Stuff

Is a monitor color calibrator…

I can’t understand people who spend thousands of dollars on expensive lenses, tripods, memory cards and other accessories but neglect to calibrate their monitors so the colors they are seeing in screen are what the digital values actually stand for. Calibrators can be had for under $100 nowadays, and combination monitor/printer calibrators like the ColorMunki or the PrintFIX Pro go for under $500, there is no reason for any serious photographer not to have one.

It has come to my attention today that Société Générale, my bank in France (yes, they of the €5B rogue trader loss), acquired the makers of Moleskine notebooks in 2006 for the not inconsiderable sum of €60M.

Frequent travellers know the right piece of luggage can make or break a trip. Tumi and Hartmann have their rabid fans, as do Travelpro, but the brand I recommend is Briggs & Riley. Their designs may not be the absolute most stylish, but their warranty is by far the best – they will repair any damage, even if it is caused by the airline, no questions asked. Even Tumi does not offer such a warranty, despite the princely prices they charge for their wares.

I just bought a second Baseline 28″ Superlight from Michael Bruno on Market Street near Castro. That hole-in-the-wall shop is the absolute go-to place for Briggs & Riley, and they offer significant discounts over list prices. Most quality luggage is seldom ever discounted, so it is refreshing to get quality service from proprietor Lou Briasco as well as a very nice price (too low to advertise without incurring the wrath of the manufacturer).

When you design remote controls, make them rubberized. The extra revenue you make from selling replacements (when the hard brittle plastic kind inevitably break) does not come close to compensating for the loss of goodwill and the sheer inventory management costs of keeping all those back models in stock.

Home automation units based on X10/Insteon or proprietary systems like Control4 or Savant start at $100-200. At a time when you can buy a fully functional WiFi router with a 200+MHz processor, a minimum 8M of RAM, 16MB of flash for under $50, why is there not a home automation system that costs $50 and uses standard TCP/IP and WiFi for connectivity?