Lanny Donoho’s God’s Blogs
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=525353&event=CF
Lanny Donoho's God's Blog
Tim Stevens’s Pop Goes the Church
Ron Brinkmann’s The Art and Science of Digital Compositing
Archives For personal
The everything else container. Stuff that I mull about or family related. Fun stuff, photos, etc
Ok, this is not something I am doing; switching from a Windows based machine to an Apple Mac. For I have switched already, da da dadummmm. Well actually the work I do as a programmer is on an IBM ThinkPad with XP on it – they already tried to push Apple before I got here but to no avail, pity.
Anyway my wife is switching, ah oh.
The sudden change in the way things are done, handled? seems to be quiet frustrating to her. That and the fact that all the info from the PC was unceremoniously dumped into her documents folder, ummm by me.
Hmmm, it is quiet obvious that the Finder application is probably the most difficult change from a Windows Explorer user. I have to admit that I really prefer the folders toolbar on the left that I can collapse and open on a whim.
One thing that has been difficult to get around is the fact that Apple-TAB does not always open the most recent window of the application, it switches to the application but if the window had been minimized then you would have to Apple-~(tilda) to get the window up. Hmmm, this is particularly annoying with iTunes.
Anyway, in an effort to make things easier I found these sites that are pretty good:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343
http://iboughtamac.com/2007/01/13/useful-keyboard-shortcuts-in-os-x/
http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20080702/some-general-tips-for-switch-to-mac-from-windows/
http://www.danrodney.com/mac/index.html
http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/
and my favourite? he new one I learnt today: command ~ (although it can get irritating for windows that are minimized – what is the key for ‘bring all to the front’?)
I constantly find; almost every day, that I am having to find a balance between God, the work I do for God, my Wife, my Son and my daytime job. Some things are set in stone, like my daytime job and my Son, they involve schedules that have to be adhered to. But then the more important areas of my life, as in God, kind of get side lined due to time constraints and deadlines. It is a balancing act that has to be maintained everyday.
And being a volunteer does not make it easier; it’s not like you can say that the work you do for God is all the time that you need to spend with God, that’s like being a workaholic and never spending time with the family, yet saying you are doing it for the family. I think as a volunteer one has to be ever more aware of the time spent with God as opposed to the time spent working for God.
I have been challenged lately in this because in the last few weeks I have found myself working late on video editing and then being too tired in the morning to make time for God. Even if I try connect with God at another time I find myself drifting off and thinking about things I have to do.
This is not a healthy thing, in fact I should be starting off with putting God First – that is my relationship with Him before I start running around doing stuff for Him, lest I run the risk of loosing the reason why I am working so hard.
So, the truth is that there really should not be a balancing act; at least when it comes to God.
That is going to be my challenge for a while. Put God First.
I always have to budget for things, personally for the things I need and the things that the team will need. But there is nothing like putting together the list of things that are just awesome, here is my list (I’ll probably edit it over the next week):
The Cameras
Red One 4k 4:4:4 HD Camera Package
O’Connor 1030S HD Fuild Head and O’Connor 25L Carbon Fibre Tripod
Panasonic AG-HVX200A with 2 x 16GB Cards
O’Connor 1030S HD Fuild Head and O’Connor 25L Carbon Fibre Tripod
The Machine
300GB startup SAS Drive
3 x 1TB SATA2 7200rpm 32MB cache
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT Graphic Card
[Added] Wacom Intuos3 6×8 Pen Tablet
[Added] Bella Final Cut Pro Keyboard
The Screens
2 x 23″ Apple Cinema Displays
Panasonic BT-LH2600W 26-inch LCD HD Production Monitor
Capture
Caldigit HDPro 6TB with 2GB controller cache
Colour Control
Audio
Mackie Tapco S5 Active Studio Monitors
Mackie Universal Master Control Surfacer
Mackie 1202 12 channel Mixer
The Software
Final Cut Studio 2
FxFactory 2.0.3 with CoreMelt plugins
Shake 4.1
The Foundry: Furnace and Tinder for Shake
Genarts: Sapphire Plugins for Shake and FCS
Logic Studio
Photoshop CS3 Extended
Illustrator CS3
ummmmmmmmmmmmmm
Yip I have downloaded the 430Mb patch and I am ready to install. But I will wait, first till I have finished my current projects and then only after all the forums and discussion boards have given the thumbs up.
That is the prudent thing to do
That is the wise thing to do
Unfortunately there have been a few reports as indicated by AppleInsider that point out Visual flaws for MacBook Pro users, hmmm I use a MBP.
So I wait a week or so and see what happens.
But I have to say that I have been waiting for this patch with much eagerness.
Man alive – yayyy, I am working with the new 2.5GHz MacBookPro and 4GB Ram. This is such a blessing since this machine; along with a 20″ iMac, is a amazing gift we received recently. I cannot say if it is a massive improvement over the 2.33GHz version I was using with the standard 2GB Ram, well not yet. But I have had some serious problems with it.
First with the Sonnet Tempo Express Card that was solved by correctly installing the drivers.
Second with the AirPort switching off and not being able to switch on until a restart is executed, this does not happen much anymore, but I hope the problem does not happen anymore with the release of 10.5.3.
Third with regular crashes:
Last night; while putting together a Title Package for the new series, the MBP kept crashing with the umm grey screen of death – 9 times. I was using Motion 3 with a only one graphic, a filter on the graphic, and two text elements that had simple behaviors. The only thing of suspicion here was the filter. I was trying out the 15 day trial of FxFactory 2.0.3 and the 3D Shatter filter from the CoreMelt Stylize package. hmmmm.
I really hope that the crashing was because of the filter and not the Ram, the ram would be such a nuisance to sort out.
Anyway, I plan to put the MBP through it Paces with FC2, Shake, Logic Studio and ProPresenter3. Awesome.
But I still dream and pray for a 3.2GHz Mac Pro with 16GB Ram, maybe then my Motion projects will run closer to the desired frame rate; hahaha
