Month: March 2013

Google Reader is gone. Now what?

Goodbye Google Reader by Dave Winer

July 1 isn't that far away, but there's time to get it together. Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles.

Sigh! Dave is right.

Many geeks, including myself, are paying the price for our dependence ( addiction? ) to "FREE". Google had decided that Google Reader is a service they no longer want to sink money into. Google is an advertising-driven company, and Google Reader has no ads. It made sense for them to shutter the service.

But now what? What do geeks like me who have become dependent on the service to host our daily firehose of information? The main features of Google Reader I depended on were aggregation and sync. I needed a replacement that had at least these two features. It would be nice if the service supported one of my favourite RSS apps. I'm exploring several options, one of which is running my news aggregation service using River 2. I set River up on a Windows AMI, but I'm not confident about it. I also think Fever° meets the need.

After setting up the software on my Linux host, I exported my OPML from Google Reader and imported it into Fever°. Fever° has an API for apps like Reeder to interact with it.

Reeder does a great job of integrating with Fever°, including adding the Hot List. I find Fever° to be faster than using Google Reader in Reeder, but that depends on the web server's performance.

A light box for food and eBay photography

Some of my friends and readers know that I have a studio lighting kit. I can (and have used) use my lighting kit to shoot my food photography. The strobes are powerful and produce a beautiful soft white light. However, the strobes are set up in my basement1 and need much more adjustment to get things just right. It's much more convenient to plate food and shoot on the kitchen table. The smell of the food helps puts me in the right frame of mind to capture the image that can help bring that out.

And with the thought in mind, I set out to make my lightbox. I started with a small Amazon.com box and used some instructions I found on the web. I followed Sarah's instructions as closely as I could, but a bit of experimentation is required. Every box is different. I used parchment paper for the light filter and taped laserjet printer paper to the inside of the box. A trip to Target for a $10 desk lamp, and I was ready to start taking photos.

Making myown lightbox was easy and inexpensive …. Photography is just playing with light, as they say.

DIY Lightbox | Monday 25 March, 2013 | Nikon D40 | AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8

So what do the images look like (after some minor edits in Adobe Lightroom)?

This is Trader Joe's Steel Cut Oatmeal with brown sugar and maple syrup. I added crushed walnuts overs grated cinnamon and nutmeg and offered it to Bhavna for breakfast this morning.

Oatmeal | Monday 25 March, 2013 | Nikon D40 | AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8

This is my Dad's Canon EOS Rebel 2000. It's a 35 mm film camera. My Dad thought I could help him convert it to digital. He was disappointed when I explained it could not be done. I kept the camera, hoping that I could use the lens. EF lenses will work on my Nikon if I buy an inexpensive adapter.

Monday 25 March, 2013 | Nikon D40 | AF-S Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8
  1. My Paul C. Buff studio is 64" Extreme Silver PLM™ with 8mm Umbrella Style Mount and 64" PLM™ White Front Diffusion Fabric. Strobes (two) are AlienBees™ B800 Flash Unit with CyberSync™ Receivers (CSR) triggered by CyberSync™ Trigger Transmitter. ↩