Kristin’s Playground

Life continues. Nothing too exciting. I spent the weekend doing some work, making sure everything from my old laptop was backed up, and relaxing a bit, etc. Walked a bit through the park on Sunday with my dog:

Yesterday, I found two more example’s of “Duck’s” graffiti:


I still don’t get it.

And today. Today I went and picked up a cheesecake from Old World Bakery. They make Ann Arbor-style cheesecakes. Awhile ago I won a gift certificate from my favorite radio station, but since the bakery isn’t open all that much, it took me awhile to make it there. It’s quite tasty though. We’ll have to see how well it freezes, because it’s an awfully big cheesecake for Logan and me.

Ugh. Last night I was editing some photos in Aperture. They looked bright and vibrant. I uploaded a couple to Flickr with FlickrExport Lite for Aperture and thought all was well. When I went and looked at them in Firefox, however, the images were flat - a lot less colorful and bright than they had been in Aperture. This screenshot shows what it looked like in Firefox (on the left) and in Aperture (well, the screenshot is from Safari, but it looked the same):

Not really having seen this before, I didn’t know where to look for the problem. Was it an issue with Aperture and the way it exports color? Or maybe the FlickrExport program did something before uploading? Maybe it was Flickr itself! After a bunch of googling, I came across some discussions on Flickr’s Aperture Users group with many of them having the same issue. It was all very confusing, and everything is complicated by uncalibrated monitors, different gamma settings between macs and PCs, and embedded color profiles in the images themselves. Ugh. I’d never dealt with any of this before, and it’s a lot to take in, so I’m still not entirely sure of myself when talking about this. At any rate, here are the conclusions I’ve drawn and how I fixed the problem on my computer. Please correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.

• Images for the web should contain an embedded color profile of sRGB for maximum compatibility between browsers and things.
• Therefore I ensured that Aperture was exporting with sRGB (and also was using sRGB for on-screen proofing - i.e. what it was showing me).
• Most browsers (Safari being the exception) are entirely unaware of color profiles for images and they assume sRGB based on a PC’s gamma value of 2.2. (A mac generally has a gamma value of 1.8.)
• I haven’t tested this one yet, but I think this means that my photos will therefore look correct on PCs, regardless of browser, since sRGB assumes their gamma value. The only place my photos would look incorrect are on browsers or programs that ignore color profiles on a mac.
• Exporting with sRGB therefore seems to be most likely to have my photos appear correctly to the widest audience. Windows users and Mac users using Safari.
• The solution for my own viewing purposes seems to be to use a browser that doesn’t ignore color profiles. I’m attached to Firefox, and didn’t really want to switch to Safari just because of this, so I was quite pleased to find out that Firefox 3 supports color management, but the option is turned off by default.
• So, I installed an add-on for Firefox 3 to allow me to enable color management. (The option is otherwise rather hidden and complicated to turn on.)
• Now, my colors are consistent between Aperture, Safari, Preview, and Firefox.
  
  Huzzah!

It’s time for another tale of Kristin’s Cooking Adventures! Read on to find out how these ingredients:

became this tasty risotto on Friday:

Read more »

I miss heat. I admit that I am one to easily get cold, but the temperature change from Puerto Rico to here makes me sad. And cold. But that’s okay. I’ve survived winters before.

Now that I’m back, I have more work to do to get my laptop up to date as my primary computer. Unfortunately, my previous version of Photoshop Elements wasn’t made for the intel-based macs, so now I find myself without a real photo program. I’d been debating previously about whether I should get Adobe’s Lightroom or Apple’s Aperture for photo management, and now it’s pretty clear that I should get one or the other. They should be able to handle the every day photo editing I need. I may need to get Elements in the future too, but I might see if I can get away with GIMP or some such. At the moment, I’m playing around with the Aperture trial, and while I like it, I’m a bit concerned about speed issues. Lightroom is supposed to be faster, but Aperture seems more flexible. Anyone have any experience with either?

While waiting for the bus yesterday, I saw this:

Duck? I don’t get it. Do you?

And today you get a photo from the Glee Club. For every home football game, we go out and sing for the tailgaters to raise some money. Today was the game with MSU - big rivalries equal big money. Unfortunately for the home team, the game didn’t go so well. The singing did, though, even if it was a bit cold. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet at a couple points. (And yes, I was wearing gloves.)

Just so you all know - I made it back safely (and even on time - gasp)! Long day of sitting on planes and in airports though. Oof. Lots to do in the next while, but for now, I think it’s bed time.

One last picture from San Juan for now:

Well - it’s our last night here in Puerto Rico. We should be coming back tomorrow night, but given my recent track records with flights, we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, here are a few things from the last couple days. Yesterday we went to the rainforest! Woo!

It was my first time in a rainforest, but it really did have the feel of those enclosed “tropical” areas at a zoo or some such. Warm, humid, green. But this one was real. Awesome. Not as much wildlife as I would’ve expected, but thankfully, I also didn’t see much in the way of insects or mosquitos. We took a trail to one of the popular waterfalls: La Mina Falls. Lots of hills and things, so it was quite refreshing when we actually got to the falls. I went swimming underneath them! So cool!

While we were at the rainforest, we also went up to one of the observation towers and got a great view of the island. Definitely a great day trip from San Juan.

Today we took the ferry over to Cataño to visit the Bacardi Distillery.

Sadly, most of the tour was a giant ad about how great Bacardi was, and we didn’t actually get to see any actual factory (”security reasons” - bah). This plant provides 85% of the Bacardi to the world. Rather impressive. Tasty rum drinks at the end too. The ferry ride over to Cataño provides a nice view of Old San Juan as well.

It’s been a good vacation so far, although Logan has officially gotten a cold today. Better now than earlier in the trip, but still, traveling probably won’t be a lot of fun tomorrow. I think we’re going to quickly check out the cathedral tomorrow morning before heading out to the airport. I’ll see you all back in Michigan!

We explored the fortifications of Old San Juan today. Took lots of pictures, and found out my lens was incredibly dirty. So, I have a lot of photoshopping in the future. I don’t have photoshop on my new laptop yet, so those will have to wait, but here’s a quick photo of the day. I loved seeing the shore from the forts. The color of the ocean between the rows of rocks was incredible.

Tomorrow we’re off to the rainforest!

Just a few things from Puerto Rico!

We have safely made it to Puerto Rico, after a couple of hiccups this morning. The lines were a little longer than we had expected, so we were pretty much the last person to board our first plane (and we were a tad nervous about it), but we made it. Our bag was also temporarily lost in Puerto Rico, but it came to the hotel a couple of hours later. Perhaps someone grabbed the wrong bag and brought it back? ::shrug:: Either way, we have it back.

The city is beautiful, the weather is hot and sunny, and we are relaxing! We’re staying at El Convento in old San Juan. It is a fabulous hotel; an old convent built around 1650, and it is definitely a luxurious place. It has a beautiful courtyard:

I imagine we’ll spend a good amount of time relaxing on their many terraces in the gorgeous weather here. Each night there is a complimentary wine and cheese reception, there is a rooftop pool, and our room is quite comfortable. They even came in and gave us bedtime chocolates when we were talking a walk. We were only gone for about half an hour, but they came during that time.

We’ve only taken some preliminary walks around the city so far, but we’ll go see the sites tomorrow. While walking around, it was quite fascinating to catch glimpses of the sunset as you passed a cross-street:

We ate dinner tonight at one of the hotel’s restaurants: El Picoteo, a tapas bar. We shared roasted potatoes with a spicy salsa, and a chicken breast stuffed with ham and manchego cheese. Tasty, and there was a live performer there, too, doing some flamenco dancing and singing. We also had our first rum drinks of the trip. There will be more, certainly when we visit the Bacardi factory.

We’re hoping to make it to the rainforest this trip as well, but for now, I think I’m off to the rooftop pool.

Oh, P.S., Neenah Foundry is everywhere:

This is just a quick note from this beautiful new machine:

Yay! Shiny new beautiful macbook. I’d been waiting and waiting since July for Apple to release a laptop I wanted, and on Tuesday they did! Aluminum macbooks. Yay! Glossy screens. Less yay. But still beautiful. I’m liking Leopard too - it has some nice features such as virtual desktops (Speces) and a couple other things.

Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. Since Omar has left Puerto Rico, we’re off ridiculously early in the morning, so I need my sleep. I’ll see y’all later!

A special treat for you today! You get a lovely movie of the day instead of my normal picture. I love my dog. She gets so excited about her toys sometimes, but she hates leaving her square of carpet. I don’t know what she’d do without it.

In other news, we’re definitely keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Omar. He should pass through Puerto Rico before we get there, we just need to hope it doesn’t get rained on too much. No flooding for my weekend destination, please!