Jason Whong: Renaissance Man-in-Training

I am a patient guy, for the most part.

The only think I am really impatient about is when a computer is too slow.

For years, it seems I only ran into these things away from home. At the departmetn of motor vehicles. At work. It didn’t seem to matter where. So at home, I always had a computer that didn’t make me wait. And it’s not like I was spending top dollar on computers. I like to hang on to computers for at least four years before I replace them.

Well, my PowerBook didn’t make it into its fourth year, because it got rained on. It’s a long story, but basically if we had air conditioning in this house, my windows would have stayed closed, and I would not have had a problem with my laptop. (Though its 640 MB limit of RAM was irking me slightly, I knew i could have dealt with it for at least another year.)

Because I have lined up some freelance work, I have enough money to replace the laptop with a new Mac mini. Some of you may think I am nuts to go for what is essentially a low-end Mac. Here’s why I chose the mini:

1. I already have a good 21-inch CRT that I picked up at a county government surplus auction for $12. It’s not calibrated, but a decent CRT at least displays all the colors, unlike the latest low-end iMac, which uses a Twisted Nematic LCD panel (making it less useful for toning photos).

2. If I get enough money later, I can use an Apple Cinema Display like the one I have at work. (Yes, I know, I could connect one of these to a new iMac and use it as a second display. But, why would I want to do that?)

3. If I decide I want to use the Mac mini for work, I can stick it in a bag and connect it to a monitor there. Or I can bring my $12 monitor and leave it at work. (This might be useful when covering LPGA or NASCAR.) I would not feel comfortable lugging around an iMac, and since I would also not feel comfortable leaving it places, I’d be doing a lot of lugging when covering some events.

4. It’s cheaper, but it doesn’t suck all that much. My only regret is that it can’t run Civilization IV, because of its relatively weak 3D graphics support. Boo.

5. It’s not really the low-end Mac, because I got the faster Mac mini available (2 GHz), with the DVD burner on it, so I can store the gigabytes of photos I’ll be taking on blank DVDs. Also, I upped the RAM to 2 GB, which is a bit out of character for me as a DIY type, but I am not really interested in opening a Mac mini. I’m really not.

So, why am I writing about patience? Because I ordered this thing Sept. 1 and it’s still not here yet. It shipped (likely from a Taiwanese factory) on Sept. 5 and was handed off to FedEx Ground on Sept. 6. FedEx says it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is good because one of my freelance deadlines is coming very soon. Y’know. The freelance deadline that inspired me to buy this thing. The one that is paying for it.

And every time I wait for my backup computer to do something (it’s a six-year old iBook 500MHz with a screen that doesn’t always turn on), I get even more impatient, knowing that I’ve paid for something better, but because I wanted to save $20 on shipping, it’s not here yet.

Since Apple began offering video downloads at its iTunes store, I have been reading a lot of comparisons between the video available there versus the video available on DVD. This article is about why it’s not smart to generalize when comparing the videos. (more…)

In an earlier post I noted that I had been promoted to Videographer and Photographer at the Star-Gazette.

Well, once again I am going to break the rule I have about blogging about work, because I have done everything I possibly could do in the first week:

• Had four front page centerpiece photos, two local section centerpiece photos, and one sports centerpiece (that ran five columns wide!).
• Shot and edited two video stories.
• Was called in on a day off to help cover some spot news (this was one of the front page centerpiece photos and videos)
• Sent video I shot the month before to a nationally syndicated newsmagazine show, Inside Edition, and saw it air, with a credit to me.
• Uploaded two photo galleries to stargazette.com.
• Learned how to capture moving subjects in mid-air outdoors with a still camera (easy).
• Learned how to capture moving subjects indoors with yucky lights with a still camera (hard).
• Learned that I sometimes have to shoot the still camera in manual mode in order to get the results I want (hard, but necessary).

I am still not 100% up to speed on the still camera, but I am overall pleased with my progress in learning it. It has nicer lenses than my video camera, and it is a different discipline. Photos are about freezing moments. Videos are about replaying them.

update: One other thing. I also gave the spot news video story I shot to the Star-Gazette’s broadcast media partner. They have few newsgathering operations on Sundays, but even their competition with a Sunday night newscast didn’t send someone. Anyway, instead of cutting my piece up to suit their needs for the next morning (which I would have expected since the story is 8 hours old), they just ran the whole thing and credited the Star-Gazette.

“Jason, I’m sending you a photo. It is 300dpi which should be really good for your needs.”

“Yes, but how big is it?”

“300dpi.”

I have had this discussion with so many people it’s not funny anymore. I’m usually polite about it. So here’s the deal.

300 dpi means 300 dots per inch. Telling me that your image is at 300 dots per inch tells me only that you can divide the total number of dots in the image by 300 in order to make the dots appear close to each other. It’s the same as giving me the following equation:

n/dpi = n(inch)
You’ve told me that dpi is 300, but you haven’t told me what n is yet. What if n is 87? It will mean the photo is really tiny.

Since I can print your photo at any dpi I choose to, telling me the dpi you selected is irrelevant anyway. (Another way of saying that is changing the dpi doesn’t change the total number of dots. the numerator is the important part. The denominator is arbitrary.)
It’s easiest if you tell me the dimensions of your image (such as 640×480) beacuse I can do some quick calculations to know that your photo is 3.2 inches wide at 200 dpi.