Mylos

When I first heard Microsoft chose “Vista” as the official name for the much-delayed Longhorn release of Windows, I immediately thought of this (Quicktime, 657KB). Does this mean I am a bad person?

I work at 153 Kearny in the San Francisco Financial district. At around 9:55AM, I heard a loud thud (not a sharp crack) and a pressure wave that rattled the windows. My first thought was naturally that a terrorist attack had occurred, and we decided to evacuate the office (as did the other tenants). Within 2 minutes, we were all out, and there were already first responders on the scene ushering us away from the scene. The awning on the Ralph Lauren store at the corner of Post and Kearny was in flames; I only took this one photo.

I did not see any wounded people, and most passersby left the scene in an orderly fashion. Many people a mere two blocks away were unaware that anything happened. Reports are contradictory, so after making sure all my staff were accounted for, I sent them all home — if it were a gas explosion or an electrical fire, it could be dangerous to return until we have an all-clear from the authorities.

Today I have officially completed my switch from Windows to the Mac for my personal stuff. The last remaining tie that bound me to the boys from Redmond was my Canon DR-2080C document scanner, which does not have drivers for Mac OS X. I have now replaced it with a Fujitsu fi-5110EOX2 and the excellent translated Japanese driver for OS X (shame on Fujitsu for not releasing the English version, despite their presence at MacWorld 2005).

My ultimate goal is the elusive paperless office. I would like to scan to PDF and shred all my paperwork, apart from that required for legal reasons like pay stubs, invoices and important documents like diplomas and property titles. Electronic documents are easier to file, faster to retrieve, backed up more reliably for disaster recovery purposes, and take far less bulk. The fact I had to reluctantly boot up my PC to scan in batches runs counter to the streamlined workflow advocated by efficiency experts like David Allen of Getting Things Done fame.

My first computer was an Apple II, the first computer I bought with my own money was a Macintosh Plus, but as I became a hard-core UNIX user, the limitations of the old Mac OS became all too apparent. I once had to write a program in Think C using low-level disk I/O primitives to do a simple task that could be handled by a shell one-liner, to batch rename TeX font files as System 6 did not have a shell or AppleScript, and I could not afford MPW back then. I decided I would not go back until Apple came up with an OS with robust UNIX underpinnings like NeXTstep. When OS X was first released, I bought an iBook, which was followed by an iMac G4 (ordered the very day it was announced, and which now serves as a video conferencing terminal at my parents’ place). The Macs were intended to be auxiliary machines, my primary home computers being a fast Windows box used for digital photography and games, and a dual-processor Solaris machine.

The PCs were in my bedroom, the iMac in my living room, as it is an elegant artifact that does not look out of place there. It also wakes up from sleep instantly, making it the ideal machine for quick web or email use. I began to notice I was increasingly using the Mac for real work, and started to evince an almost physical reluctance to boot up the Windows machine, even though the iMac was significantly slower. The noise and unreliability of the PC probably accounted for much of this (flaky ATX power supplies and motherboards). I had also never managed to get Adobe Premiere running smoothly to edit video, and iMovie+iDVD just work.

The logical next step was to upgrade to a full-featured PowerMac, which I did in June of last year. It thus took me over a year to complete the migration, despite being very knowledgeable about both platforms. The hardest items to switch were not the usual suspects like Microsoft Office — Office is fully supported on the Mac and I have a license, even though I never use it and haven’t even bothered to reinstall it after upgrading to Tiger. No, the two hardest applications to switch from were IMatch and the document scanning. Kavasoft’s amazing Shoebox has all the power of IMatch but a far superior user interface (I will post a review Real Soon Now).

What use is left for the PC? For now, games, although even this will disappear in Spring of 2006 when the HDTV-capable PlayStation 3 is released.

I recently upgraded my DSLR from a Canon EOS 10D to a Digital Rebel XT. Thanks to the universal consumer electronics upgrade plan, the final cost ended up quite minimal.

Some may object, how can an entry-level $800 camera be considered an upgrade over an originally $1500 prosumer body with a magnesium shell, glass pentaprism and two control wheels? One word: plastics. More precisely, the weight reduction plastics can offer. I usually carry a professional-grade camera in my gadget bag, and the 10D never made the cut because it is so heavy. A camera that gathers dust at home is not all that useful, so off to eBay it went.

Certainly, the 10D feels better in the hand, its viewfinder is not a claustrophobic little tunnel (although compared to my other cameras like as a Leica MP, the 10D’s viewfinder is barely less squinty than the Rebel XT’s). The 8 megapixels vs. 6 are immaterial – they amount to only 15% improvement in linear resolution, and megapixels don’t matter that much anyway.

Film cameras have the bulk of their body forming an empty cavity to load film into. DSLRs, on the other hand, are densely packed with electronics, making them surprisingly heavy for their size. The 10D weighs 790 grams, compared to 715g for a rugged Nikon F3, 600g for the solid brass MP, and 490g for the Rebel XT. The weight around your shoulders is very perceptible at the end of the day. You are not even getting that much more in build quality, the thin magnesium shell on the 10D is there more for cosmetic effect than any real structural purpose — I have not found the 10D appreciably better constructed than the plastic-shelled D30. It certainly cannot compare with the 1.4mm thick copper-silumin-aluminum alloy walls on the F3.

This brings me to a pet peeve about high-end cameras. It seems Canon and Nikon have decided that for marketing reasons a professional camera has to be a heavy camera. I could easily afford a 1D MkII, but don’t feel like carting along a 1.2kg behemoth with all the quiet understated elegance of a Humvee. This camera weighs almost twice as much as a F3 or a MP, both of which are supremely robust professional bodies.

In the era of film, I could understand that an integral motor drive weighs less and is more reliable than an separate one (on the other hand, the film equivalent to the 1D, the EOS 1V, is available without the motor drive to cut down on weight). The bulk of the 1D MkII, and its Nikon equivalents the D2H and D2X, is taken by an oversized portrait grip with slots for heavy batteries.

For digital bodies, however, many of these design choices are unwarranted. The Canon 1D MkII and 1Ds MkII use CMOS sensors that do not require the bulky high-current NiMH battery pack necessary to power the original CCD EOS 1D. Unfortunately Canon have kept the ungainly form instead of adopting the approach, used in their amateur cameras, of providing an optional portrait grip with room for spare batteries for those who absolutely must have them, but not saddle all users with heft and cost they do not want or need. Nikon does no better, their pro cameras all exceed the 1 kilogram mark, as did their film F4 and F5 bodies (the new F6 is under a kilogram without batteries, however). Perhaps that is why the F3 was so enduringly popular compared to the F4. Galen Rowell certainly preferred the F100 over the F4, and the F4 over the F5

There used to be a time when quality and miniaturization went hand in hand. Oskar Barnack invented the lightweight Leica precisely because he was asthmatic and could not lug heavy glass plate view cameras while hiking. Yoshihisa Maitani is justly celebrated for his incredibly light Olympus OM system, accompanied by excellent compact lenses, some of which are still unmatched by Nikon or Canon. Many professional cameras were available in expensive titanium versions to shave a few precious grams. But it now seems that designing a pro camera involves embracing bulk and unnecessary weight, for the simple reason a heavy camera feels more solid and reliable when you handle it in the shop. What next, adding lead ballast? Perhaps lead is not dense enough and depleted uranium will soon be the camera steroid of choice.

I do not see this trend improving over time. I guess my next and probably final digital camera purchase will be a Leica M Digital or the Zeiss Ikon version when they finally arrive on the market. Rangefinder makers still understand ergonomics.

Update (2006-04-08):

It seems pros are doing the same, as in this post from one who downgraded from the Canon EOS 1Ds MkII to a 5D, and apparently it looks like his is not an isolated case. Perhaps Canon will get the message with free-falling sales of big and heavy cameras.

I live in San Francisco’s Nob Hill. Nob is a contraction of Nabob, itself a corruption of the Urdu word Nawab, meaning the governor of a province in the Mughal empire. Of course, many locals call it Snob Hill, even though many bourgeois-bohemian neighborhoods like the nearby Russian Hill or Telegraph Hill are in reality far more exclusive, but this is where the big four robber barons of nineteenth century California, Crocker, Huntington, Stanford and Hopkins built their palaces.

I live just across Grace Cathedral, former location of the Crocker spite fence, which gives a good illustration of the robber barons’ arrogant contempt for the law or common decency. They monopolized energy and the vital railroads that transported agricultural produce to the principal markets in the East Coast, and bled farmers white with high fares, with the complicity of venal politicians. The populist backlash around the turn of the century led to the initiative system that features so prominently in California politics, and renders it to a large extent ungovernable.

The nabobs have left, and their mansions have been converted into fancy hotels, public parks or a cathedral. Despite the hotels, Nob Hill had a reputation for being a gastronomic wasteland, specially when compared with Polk Gulch and Russian Hill, but that has changed dramatically in the four years I have been living here.

Last week, I went to Rue Saint Jacques, a new French restaurant that opened a mere seven weeks ago. I once lived at 123 rue Saint Jacques in Paris, when staying in a dorm at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, so I got a kick from the name. It is apparently named after a tony restaurant in London where the chef once worked. The starter course, a salmon tartare on a bed of Belgian endives was somewhat lackluster, but the next course, a filet of beef in a foie gras sauce, was absolutely heavenly, as was the nougat glacé, a sort of ice cream studded with candied fruit and nuts to resemble Montélimar nougat.

Another restaurant that opened its doors recently is C&L, a steakhouse which replaced the Charles Nob Hill restaurant. You could be excused for thinking this place does not want your business — the only sign of their presence is a very discreet brass plaque on a residential building. Charles Nob Hill had a good French nouvelle cuisine style menu, but unsurprisingly marred with affectation and not offering great value for money. These defects have been mostly addressed in the new restaurant, which has the same owners and is managed by the same staff.

The canonical steakhouse in San Francisco is Harris, but C&L does not compete with it head-on. The waitstaff is far more friendly, for starters, and the preparations are more refined as well. This is not to ding Harris, which is a very solid, if traditional and conservative steakhouse, regularly featured among the top ten in the nation — Harris’ filet mignon Rossini is a must-experience for meat lovers. That said, C&L’s menu is more innovative, albeit with smaller portions. I had their tangy mussel soup, followed with their “pot pie”, a chunky steak served with glazed vegetables in a copper pan lined with dough and cooked in an oven, at once relatively light and bursting with flavor. I cannot vouch for their desserts as in the two times I have been there, I did not have enough appetite left, which is saying something, as I am somewhat of a dessertarian.

Nob Hill is also home to two restaurants that offer surprisingly good value, at least by San Francisco standards. Watergate is a French restaurant with an Asian accent, e.g. traditional French preparations like duck magret in truffle sauce, paired with exotic vegetables like Bok Choy, or their warm lobster martini with jasmine pearl sauce, a perennial favorite. I am not overly fond of “fusion” cuisine as it is often a lazy attempt to thrill jaded palates, at the expense of authenticity or the internal coherency of a culinary tradition. Watergate avoids this trap – their menu is original but impeccably executed in the best of French tradition, which strives for quality ingredients and balanced preparations that emphasize rather than overwhelm delicate flavors with too many spices.

The other bang-for-the-buck restaurant is Rue Lepic, which is the opposite of Watergate in that it is a scrupulously classical French restaurant run by a Japanese chef. They offer an excellent five-course menu for $38 that would pass muster with the crustiest of French traditionalists.