We are shooting a friend of mine’s wedding in May and earlier this month we got together to do an engagement session.

Here’s a couple of my favorite images that I shot:

See more from the shoot over at Lisa Webb Photography.

Email

Many people know that Tim suggests outsourcing your email in order to allow you to focus on the important tasks.  As I’m in a service-orientated business, that’s not exactly a viable option.  I can see how it could be done but I don’t see myself eliminating it as he suggests.

Instead, I’m scheduling set times to check and reply to emails.  Three times a day I download and reply to emails requiring my immediate assistance.  Ones that list tasks for projects I’m working on get a reply when I complete the requests.

Sure, I might spend the same amount of time reading and replying to my emails as I have always done, but what I am doing is eliminating the distraction of getting a new email and stopping what I was doing to read it.  It takes a while to turn your brain back on to the previous task and you are much more efficient if you finish what you are working on without taking a break.

I always took pride in replying to most of my clients emails within an hour, but now I am realizing that there is very little that requires that kind of attention.  99.99% of emails are not an emergency and can wait a few hours.

Social Media

I am a total Twitter addict.  There, I said it.  I’ve also been known to hop on Facebook to kill time and see what my friends are up to occasionally.

I’m taking a similar approach with my social media usage as I am doing with my email.  The main difference is that I’m not receiving anything that is time-sensitive through these networks.

When I’m working I turn of Tweetie and make sure any Facebook windows are closed.  I’ll hop on a few times a day and see what’s happening, and like my email, I have realized there is not much that needs my constant attention.

Text Messaging

Just like Twitter, I’m turning off my text message sounds when I’m focusing on work.  When I’m away from the computer my iPhone is always in my hands and my thumbs are getting a workout like usual though.

TV and Games

I love me some good TV.  Luckily my DVR records everything I want and I’ll take one night a week to relax and catch up on my favorite shows rather than an hour each night to find out what the hell is going on with Lost.

The Gym

No, I’m not eliminating the gym.  My workout routine is something that keeps me both sane and healthy.

I used to bring my iPhone in with me and check mail, surf the web, and post random tweets in between sets.  During a kickboxing session a few weeks ago, I ditched the iPhone and pulled out my old iPod Shuffle from my desk since it was smaller and lighter so I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking it.  What I noticed was that I flew through my workout in about 2/3 the time.

Now the iPhone stays in the car.

What about you?

Do you have any productivity tips? What things have you eliminated from your life or learned to manage better in order to be more productive and efficient?

Photo by ihtaho

Here is a short article I wrote for Dig Magazine, CSULB’s monthly publication. My day-by-day travelogue is still in th works and will be posted soon. This article is really too short to do my trip justice but please enjoy it anyway!

“Where is all the sand?” I thought to myself when I landed at Mohammed V Airport in Casablanca, Morocco. It turns out that much of Morocco is actually very dense with forests and vegetation. The Mediterranean climate is much more comfortable than one would imagine when contemplating a visit to North Africa.

“Bienvenue en Maroc! Welcome in Maroc!” I frequently heard while walking down busy streets. Not knowing whether I was French, English, or American, they were sure to cover their bases and make sure I understood that I was welcome in their country.

The hospitality in Morocco was something that was really difficult to believe being an American. In my 26 years of living between the United States and Canada I have never had people stop me on the street just to chat, ask to go have tea, or invite me into their home to meet their family and have dinner. I wished my friends and family back home were able to experience it. Instead, they were worried, waiting for my occasional emails to let them know I was safe.

I heard all kinds of questions and warnings before I left. “Why would you want to go there? Aren’t you worried about terrorism? Tell them you are Canadian!”

Ever since 9/11 Americans have been extremely weary of anything Muslim. The truth is, most North African and Middle Eastern countries are actually safer than popular European travel destinations that parents willingly allow their children to visit. Violent crime is virtually non-existent and even petty crime is limited. The only horror stories I heard before leaving had to do with Tangiers, a port town across the Gibraltar Strait from Spain. I was only passing through Tangiers on my way back home so I wasn’t concerned.

Yes, there was a fairly large suicide bombing in Casablanca in 2003, but it was much smaller than the attack on Madrid the following year. And I haven’t heard anybody warning people not to go to there.

My trip was a short one, only a week long, coinciding with CSULB’s spring break. I spent about 20 hours on four flights to get to Casablanca but once I was there, I was immediately in love with Morocco. I will admit, Casablanca is a rather new city built by the French when they landed their forces there last century, and has little to offer tourists other than a large airport and a beautiful mosque. Hassan II Mosque is the second largest mosque in the world, behind only Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. It is also one of the few mosques in the world that allows non-Muslims to visit.

After only one night in Casablanca I took a train to Fes, the former capital of Morocco. Fes is one of the four imperial cities of Morocco and life inside the walled Medina of Fes el Bali has not changed much for around 1,200 years. The Medina is filled with souks (shops) that sell everything from tasty fruit and vegetables, clucking chickens and freshly butchered lambs, to beautiful fabrics, rugs and hand woven clothing. The walkways are extremely narrow and when somebody walks through with a donkey loaded with goods, you better hug the wall and get out of the way! An official tour guide is a cheap and easy way to make sure you don’t get lost. They will take you to the most important things a tourist wants to see including the leather tanneries and several shops where you can see artisans working their crafts.

While staying in the youth hostel located in the Ville Nouvelle (French built “New City”) I met quite a few fellow young travelers. We organized a fairly large group to go have a nice dinner in town and talked about our plans. I did not have much of a plan so I tagged along with three people from England to a small town called Chefchaouen located in the Rif Mountains.

It was quite a journey to get there due to many of the busses being sold out during the busy Moroccan holiday week, but we managed to make it after spending five hours on a hot bus without air-conditioning that broke down along the way. It was only about $4 so we couldn’t complain too much.

On our way we met a very friendly Moroccan man named Youssef. We were hesitant to trust anybody as we have heard stories of people befriending you only to receive tips. We were lucky though. Youssef turned out to be a great friend. He helped us find some very affordable rooms in a beautiful guesthouse and took us out for tea. While there, he asked if we would meet his family that night and eat dinner with them. We were happy to oblige and ended up spending the following evening with them as well. He was even nice enough to take us on a hike up one of the large hills so we could experience a beautiful view of the entire village and most of the Rif valley. We were very sad to leave Chefchaouen and our new friends.

Morocco may not be your typical spring break destination, but I can not describe how much I recommend it, especially to young travelers who are willing to spend time getting around. It is not as easy to navigate as Paris, London, or Rome, but the rewards are worth it. Everything is extremely affordable (I spent only $400 on everything except my plane tickets) and you will never forget the friends that you inevitably will make. My only warning, and it has nothing to do with safety, is that knowing French is helpful. You don’t need to be fluent, but a grasp on the language, or knowing Arabic, will make life much easier and more enjoyable as Moroccans will strike up conversation with you often and being able to talk with them was one of my highlights.

Sunday was an eventful day in the world of Sports but the talk around the water cooler the next morning wasn’t about the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Seattle Seahawks victories that are sending them to the Superbowl. Instead, even the most casual sports fans wanted to talk about Kobe Bryant’s record setting game that was easily overshadowed by the two NFL playoff games.

Kobe scored 81 points Sunday in the Lakers 122-104 victory over the Toronto Raptors—the closest anybody has come to Wilt Chamberlain’s record of 100 set nearly 44 years ago in a season when the team average was 111 points per game.

The question on many people’s minds is, “Can he beat 100?”

It will be difficult to pull off, if not impossible if the rest of the team isn’t behind him 100%. With a coach like Phil Jackson, who has made many public statements about how he disapproves of players not sharing the ball, it does not seem likely that a plan to help Kobe score triple digits will be approved by the coaching staff.

But one has to ask, why not? In Los Angeles the fans don’t pay the high ticket prices to see the Lakers, they pay to see the Kobe show. With a team as inconsistent and unreliable as this years, fans know that the more time that ball is in Kobe’s hands the better off the Lakers are.

Sure, Kobe only had two assists in the game, but it’s not because he didn’t pass the ball. Kobe gives his team the chance, but they aren’t able to score the points that he can. Kobe shot 61% from the field for the night and the team’s next leading scorer, Smush Parker, shot 45%. Center Chris Mihm did manage to shoot 65% but, definitely wasn’t going to dramatically help win the game by only taking eight shots all night.

Kobe also had the Raptors defense on his side. Not only did they allow him to take 46 shots, but he landed 18 for 20 free throws. In comparison, Lamar Odem was 5-6 from the line. A respectable percentage if he could manage to get fouled a few more times.

Nobody said there isn’t any up and coming talent on the team though. Both Smush Parker and Sasha Vujacic have shown that they have talent and promise to be big names in the future, but as for now, the Lakers simply do not have any big name talent that can consistently score even 20 points per game. With a team like that, you need to look to players like Kobe Bryant who are able to step up their game and pull in a victory when it is obvious that the team isn’t going to manage to do it on their own.

So here’s to the Lakers having a chance of making the playoffs. Here’s to seeing more jaw-dropping performances throughout the year. Here’s to witnessing more records being broken. Here’s to Kobe.

Apple has been nice enough to allow users to purchase their $29 version of Quicktime Pro that will convert any video readable by Quicktime into a compatible H.264 format for new video enabled iPods. Unfortunately this does not produce quality video in a timely manner for most users. It works decently for creating video to be viewed on the iPod screen, but many users are purchasing the new product in order to view video on TV’s. If this is the case, Quicktime Pro’s H.264 conversion is not only painfully slow, but the quality is not very good due to the video being scaled down to 320×240 or below.

For converting a DVD to the iPod I recommend using MacTheRipper (MTR) and HandBrake. MTR is not required, as HandBrake can convert the video directly from most DVD’s, but I’m paranoid and feel that this puts too much strain on my DVD drive. I prefer to use MTR to first copy the contents of a DVD onto my hard drive, and then let HandBrake takeover.

Mac The Ripper is pretty simple. Put a DVD in your drive, start it, and click go. It takes about 15-30 minutes depending on the size of the DVD and the speed of your computer.

Source:

Once that is completed, open HandBrake. When it starts, it will ask if you want to use the “Detected Volume” (a DVD in your drive) or browse for a Video_TS or Image. If you used MTR to rip the disc to your hard drive first, choose Browse for the VIDEO_TS folder. Navigate to where you saved the contents of the DVD, and open the VIDEO_TS folder. Then select “Choose”.

HandBrake will take a few seconds or so to scan the disc. Once you are at the main window, choose the title that contains the actual movie from your DVD. Typically it is the longest one.

Video:

Average bitrate (kbps) is something you’ll have to decide for yourself. If you are planning on watching this on a TV set, I recommend 1000kbps. From my tests, it seems to yield good quality at a reasonable file size. You can go higher or lower if you desire. The higher the bitrate, the better quality your video will be. If you encoding a visually stunning like the Matrix or Star Wars, you’d probably want to increase the bitrate to 1500kbps or higher. The max the iPod can handle is 2500kbps.

Select 2-pass encoding. It will take a little longer, but HandBrake will give the video a second pass and the quality will increase.

Destination:

File format should be set to MP4 file and Codecs should be set to “MPEG-4 Video / AAC Audio”

You can then browse to where you’d like to save the .mp4 file once it is finished.

Subtitles:

I haven’t tested this but it should be easy enough.

Audio:

Select Language 1. Typically the first audio track will be a 5 channel surround sound track in English. I don’t think the iPod can output surround sound so change it to a 2 channel English version if it is available. Some DVD’s only come with surround sound audio so if so you’re stuck with that. The result should be the same but you will save file size and time if you just select the 2 channel track.

Leave Language 2 as None.

A sample rate 44100Hz is fine.

Setting the bitrate to 128kbps should be fine for the majority of users, but if you are a real audiophile you can set this higher. Lower is ok as well if you want to save space.

Picture Settings:

This part will vary from disc to disc based on the aspect ratio of the movie but the idea is the same.

When playing back mpeg-4 video, Apple advertises that the iPod can display video up to 480×480. This is misleading and confusing. First of all, most video is not square. Movies on DVD are typically widescreen and TV shows are in a 4:3 ratio most of the time. You can always purchase a fullscreen version of a movie, and some TV shows are shot in widescreen so you’ll just have to check.

The reality behind how the iPod handles mpeg-4 is not that it requires video to be 480×480, but instead it can display a maximum of 230,000 pixels (480×480=230,000).

So pull out your handy dandy calculator and figure out what your video’s pixel count is. I chose the movie Anchorman to use as an example and it’s resolution is 720×480 which equals 345,600 pixels. A bit too much for the iPod to handle.

Click the down arrow on the width parameter a couple times and do the math. You want to highest number of pixels possible, but under 230,000. For this movie, it was 624×336 which equals 209,664. HandBrake will automatically choose the aspect ratio if you have the check box selected.

That is about all you have to do in this window. Some users suggest Deinterlacing the picture if it is TV show, but I could not tell a difference when trying it out on Arrested Development.

Click close and go back to the main window. Once there, click RIP and be patient. On my Dual 2.0 G5 it takes about 20 minutes to convert a half-hour episode of Arrested Development, as as I write this, Anchorman is about halfway through it’s first pass and it’s only been about 20 or 30 minutes. It says that the ETA is about 3 minutes, but I know that it will take much longer than that. For some reason HandBrake doesn’t calculate the remaining time left very well.

Once it is done, all you have to do is drag the resulting .mp4 file into your iTunes library, and then into your iPod. You can set the tags for the file in iTunes if you like to better organize it.

What about converting Xvid files? For this I recommend using ffmpegX. Once it is installed it is pretty simple to use. Drag your Xvid file to the big place where it says “Drop file here”. Make note of the Video aspect ratio. It varies from video to video.

On the Target side, click the drop down menu for To and select “.MP4 mpeg-4″.

Head over to the Video tab and look at the Video Size. My file’s aspect ratio was 512×336 which is well under the 230,000 pixel count required, but for some ffmpegX automatically set it to 16:9 which will shrink the video to 512×288. This would look pretty funny. I chose 3:2 which is 512×336. It won’t need to resize the video at all which is a good thing. If you don’t need to resize your video, you can select one of the Autosize presets if it matches your video size, or go down to Unconstrained and type in the aspect ratio of your video.

Once you are finished with that click on the Audio tab. I prefer at least 128kbps. You can leave the Sampling to 48000Hz or go down to 44100Hz if you like. My file is already at 48000hz so I’m going to leave it there. The less work it has to do the better. The filesize and quality difference is probably negligible.

After that I recommend going to the Options tab and selecting Two-pass encoding. This gives you better video quality but takes a little while longer to encode.

After that just click Encode and wait.

Converting Xvid files to Mpeg-4 for the iPod is much faster than converting it to H.264. I encoded a 20 minute episode of American Dad in about 9 minutes and a 45 minute episode of Wanted in about 28 minutes. Not bad ‘eh? The file sizes are pretty close to the original Xvid versions, which is fine with me since I bought the big bad 60gb iPod.

I hope this solves some of the issues that people have been having with getting video on this sucker. Everybody seems to be focusing on H.264, but I feel that Mpeg-4 is better suited for task.

-Enjoy!

Digg is a pseudo-tech news site that allows users to submit stories. The digg community choses which stories make the front page, not an editor. It’s a great site with lots of interesting, amusing, and entertaining content. I’ve added a list to the right side of this site that displays the articles I’ve found interesting and ‘dugg’.

After lots of researching the tips I read online I was unable to repair the stuck pixel. Some are easier than others, but many take a lot of time and work.  After a couple of months I came up with a great solution.

A rudimentary version of the solution has been available here on my blog for several years with over 300,000 downloads, countless thank you comments and emails, and quite a few support emails.  I was unfortunately unable to provide all the support for free and had a realization: This is a great product that helps a lot of people fix their dead or stuck pixels on their LCD monitor.

I decided to revamp it from the ground up. The video was re-created from scratch for today’s HD monitors. I also created a PDF guide to walk you through, step-by-step how to fix dead or stuck pixels on your LCD monitor.  All methods are included: the quick and easy approach or the slightly more involved, but simple as pie method for more stubborn dead or stuck pixels.

The program has it’s own website and is available now for only $9.95.  There’s a full money-back guarantee because I am so confident this will work great for you to fix your dead or stuck pixels on your LCD screen.

fixdeadpixel.com

If you need to fix a dead or stuck pixel on your LCD screen, monitor, or TV, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Your LCD screen will be as good as new in no time.  And if not? Just let me know and you’ll get a full refund! What’s to lose?

Just a few dead or stuck pixels =)

This scene doesn’t really spoil the movie, but I am glad I saw it after I watched the movie. Watch at your own discretion.

Please right click and save the file to your computer.

Anatomy Of A Scene Garden State – LOW – 18.1mb
Anatomy Of A Scene Garden State – HIGH – 50.9mb

Comment if you can mirror these files because I know my bandwidth is about to skyrocket!

Body Boarding at the Wedge

Too bed I go. It’s way too late and I’m getting up in 4 hours to go ride some waves at the Wedge tomorrow.

Update: I fractured my neck and nearly died.

Pictures from my trip to Europe

There is over 500 so I’ll be surprised if anybody actually looks at them all, but thanks for at least checking them out.

They aren’t labeled where they are or anything. You can figure a lot of them out. Here is a list of the places I went, in order, so you can at least get a good idea.

Paris

– 1st museum in Paris is the Louvre
– 2nd museum in Paris is Musee D’Orsay

Venice

– Lido Island
– Burano Island

Florence

– Uffizi Museum
– Fiesole (with great views of Florence)

Pisa

Cinque Terra (all the shots of the water and anything green was shot in Cinque Terra!)

Rome

– Coliseum
– Forum Ruins
– Trevi Fountain

Vatican

– Vatican Museum