Archive 27. October 2005

Aperture and Performance

From creativepro.com - Stripping Raw Naked - an interview with the maker of Aperture:

JS: It depends on what you do with Aperture. I mostly run it on my 15-inch PowerBook. That's not to say that I don't enjoy the refreshing wind-blowing-through-my-hair feeling when I sit down in front of a G5 running Aperture. But a PowerBook is fine for what a lot of photographers do in the field with their laptops: browse images quickly and step through the thumbnails. Maybe tag the images they like, maybe zoom in closely on one. The photo edit stage. For that, a PowerBook does take a speed hit, but it's totally usable.

This is where our scheme of loading a proxy image comes in -- the 1024 proxy is often all I need to see at this stage. Depending on how many megabytes each image is, Aperture on a G5 can load the full Raw image in less than a second. On my PowerBook, that same image may take three to four seconds to load fully.

For heavier duty image processing, faster GPUs and multiple processors are of huge benefit. Aperture does make extensive use of dual processors, but you do not need a Quad [a new model from Apple that has two dual-core processors].

That sounds more usable - if a 15" PowerBook is actually considered operable.

Bock: meet Gärtner

Shift of the Biotechnology Sector to the Ministry of Economic Affairs Feared - Within the Union, there is discussion about transferring responsibility for agricultural biotechnology from the Consumer Protection Ministry to the Ministry of Economic Affairs. - Umweltschutz-NEWS.de

And that with Scatman Ede as the economic miracle. Well, whether his underlings would have turned against him would be doubtful anyway. But certainly a great idea if those who are well greased by the industry are the ones to decide on the use of biotechnology ...

cucumber2 is a very interesting Object-Relational-Mapper for Python and PostgreSQL, which also supports table inheritance in PostgreSQL.

Django Project - a very nice web framework that I use here.

PostgreSQL 8.1

PostgreSQL 8.1 with Two-Phase-Commits and User Roles:

Transactions can now be prepared on multiple computers with PREPARE TRANSACTION and executed together later. If a machine fails after PREPARE, the transaction can be correctly completed with COMMIT after the restart.

Yes!

Eerie Alliance

When industry, union members, and the CDU join forces to prevent the nuclear phase-out.

XML under Patent Protection?

Patent nonsense in extra strength: XML under patent protection?. But patents are such a great innovation engine, so it's quite right when a company with a patent that it has never implemented in any form, suddenly makes itself a presence in an area that has been in practical application for many years.