Just finished taking some photos of the Saturday and Sunday cosplay characters in downtown Vancouver at the annual Anime Revolution. Think some of them look pretty awesome.

Imagine this scenario:

A boy and a girl meet and fall madly in love with each other. A year later they decide to get married. Standing in front of the minister, the boy, now a man, is asked: "...from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part, ...", to which he enthusiastically responds YES. Because he loves her. His fiancée is asked the same question. She however responds as follow: YES, then murmurs softly: pursuant to disclaimer. The man being filled with testosterone does not hear this fine print, they are married and they have many kids.
Five years later, she sues him for divorce and all his possessions as he is stinking rich. The man thinks she has no case, because of her vow she made at the wedding ceremony. However, the disclaimer she so non-eloquently had uttered, and which he had failed to review, granted her the legal right to all his possessions if she ever grown tired of him. Which she did. He had no case. As he never reviewed her disclaimer.

Would you be pissed? Her disclaimer was uttered so softly it can almost be considered a secret. I don't care for these people as they are fake as is the story. What I do care about is the principle. If a trusted third party is paid for their services, and makes a public statement that affects potentially millions of people's decisions, then that statement better be clear and honest and direct.

I have just encountered an issue where in Mac OS X 10.10 all small folder icons changed from blue to the white paper icon. Large icons were fine, just the smaller ones. I found this link that finally helped me as a restart did not.

Basically, perform these steps:

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;
sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

Recently I purchased a Canon 5DsR camera, and this replaced my Canon 1DX that I had used extensively both in my studio, and on my microscope for my photomicrography work. This event triggered a cascade of events that led me to this post. Let me start at the beginning.

I have been using DSLR Remote Pro for all my photomicrography work, as the camera needs to be tethered with Live View enabled to get the best quality from the system. I never really had any issues with the software, so I never had a need to look around for something else. Until now. Chris Breeze from Breeze Systems was kind enough to fast track an enhancement to his software so that it could properly support Live View on the new 5DsR. However, I could barely muster 3 - 5 captures then the UI would lock up, and the only way to proceed was to turn off the camera and back on. The new camera was using USB 3.0, but my Windows machine supported USB 3.0 and I have been using it since the beginning with a USB 3.0 Hard Disk for backups; never had any issues.

Naturally I suspected that DSLR Remote Pro was at fault, so I started isolating the cause of the issue. I first installed Capture One Pro from Phase One to try a different tethering solution. I have never used it before, just heard about it. It worked slightly better but still locked up - the same as DSLR Remote Pro. This made me think the issue could only be the camera, the USB 3.0 cable or the USB 3.0 controller / driver. I tested a different cable - no difference. I tested a different USB 3.0 port - no difference. I tried my MacBook Air laptop with the Mac version of Capture One Pro - it worked fine. By now I was pretty convinced it was the USB 3.0 controller / drivers. Since there were no newer drivers, I decided to try and connect the cable to a USB 2.0 port on the machine. Suddenly both applications started working well. So there - it was the port (motherboard). A new PC is in sight...

When you walk in to a Best Buy here in Canada, and want to buy a $100 external hard drive, the process is as follows:

1. Take the empty box on the shelf to the Nerd Herd
2. Wait for about 10 minutes as some computer n00b tries to spell their email address to the customer rep: "All lowercase, no spaces, Jay-Eeee-En-Eye-..."
3. Have some geek locate the real box with the actual product inside in the back storage room once he is done with the n00b.
4. Pay for the product.
5. Complain that you do not want to pay the extra $50 or whatever for installation services as there is nothing to install.
6. Walk to the security dude at the exit and have him check your receipt and purchased goods, and tick them off one by one.
7. Leave feeling very good about the trust in humanity and how you were treated.

When you walk in to an Apple Store here in Canada, and want to buy a $500 Time Capsule, the process is as follows: