro camera D2Hs and a few new glasses. Photography as a hobby came back to me just in time when I want to spend less time in MMORPG. A couple of things I want to point out/notice in regarding digital photography in case you want to get beyond point-and-shot:

1. Ignore all the uber tech talk type photo people online/offline. They might know a lot about f stops and exposures, but when you take a look at their work, usually you’ll find boring and shitty pictures.

2. Forget about the notion that digital photography is "perfect". In fact, eventually you will run into dirt spots on your image capture processor or "hot pixel" on the processor. Ironically, if you shot film or slides you never have to worry about issues like those.

3. Mega pixel is not everything, but it does help. But less mega pixel also forces you to be a better photographer. Garbage in garbage out. Doesn’t matter if you shot 4 mega pixel or 16 mega pixel.

4. Whenever I hand over my camera to friends or family these days, they no longer hold the camera to their face and look through the viewfinder. They try to use the LCD display as a viewfinder. /Sigh.

5. If you are really serious about digital photography. A Master Degree in Color Science helps.  I know we all use Photoshop here and there; especially graphic designers or Web designers… but serious digital photography means you have to use Photoshop in a very different manner.  I actually prefer to stay away from Photoshop when I edit my pictures these days.

6. Be conservative with your shutter speed. If you *think* you can shot at 1/30. Think again. It will most likely come out blurry. Try 1/60 instead.

Happy shootin’.

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Designer Christmas Gift

December 21, 2005

B000bi7xry01tzzzzzzz
Wow… Sakamoto + Maeda + NewOrder + Saville?! Isn’t it cool that they all work on the same project? Irma Boom and Michael Nyman are also involved in the colorcalm project, but sadly, I don’t know much about them but I guess I will find out!

This is a perfect gift for your designer friends or for anyone that has a plasma or LCD tv.  Flaming Lips has a similar DVD project a few years ago.

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Game Over (almost) for FFXI

December 16, 2005

This is the letter I sent to FFXI development team via PlayOnline.

Dear FFXI development team, and Producer Tanaka,

I have been playing FFXI for close to 2.5 years. The most recent "MPK update" has cause me to be very concern about the future direction on where the game is heading. Yes, I am a BST (lvl 72), but I am also a NIN (lvl 65).

I think the de-spwaning of mobs outside of their radius is a stupid idea. "Train" is a way of life in the world of MMORPG. FFXI is my first MMORPG,  and I was hoping I can stay for a while, but the de-spwaning of the mob turns the game into "Disneyland" – not to mention it made it impossible for BST to farm nor gain experience point.

Also, please stop feeding the Game Master with the "script" that BST was never mean to be a solo job. Maybe that is true when the game first came out, but the great thing about online game, is that, it is a living and breathing community. The FFXI community over the years had turn BST into the great solo, duo, and trio job. Your new update has destroyed the community’s effort.

As you know (from my POL ID), I play on Cerberus. On Cerberus, there’s a VERY strong community of BST. I am afraid, a lot of those BST will quit the game if this "MPK update" is not being adjusted.

I do write with suggestion and not just complains. My suggestion about the "MPK issue" is this:

If the mob is aggressive type, and outside of their radius, it’s ok for them to de-spwan or go "zombie" and roam back.

If the mob is non-aggressive type, and outside of their radius, they WILL NO despwan since they are not threatening to anyone.

I hope you can take my suggestion into serious consideration.

FFXI has a great player community base. It’s your job to keep the community happy. I believe the recent update is much too heavy handed and might potentially destroy the game and the community. There are a lot of unhappy players since the update.

Best regards.

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Is a Toyota Prius in my future?

November 11, 2005

Is sooo pase to blog about the whole Toyota Prius buying experience. In fact, it’s kinda lame, and I’ll laugh at you if you do. But this afternoon I am going to check out a Prius due the recent passage of the new California Law that allows solo drive to use the carpool lance as long as you have a tree hugger mobile (aka Prius).

Hell yes! Time is money and I waste a lot of time in commute. If Prius can cut down on my commute I am sooo getting a Prius. Stay tune.

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Birthday Blues

October 20, 2005

Like my parents, I am not a big "birthday person". In fact, we’re pretty low key about any type of celebrations. That doesn’t mean I don’t like to spend time with love ones and family – I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it.

Today is my birthday and a couple of good friends from work insist we go out to our favorite place for Pho. Jee sent me a very nice IM greetings. My best friend also sent me a nice email which surpassingly didn’t go into my auto spam mail folder. Then a nice family dinner with Alison and my parents.

I do have one correction to make. Everyone ask me how old I am and I have been telling people I am 34 – which is wrong. I actually turn 33 today. Maybe I’m blue for the whole day since in a way I do "feel" 34. Who knows. But thank you mom for correcting me. I am only 33.