Uno is number one

I love how kids concentrate themselves when playing card or board games. Here Kaapo seems to really think about his next move in Uno card game. I also like a lot this quite heavy processing I did for this particular shot. 

The only boy

Kaapo loves to dance. He has now been two years in a modern dance class and he really likes to perform this wonderful art. In addition to the artistic part dancing is very good physical exercise and improves a lot of coordination and balance. What I have been wondering about is the very low number of boys in these dancing classes. Do people still think that dancing is not enough “boyish” hobby? Anyways, Kaapo is the only boy in his dancing class. 

 

 

Ice skating is fun

Kaapo was very happy to go ice skating first time this winter. He was amazingly good after a such long pause. We have an ice skating rink very near to our place and usually it has decent ice. Now the ice was quite snowy but actually that was a good thing because it was not too slippery for Kaapo. I saw from his face that he was enjoying a lot. Here are few shots of Kaapo ice skating, having a pause, and getting up after falling down. I am quite amazed how nicely Fuji X100 coped those difficult lighting conditions. 

Fantastic Snapseed app now in iOS and Mac

I have now Snapseed app in my iOS devices (iPhone and iPad) and in my MacBook. Really fantastic. I think I am going to use the desktop version quite much for my Fuji X100 shots. I’m shooting in JPEG with X100 and I feel Snapseed will suit very well for those shots (even though Snapseed is capable to process RAWs too). If you are not familiar with this awesome app, I suggest that you should visit Snapseed website.

 

Here’s one quick processing by desktop version of Snapseed from last night. 

 

 

Shallow DoF with Fuji X100

My long time Flickr friend Richard asked me in my last post that how shallow DoF I can achieve with Fuji X100. Here are two quick snapshots to demonstrate how shallow DoF and how smooth bokeh I’m about to achieve. Both shots are F2, 1/100, and ISO 2000. Both are shot using macro mode. 

 

 

 

Interesting times…

…photography-wise. Yesterday I downloaded Lightroom 4 beta and tested it little bit. I found it very nice and it may be so that I could be ex-Aperture user in the future. Even though I like Aperture’s UI much more than LR’s there are quite many things processing-wise that are more pleasing in LR. I found especially the new shadows and highlights sliders very nice in LR 4 beta. Shadows slider for example is now adjusting shadow areas very accurately not touching the mid-tones. That’s quite a huge improvement. All the minor changes in develop module are very welcome. And now the adjustment brush corresponds the basic adjustment module which is also a welcomed thing. Now LR is having a map module too which is nice because I usually map my shots. 

Another interesting announcement was Fujifilm’s X-Pro1 camera. I have Fuji’s X100 compact and I really love it. Now there will be opportunity to have an interchangeable lens camera which shares same ideology as X100. I love the analogue approach in the high-end digital cameras. And of course the image quality of X100 is vey good indeed and I am sure X-Pro1 will be at least as good in that department. The prime lenses they announced with the camera body seem to be great ones! 

Processed in Snapseed

The shot below has been shot with Fuji X100 and was initially saved in my Aperture 3 library in my MacBook. In Aperture I saved some of the shots from that photo shoot in the photo stream in iCloud which is very handy way to get shots in your iOS devices (and vice versa of course). I opened this shot from the photo stream in my iPad and processed it in the very wonderful Snapseed app. I cropped it and adjusted color and contrast. Very handy indeed. I uploaded the final version in my Flickr stream straight from Snapseed. And of course the final version was immediately also in my MacBook through iCloud. Fantastic. 

 

Boys love snow

Our boys, Kaapo and Tiitus, really love snow but this winter has not been very good in that respect. But now we have some and they enjoy.  
 

 

Test post from Blogsy

Just a quick test using Blogsy for iPad to write a blog post here. This app seems to have very nice formatting tools and nice handy link to my Flickr account to attach photos here. Let’s try to include one Christmas shot here:

 
 
 

 

Why I chose Pages for writing meeting minutes

First of all I personally have a Mac, iPad, and iPhone. And at work I am forced to use a PC with MS Office package.

I work in science and we have quite a lot of meetings and I would like to use my iPad to write short minutes of them. I want to read those minutes using all my devices at home and at my workplace. So, there are many things to fullfill for a notes/writing app. And I really have tested quite many.

It would be nice if a note app is easy to use and fast for writing using mobile devices. Of course somekind of syncing feature is also a must because I am using many devices to create and read them. I’ve tested at least the following ones (some are iOS and some for Mac, some for both):

Evernote, NoteMaster, Elements, iA Writer, TaskPaper, Note Taker, ThinkBook, ByWord, and Pages (at least these – there may be some else which I do not recall now).

Some of those are really great writing apps. I especially like iA Writer and ByWord for distraction free writing and I am using them for that purpose. But they are not perfect ones for taking notes. Pages is a word processor (at least sort of) and is not a pure note taking app either. But there are few reasons why I chose Pages over the other for my meeting minute app:

You can make decent lists by Pages (even though you have better system for that in other apps – like TaskPaper). But the lists are decent and quite easy to make. The main reason for choosing Pages is the iCloud sync. It is fantastic. I have many of those other apps which use Dropbox sync which is also very nice but Pages with iCloud is very special case – at least for me. When you have your Pages documents in iCloud they are in all of your iOS devices and also in your Mac. Okay, Dropbox will do the same. Some of the other apps use file formats which are not so good if you want to use them in Word. And that’s what I need (I have to circulate the minutes to many people who are using Word). Plain text format will of course work but then I have to do quite a lot of formatting in Word before I’ll send the minutes to others. If I use Pages I can download the minutes from iCloud as Pages, Word, or PDF format. That’s super handy! I can even send the file in Word or PDF format straight from my mobile device as an email. And I can upload Word documents to iCloud too. Even more handy. So, there is much less messing around when I use Pages instead of those other apps.

One bonus more when using Pages. You can easily add some pics and charts in your documents when using Pages.

What’s wrapped in there?

What’s wrapped in there?, originally uploaded by Jonne Naarala.

This shot is from Kaapo’s birthday party we arranged for his friends. They opened all presents together and as you can see they all were very excited to see what is inside the wrappings.

I am wodering how to get some new life in my photography. I think it has to be this extreme darkness around us which puts me in off mode. And of course this hectic life in which I’m immersed in at the moment. Then all the photography I am able to do is snapshots like this one. Of course it is a precious shot to remember things but otherwise it is a really bad one. I hope I’ll find a new spark for my shooting soon.

Lunch in a Chinese restaurant

Lunch in a Chinese restaurant, originally uploaded by Jonne Naarala.

Kaapo is here thinking about which kind of lunch he is going to get. It was the first time our sons got Chinese food and they liked it. Some dishes were litlle bit too spicy but in general it was a real success and I am sure we will visit there again.

Mobile WordPress approach

Elements – Dropbox – Byword

The above apps work really nicely together. When you use Markdown editing you can read Byword documents in Elements and vice versa. Very handy indeed! Now I have two different apps who work greatly together and I have beautiful mobile approach to edit documents written with Byword.

Markdown and Dropbox make all this possible.

Byword test

Blog post by Byword

Now I am testing Byword writing app to write a simple blog post to WordPress. I have already tried out iA Writer which I really, really like for writing but it has one major disadvantage for blog writing. I couldn’t find out how to easily import an HTML file to WP and there is no way to just copy an iA Writer document as an HTML file and then paste it to WordPress. But Byword has that option. If it is working (and I will see that soon), I am really going to like Byword.

Byword is a “distraction-free” writing app as are e.g. iA Writer and WriteRoom. Byword has little bit more preferences to twek with than iA Writer (well iA Writer has no preferences at all) but otherwise these two programms are quite similar ones. Well, I do miss that gorgeous Nitti font which iA Writer uses!

I am just hoping to see iPhone versions of Byword and iA Writer. I think there will be an app for iPhone from iA Writer but I have not seen any info about such plans concerning Byword. If there will be iPhone app from either of them I will definitely purchase one. I would like to have this kind of a writing app in more mobile format.

I can say that these “distraction-free” writing apps are able to increase my productivity. I have now started to write a short novel using this kind of apps. This novel project has been my long-time dream for many, many years.

Birthday boys

Birthday boys, originally uploaded by Jonne Naarala.

We had combined birthday party for our boys today. They enjoyed so much and it was very nice to meet some friends and relatives.