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what i usually use to manage my photos on my mac is a combination of three applications: cocoviewx to do quick reviews, iview mediapro to catalog, and photoshop CS3 for post-processing (things like resizing and renaming). i'm always looking to simplify, and tonight i tested two programs specifically designed for photo management: apple aperture and adobe lightroom.


apple aperture v1.5.4

apple aperture feels like a professional version of iphoto, their consumer-oriented photo management application. i played with aperture a little bit and my favorite feature is the stacking option, where it can automatically group photos based on when it was taken.


adobe lightroom v1.2

adobe lightroom seems like a more robust program but i have a problem with applications that try to usurp apple's user interface guidelines with their own interface system. it's not that bad and i can see why lightroom went with a darker color scheme (mimicking a photo darkroom or a light box) but it's one of my pet peeves.

i don't think neither application is perfect - if only they could merge the two! i still have to play around with them some more before i can definitely say if one is better than the other. one thing i noticed is these programs are real memory hogs, making my macbook pro slow to a noticeable crawl. i may have to upgrade my memory soon.

lacking anything else better to do this morning, i found my way to memorial drive down by MIT to catch the tufts health plan 10k race for women - held every columbus day. i've been there once before, back in 2004. the weather was wet and foggy and started to drizzle by the time the race started at noon.

a race is not like a parade: it's interesting to see but inherently boring for the spectator. they're always the same: first comes the wheelchair racers, followed by a trickle of front runners. slowly, steadily, the number of runners increase until the street becomes a stream of runners and all you hear is the thumping of sneakers on the road. as the flow starts to dissipate, all that's left in the tail end are the walkers and the injured. i wonder if i could ever run a 10k. that's about 6 miles, and my usual is just 3 miles (good enough for a 5k).

the rain had stopped by the time i decided to head back. my helmet attached to my motorcycle was of course soaking wet but i put it on anyway. after a shower, i heated up some meat buns for lunch.

later during the day i cleaned out the two empty (but still filled) fish tanks in the guest bedroom. i transferred the content of my pond scum jar to the smaller tank. the duckweed seemed fine but any sort of microscopic aquatic life were already died from lack of oxygen. there was also a horrible swamp smell that made me think about pouring the whole thing down the drain and start over with a fresh batch of pond water.

i fell asleep in my bedroom in the early evening, waking up close to 8pm to watch some television and have some more meat buns for dinner. i watched with some schadenfreude as the yankees lost to the indians tonight, eliminating them from the playoffs. so now it's certain: boston will face cleveland - whom we have a winning record against - come this friday. just 8 more wins until another world series parade! but you didn't hear it from me, i don't want to jinx the team.

i can't believe the dallas cowboys won their game! i caught a glimpse with just 4 minutes to go and they were still down at that point. it's going to be an awesome sunday: undefeated patriots versus undefeated cowboys. i can't wait!