geek entry: One reason ZSH can have problems.

[Warning: non-geeks or geeks in areas other than unix can stop reading now. This isn't going to be relevant to you.]


OK, so, after doing a google search, I failed to find help for the following error message from zsh:

_main_complete: function definition file not found

(it's actually something like "_main_complete:12: _main_complete: function definition file not found", but the 12 can vary, so the main thing is the rest of the error message.)

Anyway, it seems to me that the problem, in at least my case, is this:

As a former ksh user, I have dot-files that set FPATH, and that seems to break this. Or at least it does with my current value.

Commenting out the line from .profile or wherever you have that sets FPATH seems to fix the problem (though you also loose that functionality). Alternately, just making sure the previous value of $FPATH (i.e. the one the shell had before getting to your dot-files) is in your new value also seems to work.

edit: so, instead of FPATH=/what/ever, try FPATH=$FPATH:/what/ever

Hopefully this'll help someone... the only hits I found weren't helpful in my case.

Happy New Year!

I think I forgot to mention on here:



:-)

Cheers, all!

The beginnings of some informational documents (photography)

Well, I've finally started something I've been thinking about for a while. There's a lot I still intend to do with this, but it's a start, which will hopefully encourage me to do more.

I now have the beginnings of a guide to the Canon EOS 30D digital SLR.

There's a whole lot more to add to that guide (photos of menus and such, much more detailed analyses of existing concepts, other controls, and general prettification), and many other guides (other cameras, as I get them, and various peripherals and such) to write.

Hopefully, this will become a useful store of knowledge for folks wanting to find information about their equipment.

Eventually, I may even supplement things with short videos. (Gotta get some decent video capability first, though -- and of course more disk space to store it all!)

Aperture versus Lightroom

I just found a blog post by an acquaintance of mine (Ted), comparing Apple's Aperture with Adobe's Lightroom. It's well written, and I think I agree with everything he says in there (well, some things I hadn't tried doing, but everything I've tried...)

I, like him, am frustrated with the lack of an update for Aperture lately. I really liked it for a while there, and I miss it, now that I'm predominantly using Lightroom. And yet, that's the situation: I'm predominantly using Lightroom, because of issues with performance in general, and also, something Ted doesn't mention (because I presume he hasn't tried it), the way that Aperture utterly fails to behave properly with a project whose RAW files are on an NFS-mounted drive, once you quit Aperture. There's a way to work around it ("reconnect" the masters), but boy is it a pain. Those files are in the same place they were last time, and the drive is online and mounted, so very frustrating for Aperture to claim they're missing. Not to mention slow to reconnect a large number of them.

So, here's hoping Apple is still working on this -- both because I want Aperture to improve again, and I want the pressure of continued competition to make both options better.

Alas, for a variety of reasons, the notion of writing my own competitor is unlikely to ever happen... it's very tempting, though. I think the world could have a lot better than either of those programs, in certain ways.

If anyone wants to start an open source project, though, I'd be glad to contribute some time and ideas, and likely code, to the effort.

Google, here we go!

While I must admit to a little bit of ambivalence about returning to the work in the tech industry, and certain other little nibbling concerns, the fact remains that mostly I'm excited about the prospect of working at Google. The amount of time I have for my photography will surely decrease, which saddens me a bit, yet on the other hand, I've been feeling frustrated for a while by inability to make a few key equipment purchases, and having a salary again should help out quite a bit with such things, not to mention having health insurance again, etc., etc. So we'll see. Who knows, it may even re-invigorate me in ways that will leave me doing more photography. Or at least more of my art in that realm. That'd be nice. We'll see...

Anyway, yeah. I've accepted a job at Google, and I'm due to start on January 7th. There'll be two weeks of training down in Mountain View, CA, in the buildings I once worked in when they belonged to SGI. That'll take me back. (And my recollection of that place goes back further than that, as well -- I remember going with my mom to the little produce stand on the edge of the field that once occupied that same land. That was when I was in high school, and my mom worked at SGI, in a group a later worked in. Hmmm, there seems to be some circularity to my life, eh? ;-)

So, I'd love to try to get together with old friends from the bay area, so if you have any time free between January 5th or 6th and say the 20th, let me know, and we'll see if we can make something happen.

I shall do my best to keep to the "don't be evil". :-) Wish me luck.

I believe Amazon Kindle... will kindle a fire

So, I just saw Amazon Kindle the other day, while randomly visiting the Amazon main page. It caught my attention. I watched some of the videos. Pretty interesting, really.

For anyone who hasn't already clicked the link, here's the basic premise: it's a device which will allow you to read e-books, electronic newspapers, magazines, and blogs. It downloads the content wirelessly, and you can carry it with you everywhere. So it's like a book, only it's all the books you might want, all at once. Or at least that's the idea.

My take (not having seen one in person yet, or anything)? It will indeed kindle the fire of people wanting devices like this, but it won't be that fire. I could easily be mistaken, of course, but here's my reasoning:

Basically, my impression is that this device gets a number of things Right, and a number of things... well, let's just say Less Right:

Some of the things they get Right:

• It's using "electronic ink" instead of traditional LCD. In theory, at least, this means a crisper image, that's more like paper, and thus much happier to read than a regular LCD.
• It uses the cell networks (EVDO), for broad coverage (at least in the U.S. -- does it work internationally, though? Perhaps, but it looks doubtful, since they won't ship it out of the U.S.), but without charging any sort of monthly fee (of course, that just means the price of each title you download is higher, but I would still say that's the better option).
• It has expandable memory (just add an SD card).
• It doesn't use backlighting, which means you should be able to read it nice and easily in any good lighting situation.
• It keeps track of where you left off.
• There's a built-in dictionary for looking up words in the text you're reading.

Some of the things they get Less Right:

• Clunky interface -- they seem to have done a half-way decent job with the interface, but only half-way. You can't touch the screen and have that mean something, so even though you can annotate certain pages, lines, and even words in the text, the way to do that is going to be moderately annoying. Not horrible, mind you, but annoying enough that I'm sure this won't be the final word in this technology space.
• It only does cell networks. It should do wifi, too, so you can use it in places with wifi but no cell coverage (e.g. internationally, or in large metallic buildings or whatever).
• As far as I can tell, there's no way to add arbitrary blogs to it. If this thing could be my RSS reader, that'd be killer (as in "killer app").
• Of course, if it's going to be my RSS reader, I'd want it to be able to show me color, too -- e.g. for viewing images from my contacts on flickr.
• The dictionary looks limited. It'll help when there's a word you just don't know, but the true word geeks (let alone the lexicographers) will not be satisfied.
• More interface clunkiness: there are buttons to "turn the page" (in either direction), and thus it would seem it's page-oriented, and yet, at least with certain font sizes, it seems clear that one "page" does not always fit on the screen at once. This is certain to be highly annoying in some cases, even if only mildly annoying in others.

Anyway, that's what's springing to mind for the moment. Perhaps if/when I ever get my hands on one of the things, I'll be able to say more.

My impression, though, definitely boils down to this: I'm really glad someone's doing this kind of thing, and I think in the future there'll be lots more of it. And that's the thing. I don't know what will follow -- new revisions under this name, or competing products, or both, or what, but I fully expect that the current iteration of Kindle will not be the final word.

Still, I would recommend that folks check it out, and maybe even buy one if you've got the cash.

I'm trying out Etsy...

Well, I figured I'd give Etsy a try, as a way to sell my photos. I've been meaning to do this for a while. Well, I finally did it. Rowing Home is my first listing there. If it sells in a reasonable amount of time, I'll list more.

Enjoy!