A man who needs little introduction these days is Al Gore. I have been following his more recent efforts to give the world a wake-up call on the climate crisis we face. Recently he presented his latest set of slides and motivational words to an audience at a TED conference in Monterey, California. Please, no matter what your attitude toward climate change, take a few minutes to watch the video I included with this post.
If you had not guessed, I returned safely from my 10 day spring break leadership trip to four cities in Europe. I have been editing my photos from the trip as I have had the chance. Sorry for the delay, but to say the least I've had a lot going on lately ;-). As I finish them, I am posting the photos in this gallery: CIAS Honors in Europe. Right now, the first 2 days worth are there for your viewing pleasure. Eventually, I hope to leverage the functionality of my hand-coded gallery system to include tags or descriptions under most of the images to give you an idea of what we saw. The trip was amazing, so keep checking back for new photos to be added!
This is a quick post since I'm about to head out the door. I'm going to be traveling in Europe for the next 10 days. If you need to reach me, it will probably have to wait. I will return on March 10th, and that is the first time I can guarantee I'll be able to check email and voicemails. This trip is sure to be a blast. A group of us from the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences are going to Prague, Dresden, Krakow, and Budapest. I'll be sure to take tons of photos and tell you all about the trip when I get back! In the meantime, I'm going to be off the grid, so wish me luck 🙂
I have had a Canon PIXMA Pro9500 inkjet printer in my apartment since mid-January. I am very impressed at the quality of this printer, and it has done its part to re-energize my desire to create prints of my photographs in addition to displaying them in digital formats. A few weeks ago, however, the printer began reporting ink tank errors. It started with the Photo Magenta and Yellow cartridges. Eventually, the errors on those two cartridges would no longer allow me to print. I called Canon's customer support center and after speaking with the representative for a few minutes, they sent me two replacements in a few short days. Last week, however, the Green tank began reporting errors. I called Canon again, and the representative arranged for a total replacement of all 10 of my ink cartridges. That's no small replacement considering these buggers cost $15 each. On both occasions the hold time was very short and the representative was kind and helpful. Not to mention I found out on the second call that their support center for all of the United States just happens to be located in my home town of Chesapeake, Virginia! Thanks for your great support, Canon. The box of new ink arrived yesterday, and I'm back up and printing.
Call me crazy, but a little under a week ago I installed Fedora 8 as a second operating system on my new MacBook Air. It was not a small undertaking since this computer is essentially hot off the press with several brand new internal components that are not yet natively supported by Linux. So, here are a few pieces of advice to help others: First attempts at Fedora 8 on the MacBook Air. I hope many more people try out Linux on the MacBook Air over the coming weeks and months and give feedback to developers so some of the issues I have seen are ironed out.
So, a week and a half ago I received a lovely, little package in the mail. It was a MacBook Air, Apple's newest, thinnest, and lightest notebook computer. I can say, without a doubt, that this is the best laptop I have ever seen, used, or owned. It is not the right laptop for everyone, but it fits my needs perfectly. I have little need for extra USB ports or an optical drive while I'm away from my desk. The combination of its beautiful, widescreen, LED-backlit display, its full-size keyboard, and its surprisingly light weight make this computer a pleasure to use and carry around. Despite its thinness, the MacBook Air runs Mac OS X very well. I am using the 1.8GHz processor + 80GB HDD configuration. To be honest, most of my comparisons are against my old 1GHz 12-inch PowerBook G4, but for someone like me, who has a powerful quad-core Xeon Mac Pro as a desktop, the MacBook Air still does an excellent job of holding its own. The computer runs Aperture quite well (I just installed Aperture 2 a couple days ago), which certainly says something given the requirements of that application. This new laptop allows me to be more productive away from my desk without being too much of a burden to lug around. Additionally, it is Apple's most environmentally friendly computer to date. For that, it is worth my money.
At the request of members of the RIT Honors Publicity Committee, I put together a little write-up about myself a few days ago. I had enough fun constructing the article that I'm posting it here for others to read. It is a nice exercise to write about yourself every now and then. Enjoy:
So there's this guy named Eric P. Kerby. Some of you know him as that third year honors student who is a VP on council and makes the honors website tick. A few more of you will know him as that CIAS photo tech student with a camera at honors events. So for those of you who want to know more about this tall, red-haired chap, read on.
Eric is one of those nutty art students who studies Imaging and Photographic Technology and somehow ends up with a Bachelor of Science degree. In his freshman year at RIT, he began working for ITS to support Macs on campus. He still holds this job and has a knack at making an ailing Mac feel top notch. Last summer he went down south to Hampton, Virginia to be close to home and work at NASA Langley Research Center. Hundreds of photos and a dynamic website later, he returned to RIT to mentor incoming freshmen. In his spare time, Kerby tends to stay busy with way too much web programming. He loves to surround himself with technology that he uses in innovative ways. Somewhere in there he finds time to keep his various Linux servers running at their best, especially the one that drives his website, epkphoto.com. These days you can often find him in his Perkins apartment following the latest environmental issues (you should read his senior high school speech lambasting corn-based ethanol) and listening to podcasts and country music.
I requested my absentee ballot for the Virginia 2008 presidential primary on February 5th and received it yesterday (the 8th). I filled it out with a witness present, sealed the multiple envelopes, attached more than enough postage (old stamps from my roommate), and sent it on its way back down south this morning. If the jolly old USPS does their job right, the ballot should make it back home by the 12th to be counted among that day's votes. Yay for doing my civil duty. I hope you other states enjoyed your Super Tuesday.
I could not resist posting a link to a humorous tidbit about today's Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses. Take a look at what many Virginians did today to get a laugh. It turns out that some people in the good old Commonwealth missed the message that the Virginia primaries are happening on February 12th…not today. I tell ya', we Virginians sure are a mighty smart crowd!
A recent announcement from Microsoft's Internet Explorer Platform Architect Chris Wilson last week has set the standards-aware web community afire with discussion. What it boils down to is that web developers will need to add a specific meta tag to their code (or change their web server configuration) for IE 8 to render their pages in a standards compliant manner. If that tag is absent, IE 8 will render as if it were IE 7. The goal of this is so developers can target their page to a specific version of IE that they tested against. So, if I wanted, down the road I could make a page render like it was being run in IE 8 even though let's say IE 10 is displaying it. That becomes a safeguard against future changes to IE's browser engine by locking the page to a specific state in the browser's version history. If that technical speak has not scared you off, read on so I can tell you why I think this is a bad idea and how Microsoft got itself in this mess. Read the rest of this entry »
