by Jason Prahl | Oct 22, 2005 | Photo - Vehicles, Photoblog
Ok, I need your opinions again. Color or Black and white I did a bunch of cleaning up on this one because it had a bunch of powerlines and junk that I found disctracting. Here’s the original if you are curious. The truck isn’t in focus as much as I had hoped for, but that’s what happens when you hold the camera out the top of a moving car through a sun roof. :)
by Jason Prahl | Oct 21, 2005 | Photo - Animals, Photoblog
I took my kids to a park the other night and between them and their cousins they scared off every goose, duck or other type of bird around this pond. It was interesting to watch them as they floated along. Most of them tended to stay in little groups, but this one duck I noticed seemed to go to each group and each time the group would swim away. I guess we’ll never know what made this guy an outcast but it was kinda sad watching him swimming all alone.
by Jason Prahl | Oct 20, 2005 | Photo - Macro, Photo - Monochrome, Photo - People, Photo - Self Portrait, Photoblog
I’m not really so vain as to think you want to look this close at me. I have been wanting to experiment with up close shots and for a lack of willing subjects I used myself. Just messin around. And, I’m not normally quite this serious! :)
by Jason Prahl | Oct 18, 2005 | Blog, Computer Hardware
I love my job. At work we have a project coming up that is likely to work best with tablet PC’s. Once we get into this project we are going to need about 30 or more of them. So, to find out which brand and model will work best for our application we have got a couple of them in and have been experimenting.
The models we have played with so far are the IBM X41, Toshiba Tecra M4 and the HP tc1100. We previously had a Viewsonic V1100 and we had a rep from Motion Computing come out and show their line of tablets as well.
The Motion Computing tablets feel solid and are really sharp though we haven’t really got to test drive it. It’s hard to tell how they will perform without taking it and really putting it to use for a few weeks.
My favorite so far has been the HP. This actually came as a surprise to me because I’m not much of a HP guy. We have a HP 9000 Unix server that does a good job and we use almost nothing but HP printers. I’ve never really cared for their laptops or desktops.
The Toshiba is really more of a laptop and is way to big to be a useful tablet pc. The M4 is a convertible type where the screen rotates around and can lay flat to be used as a tablet or upright like a laptop. It’s performance was good although it was bogged down with a bunch of Toshiba junk which we promptly turned off most of it. The battery life seemed shorter than the other two probably because it had a larger sized screen.
The IBM is sharp from a hardware standpoint, but it’s performance was poor compared to the HP and Toshiba. It has built in fingerprint reader which is interesting but not really needed for our uses, plus the software running behind it seemed to be one of the biggest drains on performance. After turning off alot of the extra software and stuff running in the background it worked a lot better. The X41’s size is nice and it feels real sturdy. One gripe I had with it was the fan that keeps the cpu cool was unusually noisy. This could have just been a problem with the particular unit we had but it was annoying in quiet situations. Like the Toshiba it is a convertible type tablet PC.
Like I said before the HP has come out as my favorite so far. It’s size is great. The design is sharp and it’s performance was particularly surprising. I loaded Photoshop CS2 and had no problems editing large photos. Running Microsoft Office (Word and PowerPoint), Firefox and a couple of other applications simultaneously wasn’t a problem for this little machine either. Battery life seems good thus far as well.
The HP can be called a convertible or a standard tablet because the keyboard can be removed or acts as a stand. The keyboard is a undersized version and can take a little getting used to.
We’ll be testing some other models later and will keep you posted on those as well. Right now the winner is the HP.
by Jason Prahl | Oct 18, 2005 | Photo - Nature, Photoblog
Here’s a little color…From a couple of weeks ago during a early morning walk.
by Jason Prahl | Oct 17, 2005 | Photo - Flowers, Photo - Monochrome, Photoblog
It’s a little more centered than I intended, but oh well. Oh, and I lied when I said one more black and white yesturday. Here’s another. :)
by Jason Prahl | Oct 16, 2005 | Photo - Monochrome, Photo - Nature, Photoblog
Ok, one more black and white. Nothing special, just messing around just after sunset. Process: Slight crop, gradient map adjustment layer with black and white gradient. Clone tool to clean up the leaves on the top and bottom edge. Two passes through Neat Image to remove noise. I’ll get back to color stuff some time…or maybe not. :) Here is the original if you are curious.
by Jason Prahl | Oct 15, 2005 | Photo - Monochrome, Photoblog
This time the grain is natural. I was playing with ISO as the sun was setting at a playground.
by Jason Prahl | Oct 14, 2005 | Photo - Monochrome, Photoblog
More black and white