DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Subject: SHARON’S SORBET IS BACK AT TRADER JOE’S!

Dear Matthew;

Sharon’s wants to thank all the loyal fans of our sorbet for their strong support! We just received news that Trader Joe’s is placing Sharon’s Sorbet back in their stores.

We are eternally thankful and would like to send you FREE manufacturer coupons in gratitude. Please email us your address and we will send you the coupons as thank you gift.

So, that phone call has paid off. Now if TJ’s would just do something about all the plastic wrap on their produce.

Anyway, if you haven’t tried it, Sharon’s Coconut Sorbet is the best cow-free ice cream you’ll ever taste. Seriously, you won’t miss the cream (nor the rBGH).

Last November I lamented the demise of PhotoAccess, an online photo-printing service that I’d used for years. I found a few recommendations for alternative printing services, but the prospect of actually testing them was terribly uninviting.

But the picture-taking continued, even if the print-making did not. We had hundreds of images to review, print, and arrange in albums. The backlog was daunting.

Finally I reread the Printers and Printing forum at dpreview.com and concluded that either White House Custom Color or MPIX.com would meet my needs. That particular evening, the whcc.com site was flaking, so MPIX got my business, despite the site’s awful FAQ and help-text sections.

Unfortunately, I know more about color correction than most digital camera owners, in part because my old camera (a Nikon Coolpix 995) had a nasty habit of turning faces into tomatoes. So I assumed that if I simply uploaded a bunch of unretouched images, I’d get lousy results — color casts, oversaturated skin tones, compressed dynamic ranges, exaggerated contrast, and so on.

Therefore I spent that first evening researching color workflows, ICC profiles, and monitor calibration, in an effort to set up my laptop to give me a realistic preview of the prints MPIX would produce from my images. Net.wisdom proclaims that it’s impossible to get good color from any of these print services without using a $100-$200 hardware device to calibrate one’s monitor — and also that “serious” color work requires a CRT, not an LCD.

Hardware calibration may make sense for pro photographers (despite the fact that Dan Margulis has taught color-correction to people who are colorblind), but it’s an unnecessary expense and a waste of time for me. I just want to see flesh tones that don’t make my friends look like they’re seasick, jaundiced, or enduring third-degree sunburn. (Note: ditching the Coolpix 995 was an important first step.)

So, I used the software display-calibration routine built into OS X (within the Displays pane of System Preferences, click the Color tab, then the Calibrate button). Starting with the sRGB profile, which is 10x too bright on my old Powerbook, I went through the Calibration process, setting all the controls as directed. I used a Gamma of 2.2 and a color temperature of 6500°.

Next I set up Photoshop’s “working space” to match my camera: within Photoshop’s Color Settings dialog, set the RGB profile to match whatever color profile your camera uses. (If there is no matching profile, you can have Photoshop use the “embedded” profile when opening image files.)

Next, I got a copy of the .icc profile of MPIX’ output device, from MPIX tech support. Within Photoshop, I configured the “Proof Colors” feature to use this profile.

As a sanity check, I got a “calibration kit” from MPIX (they’ll send you one upon request). This consists of an 8x10 print of their in-house test image, and a CD-ROM containing the original image file. This allowed me to view the file (onscreen) and print side-by-side to confirm whether Photoshop on my laptop was showing me anything close to what my MPIX prints would show. To my eye, the colors were practically identical.

The next step is turning on Photoshop’s “proof colors” mode (⌘Y), which simulates the printed colors via MPIX’ .icc profile. When I toggled this on, the display barely changed. This suggests that my non-hardware calibration routine was very effective at producing true-to-life color settings.

I’ve just received my first order of prints from MPIX.com, and overall I’m very pleased:

• Color reproduction is great, as expected.
• MPIX’ 4''x5'' print size is a much better suited to my camera’s 4:3 images than most printers’ 4''x6'' default. Your mileage may vary, but this print size ended up being a great solution to the crop/border problem PhotoWorks created for me.
• The MPIX ordering process works pretty well, despite the fact that uploading relies on a clunky JAVA applet.
• Prints have filenames stamped on the back — a huge benefit when organizing prints from a large order.
• Turnaround time was impressive: images uploaded Thursday night arrived in the mail Tuesday.
• My order was shipped in a rigid cardboard box that not even the local post-office Neanderthals can mangle.

My only gripe is minor: MPIX’ standard paper has a matte finish. I would prefer glossy.

(MPIX does offer a glossy-finish metallic paper, but it’s twice as expensive. I printed a dozen test images on this stock, and the results were disappointing, considering the price: the colors are fine, but not a significant improvement over the matte paper. The metallic sheen is visible from an angle; it’s distracting. And the images lacked sharpness; as compared to the matte prints, the metallic prints were much softer.)

So, despite the difficulties of getting set up, I’m happy with the results from MPIX. And I didn’t have to spend a dime on hardware calibration.

I am intrigued by the “rain-catchment system” in this earth-friendly house in San Francisco. We’ve been looking for another green upgrade to the homestead; maybe this is it.

WonderWater founder Dylan Coleman contributed an amazing quote to the article:

I see a day in San Francisco when you can’t get a permit unless you collect a certain amount of water, and when you are charged for excess runoff.

It sounds unbelievable, even for San Francisco… but on the other hand, it would solve a mess of problems, like multi-year droughts, disappearing water supplies, maybe even erosion.

All our downspouts are routed into PVC pipes that empty into the creek. It probably wouldn’t be terribly expensive to run them into a tank instead. We certainly have enough room for a tank… assuming the back yard doesn’t slide into Marin County from all the damn rain.

Having a baby has done nothing to cure me of my mail-order lifestyle. In the past two years I’ve used the web to research — and purchase — hundreds of varieties of diapers, strollers, cribs, toys, and, as a new but somewhat aging father, hair-replacement products.

We don’t order from companies that don’t have reasonable privacy policies. And we always opt out of list-sharing and affiliate solicitations at the time of the order.

Nonetheless, recent weeks have brought a spate of unfamiliar catalogs pimping thousands of overwraught, battery-powered kid toys, e.g. the “John Deere® Real Sounds Lawn Mower.” Why? Why? Why?

I always call. I always have my name removed from the mailing list. I always ask where they got my name in the first place — although unfortunately 90% of vendors are unable or unwilling to tell me; customer acquisition generally happens in a dark room staffed by marketing trolls who have had their tongues removed lest they divulge the sekrit source of potential future revenues.

But today, a helpful operator at Sensational Beginnings revealed that they’d purchased my name and address from One Step Ahead, a catalog and website vendor we previously trusted.

The privacy policy at OneStepAhead.com reads:

We use third party companies to help us provide our products and services to you. Some of these companies are given access to some, or all, of the information you provide to us and may use cookies on our behalf. These companies are contractually restricted from using your information in any manner, other than in helping us to provide you with the products and services available on our site. For more information, including how to opt out, please go to: http://www.coremetrics.com/info_eluminate2.html. Occasionally, we allow other carefully screened companies to mail their catalog to our customers’ physical addresses. If you do not wish to be included, please let us know by email at questions@onestepahead.com.

What One Step Ahead doesn’t mention is that these “carefully screened companies” in turn sell OneStepAhead’s customers’ addresses too. This is not a temporary list rental, as the above policy implies.

So, if you’ve purchased something from One Step Ahead, you’ll soon receive a few catalogs from the “carefully screened” companies One Step Ahead sold your address to. Then, a few months later, you’ll receive a few more catalogs from companies who purchased your name from the companies One Step Ahead sold your address to. “And they told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends,” like the old shampoo commercial.

You may not mind the full mailbox, but you might mind the waste: more dead trees, more toxic chemicals from paper bleaching, more heavy metal dyes from printing, more toxic truck exhaust from hauling extra weight to your mailbox, more glossy pages blowing around the local landfill. And for what? So OneStepAhead can make an extra ten cents from your account. Feh.

Here’s a good deed for Earth Day: stop doing business with One Step Ahead.

Apple made a big splash with its iPod Shuffle, the primary feature of which is that it allows users to listen to a playlist in random order:

Random is the New Order

Welcome to a life less orderly. As official soundtrack to the random revolution, the iPod Shuffle Songs setting takes you on a unique journey through your music collection — you never know what’s around the next tune. Meet your new ride. More roadster than Rolls, iPod shuffle rejects routine by serving up your favorite songs in a different order every time.

But here’s the thing they don’t tell you: random order can suck. Sure, your collection of Matchbox 20 or Prince songs can be played back-to-front, in alphabetical order, sorted by length, randomly, or, my favorite, not at all. It scarcely matters.

But if your CD collection looks like this:

…then you’re going to want to listen to songs in album order, the way God and progressive rock musicians intended. (Yes, I grew up with vinyl.)

Fortunately, iTunes can reveal the dark neglected corners of your iTunes Music Library without forcing you to suffer indignities like listening to “Thick as a Brick (pt. 2)” before “Thick as a Brick (pt. 1).” It’s a feature called “Smart Playlists,” which is a way to make a playlist whose contents change moment-to-moment based on criteria you define. In this particular case, the important criteria is to called “Least Recently Played.”

Because iTunes keeps track of the time you’ve most recently played each song in the library, it’s a simple matter to find the ones you haven’t heard in a long time, or more to the point, in the longest time.

So, for the past couple days I’ve been enjoying many hours of music I ripped in 2003-2004 but haven’t listened to since. It’s an equal-opportunity playlist. And it’s a nice break from the stuff I seem to listen to every two days.