Seven ways to organize your photos in Adobe Lightroom: terminology and philosophy

Library: the basic structure of Lightroom. Photos either exist in the library or they don’t (and they still exist as a file on the disk). Library is the database that you will be operating for whatever you do in Lightroom, since everything you do affects the metadata and these data are stored in the library. It might be a good idea hence to know where the database is and to have it backuped from time to time. More macro-library operation is probably needed, since professional photographers will tend to not to keep their entire collection in one library but rather use it as a current project workspace.

Collection: a virtual subset of the database that is currently in use. It contains only pointers to the actual image so you can have photos exist across multiple collections. A quick collection comes handy if you need to isolate some photos to a temporary purpose, say, to print, to send to a friend, etc.

Folder: normally, a folder in Lightroom corresponds to that on the disk. Hence, you cannot have files with identical names under one folder—which makes a unique naming convention important during the import. However, the changes you make to the disk folder are NOT automatically reflected in Lightroom, unless it is a “watched folder”. In this sense, folder is not the folder as you see in, say, Picasa, but just another hierarchy view of the library.

Keyword: a property that is part of the metadata but serves as an index for searching. Since you can easily find photos taken with a certain camera, lens, ISO value etc, keyword is better reserved for subject matters: the name of the person, the location, the theme, etc. Multiple keywords can be applied to one photo.

Rating, Color Tag: in principle these are the same thing with keyword. They are part of the metadata that has only subjective value and are most often used in the preliminary selection process. What is digital darkroom? Apart from the actual developing and creative retouching, there is a considerable work load of selecting the right set of picks to work with. Anything that facilitates this task is thus useful.

Stack: a series of photo taken with the same subject, same lighting, same lens parameters, and an identical composition. This is extremely useful for professional photographers, especially portrait photographers, since they always take a stack of photos on everything. There is even an option that will automatically stack those photos taken in a given interval, say, less than 2 seconds. In my opinion, photos in the stack have a large chance to have the same white balance and tone curve setting, so it is probably desirable that this is done automatically. Yet manually do this is not a lot of work since you can paste a setting to multiple photos. The visual arrangement of stacks needs more work: its current layout not yet pleasant.

Virtual copy: (Apple Aperture’s version) a metadata set exist in relate to the actual pixel information. Unlike snapshots which exist only in the process of developing, virtual copy is the final product. This makes one thing possible: to interrupt the developing indefinitely and yet to keep your current work in progress saved.

Intel steps into GPU

有消息称，Intel已经开始研发自己的独立图形显示芯片。

Intel VCG（视觉计算小组）的工程师透露了Intel独立图形芯片研发的部分细节。Intel这种独立图形芯片将在2年之内挑战NVIDIA和AMD ATI。Intel这种独立图形芯片采用多核心设计，针对高端图形芯片市场，首批产品将在2008年底到2009年推出，1个GPU当中将最多封装16个图形核心。

据悉该产品最多可以集成16个图形处理单元（GPU）。按照英特尔的发展路线，这一产品将会采用32nm工艺制造。英特尔在制程方面一直拥有更多优势，目前他们至少比对手领先一年的时间。Intel这种独立图形芯片命名，可能采用和处理器相同的传统方式，比如高端产品将采用“Extreme Edition”，当然同时也有主流和低端产品。

据称，Intel独立图形芯片的高端版本，性能是目前顶级DX10图形芯片性能的16倍。不过，目前还很难判断Intel这种独立图形芯片，在和NVIDIA G9x、ATI R7XX的DX10.1和DX11大战当中的胜负。

AMD之所以收购ATI，正是因为认识到下一代CPU大战的关键武器就是GPU。目前来看虽然GPU的制程还落后于CPU，应用范围也略微狭窄。但随着“视算”（十几年前SGI就已经大力推广的概念）的深入人心，即便是普通的办公用户，对图形性能的要求也将大大不同于当前。

Intel不能眼睁睁地看着AMD收购ATI，但是它之所以没有急于和Nvidia展开谈判，原因就在于Intel相信自己有能力独立吞下这块大饼，其优势在于：

1． Intel在工艺方面领先对手。ATI目前发布的1950系列是基于90nm制程的，而R600将发布于80nm，而后迅速转移至65nm生产线。但因为没有Intel的关键技术（Penryn），很有可能就卡在45nm这个关卡前。

2． Intel在集成多核心方面已经积累了充足的经验。这个芯片内部的封装不同于现有图形卡厂商的双核，实际上是将两个GPU做在一块板上。

3． Intel目前相当重视功耗控制的问题，Conroe微结构的成功，势必将Intel的研发工作进一步向这个方向推进。目前独立显卡厂商无力进一步控制GPU的功耗（据称R600的功耗将达到300w），将使其未来产品失去竞争力。

4． CPU和GPU的合并，现在看来也许还是一个新奇的想法，但在五年以后，很有可能成为工业标准，从而第一次修正长达半个世纪以来一直沿用的冯诺依曼体系结构。

Intel此举不论是否成功，我认为，五年以内，独立图形芯片生产厂商都将退居二线。未来图形芯片所需要的巨大计算能力，将只有Intel和AMD能够提供。

Starship troopers or the origin of inequality

There are many ways of making a political film. One extreme is exemplified by 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, or Hora de los hornos, incorporating both an explicitly political content and a radical methodological form. The other extreme is those “progressive” films of the classical Hollywood period that manifest a tendency to revise the dominant ideology while in a large extent keep this intention buried under its apparently harmless cinematic language and gross entertaining value. The vast area between these two poles is then filled by political documentaries, comedies of social satire orientation and all sorts of constructions featuring a delicate balance of compromises and divergences.

Genre thus becomes a useful concept not so much as its embodiment of a fixed set of rules, but to which extent it can be subverted while still maintain its recognizability. In this sense, to classify Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers under sci-fi is no less problematic than to put Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life under the category of melodrama.

A lot has been said about the film’s sometimes overtly explicit analogies to the Third Reich. It indeed blurs the seemingly distinct boundary between democratic and fascist regime and implies that their apparent differences could be only false fabrications. But what strikes me the most is its depiction of the “origin of inequality”. Johnny Rico is bad at math. So when he joins the army, he becomes a private in the mobile infantry, where you have to run hard in front of the killing bugs and prepare to lose up to four limbs any time. His high school girl friend Carmen fares better, so she gets the job of a pilot, which consists of manipulating control stick, designing optimal cruising route and, is equipped with more impressive (darker) uniform. But the brightest among them, Carl, leads a prestigious career in the military intelligence, where he quickly emerges as colonel, stays away from the front (he arrives only when the battle is finished), and wears an all black Gestapo uniform. How is he able to do this? The clue is given quite early in the film, where Rico and Carl are seen doing something very strange. Carl is trying to show Rico how to “visualize” the hidden poker in his mind and match it with the other. Obviously, Carl has a “super intelligence” which allows him to see what a normal guy like Rico can not. This ability later also enables him to tell what the bug queen feels by simply touching it.

If the society is inevitably divided into hierarchies, as the film shows, what keeps the lower class from going crazy out of endless envies? The remedy proposed here is the heroism—the only way of feeling better without any substantial compensation. The bonus that goes with heroism is called brotherhood which, in the film, is illustrated in a very, very peculiar way: men and women bath together. Of course, the host of such heroism does have an advantage over the higher ranking officers: he directly commands his squad and is able to shout at them: there is only one rule here, everyone fights and nobody quits! Pilots, on the other hand, never really raise their voices. As for the most invisible and most prestigious career, that of army scientist, apart from a brief TV appearance, we don’t really know what Carl is doing everyday.

The lack of resentment is nevertheless inconceivable, notwithstanding all above considerations. It should be painful, at least for Rico, to realize that in the real world a man’s values are no longer the same as those in high school. Being able to play football is definitely a good thing, but it will go only that far. Simple-minded individuals are maybe still necessary in today’s war, but it is hard to imagine why, in the future, they should not be replaced by robots—even more simple-minded thus even more effective killing machines.