I have been interested in photography for a long time. I got my first Spiderman camera when I was six. I still have the pictures I took being 6 and 7 years old in a photo album. I learned early on that taking pictures was expensive (especially for a youngin’) and I did not have the patience level required for photography, especially because:

1. Cost of film
2. Limited number of pictures per film
3. Cost of developing pictures
4. The wait for picture development
5. The complexity of developing your own pictures
6. The management of all the developed pictures (photo albums, shoe boxes full of pictures)
7. Storage of original film

So my interest in photography was overcome by it complexity and cost.

At the dawn of the consumer digital camera era my interest returned but never had enough cash for a good camera I always had access to a “OK” digital camera. The first one I got to use was a AGFA 2.0 mega pixel (MP) camera. The pictures where not worth crap and the batteries lasted about 10 minutes. Yup, it would go through a 4 set of AA batteries in 10 minutes. Ug. Then I got a free 3.2 MP HP when I bought a color laser printer for work. It was OK, pictures where OK and the battery life was OK, but nothing to inspire the inner photographer, I found the press of the “take picture button” and the 5 second delay until the picture was taken was painful taking pictures, especially when taking pics of the kids. While we had lesser digital cameras Kristy had a decent film camera which was still capturing the “moments” but I never seemed to use it much.

Next up was Kristy’s new 5.0 MP Sony Cybershot. The pictures where good and the battery life was great. Armed with a 512 MB Memory Stick this is what I was waiting for. I starting taking good pictures, but not great pictures. But the one thing I did notice it that I was enjoying carrying the camera and trying to capture the events and taking some interesting shots. This all changed when Sean showed me his pictures and introduced me to DSLR. Wow. His shots where fantastic and the quality of the shots where a cut above mine (pinto vs. ferrari). What I learned is it is not all about the massive MP but also the lenses, image stabilization, and of course good lighting.

So this year one of my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions is to unlock the inner photographer. I picked up a Canon XS Rebel DSLR from the Boxing Day sale of Future Shop (got to love those 6 AM crowds).

One thing about taking all these pictures is about managing them. So I have set out to explore how I can mange these pictures. I am been playing with Microsoft Expression Media 2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 and I will blogging about that discovery later. Also there is a collection of Dummies books on the Canon XS Rebel and using Photoshop of digital photographers which I will be reviewing in upcoming months.

Happy New Year everyone.

A few times in your career you get to be involved in a project that will stay your memory as a special project. The One Million Acts of Green (OMAOG) campaign by CBC (sponsored by Cisco) is one of those projects.

Before OMAOG my favorite project was the CETS project with Microsoft Canada and Toronto Police Services. CyberSecure (an old company of mine) got engaged by Microsoft to secure the infrastructure (which resides in the RCMP data center) that helped police officers track down child exploit offenders.

Now with GreenNexxus being one of the core components of the CBC green website is very exciting, plus getting photos on the set of “The Hour” was pretty cool.

MacAppetite (Sean and Ryan) has released (and mega excited) its first iPhone app to Apple’s iPhone AppStore. If you are a delicious user and an iPhone user I say this is a must have application for your iPhone. It stores your delicious bookmarks on your iPhone, you can search your bookmarks and look at your bundles right on the iPhone.

Go directly to the iTunes Store and take a look at Red Delicious.

Having all my Windows machines backing up successfully now it was time to get my Macbook to be backed up. Looking at Apple’s Time Machine (OS X included backup software) it looked like it would only backup to Apple’s Time Capsule (Apple’s Wireless Hard Drive), but searching the Internet I found how to have Time Machine see a Windows Share. Tell me why would that not be default?

First there was the Commodore Amiga, my all time favorite computer. Then I was drawn into the world of Windows. I really do like Vista x64 on a kick butt computer. But now I want to do iPhone development. So to do that I got to do the development on ObjC on OS X. I have created a web site on my Mobile Me account to journal my learning experiences and rants (good and bad) about my adventure with my new computing platform.

Please visit Ryan’s Mac Site