The Move to Aperture

I recently upgraded from iPhoto to Aperture. Overall, I'm glad I did, though this assessment may be a bit premature. I'm a reasonably experienced iPhoto users, so hopefully my experience could be instructive for others out there.

Here are my initial thoughts on Aperture:

• Import Process: Setting up the process to import is easy and I particularly liked how the process did not take up all available resources. That is to say, after Aperture identified all of the events from iPhoto to import, it went about the import in an event by event fashion. As soon as an event was imported, you could go to work on it.
• Faces Import Data Integrity:Faces information came in well. All of the people that I had tagged were there with all of their associated pictures. Note that this included 100's of photos for some of the kids, so it would have been a real hassle if it had not worked well.
• Places Import Data Integrity:Apparent failure at first. None of the geotagging information seemed to be imported. None whatsoever. That is say that when I went to the map, there were no pins on it. At first, there are only two things that mitigate this failure: ex post geotagging is easily done with multiple photos and you can import a GPS track log and pictures to geotag. This will remove the extra step of using GPSPhotoLinker for doing this with iPhoto. After messing around some more, and unsure if I was just looking at things incorrectly previously, it appears that my tagging information is still there. Excellent. I'm looking forward to tagging a larger percentage of newly imported pictures and will also work to tag some old stuff due to the easier process.
• Image Adjustments: Brushes One of the items that I thought was particularly interesting about Aperature was the ability to brush in our out an image adjustment. This has already come in very handy for some post-processing of an image that needed the lowlights brought up, but had some blacks in it that I wanted preserved. Not a problem, just brush out the adjustment on those areas.
• Keyboard Shortcuts: There are a lot of them, which is very appealing to me. I've already downloaded a cheat sheet and have put next to my monitor. I hope to learn them over time.
• Interface: I will have to say that I have done much more stray clicking around in Aperture than I have ever done in iPhoto. The interface looks like its going to take some getting used to. That said, I'm not worried that it will never make sense. I think it will just take some getting use to.
• More to come . . . .

All I want for Christmas

There are few things in the electronics realm that I find overly compelling from a Christmas present receiving sort of perspective. That is to say, there isn't much I want for Christmas. Part of the problem as I have gotten older is that my interests shift to larger and larger dollar purchases. In no particular order, here are the few things that I do sort of want:

• 30" Dell Monitor: I've been wanting to replace my two 20" Dell monitors on my desktop for some time. My hope was always that the 30" monitors would be well below $1000 by now. Alas, they are not and I can't get myself to take the plunge yet. I'll have to look for refurbished and sales items from Dell.
• A Sports Watch: Thinking something cheap or on the order of $35 and from Nike or some other such sport brand. Doesn't need to do anything but tell the time, just like they did 100 years ago, but digital, waterproof, sleek and durable would be nice.
• Home Automation Gear: This is still on my list of things to do, but hardly seems like a Christmas present. Maybe there are some starter packages that work well. I've been advised by a friend who runs a home automation company that Control4 is a much better purchase than Insteon or X10. Therefore, I'm a little hesitant to buy any other as a result. I also think that I would find it useful to have the security system (that we haven't decided on buying yet) tied into the home automation system.
• A New, Higher Quality Pocket Cam: I have a range of cameras available to me right now: a Canon 5D Mark II (high quality, but crazy bulky), a Canon Digital Rebel XT (still high quality in most cases, but still bulky), an Olympus Stylus 1030 SW (pocketable, waterproof, and virtually indestructible but optics and picture quality are mediocre). I have researched a bit and found two good candidates, but neither is sufficiently compelling to take the plunge. The first, the Canon S95, inspired this post from David Pogue from the NY Times. The S95 has a large sensor and great features to take great pictures. It does, however, still lack GPS tagging, one of the key features that I find compelling about the Panasonic Lumix DMZ-DS7. It not only has some good optical properties, including a 12x zoom, but it also has the GPS tagging.
• Vehicle Port Logging: I ran across the concept in Popular Science (or Mechanics, not sure which) and am very much intrigued. There are at least two options: the Rev and the (less excitingly named) GL1. Both of these products combine information from your phone's GPS data stream with data from your vehicle's OBD-II data port output. That second stream of information will allow you to track instantaneous fuel consumption, engine revving, service codes, etc. I think that there would be a bit I could learn about how I drive and when I do or do not waste gas. Of course, in the end, I would want to be able to keep the data in my own database, just not sure that part is going to happen. UPDATE: After reading this review, I've decided that the GoPoint GL1 has a ways to go before I want to invest my time and effort into it. The software may have improved since the April review, but the fuel efficiency calculations were horrendous -- enough so as to mislead. I will wait for some maturity here.