After my last round-up of Digital Asset Management applications on Linux, Martin Herrmann sent me an email about his own program, Mapivi, currently at v0.9.1. After an initial adjustment period, I’ve since started migrating my image management to this application.
This is a roll of Kodak BW400CN, a 35mm C41 process black and white film, and it might just save my life, photographically speaking.
…Is probably utterly irrelevant to anyone else because they’re all different. Nevertheless, with Junior Research Assistant #2 on the horizon any day now, here’s a recap of what we’ve learned from their now more senior associate in the last two years.
Round-up of the day’s news, first for a long time. Plus ça change.
At last, Big Bubbles (no troubles) is pleased to announce the publication of our first book, Tuna and Waffles by Ade Rixon. Available for a measly fiver or so from Lulu, it’s a rollicking compendium of student humour culled from tattered ten year old copies of The Courier, and ideal for the post-Christmas letdown period. So don’t deny yourself the pleasure of putting it down.
Two recent notable mentions for my photography that would otherwise pass unnoticed:
![[Bessa L & R2]](/blogs/bubbles/images/blog/bessas.jpg)
“You want an ultra-wide angle lens,” whispered my Gear Acquisition Syndrome to me. “You need an ultra-wide angle lens!!” Well, that settled it: clearly I needed an ultra-wide angle lens. Because I had an idea for a shot of my Junior Research Assistant (just the one, mind) that required it.
The obvious and most useful option would have been to buy the Sigma 10-20mm zoom for the DSLR on which I take most of my family shots. However, I have a congenital apathy towards zoom lenses, and the Sigma, while cheap, seemed quite expensive just to add a mere wide angle capability. So I went looking for a rangefinder camera instead. And ended up buying two. So not an expensive alternative at all, oh no.
My F80 is up for sale on eBay, after over twelve months sat unused in a bag under the bed. It’s a great camera, but obviously I no longer have a use for it and, well, let’s not get sentimental about this - I’d rather use the money to buy something else (coming soon: Voigtländer review).
Following on from my last post, I downloaded jBrout v0.2.109 to give it a whirl. Despite the name, it’s a Python/GTK application but feels fairly slick. The RPM didn’t work on FC5 (complained about a missing “userenv” dependency) so I installed from source; the entire distribution unpacks into a self-contained directory and only a small wrapper script (extracted from the RPM) is required to run it. Note that while the jBrout site has a support forum, much of the dialogue is in French, reflecting its author’s origin.
Notes based on quick research into image management under Linux.