Doug Hilton's Blog

Oh, the places I've been

Came across an interesting service while poking around geocaching.com. It's a service that will make a map, either US or world, with the states/countries you have visited highlighted in red. Below are my maps, leave yours in the comments.

create your own personalized map of the USA.

create your own visited country map.

15" MacBook Pro

I've had the new MacBook Pro 15" for about a week now, but wanted until I could make the image I had envisioned to show it off. Now I've got one, so I can post about this wonderful piece of computer hardware.

My Dell laptop running Linux has served me very well for the past 5 years, and would have continued to serve me well, had I not had the need for a good digital photography workflow solution. GIMP worked well for basic image editing, but I could not find a Raw converter that I liked and that worked well. Adobe has recently release Lightroom, and all in one Raw converted, image cataloger and image processor that has fit the bill nicely for me, but at the expense of having to go to my parents in order to do any image processing. Enter the need for a new computer.

I decided to switch platforms from the last several years of running Windows whenever Linux was not an option (work, school) and go with OSX for several reasons.

First and foremost, Mac has long been considered the front runner when it comes to a platform for image professionals. They have the hardware, the software is usually released first for the Mac, and it's just a solid platform. I had an old Mac 10-15 years ago that I loved, but had to give up when I became a Windows programmer.

Apple has also released their new line with the Intel Dual core chips that absolutely haul with native applications. Running Lightroom on my parents PC, a dual core Athlon with 2GB of RAM, I got decent performance, but there were several times that I wish I had more RAM. Running on my new MacBook Pro dual core 2.33GHz with 2GB of RAM (basically the same spec), the program runs very smoothly. I don't find myself wishing I had a faster machine or more RAM. I think a lot of that has to do with the difference in operating systems.

Third, Mac OS X is built on the BSD kernel, and even includes a port of the X11 windowing server. I can run most software that I could on my Linux laptop on my new Mac, without having to run a virtual server and without having to carry two laptops. I'm learning there is a slight learning curve for getting those applications built and installed, but I found the Fink Project, which is a package management system, based on Debian's apt. First Linux program to get running, GNUCash.

I'm very excited to have my new computer, it's already made image editing much easier and more pleasant. I can do it from the comfort of my own home, whenever I want. Now maybe I'll get caught up on the backlog of work I have.

Opening my eyes to new foods

Since becoming a vegetarian nearly three months ago, I have discovered many foods that I never would have tried. Without meat, the variety can become very static if you stick with meat substitutes such as boca burgers, chiq'n, or even salads every day. I've ventured out to new foods such as ethnic Indian cuisine, other vegetables such as artichokes and chick peas, and new mixtures of vegetables and soy products. Tabula and Hummus have become staples for me at work as well as a large jar of peanuts.

I look forward to trying new things as I get the chance, and continuing my vegetarian journey.