Setting up Shop: Which Linux to use?

Ubuntu 12.10 x64 with KDE Desktop

Eleven (11!) installs in 10 days. That’s how things worked out when I got my new Dell Vostro 2520 laptop and experimented with the operating systems I wanted to work with for the next while. Due to some mistakes on my part, I occasionally blew away things I meant to keep and sometimes experiments worked out badly, like when I tried to zero the MBR (master boot record) so I could get a cleaner menu install. My backup didn’t write back properly. At least 4 of the reinstalls were related to accidents.

The other deletes and installs occurred as I worked through distros to see which ones might be of most use in my computing and writing projects. In truth, they were all, aside from the requisite Windows install, good for projects, but some of the distros had too many rough edges or lack of support to be useful in writing for a beginner’s audience.

The first OS to go was PC-BSD. I was personally fond of it, but it was a bit too wide of the mark when it comes to writing about Linux. It also had driver issues. When it wouldn’t go wireless after installing the latest Belkin USB WiFi stick I had to give up on it. BSD is a great OS but perhaps not at a desktop level.

In its place I tried Fedora. I was initially impressed with Fedora, but the more I worked with it, the less I understood it. The interface (Gnome 3?) totally confused me and, compared to Ubuntu, I found overall documentation lacking. So Fedora was sent to the bit bucket.

Next up, Linux Mint 14 with the Cinnamon interface. Wow, I thought. This is the distribution for me. I really liked its aggressively modern approach of providing the best possible desktop for a user coming from Windows. It even offered software like Picasa.

I was getting along great with Linux Mint until I tried to set up my networked Laserjet 1300 printer. I’d done this before in other operating systems with no trouble, but Linux Mint gave me nothing but. After doubting myself and going in circles with the setup menus I began to suspect Linux Mint itself. I did some googling and, sure enough, there were others with the same problem and, worse, the problem went all the way back to Linux Mint 12. This did not bode well. I then discovered that Google had dropped development for Picasa for Linux some time ago. It seemed to me to be a kind of dishonesty to be featuring abandoned software up front, so I decided that for all the good things I saw there, Linux Mint, too, would go to the bit bucket.

By this time I realized that the one distribution I could reliably count on over and over was Ubuntu. I’d even started warming up to the Unity interface. Not to mention that I have a choice of Gnome, KDE, Xfce, and others should I go off Unity. So I deleted the current Ubuntu partition and reinstalled Ubuntu into the lion’s share of the hard disk, leaving only Windows 7 and Ubuntu as a dual-boot machine.

I set up my networked printer with no troubles, using exactly the same menus that were presented to me in Mint. The thing about Ubuntu — it just tends to work, and I appreciate the rich amount of documentation.

So, this machine is literally leaving boot camp and is now ready for action.

Uniting the Tribes: Triple Booting Windows, BSD, and Linux

Last Cyber Monday I fell for a deal from Dell: a Vostro 2520 15.6″ laptop with Intel i3 processors, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard disk and CD/DVD burner, plus WiFi, camera, USB ports, SD port, HDMI port, etc., with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled for $279 Cdn. It’s not a powerhouse, but was too good a deal to pass up. It’s a lot zippier than my old Dell Inspiron 1520. Two days ago it arrived, booting up perfectly with Ubuntu 11.04 64-bit and the unit even had a little Ubuntu sticker on the case instead of the usual Windows sticker.¹

Because I’ve started preliminary work for a possible book on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, I needed a good lab computer — a unit to turn into a sandbox where I could play around with stuff and not worry about my critical data if something breaks. It’s a good thing too because, as you’ll see, I managed to trigger a superb messup along the way.

The reason I need Windows in the mix is to test out the capabilities of Cygwin, the project whose motto is “Get that Linux feeling — on Windows.” Cygwin provides a Unix-like environment running in Windows itself without the need to install a parallel operating system. I’ve used it once or twice in the past and liked it and can see how it could be a highly useful tool both in itself and as a vehicle to learn Unix concepts.

So, when creating a multi-boot environment, it’s always a good idea to start with Windows first because if you don’t, Windows will blow away any boot menu you’ve set up in the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your drive, claiming the space as its own. Windows does not play nice with other operating systems.

I installed Windows 7 into a 100GB partition. I thought of installing Windows 8, but I already had a Windows 7 license and I had enough new learning on my hands without experiencing the weird aggro of Windows 8. While partitioning my drive (blowing away the Dell installation) I used Windows to create an extra 80GB partition for PC-BSD. PC-BSD doesn’t care what kind of file system is there initially, but it has no partitioning tools at this time and requires a primary partition to be available to install into.

PC-BSD? I’ll admit this one sneaked up on me. I used to install FreeBSD servers in one of my IT jobs and I really liked BSD (another Unix-like operating system similar to, but different from, Linux). What PC-BSD is, is FreeBSD with desktop enhancements to make it attractive as a workstation computer as well as a server. I hadn’t heard of it until recently so I wanted to include it in my studies and tests. PC-BSD 9, 64-bit, installed cleanly from DVD and all was well until I tried to reboot after installation and the system went straight into Windows instead. Evidently PC-BSD’s boot menu routine wasn’t up to the task. Later, I thought. I’ll deal with the boot issue later, because I have one more operating system to go.

My third operating system on the Dell unit was Ubuntu Linux, but version 12.10 rather than the 11.04 Dell had installed. As always, Ubuntu behaved well for me and installed nicely, taking the rest of the available disk. I expect to spend most of my Unix time in Ubuntu (unless my time on my intrepid Mac counts as Unix time, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch, despite the Mac’s BSD underpinnings).

The GRUBby details

I had rather hoped that Ubuntu would sniff out PC-BSD as well as Windows and add it to GRUB (GNU GRand Unified Bootloader), the current Linux boot manager. It didn’t. It certainly picked up Windows and I had a fine dual-boot computer working, with no apparent access to the BSD installation.

I figured I could fix GRUB manually so I did a little googling and found some recipes for booting PC-BSD. GRUB has changed substantially since I last used it and the /boot/grub/menu.lst file is no longer hand editable. I had to add the BSD stanza to /etc/grub.d/40_custom, which I did, finishing off with a $ sudo update-grub command to insert the new boot menu into the MBR.

When I rebooted there was an entry for PC-BSD, but it didn’t work. I chased a number of red herrings trying to get it working, including reinstalling the OS in case I’d done something wrong. During installation I thought, with an increasingly fatigued mind, that if I put the /boot partition in the MBR, it would solve the boot issue. It did. Boy did it! It booted beautifully, but took over the entire hard disk, wiping out both the Windows and the Ubuntu installations. It wouldn’t have been quite as painful if I hadn’t gone through the gruelling process of “first update” of Windows software: 139 slow, slow, slow updates. (It’s this sort of thing that turns me off Windows). But, the fault lay with me, so I had a good laugh and started over.

Last night I got everything installed again, with the same initial result. PC-BSD wouldn’t boot from GRUB. Somewhere along the line something I read niggled at my brain and I read more about GRUB, learning that between the last edition, which I’ve used, and this one, they changed disk numbering. Numbering of the first partition used to start at 0, second partition at 1, third partition at 2, etc., so for the BSD partition at partition 3, I was using 2. It’s been changed to simply 1, 2, 3, etc., without starting at 0. That was one I wouldn’t have anticipated.

When I fixed the number, changing it from a 2 to a 3, PC-BSD booted perfectly. For the record, this is the stanza that worked for me:


menuentry "PCBSD 9.0" {
set root=(hd0,3)
chainloader +1
}


Simple math, if you know the rules.

Now that the Cyber Monday special is up and running, I can compare and contrast the three OSes and the type and quality of Unix experience they provide.

More later.

---

^{1. Lest anyone think the acquisition was perfect, let me admit that the Dell Vostro 2520 has a crappy keyboard. It’s cheap and bounces easily resulting in multiple characters per keystroke. Worse it has the dreaded Canadian English-French keyboard layout that shrinks the left shift by putting an extra key in the way. Instead of shifting, you get a string of backslashes unless you type very carefully. I use a USB keyboard and mouse in place of the built-in stuff. [Jump back to footnote 1]}

Ubuntu Linux on Nexus 7: First Look

My OTG (“On the Go”) cable arrived after three weeks of languishing in the postal service so I finally had what I needed to plug a USB keyboard into the Nexus 7. The procedure looked fairly safe, and I was willing to gamble. I say gamble, because I’m not a serious hacker and if the instructions were to deep-six my system, I’d be screwed. But I figured there’d be some way to restore it, so, to pursue my abiding interest in things Linux, I took the plunge.

Unlocking the Nexus

The first step was completely new to me: Unlocking the Nexus 7. I’m guessing this is the equivalent of jailbreaking an iThing, but more up front. In fact, Google makes it easy to do. You simply power off the device, then power it back on while holding down the power button and the volume down button. What you get onscreen is cute little Android figure with the hood to its insides open and a big Start button on the top. If you press Start the unit boots back up normally. But when attached to another computer, the ROM can be flashed via the USB port. This state is called “fastboot mode.”

Courtesy: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=bootloader.png

I used my Ubuntu Linux 12.04 laptop (Dell Inspiron 1520) to do the procedure, but I understand it can also be done from Windows or OS X. I had already installed ubuntu-nexus7-installer and was ready for the next step:

$ sudo fastboot oem unlock

I then followed the directions on the Nexus “Unlock Bootloader?” screen, restarted the unit, and it came back up, still in Android mode, but unlocked.

The next step was so easy it was liking riding in a robotic car. I returned the Nexus 7 to fastboot mode, located the graphical Ubuntu Nexus 7 installer program on my laptop, clicked on it, and waited for it to finish.

Courtesy: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Nexus7/Installation?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=dash3.png

Test Drive

When the installer finished, I was looking at Ubuntu’s Unity graphical interface and a virtual keyboard. At this point I should say that I wasn’t expecting it to be a finished product. In fact it’s a long way from alpha, much less beta. But I wanted to see how far the team had come in getting Linux onto a tablet, which is a remarkable feat. While Microsoft is spending millions getting full Windows 8 onto a tablet, here is a team of people on the Internet building the equivalent on their own dime, simply for the good of the community. These people have my profound respect, as well as thanks.

So, performance was about what I expected. I’d touch an icon, say for Gedit, a text editor, and there would be a several-seconds wait before it appeared. I touched the Terminal program icon and it, too, appeared in a few seconds. Not instantly as in Android or iOS. I typed a few commands in the terminal using the virtual keyboard, cd’ing around the sytems and ls’ing the directories to see what was around. The virtual keyboard got old fast. Because it’s such a full keyboard, without numeric and special symbols modes like an Android or iOS virtual keyboard, everything has to be on Ubuntu’s virtual keyboard. That makes for very tiny keys and circumspect typing.

Next I hooked up an external USB keyboard. I touched the text editor, exited the virtual keyboard, and tried typing. Worked like a charm! I typed at full speed and didn’t detect any lag onscreen. I tried it in the Terminal window too, and it was great. However, the pesky virtual keyboard kept popping up whenever I touched the screen. It got to be highly annoying. It would be a good idea if the virtual keyboard could be suppressed if the system detects an external keyboard.

Still amazed at how far the team had come, I looked for, and found, a Screen Capture program. It’s what I used to capture the image at the top of this blog posting. It too worked a treat, but I wondered how I could get the captured image out of the, I guess I can’t call it the Lexus 7, so I’ll say the Ubunexus 7. (Doesn’t have the same ring, does it?)

I removed the USB keyboard and attached an SD card reader with SD card inside. The folder viewing app detected it right away so I thought I’d just do a copy and paste using the app. Unfortunately, every time I started to get somewhere with it, the app would cause the system to freeze and I’d have to reboot. To reboot when you don’t have any control of the system, just push the power button on the Nexus 7 and the reboot/shutdown options appear. After a few rounds of this I gave up and went to the terminal window where I typed something like (I forgot to write down the exact command):

$ cp screenshot01.png /mnt/ubuntu/SDCARD01

What a delightful sight it was to see the green light blip on the card reader. If that hadn’t worked, I’d have tried rsync or something, but I had what I needed.

Aside: This simple copy to the SD card impressed me to no end because in Android 4.2 I CANNOT get the OS to see any card or memory stick I attach. All the tips I’ve seen on the Net simply say, attach with an OTG cable. Done that, been there, tried two different readers and two different cables. No joy. Yet Ubuntu Linux mounts it intelligently. Piece of cake.

Back to Android 4.2

Bottom line: I’m impressed with how far the team has come with the touchscreen interface, and the port to the ARM processor. Much work still needs to be done. For instance, you can’t yet use finger gestures to enlarge the screen, something that will make using the tiny icons and fonts more tolerable for pudgy fingers. And there will be, I’m sure, many bugs to be fixed. Great work!

As nice as it was to visit, however, it’s still under construction, not ready for occupancy. Eventually I’ll move in, but for now it was back to Android. The installation procedures also give instructions for downloading the current install image for Android 4.2. Once it’s fetched, gunzipped, and untar’d, you put the Nexus back in fastboot mode and type (depending on the image version)

$ cd nakasi-jro03d/
$ sudo ./flash-all.sh

At this point the Nexus 7 is returned to Android. All your customized settings are lost, of course, but if you’ve been autobacking your system to Google (recommended), Google restores all the apps you’ve loaded. You need to retweak the interface to your taste.

And if you wish to relock the OS, there’s one final step. Return the Nexus 7 to fastboot mode and type

$ sudo fastboot oem lock

I’ll leave mine unlocked so I can try out the distribution again when it reaches another plateau, without fussing with the Nexus lock. I’ll admit I’m looking forward to the next trial. This is great stuff. Cheers to the development team and all the testers!

Nexus 7 Has Arrived

It arrived two days ago, all gleaming and ready to go with Jelly Bean,aka Android 4.1. The Google Nexus 7.

Lest anyone be confused, I’m not turning away from Apple products. I love my iPad 3 and use up its battery charge nearly every day. No, this purchase was made for a different reason entirely: Linux.

In an exciting development, Canonical Ubuntu Linux has released a distribution for the Nexus 7 as its target tablet to further develop this ARM implementation of Linux. I expect it to be very rough around the edges and only moderately useable but I’m excited to test it out. It’s a worthy dream to have a full Linux operating system on a tablet for portable use. Rather like what Microsoft is trying to do with full Windows 8 tablets.

In the meantime I’m trying out the Nexus 7 with Android, an operating system I’ve not before used and I must say, it’s very slick. The App store at Google may not be as well stocked as the iPad App store, but I was able to pick up most of the extras I need, such as a basic text editor for writing and a file manager to move files around. By the time I added a few extras the Nexus had most of the apps I use frequently on the iPad, including Chrome, Kindle, Netflix, Overdrive,DropBox, Adobe Reader, and a decent epub reader. What I haven’t found yet is a text editor that is the rough equivalent of WriteRoom.

My only regret about the Nexus 7 is that Google/Asus didn’t include a MicroSD slot. There is, however, a micro-USB connector and I have a coverter cable on order that will allow me to attach standard USB devices, such as an SD card reader or USB memory stick.

To be honest, it’s going to be painful to give all this up in order to install a partly working operating system that is in its early development and doesn’t yet do too many practical things.

So, would I give up my iPad for, say, the 10″ Google Nexus expected in a few weeks? Not really. Although I’m not an Apple fanboy, I really like the iPad and have owned two of them. Other than their being set in a protected, “walled garden” I have no complaints. However, for anyone looking for a less expensive option to a 7.8″ iPad, I think the Nexus 7 is a great buy.

Ubuntu Linux 12.04.1 on a Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop

We finally retired wife’s Dell Inspiron 1520 15″ laptop with built in DVD drive from Windows duty and that, as always, provided me with an opportunity to press it into service as a Linux computer. Linux laptops with WiFi are a special treat because I can relocate them to spots where I can access them directly when needed, or ssh into them from my Macbook Air.

I normally use Ubuntu Canonical as my go-to distribution because I’ve found it stable, easy to install, and helpful in terms of third-party drivers, but in this case I thought perhaps I’d experiment with Debian. I burned the latest Debian stable release to CD, inserted it into the Dell, and installed. The installation was straightforward but, as I feared, the WiFi adapter was not attended to and, worse, I realized that the software base was so old it was still using OpenOffice rather than LibreOffice. It was only then that I recalled that the Debian stable release is very conservative. You use the beta release if you want the latest versions.

I might have downloaded the beta and reinstalled, but I thought about the driver I needed for the Dell’s Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter. I was in unfamiliar territory. I wasn’t certain where to find the necessary driver or how to get it installed and working even if I did. I knew I could spend hours searching for the info with Google searches, working up the driver by hand, but I’ve been spoiled by Ubuntu. It makes the job so much easier.

So instead of downloading the Debian Beta release, I downloaded the current LTS version of Ubuntu: 12.04.1. I remembered using Ubuntu once before on an earlier model Dell laptop and being able to pick up the driver during updates when I jacked it into an RJ45 hardwired port. I decided since it was comfortable to do the installation in my dining room that I’d install unconnected to the Net and pick up the BroadCom driver after the fact.

Ubuntu installs are a piece of cake, especially since I was able to allow it to use the entire hard disk for its own use with no sharing or dual booting. The only surprise I got was a good one. When it arrived at the point of wanting to know if I wanted the installation to update software at the same time, via the Internet, it provided me with the necessary Broadcom Wi-Fi adapter. I chose it, typed in the network password, and Ubuntu did the rest. That’s plain classy.

When I booted up for business, after the installation, I was pleased with the selection of software Ubuntu had chosen, including LibreOffice and Firefox. I planned to add my specialized preferences, such as LyX and LaTeX, myself.

The new Unity interface was interesting — a kind of cross between Windows and Mac. It was easy to navigate and use, but it took me awhile to find my way to a terminal. You’d think that any version of Linux would set up an obvious terminal emulator by default. Worse, though was the performance. Rather than being better than Windows, I felt I was clicking through treacle. What was going on?

I did some Googling and discovered that, by default, Unity tries to use 3D graphics and works best with a graphics accelerator. I don’t know if the old Dell has an accelerated graphics chip or not, but if it does, it wasn’t working very well. So I logged off and on logging back on chose Unity 2D. After that everything speeded up to normal. All was almost well.

Except. I don’t know quite how to put this without offending the fine people at Ubuntu, whom I respect tremendously, but I really don’t like Unity. It’s a grandma’s interface. Something for the novice who never has plans to be anything else. Surely there must be a better way.

Here’s where my memory fails me. I can’t recall if Gnome Shell was an option on the relog screen or whether I went to the command line and typed $ sudo apt-get install gnome-shell. It was certainly an option after that.

So finally I rebooted into the traditional Gnome Shell and found an interface I could live with. I’ve used it before and found it plenty serviceable. The first program I stuck onto the top bar was Gnome Terminal. Now I was back in the Linux business. Next came Firefox and GEdit. TeX and LaTeX loaded up nicely, and I installed Handbrake because I have a DVD ripping project on the go.

Although I intend to do some modest development work on the Dell 1520, I’m first using it to rip the many Teaching Company “Great Courses” we own to MP4 format. As a friend remarked, I’m digitizing my university. Nowadays I purchase Teaching Company courses in download format from the get-go, but I have years of DVD courses I’d like to be able to study and review on my iPad or put on a memory stick to plug into my Blu Ray player.

All in all, it’s been another fine exercise in installing and using Linux. So far I haven’t found any trouble spots with the Dell 1520. I might, after finishing my ripping project, reinstall with Linux Mint, just to have a first look at it, but for now I’m happy with Ubuntu.

Updates

My friend and fellow camera enthusiast Ron Herron has published his first novel, Reichold Street, which “introduces a group of young, urban friends in the 1960s, and follows them from youthful neighborhood intrigue to family dysfunction, murder, suicide and madness. It explores the relationships that unite, divide and sustain these young friends, and their families, all the way to the searing tragedy and redemption of war.” The book is available in both print and ebook formats. I look forward to reading it.

I’ve been exploring the artistic/interpretive side of photography for the last while. In particular I’m using iPhone apps to create special effects and abstracts, as seen in my Abstracts set on Flickr. Standard photography has been in hiatus while I await the delivery of an Olympus OM-D, which should happen in the next week or two. Sometimes I need a new piece of gear to whet my appetite for photography.

I’ve been working on some essays for a collection I hope to pull together in the next year or so. My current essay has the tentative title, “On Becoming a Squirrel Whisperer.” I confess that work has been proceeding slowly, partly due to spending so much time reading on the Internet each day. It’s challenging to keep up with the science and technology stories that interest me. One aid is my Sci/Tech Daily Twitter newspaper that is issued twice a day.

For some odd reason I’ve been out of touch with my musical side. I never listen to music while I’m working or reading, and it’s been months since I took one of my instruments out of the closet. I’m hoping this is not some kind of brain problem caused by aging or the use of antidepressants. One positive sign is that I took out my six-string a couple of nights ago and enjoyed trying out some new (to me) songs. I’m hoping my interest in music will return.

Healthwise, not much to complain about. My ticker seems to be doing fine and aside from broken sleep patterns and a somewhat gimpy hip, both signs of aging, I’ve been feeling healthy. We’ve been enjoying a fine spring in Ontario and it’s a pleasure to go for walks.

One correction: in my posting, The Problem with Streaming Video, I complained about the lack of subtitles or captions. I’ve since discovered that Netflix has English subtitles for many of its videos. Getting captioning to display on the Apple TV is not intuitive, so here’s how to do it: Got to Settings, Audio & Video, Closed Captioning. Click it on and enjoy.

Latest tech acquisition: an iPad 3. A very satisfying purchase.

English Usage: The Science “So…” and the British “Different to…”

While listening to science podcasts such as Science Weekly, Science Friday, and Science Times, I began to notice a speech pattern that must pervade the science community: the use of “So …” to introduce remarks.

“So what they discovered is that …”
“So they fed mice a diet of …”
“So when the amygdala shows up on brain scans …”

I don’t hear this introductory word used by people being interviewed in non-science fields. If they use a word at all, it’s usually “well …”

I began listening for this diagnostic word indicating a bit of science is to follow and noticed it on TV science shows as well when scientists were being interviewed. I don’t know if this usage phenomenon has been widely identified.

The other expression to catch my ear during podcasts and interviews relates not simply to scientists, but to most British and Australian speakers. In North America we tend to vacillate between two forms of the comparative: “different than” and “different from.” I remember my grade school grammar teacher telling us that “different from” was the preferred usage, though I hear “different than” more frequently.

When listening to British speakers I hear an altogether different expression: “different to.”

“Middle English is different to Old English in the use of …”
“The highlands are different to the lowlands because …”
“Stage acting is different to movie acting.”

I rather like the expression, though I wouldn’t use it myself. It sounds foreign to my North American ear. I’m still firmly imprinted in the “different from” camp.

The Problem with Streaming Video

Streaming video, whether from Netflix or YouTube, is a great medium for young people with good hearing. But there comes a time in life, alas, when hearing starts to diminish and your either watch things with the volume turned up too far for decency, or you rely on captioning, or subtitles.

My wife and I are in our mid-60′s and our hearing has started to go. Our solution to this, when watching TV or DVDs, is to turn on captioning. It goes by various names: captioning, closed captioning, subtitles in English, subtitles for the hearing impaired. Go to Setup on a DVD and you’ll be able to turn it on.

We first started using subtitles when listening to British shows that often had hard-to-understand regional dialects. Then we used them for the archaeology show Time Team so we could catch the technical terms that were unfamiliar to our ears. It was better than “What was that he said?” “I dunno, couldn’t make it out.”

By the time we discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer the show was no longer on the air so we bought the DVD collection. There were so many quick lines and references to pop culture that we needed the subtitles to keep up.

Now it’s become our preferred way to watch any kind of video. We can keep the volume on the TV low yet still not miss any of the dialog.

With streamed video, which we watch via a Western Digital TV Live media player attached to our TV, there are no subtitles. There are none when we listen on our iThings either. I’ve often wondered why subtitles are not offered as a viewer option.

Not knowing the industry, I suspect it might have something to do with licensing rights and that subtitles and captions are not necessarily licensed along with the video itself. I could be wrong, of course. It may simply be that adding a subtitle track to the video isn’t standardized.

I hope something might be done about this eventually. There is, of course, a large demographic consisting of aging seniors and soon-to-be-seniors. Streamed video services would be more attractive to them as subscribers if they included captioning.

Captioning has some downsides, of course. And some chuckles. The captions occasionally obscure something you’re trying to see. Or, more comically, they try to capture the mood of the video by announcing “ominous music” when a murder is about to be committed. Still, they’ve become an important part of our viewing pleasure.

That’s it for now.

(“waves goodbye”)

Goodbye to Film (Again)

The last time I intended to go all digital, I hedged my bets and kept a Bessa T rangefinder and a few M-mount lenses for the Bessa. I also borrowed a Yashicamat 124 from my friend Jan and a Canon Rebel 2000 from my friend Suzanne. Feeling the film itch again, I bought a used Nikon F100 and replaced my development tanks and reels. I was ready to go.

That was over a year ago and I realized that in that time I had not shot a single roll of film. Clearly something was wrong with this picture.

It’s not film per se, or film cameras that held me back. I still think film black-and-white is special and I enjoy the handling and build of film cameras. The problem lay with me.

The problem is not that I like digital, but that I love digital.

I’ve become a Flickr hound and like to post something new each day. I also like to go out for a photo walk, come back home, and dump the images to my Mac. I really enjoy post processing. Although I’m not a Photoshop expert, I’m very comfortable with Photoshop and Bridge and look forward to organizing the images then selecting ones to work on for posting on Flickr.

On the other hand, I no longer felt like going through the effort of developing film then scanning negatives before I got to a starting point. Call it laziness, or simply call it practicality — bowing to the inevitable.

Another factor for leaving film again is that I now do a lot of my shooting with an iPhone 4. Because it’s also my phone, I always have it with me and the photo apps available for the iPhone camera make it great fun to shoot with. The iPhone made it less likely that I’d venture forth with a film cam.

Then, the biggest factor of all: I read that Olympus was going to release an m-4/3 camera styled on the Olympus OM film cameras. The Olympus OM-D. I loved my OM-1s when I was a film shooter and once I saw what the camera would look like, I decided to clear by closet of film gear.

I sold the Bessa T and most of the lenses for it. I sold the F100. I sold my unused developing tank and reels. I even sold my remaining Rodinal and HC-110. I returned my borrowed cameras. A clean slate.

So. I have a black-body Olympus OM-D with the 12-50mm weatherproof lens on order. The order includes a trade-in on my faithful Lumix G2, a nice camera in its own right. Because I own a few Olympus and Lumix m-4/3 lenses, along with my remaining vintage lenses, I’m well kitted out for when the OM-D arrives.

So once again, goodbye film. A blessing to all those who still use it and keep it alive. I’ll watch for your work on Flickr.

Solar Flares and Twitter Follies

So, it was an odd week. During an intense solar flare there were widespread reports of huge aurora borealis displays, often seen much farther south than usual. We might have been able to catch a glimpse of these but for one thing. We had a week of socked-in, cloud cover with intermittent rain and snow. No hope of seeing the sky.

I started physiotherapy for a neck problem seemingly caused by normal aging and arthritis — an impinged nerve that sends pain into my shoulder, down into my arm, and tingles all the way to my fingers. The exercises my therapist has given me are straight out of Treat Your Own Neck, by Robin McKenzie — a book he recommends highly.

A news item from this week is a head scratcher: British Tourists Arrested in American Terror Charges. In their Twitter comments the couple joked that they were going to “destroy America” (British slang meaning party hard), and “dig up Marilyn Monroe” (a quote from the comedy Family Guy which is an American show).

For his Twitter jokes, Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was handcuffed and kept under armed guard in a cell with Mexican drug dealers for 12 hours after landing in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. Both had their luggage searched for spades and shovels.

Lessons learned? Big Brother is watching and BB has absolutely no sense of humour (even American-grown humour). The couple were barred from entering the U.S.

On a positive note, I just received an Amazon delivery: Garner’s Modern American Usage. I’ve already enjoyed spending over an hour opening the book at random and reading the passages. For anyone who loves the English language and enjoys usage and grammar discussions, this book is highly recommended.