The Juicy Cow

I love my Mac. I really do I’ve been a Windows PC user for about 10 years, I used to setup my own computers putting together the best pieces of hardware I could find, tweaking every bit of the system to gain the most efficient computer possible. So I probably had about 5 or 6 different computers running from Windows 95 to Windows XP. Last year my laptop Sony Vaio died, taking with him all my data by the way. That’s when I decided to jump the fence, Mac were affordable, especially with the student offers and it was possible to run Windows XP/Vista on it. Why not then?

So I’m now the proud owner of a Mac Book Pro 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of DDR2 SDRAM. I use it about 14 hours per day for both professional and personal purpose and, well, I couldn’t go back to a Windows PC…

In a nutshell, I would strongly recommend to anyone looking for a new computer to go Mac. But…

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Illustration: Cheksa

I always loved music video clips. Obviously they mixed two things I like; music and video and they are often an interesting source of inspiration for visual work.

So here I put a list of 10+1 music video clips that particularly stand out in my opinion. They are often the work of great directors such as French director Michel Gondry (N°2,6…).

1. Pearl Jam: Do the Evolution
2. Chemical Brothers: Star Guitar
3. Timo Mass ft. Brian Molko: First day
4. Gym Class Heroes: Cupids Chokehold / Breakfast in America
5. Bob Marley feat. Lauryn Hill: Turn your lights down low
6. Kylie Minogue: Come Into My World
7. The Prodigy: Smack my bitch up
8. Missy Elliott: Teary Eyed
9. Michael Jackson: Thriller
10. Smashing Pumpkins: 1979
10+1. Harvey Danger: Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitt

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If you were wondering where to get the best deal on a brand new Apple Ipod Nano you will be happy to find this price study that I just finished

There is a few surprises here, as it is not necessarily where you expect the Ipod Nano to be cheap that you can actually get it for a good price…

For example it is actually about 40% cheaper to get an Ipod Nano in Tokyo than in Paris…

Without further delay here is the chart: Read the rest of this entry »

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I’m working on a web service project that involves pictures, a lot of pictures. So I’ve been thinking on what was the best way to store information about a picture? I found 3 possibilities:

1. Store the information in a database. It’s the most obvious solution. When you need the information, you get it from the database. Easy. BUT databases are known to slow down web services…
2. Store the information in a separated file. So you would have the JPEG and its data file. You display the first one and get the informations needed from the second one.
3. Use the EXIF data directly. JPEG have metadata, structured under the EXIF methods. It’s easy to get those informations out of the JPEG file with PHP code for example.

So who’s the fastest?

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Not that I am a big fan of guns or anything like that, but I always found entertaining those scenes of complete chaos and violence that the movies brought to us.

Here is a list of 10+1 Best Shootout Movie Scenes Hope you enjoy it.

Some of them are all time classics (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, such a masterpiece!) others are not as exciting today as they were when the movie was released (I’m thinking of Matrix for example, I remember that I loved it when it came out but I found it almost boring today ;)).

Disclaimer: Most of those seen are extremely violent (Yes people died! But don’t worry it’s not for real, it’s movies…).

1. Children of men

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How many people are using Flickr? How many are Pro (subscribers) users? How many pictures do they have in their accounts? Do they fav pictures? How many contacts do they have?

First of all, what is Flickr? Flickr is defined on Wikipedia as:

“A photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community platform, which is generally considered an early example of a Web 2.0 application.”

Yahoo! acquired Flickr in March 2005 for a price tag of around US$35M according to Om Malik. Today’s Flickr value is probably closer to the Billions than the Millions.
It’s truly an awesome application to publish and share your pictures on. I use it together with my photoblog. Thanks to the Flickr API every time I publish a new picture on my photoblog it goes automatically to my Flickr account with description and tags…
I think the most important part of Flickr is the community. Flickr is very popular among digital photographers. The direct consequence of a very active community is that you can get a lot of interesting feedback on your pictures. It’s also a way to get to know other photographers from your city and so on…

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During my daily surf on the web I, from time to time, come across content that are worth being shared. Sometime it’s a stupid, but funny, video on Youtube, sometime it’s an amazing picture found on Flickr, some other time it will be a nice article…

But sometime it’s something truly captivating, something that have a real impact. It’s the kind of content that last more than the 30 seconds smile watching this funny advertisment.

So here is a list of 10+1 video recorded speeches that I believe make such difference.

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I’ve been using digital cameras for about 6 years. My first digital camera was a Canon Digital Ixus 400 / PowerShot S 400 (4 MP). It was an excellent camera even if it had a small screen and was bigger than today’s point and shoot cameras. Later on I sold it to a friend and bought a Digital Ixus 40 / PowerShot SD 300 (4 MP). What was interesting for me in this model was the smaller size and the extra speed (new electronic (Digic II) compare to the Ixus 400 / S 400). About 2 years ago I broke the Ixus 40 / SD 300 during a party (had to make a choice between saving the beer or the camera, I went for the beer), it was a good excuse to buy a new toy. So I bought a Canon SLR 350D / Digital Rebel XT (8 MP). This is an excellent camera, perfect for my “advanced amateur” use. It has just the right amount of mega pixels and works just perfectly every time I need it (I took about 80 000 shots with it (ouch!)).
My next purchase, when my 350D will die, will probably be a Canon SLR 40D.

The notable evolutions I experienced during those 6 years of digital photography were:
- Decrease of camera size
- Increase of camera speed (On/Off and shooting)
- Increase of mega pixel number

Today those factors have reached their own limits. Camera can’t get smaller because users like big screens on the back. Speed is already close enough to instantaneity that average user won’t feel any difference with faster electronic. Mega pixels have become a marketing only argument (in a nutshell, everything upper than 8MP is point less for a non professional use).
Today’s evolutions are mainly software related (face “recognition” systems) and merging of point and shoot innovations with the SLR world (LCD live view) and vice versa (image stabilizer).

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This is the first post on this brand new shiny blog I’m going to use it to introduce myself and the reasons that made me start this blog.

So, here we go, my name is Pierre Sauvignon (sounds very French isn’t it? ;)), I’m 23 years old at the time I write those lines. I’m living in Sydney (Slurry Hills ;)) and graduated a few months ago from a Master Degree of Multimedia and Internet Engineering. I’ve been using Internet for more than 10 years now. I did my first website when I was 14 years old at the time where most websites looked like today’s Myspace web-pages So I won’t have any fake modesty and I’m proud to say that I have years of experience on Internet. That’s why I do consider myself as an Internet professional (if such thing exists! ;)). That’s one of the reasons that decided me to start blogging. I believe that I have something interesting to say, to share (sometimes, not too often, but it happen!).

I see blogging as a learning tool. It’s something to have ideas, opinions, and it’s another thing to write them, share them with readers. I also believe that blogging is the new résumé. So having a blog is a bit like having an online, dynamic, CV.

As you probably noticed English isn’t my mother tongue. I’m French, I learned English at school first and went to Australia for the first time 3 years ago. That’s where I really had a chance to learn English. I studied and work there so I hope my English isn’t too bad. Nonetheless I’m more than aware that my writing skills are not perfect and I would always be positive regarding any criticism, correction and suggestion that you, readers, could have.
I’m still learning and blogging is another way to improve my English. For example I recently learned that it was actually “Round About” and not “Run About” and that “Lemon” and “Lime” where referring to the same fruit, just a color matter (In French it’s always lemon, we just add the color. We then have Green Lemon (“Citron vert”) and Yellow Lemon (“Citron jaune”))

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