Construction done! Back in action!

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After a 7 month remodeling job, the world headquarters of Brian Johns Photography is ready for prime time again!   The house was lifted and a new photo studio was built below! You can see the progress over the last 7 months here: on flickr

This year has been super busy with construction details, extra daily travel time, and general craziness which has really cut into the photography time, so I haven't produced much photography this year.  But never fear - I've got a photo shoot planned for this coming week to break in the new facility, so stay tuned here for the results of the shoot.

My thoughts on Steve Jobs

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[editor's note:  I wrote this in August when Steve announced his retirement but I never published it.   Steve Jobs' death was announced this afternoon.] Today Steve Jobs announced he is resigning from Apple, although he is retaining his role as Chairman of the Board. He has been on medical leave for most of the year but this is his admission that he will not be able to return to full strength in his role at Apple.

This is not just about the CEO of a large electronics company stepping down - What this really means though is that he is admitting he is done with his multi-decade tenure of shaping the personal computer industry.

To say that Steve Jobs "made computers" is the understatement of the century, so really this announcement is admitting the end of his influence on the cell phone industry, the personal electronics industry, the music industry, and dare I say, the entire Internet.

There's a very personal aspect to this as well, since Steve Jobs' products and vision have influenced me since the very beginning.  My first exposure to computers was an Apple ][ in elementary school, programming in Applesoft Basic.  In high school I moved to Macintosh.  By the time I hit college I had a NeXT, later becoming the NeXTStep admin for the network of NeXTs.  I applied to work at Apple in 1997 on the CHIRP (Common Harware Reference Platform) team but that team got shut down when Steve returned to Apple.  I ended up being an intern for Apple as a grad student in 2003 which fulfilled a life-long dream to work for Apple.

Because I worked in the MacOS group, my office was in Infinite Loop-1, the same building as Steve, but two floors down.   I parked next to him in the parking structure and I thought it was cool that he parked right next to the "rest of us."   I crossed paths with him a few times but most people just stayed out of his way, lest they incur his wrath by catching him on a bad day.   There's a long-told tale that Steve Jobs had a reputation for arbitrarily asking random employees what they did for Apple and firing people who didn't have a good enough answer.   They say "never get into an elevator with Steve Jobs" because in the time it takes to pass a few floors you might be grilled about your value and lose your job.

One day I was walking across the lobby back from lunch and I saw Steve walking across the lobby for the elevator to his 4th floor office.  I'm on the second floor and I usually take the stairs but the chance to take the elevator with him and perhaps have a chance to defend my purpose was too much to pass up.   We both got on, he hit '4' and I hit '2' and looked off into space, not giving him any undue attention or otherwise acting "weird" around him.   The doors didn't close.   The silence got awkward.   He looked at me, looked at the lit buttons on the elevator, looked at me again, and walked right out, leaving me (at the fitness peak of my life) standing all alone waiting to take an elevator up one floor.

Sure, I was probably wasting his time by adding an extra stop.  Sure, I was just some pukey intern trying to stand next to Steve Jobs for a minute.   It was selfish but it was worth it.  I got into an elevator with Steve Jobs and escaped with my life!

I haven't worked for Apple since then but I live in Silicon Valley and I have a lot of friends who work there, and it is clear that the work they do is still directly influenced by Steve.

Library management software

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I've always had a things for books, and photography has only increased my love of books. When it comes to photography, I love a physical print. And when it comes to physical prints, I love a luscious coffee table book full of them. Combine that love with my lifelong addiction to other non-fiction books and I've ended up with a lot of books. How many books? I don't know. And thus my recent desire to catalog my book collection. It's especially bad when I go to a used bookstore or the book sale at the library and see a book I'm interested in and sometimes I honestly can't remember if I have that book or not. I used to have this problem with CDs all the time. I would find a good deal on a CD I like, get excited about it and buy it, bring it home and then find I already owned it. I solved that problem by getting an iPod, so I have a good portion of my music collection with me at the store. I don't buy duplicate CDs anymore!

I want something similar for managing my books (photographic and other) and I've started too look at the options.  The first obvious option is Delicious Library from Wil Shipley.   I was a huge Omni Software fan in the 90's and on the surface it looks like he's come up with something cool for managing libraries.

Here's my list of desires:

  1. Allows searching and sorting by title, author, keyword, etc.
  2. Exports inventory of books I own to something I can carry on my iPhone.  (pdf, etc.)
  3. Supports ordering by Dewey Decimal system as well as Library of Congress.  I'm getting to the point where I may actually start arranging my shelves by one of these systems.   I'm partial to LoC since it is not proprietary like the Dewey system and it catalogs (computer) science books better.

That's it for actual requirements.  But since this is 2011, most software is Internet aware so I'm open to some cool Internet-enabled features.  Also, there are a few other features I'd like to see, even though they're not deal-breaker requirements:

  1. "If you like that then you might like this" functionality.  Like Amazon suggestions.
  2. Some sort of functional iPhone/iPad client that lets me browse my collection on the go, without Internet connectivity.
  3. Grabbing metadata from the Internet is cool so I don't have to type everything in.

I have something to say about that Internet thing.   The main benefit I see in adding networking functionality is to help me discover new books.  I can already go to Amazon for any given title and see what other books people like so this software should do more.  I'm talking full-on social networking here, but anonymously if I choose.  Two points here:

  1. The algorithm for suggestions should get better the more books I enter.
  2. The algorithm should get better as I share my list with more friends.

The first point is huge.   As I mentioned, Amazon can already tell me what other books I might be interested in based on one single book. But this software knows more than that, so the suggestions should be better.  I'm thinking of a use case where it says "Everyone in your friend group who owns these 4 books also owns this one other book."  The smarter the software, the better the suggestions should get as it has access to more data.

So I've downloaded Delicious Library and I'm trying it out.   I've hit a few snags already (no Library of Congress numbers, haven't figured out the best way to export for my iPhone, can display a virtual bookshelf with covers but not with spines, half of the help entries seem broken, not sure if there will ever be another update) but I'm persevering.  My main problem is that all my books are in boxes right now which makes it hard to build up my library and really test it, but these are the snags I've identified already.

Do you use Delicious or any other competing software?  Let me know in the comments.   I'm especially interested in what other alternatives are out there.

Adobe ACE exam: why do it?

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I was reading John Nack's blog the other day and discovered the Adobe ACE program (Adobe Certified Expert) which is where you go to a testing center and take a multiple choice exam about a specific Adobe product.  If you pass you get to call yourself an "Adobe ACE" in that product, including using the Adobe name (and logo?) to promote yourself.  This theoretically shows people you know what you're talking about and gives you a little more credibility in dinner party arguments over software.  :-)   I immediately thought about taking the Lightroom exam, figuring I could probably pass it without too much trouble. I can see a certification like this being important for a lot of people trying to get entry level jobs in the content creation world.   Let's say you're graduating from school and you use Photoshop all the time and you want to get a job in the graphic arts industry.   For $150 you could take this test, put the Adobe name on your resume, and hope that makes you stand out above the crowd a little bit.   I don't know much about the graphic arts industry but that sounds plausible.   I assume that anyone with more experience would already have a portfolio or a reputation and this wouldn't be very useful though.

But I'm not looking for a job as a graphic designer.  The main reason I would want to do it would be to lend myself credibility for consulting/contract jobs as well as teaching/lecturing/training opportunities.   So I started looking into it, with the eye towards taking the test in the next week or two.

First off, the exam costs $150 and there's no refund if you don't pass, so there's some incentive to not just go into it cold.   You get to say you're an official "Adobe Certified Expert".  But then it's up to you.

What's really missing is some form of registry for Adobe ACEs.   I got really excited when I saw a link to the "Adobe Certified Expert Community".  I thought this would be the place to see the community of ACEs, find one in your area, look at profiles, figure out who to hire.  But no, that's not what it is.  It seems like Adobe would want to push this huge collection of people who are passionate about their products.  Having something like that would be good for both Adobe and the people who are free evangelists for their products.

So if Adobe is leaving the marketing to the ACEs themselves, let's see how that's working out.   If you google "Adobe Lightroom ACE" the first four hits are Adobe's own links to the test.   The next link is a blog entry from 2008 from a guy saying he passed.  The next links are for test prep materials.   What's missing is people advertising their services and mentioning their ACE certification.  A search for "Adobe Lightroom ACE near San Jose" turns up nobody advertising their services as an Adobe ACE.

So, where's the evidence that anyone has actually ever taken this exam?   Why isn't Adobe pushing this?  Has anyone ever tried to use this certification to get a job?

And most importantly,  should I pay $150 for this?