Category Archives: Photography

The LG 34UM95C ultrawide display

Supersize me.

For an index of all my Mac Pro articles, click here.


Dual LG displays, each running at 3440 x 1440 pixels. 30″ Apple Cinema Display in back.

A custom Mac Pro build for a customer saw him requesting tests with two LG 34UM95C displays, which run $600 or so each at the time of writing. These are ultrawide IPS panels with definition just shy of 4K. The user is a video production professional and needs all the screen real estate he can get. The Mac Pro is a 2009 heavily modified by me, running dual X5690 3.46GHz 12-core CPUs, 64GB of 1333MHz registered server RAM, 4TB of mSATA SATA3 SSD drives on one PCIe card and 4 x 4TB WD Caviar Black 7200rpm HDD. The total investment of some $6,000 compares with an all in cost of $15,000 for like performance with the new (trash can) Mac Pro.

The displays are driven by an EVGA Nvidia GTX970 4GB card, model 04G-P4-3975-KR, which runs some $300 at Amazon. This card is distinguished by having no fewer than three DisplayPort sockets, in addition to DVI and HDMI. The GTX970 has the same performance capabilities as the earlier GTX680, but the latter comes with dual DVI, one DP and one HDMI sockets and while it will drive one of the LGs at maximum definition it will not drive two, both the HDMI and the DVI (using a DVI to HDMI cable) being limited to half a screen at 1720 x 720 pixels – useless. The GTX970 uses 25% less power than the GTX680 – 145 watts vs. 195 watts at full chat. That’s a non-trivial difference. If you can live with the issues in the next paragraph, this card is highly recommended.


The ports on the GTX970 – the three DisplayPort sockets are arrowed.

The stock GTX970 has two issues – there is no splash screen at start with the Mac Pro (no big deal unless you want to switch in and out of Boot Camp) and requires the use of Nvidia’s drivers which must first be installed (as a SysPrefs pane) or you will get a black screen. Further, as Apple does not include these drivers with OS X, any update to OS X may require the update of the driver first. Nvidia is very good about keeping these current as it helps them sell cards for the 9xx cards. By contrast, the 6xx and 7xx cards work with the native OS X drivers.


Nvidia driver loaded in the System Preferences pane.

If you need truly vast screen area, the LGs are recommended. There’s a costlier version with Thunderbolt sockets for the trash can Mac Pro, useless for classic Mac Pro users. The center base of the display sports a joystick which makes one-off tuning adjustments easy. The foot, a nice alloy match for the Mac Pro, is retained with two screws at one of two heights and limited tilt is provided. The displays have a very narrow frame and are both elegant and beautifully made. I would prefer the foot to be one inch taller, but that’s a personal preference.


Full definition on both, each running at 60Hz.

My copy of Unigine Heaven maxes out at 2560 x 1440, so the adjusted framing rate shown in the (stretched) screenshot below figures to 38fps – excellent performance especially when the number of pixels is taken into account.


Tested on a 12-core 3.06GHz 2009 Mac Pro which also sports an ancient GT120 card.

Performance of the displays is exemplary. There is absolutely no backlight bleed and the displays are easily tuned, being shipped far too bright for photo processing – as is the case with just about every display out there. If you need vast screen real estate – 23% more than on a 30″ Apple Cinema Display – these are a bargain, and involve none of the issues encountered with 4K displays (flickering, incompatibility, minuscule font sizes, etc.). The back is drilled for a standard 100mm VESA wall or arm mount plate. Surprisingly light for their size, each comes with a DP and an HDMI cable, and those are the only two graphics sockets on the display. A provided stick on clear sheet of plastic adds ‘slideability’ on your desktop of choice. I left it off. Unlike the current ghastly and horribly overpriced Apple 27″ Thunderbolt displays with their awful glossy screens, the LGs sport pleasantly matte screens and suffer no reflection issues. Ideal for professional use all day long.

Prices on all flat panel LED/LCD displays continue to fall rapidly – I would hate to be in that business. Here’s the trend for the LG:

Tracker blocking

Stopping evil.

Jean-Louis Gassée, former head of Apple France, writes a weekly column on his Monday Note blog which is always interesting. A few weeks back he wrote this interesting piece addressing the growing use of tracking software which allows the not-so-nice people at Google, and its runt offshoot Facebook, to Do Evil. Meaning that these crooks steal your tracking history for sale to the highest bidder, their customer, also known as an advertiser. You are not Google’s customer. You are Google’s merchandise, your behavior unwittingly sold every second of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you agreed to their carefully obfuscated terms of service – I need no lessons in the law, thank you. I know theft when I see it.

One of Gassée’s points is that with the wimpier processors found in portable devices, especially iPhones and iPads, this invisible but very intrusive software has a significant effect on the speed with which content loads while all those nasty trawlers lodge inside your CPU and memory. With iOS9 being released by Apple today, I got off my duff, loaded it up on the iPhone and sundry iPads and immediately installed Marco Arment’s aptly named ‘Peace’ app which permits trackers to be blocked. Arment is a long time Apple developer, is a person with a great track record and I have been a happy user of his apps for years. Sure, there are free variants out there, but why not go with a known quantity? All of $2.99. The effect was immediately noticeable. One of the worst offenders is the New York Times and pages now load far faster on my iPhone and iPad – no measurements needed. It’s obvious.

Then the other shoe dropped and I realized I had to install tracker blocking in Safari (I already use AdBlock to stop intrusive advertising) on my desktops and laptop, so I zipped over to Ghostery and downloaded and installed a conceptually similar app for OS X browsers. Marco Arment’s ‘Peace’ uses the same Ghostery back-end on iOS. Once installed, Ghostery places a small ghost icon to the left of your URL bar and when trackers are in effect a red numbered flag tells you how many you are blocking – this is what you see when you click the icon:


The liberals at the NYT aren’t past making a silent buck off your reading.

No surprise that Google Analytics and Facebook feature in just about every tracking err… tracking, and I’m not even a member of that great 21st century time sink for those with IQs in double digits and below known as Facebook users (they are more accurately described as ‘used’ than ‘users’).

So there are two benefits of using tracking blockers. First everything in your browser loads noticeably faster, meaning less time lost and less battery drain. Second, you get the smug satisfaction of thwarting those who Do Evil. Given that this is an existential threat to Google’s revenues, you can bet they have large teams working overtime on working around this. Until then, I have a smile as large as a Cheshire Cat on my mug.

Apple is to be congratulated on making tracker blocking available in iOS (you need recent versions of the iPhone or iPad for this to work – an excellent excuse to upgrade). And JL-G is to be congratulated on bringing this issue so eloquently to the fore.

I checked this blog to see if some trackers had somehow insinuated themselves and found but one – Google Translate. If you use the translate option (scroll to the bottom of this page) Google will know all about it. If you read English, nothing about your coming here is known to anyone – except you. Google’s translation is mostly awful anyway, but there for those preferring not to use the Queen’s English.


The one tracker in effect – turned off here – on this site.


Update not 24 hours later:

I take everything I said about Arment back. This just sent to me by a Guardian reader:

“The maker of Peace, a bestselling ad blocker for iPhones, has pulled the app just days after its launch saying the app’s success “just doesn’t feel good”.

Marco Arment, co-founder of Tumblr and creator of the Instapaper reading app, launched Peace on 16 September. The $2.99 app became the bestselling app in Apple’s iTunes store almost overnight.

Peace takes advantage of iOS 9, Apple’s newly updated mobile software, to filter out mobile ads and tracking on other apps and websites. Mobile advertising is the fastest growing sector of the ad business and seen by most publishers as vital to their future finances.”

Well, I got mine ….

One of the basic facts of life is that those with bleeding hearts  generally have zero grasp of economics. Just buy someone else’s product because he has just helped them get rich.

Now the fellow has rebated the money rather than giving it to a good cause like education:

Update October 1, 2015:

Now that Apple has refunded me my $2.99 for Peace, why not just stick with it, free as it is? because there will be no updates fromn the fool who passes as developer.

Go to this excellent New York Times piece (talk of biting the hand which feeds you!) and download Purify from the App Store for $1.99. It works just like the article says and you should get support going forward.

Bel Air – 2015

The best of the best.

These pieces generally run annually in time for Hanukkah and Christmas.

The only way to live and work in Los Angeles is to avoid the freeways, for they are a living hell. No matter the time of day or night, you can be sure of wasting horrible amounts of your dwindling life span in your car, parked on a way that is anything but free.

When I lived in Los Angeles (1987-93) I was lucky to have a home high in the hills of the San Fernando Valley in Encino and a job in Century City, the other side of the transverse spine that is Mulholland Drive. Mulholland, named after the DWP engineer who literally made Los Angeles possible (it’s called water) just happens to be one of the most dramatic of roads in that thrilling city. The beauty of this location was that I could zip up to Mulholland from home, turn down Roscomare into Bel Air then wind my way though the labyrinthine paths of this haven which is a very small part of Los Angeles, exiting at Sunset Boulevard with but one city block to my office on Century Park East. Traffic? Nowhere in sight.

The small firm I called home made for great friendships and as often as not we would gather monthly after work for camaraderie at the haven which is the Hotel Bel Air. I had stayed there on business from New York back in 1985 in one of the bungalows in the lush grounds and it was a memorable experience.

When a resident of LA, on one occasion while conducting arcane tests on my Mercedes diesel to determine the exact fuel consumption (don’t ask – it’s the Engineer’s Curse) I crossed Sunset into Bel Air on the way home only to feel that superb five cylinder turbodiesel motor stumble. Barely making it across I stopped on Carcassonne in Bel Air, out of fuel. I had miscomputed the size of the tank, smaller in the diesels than in the gas models …. bloody Germans. No sense of humor.

Flashers lit and making my way on Shanks’s Pony to the Bel Air I headed for the tea room whence I called AAA, alerting the valet that he was to direct my driver there upon arrival. Sure enough, the mechanic was unquestioningly ushered into the rarefied confines of the watering hole a while later and we exited magnificently – I in suit, he in overalls – to get the beast fueled and started. (Diesels need bleeding. Pumping is involved. Again, don’t ask). My love affair with the Hotel Bel Air and with Bel Air itself has proceeded apace since.

You see, unlike most places which boast wealth, the Hotel Bel Air specializes in those costliest attributes – discretion and silence. Not only is it hellishly hard to find, it’s buried deep within Bel Air on 12 acres of heaven remote from busy streets, and if there is a more perfect place on earth to relax I do not know of it. Thus on this, my son’s first visit to Los Angeles at age 13, I determined only the best would do and one night last week found us at the Bel Air in – yes, you guessed it – one of the bungalows in the grounds.


Our room. The bed was magically split into two as we dined.


Exquisite landscaping against Southern California pink.


Winnie checks out the pool. Notice the large crowds in attendance.

While my obligatory tea arrived poolside (you can take the boy out of England, but you cannot take England out of the boy) I obeyed Winston’s dictate to think not about work but to merely gaze into the distance and think peaceful thoughts. Much harder than it sounds for one who considers vacations a leading cause of stress, but the boy was clearly onto something. He is wise beyond his years.

These thoughts were interrupted by two young girls to my left discussing education, the one a UCLA junior trying to convince the other, a USC sophomore, to transfer, the better to enjoy their friendship. Half way though this dissertation the one decided they needed a late lunch served to them on the chaise longues surrounding the pool, but things proceeded to get sticky when it came to payment. The young woman dashed back to her room in search of a credit card, returning breathlessly to admit to the pool waiter that she could find neither hide nor hair of it. After some embarrassing back and forth she called her mum only to be reminded that she has an account at the place – this at the age of 17 – and a quick “Charge it!” resolved the issue. High class problems.

I contented myself with mindless thoughts (sort of like ‘military intelligence’ or ‘stock market predictions’ when it comes to grammatical logic, I suppose) and gazing at Winnie doing his thing was a subtle and sublime joy. My boy’s first visit to the City of Angels really had started at the top, and my joy was but sublimation of my hopes for him. He rejoiced in the heated pool and I rejoiced that he was there.


A lovely fountain in the large yet discreet grounds.


Winston at Swan Lake in the grounds. Back in the 1990 the swans used to be black.
Maybe this is more PC at work?

The Hotel Bel Air takes its tea very seriously.


Winston’s first ever cup of coffee at the Wolfgang Puck over breakfast.
You can read all about his Unfair Advantage here in a piece that remains 100% correct.

There’s no need to drive anywhere for dinner for the Wolfgang Puck Restaurant in the hotel would be hard to improve on. Dress code dictates a jacket and long trousers for dinner and tattoos are nowhere to be seen. White trash need not apply and the prices see to it that they do not – this is a feature, not an issue. The women’s dresses over dinner have to be seen be believed. And they are wonderful to behold – the women and the frocks. Breakfast dress code is relaxed as the above shows, and the staff is so professional you leave regarding them as friends. Jeans are notable by their absence and let’s all be grateful for that.

Money is quiet here and waistlines are slim. The bungalows are the preferred places to stay and many have been the location of choice for discreet assignations among the Hollywood set, from Frank Sinatra to Elizabeth Taylor who enjoyed most of her numerous honeymoons in one. Or was that in seven? They came here to not be seen. Ask nicely and the hostess who walks you to your room will point out the bungalow in which Howard Hughes lived, right around the time he crashed his experimental single wing plane at the LA Country Club next door, barely surviving. It’s an episode which is perfectly recreated in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, a favorite with both Winnie and I. Hughes was an American with a capital ‘A’, and Hollywood history is writ large at the Bel Air.

This is a haven for the visitor. If you crave isolation, hate crowds and desire peace and quiet with the most charming friends to look after you, a stay here is de riguer.

All snaps on the iPhone 6.

* * * * *

Click here for an index of all the Biographical pieces.

Downtown Los Angeles

From the Bonaventure.

No one could accuse John Portman of making boring buildings, and his many hotels across the world are a testament to the belief that the destination should be the highlight of a journey. He has left a massive footprint with his innovative designs which span the globe. An American original. I have always loved his Bonaventure Hotel (1977) in downtown Los Angeles and would visit frequently to enjoy the architecture when a resident (1987-93) of what is my favorite American city.

So when my 13 year old son Winston and I visited Los Angeles last week, one goal was to show him the best of the best across this amazing city. These were snapped from our room on the 30th floor. The views were simply thrilling, downtown America at its best.

The vast lobby with its many pools is a surprisingly quiet and restful place. Noise does not resonate here. It simply wafts away up the vast atrium. Check-in and check-out were exceptionally smooth and professional, American hospitality management at its best. These people clearly love what they do.


Winston stays dry.


John Portman’s distinctive architecture.

There’s an outstanding, if expensive, steak house on the 35th floor named the Prime Rib, where Winston and I enjoyed the finest steaks we can recall. Walk down one level to the 34th floor and you will find yourself in the rotating bar – quite something – and the vibrations from the motor can just be felt in the Prime Rib if you touch the table with your fingertips! These places typify the sense of wonder which pervades this venue.


The Prime Rib boasts tremendous food and views.

You can read more about John Portman here. Portman also designed San Francisco’s Hyatt.

First two snaps on the Panny GX7 with the kit zoom, the third on the iPhone 6. I used a small and very light Oben carbon fiber tripod for the night shots – a fine and unobtrusive travel companion which will fit in the smallest of bags, weighing some 2.5lbs with ball head. An ideal match for the small Panasonic camera body.

The Biltmore, Santa Barbara

For your Napoleonic complex.

This legendary corner – a very large corner – of Santa Barbara is a haven to those of short stature. For a ridiculously overpriced night at this joint, which boasts a 4pm check-in time making the already silly-expensive daily rate even higher, your inner Napoleon will be seriously catered to.

Meaning that if you are so massively insecure as to demand total sycophancy for your Rolex bewristed persona, this is the place for your short stature because obsequoisness is very much the order of the day. In fact the level of suck-upedness here would put a bilge pump to shame. After about twenty minutes of “Mr. Pindelski this, and Mr. Pindelski that” I found myself longing for those days of yore at the local Best Western. $39 a night, clean sheets and no nonsense. That and wishing my last name was Smith.

In fact, it’s impossible to walk more than 10 yards in this open prison without being accosted and greeted like the profit center you are. I would imagine the inmates at Rikers get more privacy.

And make no mistake, this place really is run by cost accountants. Everywhere you go your name is requested, nay, demanded, by one of the slim young things charged with being your best friend (most are named Carlos or Maria), and it’s not because they want to be your chum. It’s because they are after your billing data. Ice cream at the pool for your son? “Mr. Pindelski this, Mr. Pindelski that”. A glass of water? Yup, you guessed it. And be sure to record the exact choice, or else. Think I’m kidding? They immediately scrutinized/audited/verified that my son did indeed get the Klondike bar, not the Haagen Dazs. And blammo, right on the bill at 3x the market price at the local 711.

Then, when you get over the $40 parking fee and the $20 for the internet connection (for $1000 a night plus tax no way that will be free here) you begin to really miss the Best Western. In its next life this place should be named The Billmore.

My son and I dine at the Bella Vista restaurant in the resort and after they hum and haw over seating us outside – odd given that on this Monday night there’s no one there – we are served a meal of such surpassing blandness that I confess I cannot recall what we ate. OK, my son’s chocolate soufflé was fine while I focused on not throwing up faced with yet more bilge pump action from the waiter/bus boy/etc.

So if you are 5′ tall or less, need your ego polished, have to display your wealth and are generally on the insecure side of the cost accounting ledger, this place is you. Just bring your platinum Amex and suck it in.


The Billmore – the general desertedness testifies to the price.

Value for money: 2/10. Food: 4/10. General yuckyness: 10/10.

iPhone 6 snap.