The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera Web browser

Back in college, I took photography courses that opened my eyes to the world beyond point-and-shoot cameras. For the courses, I bought a Minolta SRT-101 from my uncle. The SRT-101 is a fully manual camera: the only thing automatic about it is the light meter. I used to take roll after roll of film and develop them in the school's dark room. I still used it after college, but without having a dark room readily available, I didn't have as much freedom with my prints. I had some bad experiences getting film developed and I've since shelved my SRT-101. That's really unfortunate because it's a great camera for shooting black and white images. The pictures I took with it are still some of my favorites.

After graduation, my grandparents bought me a Canon Powershot A70 digital point-and-shoot camera, which was one of the best digital point-and-shoot cameras available at the time. Most digital point-and-shoot cameras are almost fully automatic, but the A70 allowed me to at least change the aperture setting. Since then, I've taken thousands of photos and my A70 keeps right on shooting vibrant and beautiful photos. Despite the camera's advanced technology and photo quality, I found myself missing the versatility and hands-on experience of SLR cameras.

Over the past couple of years, I've found my interest in using the A70 wane. It's been a tough time because I really enjoy photography, but I often found myself frustrated at not being able to get the right depth of field or focus on the subject of my photo instead of whatever the camera chose. I started to feel like all my pictures looked the same and I blamed it on the A70's limitations. To be fair, I know at least part of the problem was my lack of creativity. I'm sure I could do more with the A70, but my mind has subconsciously been made up that it's holding back my potential.

At the beginning of February, I decided that was time to take the digital SLR plunge. After quite a lot of research, I finally settled on the Canon EOS 40D with a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens. Since the lens was backordered, I also ended up getting a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. Both are fantastic lens, with the former offering super wide-angle shots and the latter offering extremely shallow depth of field.

I haven't been able to get out as much as I would like, but I am beyond happy with my purchase. I've found my interest renewed in going out simply to take photographs. I again pick up my camera to photograph something mundane that can be given new life in a photograph. I've found myself posing inanimate objects to get the best image composition. It's such a fantastic feeling to have something I enjoy so much no longer frustrating me.

I still have a lot to learn. The 40D is a very advanced camera with tons of features and loads of configurability. Not just that, but I have a lot to learn about different techniques. I need to learn about panning. I need to learn how to better take advantage of the depth of field and wide angle possibilities of my lenses. I'm sure I'll have enough to experiment with to last me years. And I am so happy to have so much to learn!

Sara Ellen is now twenty-six and a half months old. Compared to the first two years of her life, the development she's going through now is much more subtle. This week, her hair is falling in front of her eyes for the first time. She's started eating raw carrots, counting, and sleeping more often in her own bed. She has great senses. She is energetic, smart, fun-loving, kind, shy, and gentle; I hope these are the traits she holds on to as she grows up.

She wants to watch movies constantly, though we restrict her to one a day. Her favorite movie used to be "Monsters, Inc" (which she called "Bears and Frog"), but now she prefers "Cars" (mostly because of Mater). A couple of days after she first watched it, Rebekah had become Lightning McQueen, I had become Mack (McQueen's transport truck), and Sara Ellen called herself "funny Mater". Her other favorites are "The Incredibles", "Ratoutille", and "Finding Nemo", though she'll occasional want to watch "Beauty and the Beast". Sara Ellen always cheers for the heroes by exclaiming, "No get you!" and fearing for their well-being.

Twenty-seven months ago, I didn't know what I'd do with our child. Now, I don't know what I'd do without her.

As Opera Software's lead QA for Opera Mail, I get a lot of opportunities to analyze the communication between IMAP clients and servers. Gmail is by far the quirkiest and most troublesome IMAP implementation I've seen to date. Gmail's own documentation describes how clients must work around the deficiencies built into their implementation. I understand that Gmail's IMAP implementation is still in beta (a Google norm), but some of the basic design choices are at the heart of the problem, which leads me to believe they won't be changing. These decisions are anti-IMAP (even the IMAP spec. author finds Gmail's IMAP disappointing) and cause Opera users headaches. Here are some of the specific problems:

• Gmail's labeling system could integrate marvelously with IMAP clients if only it used IMAP keywords. Instead, IMAP mailboxes are used to represent labels. All messages (sent and received) are always available in the "Gmail/[All Mail]" mailbox, so any time a message is labeled, a duplicate message is added to the label's IMAP mailbox. IMAP clients then receive several copies of the same message, none of which integrate with the client-side labeling system. If Gmail had instead used IMAP keywords, only one message would be needed and integration would be seamless.
• Gmail doesn't allow users to change mailbox subscriptions. Unsubscribing from label mailboxes is a sensible work-around for the above design deficiency, but it's inexplicably not allowed.
• Gmail doesn't handle standard IMAP flags, such as "\Deleted", "\Answered", and "\Recent". For instance, instead of intelligent handling of "\Deleted" flags in the web interface, users are required to use a variety of work-arounds to mimic the functionality already built into the IMAP protocol.

In addition to the unfortunate design decisions listed above, Gmail's IMAP implementation has a number of bugs:

• Gmail encodes message headers containing Slavic characters (at least) incorrectly when clients download only message headers. Headers are encoded correctly if a client downloads message bodies and headers together.
• Gmail sometimes sends malformed BODYSTRUCTURE responses (often used to determine the number and size of attachments to a message before it's downloaded).

To their credit, Gmail has already fixed another bug (in the STATUS command response) we reported to them. I hope they rethink their design decisions and fix the remaining bugs soon, enabling a seamless web interface and IMAP client experience. Otherwise, the burden falls on IMAP clients to implement hackish work-arounds for Gmail, rather than relying on open standards.

Special thanks to Arjan van Leeuwen for investigating many of these issues.

A while back, Eirik tagged me. He'd like to know a bit more about me. One...word...at...a...time. So, here goes:

Where is your mobile phone?
shelf

Describe your girlfriend:
girlfriend?!

Your hair:
missing!

Your mother:
young

Your father:
closer

What is your favourite gadget?
40D

What did you dream last night?
forgotten

What do you prefer to drink?
water

Dream car?
Jeep

What room are you currently in?
Dining

Your ex?
n/a

Your biggest fear?
loss

What do you want to be in 10 years?
same

Who did you spend last night with?
family

What are you not?
active

The last thing you did?
waste

What are you wearing?
comfy

Favorite book?
Stardust

The last thing you ate?
pie!

Your life?
good

Your mood?
stable

Your best friends?
faraway

What are you thinking about right now?
life

Your car?
dying

What are you doing right now?
finishing

Your Summer?
sticky

Marital status?
happily

What is on your TV right now?
SG-1

When did you last laugh?
earlier

When did you last cry?
today

School?
done

Helen, Rebekah, Rijk, and David, you're up! Copy the list of questions above and fill in your one-word answers.

At the end of January, I finally joined the church I've been attending for the past five years (when I was in the United States, anyway). Rebekah and I were married there, Sara Ellen was baptized there, and I play in the handbell choir there. Membership brings a few additional benefits to me: it serves as a gesture of my commitment to the church and it makes me feel more like I'm a part of the church family. I've been reluctant to join not because I didn't want to or because I disliked anything in particular about the church, but because I figured we'd be moving elsewhere soon, so it wouldn't be worth it.

While we still lived in Oslo, a co-worked confided in me that he really wanted a bicycle. He'd wanted a bicycle for a long time, but knew that he might be moving soon and he didn't want to deal with the hassle of moving with a bicycle or trying to sell it before moving. And he'd been telling himself that for the past year, all the while really wanting a bike and missing out on having one. Finally, he bought a bicycle and he couldn't have been happier. His point was that if you put off doing what you want because of something that might happen in the future, you miss out on all the enjoyment you could have had before that future event happens, if ever.

Joining my church didn't take much effort, didn't cost me anything, and didn't have any down side. I just put it off because of something that might happen soon and I was missing out because of it. When I realized that I had no good reason not to join the church now, it was almost as if a burden had been lifted off my chest. It was one less thing to wait for. I learned that if you wait for life to happen, you'll be waiting instead of living. So don't wait: live.