Once in a while I encounter a situation that really needs attention. Years ago, when I signed up for Internet service with a local supplier, I discovered that they had not restricted my access to other people’s accounts.

I typed .. (two periods in a row) one day in the directory, and was suddenly at the root of their server. I had access, seemingly, to everyone’s accounts.

I sent a note to the account administrator, who fired back a note saying that what I had done was impossible. So, I sent a note to the owner of the business, who also responded that it was impossible.

Knowing that doing this was illegal and unethical, (but concerned that if I could access all of the accounts, that someone else in their server could access mine) I went into the accounts again, opened the owner’s e-mail folder, opened one ...Read More

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I’ve been carrying a Macintosh PowerBook since the early 1990s when they became available. I used them primarily for making presentations to audiences around the world.

My first was a PowerBook 170. It was a black and white machine with a track ball and a mouse-clicker on the front edge. It was well-made, fast enough to use on the road, and a pretty good computer for staying in touch with the world while traveling. Over the years I upgraded to the PowerBook 3400,* a machine that could present in color, and then, when they became available, a Macintosh PowerBook G4 12-inch laptop computer with the aluminum shell. I have had that one since the first few months they had been available. That was almost six years ago.

My affair with the 12-inch machine was enduring. It is small and light. I always argued that it was the size and weight of – a book. I...Read More

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I promised a week or so back that I would report back with news about my experience with the Color Munki as a projector calibrator tool.

Here ’tis: I love it!

The Munki makes color palettes, profiles your computer display, and will make printer profiles. It’s a real 32-band spectrophotometer, and it’s modestly priced (under $500). I have now tried everything it will do, and I like all of the features of the Munki.

...Read More

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It’s finally Tuesday, November 4, 2008. This is my 125th blog. I have learned a lot, thought a lot, and I have learned to think in small editorial bits rather than epic-length works. It’s surprisingly difficult to write short blog-length editorials, and I hope that you in the blogsphere (blogdom?) are willing to put up with me longer.


Today is the day that our country votes. Interestingly, and surprisingly in one state 41 percent of eligible voters have already voted. That’s almost twice as many as voted in the 2004 election. That, in itself, is an amazing statistic about the election we’re having today.


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I usually take the escalator up from the show floor at GraphExpo to the classroom level. I do this because it gives me an aerial view of the show floor about half way up.

From there I can assess the size and “excitement” of the show. This year was pretty good. There was a lot of traffic, many new, small businesses with displays of their wares. It was a GraphExpo like many others – one big McCormick Place hall filled with equipment and customers.

But GraphExpo is not Print (that’s next year). The GraphExpo show is always shorter – just four days total. As a result, it seems pretty quiet. And, considering that all the manufacutrers had spent their shipping and installation budgets this year on DRUPA, it was a very good show.

The seminars were well-attended. Mine was, at least. I stuck my head into Sandee Cohen&rsqu...Read More

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Several times in recent years companies have made a stab at integrating print and web URL addresses with technologies that can read codes in pages, and then direct a computer to the right place.

One of these was Digimarc, an Oregon-based company whose copyright embedding technology is embedded in Adobe Photoshop, among other places. That technology changes the least-significant bit of pixels in an image to encode text that can later be decoded by Photoshop. The image is modified slightly (you can see the encoding in some images), but the technique is effective, and it can thwart copyright infringement. About five years ago, Digimark tried, without much success, to use this technology to print digital messages in ads.

The problem with the Digimarc approach to getting consumers from the printed page to the web was that...Read More

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As I traveled this week to Chicago, Illinois to attend the GraphExpo show, I spent far too long in airports (my flights were delayed on Monday by only seven hours). A side benefit of that is that I got to sample the Phoenix Airport’s many restaurants, gift shops and coffee shops. Hudson News, the nearly-ubiquitous airport newsstand, has magazine racks near the ends of the airport’s several concourses. I checked the available titles: Knitting Monthly, Threads, Maxim! and the two almost-identical Popular Science and Mechanics magzines.


I picked up the new issue of Pop Mechanics and was admiring the 300 mpg car on the cover when I realized that the magazine has gotten significantly smaller than the last time I saw i...Read More

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In my blog a few days back I described my love affair with ColorThink Pro, the color visualization and analysis tool from Chromix. In addition to its ability to compare profiles against other profiles in both 2D and 3D space, the program has a Workbook view, which is like Excel for color.

In this mode, you open the Color Worksheet, then put an image into the worksheet, and then apply a “work flow” to the image. The work flow can be as simple as applying a color profile (in my example here I am converting from RGB color to CMYK color using U.S. Sheet-fed Coated). The result can then be converted into a list of colors found in the image, and their Delta-E error value expressed in a variety of forms. Or, you can display the Delta-E error as a photo-map where green,...Read More

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This is a time of statistics, polls, numbers, numbers, numbers! I check the polls daily, watching the various polling agencies and their analysis of the voting public. It is amazing that these organizations can eek out a living by asking questions of 1,413 likely voters. The other part of my amazement is that 1,413 likely voters can statistically predict the outcome of an election with 141,647,783 voters (that number is provided by a WIKI of possible voters, and is based on statistics of the 2000 and 2004 elections).


The other part of polling that makes very little sense to me this year is that almost all the polls are taken over the telephone, using land lines. And the largest group of new voters in America is the 18-28 year-old group. None...Read More

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Over the weekend I was Munki-ing around with the Color Munki, and I realized that I have never praised ColorThink within the confines of this blog. So, I will correct that now.

For anyone who has ever dabbled in color management, color theory, color psychology, or the fine art of explaining to a customer why their color doesn’t look in print like it did on their computer display, ColorThink Pro is a delightful addition to your software choices.

ColorThink Pro was created by Steve Upton who is a color genius, and one of the most amiable fellows I know. He somehow combines being a fine fellow with being a software developer, entrepreneur, teacher, and color guru. That’s quite a combination of skills and qualities.

It’s a combina...Read More

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I managed to get back home, courtesy of United Airlines, and a fair wind from the west (actually it took almost as long to go east as it did to go west). And I brought the Color Munki with me. The Agricultural Inspection station at Kona airport (Their sign says “Yes, you have to do this again!”) runs every carry-on through an X-ray machine to search for clandestine bananas and pineapples, which they will make you go back and throw away, or consume.

Curiously, there is a stand at the airport that will sell you fresh pineapples that have been cleared for transport to the mainland. I will never understand this.

The Munki made it through the inspection without difficulty. I would have imagined there would be a law against transporting a Munki without a cage, a permit or something bureaucratic, but no.

I remember losing my ColorTron t...Read More

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I spent some time mid-morning clambering over loose lava in a field near my hotel on the island of Hawaii. I was balancing my aging PowerBook G4 computer (see how cleverly I slipped that in? Those new MacBook Pros are awfully appealing) and a Pantone Color Munki Design spectrophotometer.

My objective? Collect spectral samples of lava. The police came by and warned me how dangerous the lava is. I told them I was gathering spectral energy signatures of the lava, and they were impressed by that, and they drove away.

I haven’t had this much fun with a color instrument since the ColorTron, back in hmm... 1995-96. My favorite tale from that era was walking around a BMW dealership in Minneapolis with my ColorTron and an early PowerBook, dogged by a salesman who kept saying, “Don’t-cha-know, I can put-cha in one of these things for a good price!&...Read More

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