After grabbing some milk at the grocery store, I thought I would give the Chantico a try. Of course, I had to take a picture before I tasted it.

It's good. It's not as rich as I was expecting based on other reports, but then I do have a high tolerance. I definitely could have drunk the 20–oz size even though I only got the 6–oz version.

It tastes remarkably similar to the Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate I often make at home with the chocolate marshmallows in it. It's much thicker than any instant hot chocolate but not quite as thick as the version I make once the marshmallow has mostly melted.

One of these days I want to taste Mayan or Aztec hot chocolate even though I know they wouldn't be sweet.

Will I buy a Chantico again? I will if I'm out of Williams-Sonoma hot chocolate or I'm not at home where I can make it myself.

Update: I forgot to mention: pronounce it as though it's a Spanish word. Emphasis on the penultimate syllable, soft "ch" with the first syllable rhyming with "Khan" (Think "Chaka Khan" to get some of the sounds). The stressed syllable rhymes with "tea" and the last has a hard "c" sound. Chantico is the Aztec domestic goddess of the home and domestic hearth fires.

Chantico Drinking Chocolate

Has anyone tried this yet? Is it any good? I don't drink coffee so I never have a reason to go to Starbucks but this seems interesting.

Here's a popup from the Starbucks site with more info. Someone in Oklahoma enjoyed it.

My wife is always surprised at just how much rich, sweet stuff I can consume without getting tired of it — I guess it's part of growing up in the South.

According to this reply from Magne at his site, the 20D profiles should be here any time.

ETCETERA, colors, profiles, etc.

Phase One finally released version 3.6 of Capture One with support for the 20D, along with other new features. And they've shown again why they can repeatedly alienate customers with their product line changes (first with the Rebel edition, then with SE) and can be late to the party (all the other major, and not so major, converters have support for the 20D — some for months): they knock it out of the ball park on image quality.

As soon as Magne Nilsen has the 20D profile ready, I'm all over it. I didn't want CO v3.6 to be so good. I wanted to be able to look at its output and say that Adobe Camera Raw was just as good. But even without the Etcetera color profile (whose effect on my D30 files was remarkable) CO v3.6 is noticeably better. Tough lighting situations (with the bounced-off-the-wall ambient lighting in our rooms, for example) turn out much better in CO than I've been able to achieve with other converters. Banding suppression is great: even in the shadows on ISO 1600 shots that I've pushed by +1EC, banding is gone. ACR did OK at this, but Capture One is better.

I have learned how to make ACR work for me but I just love the output quality and the nature of the colors that come from

I got some plexiglass (err, acrylic) tonight and I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with it.

I've been planning to write about how I've made Adobe Camera Raw work for me but every time I start I realize it's going to take longer than I can spend at that moment. So, instead of waiting and waiting, I'll try to roll out bits and pieces and then pull it all together in a summary later.

One of the big secrets to allow you to work with the files in batch mode rather than one at a time is the use of the alt (or option, if you're on a Mac) key. In the ACR window, this causes the "OK" button to change to "Update." At this point, instead of opening the file after making settings in ACR, those settings are saved and the dialog closes, ready to move on to the next file in the file browser.

Figure 1: Update Camera Raw settings

Once the settings have been updated for all the files you want to process, just run an action to convert them to PSD or TIFF or whatever format you want to work with.

Oh, you say you need an action? And you need to know the batch settings to run that action?

The action just needs three steps: One that opens the file using ACR, one that saves that file in your preferred format, and one that closes the file. Just record this with any RAW file — just be sure not to overwrite an output file you care about.

Then you need the right settings in the batch processing window.

Figure 2: Batch processing settings

Select the RAW files you want to convert in the file browser. I find that Ctrl-' (Cmd-' on Mac OS) is a good hotkey to learn. It toggles the flag setting on files in the File Browser. I flag RAW files as I update their settings, then sort by flagged files, select them, and then run the batch conversion with the settings specified above. Be sure to choose the correct output folder. That will vary depending on how you organize your files. I organize by date and under each of those is a directory that holds the RAW files, one where the converted files go for further processing, and a third folder to hold JPEGs that have been resized for the Web.

I don't keep separate print versions because I find the upsampling and print output sharpening in QImage to be as good as or better than anything I do myself. No need to eat up the extra disk space or the extra time.

More about the File Browser, setting white balance across multiple files, and adjusting exposure in a future post.

A few other pictures of orange glassware.

Looks like amateur photographers in Canada are being harassed as well.

A Little Story:

Through fences we shot densified metals packed into perfectly shaped cubes; we shot pyramids of sand set against a backdrop of grey skies and blue buildings; and we shot the blue and yellow pipework of a factory set outdoors, and that is where the story gets interesting.  While getting ready to shoot the wonderful colours through the fence, I noticed a woman had come outside for a cigarette so I said hello. She proceeded to tell me that I needed permission to take pictures on their property. It took a great deal of strength for me to resist the urge to move my tripod two feet back where I would have been on a public street, but in the end I managed to refrain. Afterall, I had already snapped what I wanted and my friends were waiting in the car. So, I wished her a happy new year and said goodbye.

All of this happened less than two weeks ago. I received a phone call tonight from my friend who did the driving that day, informing me of the visit by Hamilton Wentworth police to his home tonight. It seems the busy-body smoker-lady called them and said that an east indian terrorist had been taking photos of their factory.

We got a bit of snow today.

It feels like that's what non-commercial photography is going to be reduced to pretty soon, all in the name of preventing terrorism. Here's the New York Times article referred to below.

New York City Transit Authority Board to Ban Photography:

Dave Bushnell has sent me a disturbing email this morning, to let everyone know that the New York City Transit Authority Board will today impose a ban on all photography on its system (bus and subway). This has been threatened before early in 2004, but now it looks as though the ban will go ahead after all.

"An article in the New York Times this morning brought to light the fact that the New York City Transit Authority Board is about to approve a sweeping ban on photography in the New York City Transit system as a supposed anti-terrorism measure. Adoption of this rule would mean that the transit police would have the authority to arrest anyone using a camera on a bus or subway including tourists, artists, and journalists. This was the straw that broke my particular back in my tolerance for broad, anti-intellectual, unenforceable, publicity-driven measures that significantly hasten our march towards a full-out police state while quietly failing to provide the safety they promise."