Like you, I’m usually pretty suspicious about such blah blah and flowery language, even more so in press releases. But last year they predicted that 2008 would be the year of PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris. Now, I believe that color blue closely resembles Obama’s blue, doesn’t it? Interesting…

I had a bit of a scare the other day when I noticed that my photos looked significantly different on the different monitors I use. Of course, no monitor is the same, but this was just too much. I asked myself: Which monitor is accurate and reliable? Were all those hours of post-processing pointless, in vain? How can I solve the problem of inconsistent colors?

It became clear that needed a color calibration system, which consists of a hardware color calibrator (also called a colorimeter) and a piece of software. From what I understand (and please correct me if I’m wrong), a colorimeter reads the color output from the monitor and compares them against what it knows these colors should be. Consequently, based on this comparison, the software makes the necessary changes to the LUT (Look Up Table) of the graphics card for accurate display of colors.

Brandon, who runs his own excellent photoblog JavaJive, kindly offered his advice and recommended me the X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 (i1Display 2). After some comparisons here and there between the different Huey, Spyder, and X-Rite products, I decided to order myself the Eye-One Display 2. It offers color calibration for CRT, LCD, and laptop monitors through easy wizard-driven functionality.

So, what’s inside the box? Not much really, just the colorimeter with funny octopus-like suction cups, a protective cover/ambient light measurement head, a counterweight for use with LCD monitors, the profiling software, and a quick start guide. Disappointingly, there’s no physical manual inside the bundle, one depends on the annoying Flash tutorials on the software CD-ROM.

Using the system is very, very easy indeed. Just install the software, plug-in the USB colorimeter, attach it to the monitor, and run the software. The software automatically creates a profile and calibrates the monitor for accurate colors. You’re done. It’s wise to repeat the process every few weeks.

Money well spent? The purchase reminds me of the MasterCard commercials you see on TV:

• X-Rite Eye-One Display 2: €140;
• A reasonable monitor: €300+;
• Confidence and ease of mind when post-processing: Priceless.

But, is it really, really worth it? I’m not so sure. First of all, the system is quite expensive. There’s a noticeable difference but I think that one can set-up his or her monitor reasonably well with eyeball measurement tests such as this one. Most viewers of my photos probably don’t have calibrated displays, no matter how carefully I’ve calibrated my own monitor, I won’t be able to tell what they see. And even if their monitors are calibrated, the interpretation of color will remain pretty subjective. There’s absolutely no guarantee you will like that blue, saturated sky in one of my photos the same way as I like it…

Congratulations Barack!

But, having read some reviews online, I decided to go with the lesser-known KPS U-13C Magnifying Eyepiece from a Korean company called Seculine, which offers 1.35x magnification. I bought the one with two different eyecups from eBay for some €40 including shipping.

Am I happy with the KPS U-13C? Yes, I am:

• Nice and solid build quality;
• Fits tightly on the camera;
• Noticeable 1.35x magnification;
• Packaged with adapter pads, screws, and screwdriver, there’s no need for any DIY modifications;
• Sharp;
• Reasonably priced.

Any negatives about the KPS U-13C? Well, not really, it’s just a simple eyepiece after all.

As you can see, the eyepiece is compatible with most popular brands (including Fentax!) and camera models through the three different adapter pads that come delivered with it:

Do you use a magnifying eyepiece? What are your experiences? Please share in the comments.

Next up on my wishlist is a focusing screen, any advice?

For those of you who are having trouble reading my handwriting (including myself and you search bots!) here you go:

• If I handwrite a blog post, will it rank lower in search engines because the search bot can’t read it?
• When applying for a job before the digital era, did people mention how many words they can write per minute instead of keystrokes?
• I love this Flickr pool about handwritten blogs.
• Life would be easier if companies and government agencies would accept a digital scan of my signature more often!
• Has anyone tried turning their handwriting into a font through Fontifier.com?

So, what about your handwriting?

Above pattern is loosely based on this original:

Wait a minute, where had I seen that before? Oh, now I remember, at one of my favourite blogs Indexed by Jessica Hagy! What a rip-off!

I can vividly remember the night when I was preparing for my interview on Dutch literature. It was 8 o’ clock in the evening, and I still had to ‘read’ eight more books. This meant that I had to catch up on a single book every 1,5 hours, this was tough even with the summary and additional newspaper articles. (I didn’t have the luxury of the Internet yet back in 1998.)

Reading just the summary of a highly acclaimed literary achievement didn’t make me feel particularly good about myself back in the days as a student. I knew I was missing out on fine subtleties and much of what’s between the lines. There was no time or opportunity to actually enjoy reading a book nor could I form my own opinion about a book.

You get the message so let’s get to the point. Catching up on RSS feeds and the online news, very much feels like doing homework and who doesn’t hate doing his or her homework? When I’m trying to catch up on 1000+ unread items, I get the very same feeling I had preparing for those interviews on literature 10 years ago. Too much homework leads to overload, overload leads to distortion, and news distortion is dangerous.

Even though TechMeme and linkblogs of shared feed items serve as reasonable summaries and pointers for further reading, I know I’m still missing out on unique and original content on the web. Scanning headlines and/or hitting the ‘Mark all as read’ button in Google Reader feels like sin against content, those small little gems of posts will never catch my attention again, ever.

Unfortunately, I’m unable to match Robert Scoble, who can read over 600 feeds a day through a process of impression, scanning headlines, keywords, and post authors, and structuring based on current events (or something like that). To compare, I’m subscribed to some 350 feeds, read between 150-250 items a day, most of which I read in the morning and on Mondays.

Should I cut down on the number of feeds I’m subscribed to? Probably yes. But it doesn’t really solve my problem. Overload is inherent to today’s publishing craze. And most websites and blogs seem to agree that more is better, thereby only adding to more overload. Everywhere on the web we see links and suggestions along the lines of More like this, Related posts, You might also be interested in, and Customers who bought this, also bought that. Nice attempts to catch my attention, but hardly ever useful. To be honest, I’m not interested in more at all, there’s so much content coming at me already on a daily basis. More isn’t going to catch my attention anymore, I want less and deeper content and/or a better way to structure it around themes, topics, and personal interests.

I’m afraid of becoming fed up with the news like I got fed up with the news on television, I’m also afraid that the joy of reading disappears when RSS overload kicks in. What is the solution then? I honestly don’t know. An ideal service would be one that is able to cope with overload and summarizes the news for me, personalizes and/or ranks it based on my reading preferences, and preferably, a service that encourages me to think and engage with the news, not just to follow it. Do you know of any such service?

Or, like Robert Scoble says at the end of this video, should I just forget about it and is ignorance bliss after all? Nah, it isn’t.

And by the way, I passed all my interviews and exams.