Hey All - Here are a few pictures of some kitty cats that I've photographed around the world. They have several things in common: they were originally RAW files (which have a wider exposure latitude than JPEG files), all were cropped (because I like to fill the frame with the subject) the kitty cats were all photographed with my Canon 100-400mm IS lens at f/8 (the sharpest f/stop on that lens), and I took all the photos close to eye level (because I like to see eye-to-eye). One photo is different. I know it's kinda obvious, but someone asked me why? As soon as I post this note, I'm going to try to find out the answer. Any guesses out there? If so, post away!

Here's something I've missed since OS 9: a wee program that checks if your other programs are up to date. The App Update widget compares your programs against the listings at Apple, Version Tracker, and MacUpdate, and then offers download links to the programs that are outdated. It generated a few "false positives," but also reminded me of a...

In which I pass one some additional tips about past subjects, point out some interesting links, and say farewell for time being.

We've had a couple of spells of really warm weather lately. This is an unusual pattern for the San Francisco Bay area in summer. It is well known that summer weather in San Francisco is often cold and foggy. On one of these hot and sultry summer days Mark and I started down the trail for Tennessee Beach well after...

In November of 2007, while I was clambering around Zion Canyon at night, exploring the Wave, and getting lost in the desert, Phyllis fielded a business call from Ringing Cedars Press. Ringing Cedars is the English language publisher of a series of books by Vladimir Megré. The Ringing Cedars series conveys the wisdom, strength, and experience of Anastasia, a woman...

The cost of fixing bugs found early in development is much less than the cost of fixing bugs found late -- like during Q A or after a product ships.

After much debating, we decided to enable Google Apps Premier Edition for in-office use. SSL had always been a sticky point for us, and Google Apps are notoriously lacking in this regard, but probing around various newsgroups and sites seemed to show behavior had been improved across the board. Unfortunately, things are still very hit and miss and I fear...

The R Project for Statistical Computing is a free multi-platform Open Source statistical and graphical programming platform. It provides a Mac friendly R Console for all the statistical and graphical work you can throw at it. Version 2.7.1 was released earlier this week.

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac users can finally read those DOCX, XLSX and other "X" files created by Microsoft Office 2007 (for Windows) and 2008 (for Mac). Office 2008 for Mac gets its own giant 12.1.1 update with a bunch of fixes (some related to the previous SP1 update).

DekePod is back with an insane vengeance. Here's a behind the scenes look.