A tale of 2 water filter pitchers

If you read my previous posts you probably know I had a bad experience with the ZeroWater filter pitcher. Well this is an update to that as well a revue of a Clear2O water filter pitcher.

It turns out I had a bad filter with my first ZeroWater pitcher, the company replaced it and the water was better and lasted longer (about 3 weeks with heavy use).

That being said I thought I would do a few comparisons between the ZeroWater and the Clear2O pitcher. First off the ZeroWater has a much more sophisticated filter with 5 stages and the Clear2O is a single stage with solid charcoal filtering. Don't confuse this with other charcoal filter pitchers as none are solid, they use powdered charcoal and that does not do nearly as good of a job. To get water through a solid charcoal filter you must have water pressure not just gravity feed.

So which of these is better? Well that is up for debate but the bottom line is, if you are filtering your municipal water it is already considered 'safe' to drink. So why filter? Simply for taste and smell, as well as the unlikely but possible contaminates in the water.

They use chlorine to kill off bacteria and other nasty critters in our municipal water system, and it works pretty well but sometimes things get into the water after most of the chlorine has done it's job. A filter that stops these bacteria and other health hazards is just a good idea.

The main problem with water treated with chlorine is it tastes bad. Well both of these filter pitchers will make the water taste good as they get rid of the chlorine equally well. Both will get rid of most strains of germs and bacteria, at least the most common ones found in water supplies.

The ZeroWater can get rid of some nasty chemicals that the Clear2O cannot but municipal water supplies are tested for these chemicals several times a day so in reality this should not be an issue unless you get your water from a well or other un- monitored ground source.

So for healthy water I feel that both pitchers will do the job and both fix the taste and smell equally. However there are some differences in their use that make one stand out.

First the ZeroWater unit is a gravity fed unit, meaning you put water into a top reservoir and gravity pulls it down through the filter. Problem here is that this is a slow process and since the top reservoir has less than half the capacity of the bottom one (the drinkable water one) this means to get a full pitcher you need to fill it, wait, fill it again then wait then top it off a little. I found this to be the biggest drawback of this pitcher.

The Clear2O has a unique filling system unlike any other filter pitcher I have seen to date. It has a hose on it that attaches to your faucet with a quick connect fitting that then uses your water pressure to force the water through the solid charcoal filter. This is more in line with the way larger installed filter systems work, basically you can have a full pitcher of ready to drink water in under a minute.

The ZeroWater comes with a testing unit to see if the filter is still good. The Clear2O has an indicator window on the pitcher itself to tell you when it needs a new filter. Green means you have up to 40 gallons left, yellow 10 gallons and red when it's time to change the filter.

While the ZeroWater tester should be more accurate I found it showed time to change way too early, and the taste of the water is what I used to tell me when it needed to be changed.

Both units have easy to change filters but the 5 stage ZeroWater filters do cost more due to their complex 5 stage process. Both should in theory give you about the same amount of good drinking water (if you ignore the meter and go by taste).

One feature the ZeroWater unit has over the Clear2O is it has a spigot on the bottom so you can fill a glass without lifting the unit out of the fridge. But the overall size and weight of the Clear2O pitcher is smaller so it's easier (and quicker) to take it out and pour a glass.

End result, if you are on municipal water and drink a lot of water I recommend the Clear2O unit. If however you have certain health risks (auto immune) or are on ground water you might be better off with the ZeroWater unit just as a safeguard against other contaminates that the Clear2O won't take care of.

Snow Leopard Continued

Well I have had Snow Leopard up and running for about 2 weeks now so I thought I would give a quick update.

Spell checker is working for most items now thanks to a script provided by the author. Basically it only works on programs running in 32 bit mode so you must do this first. Second it must be activated anytime you go to a 64 bit environment and back to a 32 bit one. The script they wrote takes care of this.

The only negatives I see now is Safari, while it does seem a little peppier the JavaScript and Flash is quirky. I submit photos to several stock sites and some of them I can no longer use the flash or Java methods for various reasons.

I have decided to keep the new cat installed and have plugged my time machine drive back in so it will start backup the new system. I still have 2 backups if disaster strikes and will keep at least one as a 10.5.8 for a month or more.

I will update this info if I find any more good or bad news on Snow Leopard.

Snow Leopard Install

As many people know I am a Mac user. Well last night I bought the new Snow Leopard operating system. This operating system takes a leap as it is the first Intel only Mac operating system. This upgrade along with all future system upgrades no longer support the Power PC chipset.

This upgrade will allow true 64 bit operation for those with 64 bit machines (most Intel Macs). Basically for $29 you get a leaner faster machine. The install was flawless on my Intel iMac and so far only a few bumps in the road.

I did have to buy an upgrade for Phone Valet to make it compatible. Now to be fair the upgrade has been out for some time now and I just lagged behind. I must have Phone Valet as it is my business voice mail and call logging system. If I could not get Phone Valet to work it would have been a deal breaker and I would have gone back to Leopard.

Now I did plan for the worst. First off I have a full backup by Time Machine, then I also had not 1 but 2 total clones of my system drive so I have 3 methods of going back to Leopard if needed (Yes I am careful).

The only other glitch I see right now is Spell Catcher my system wide spell checker. It works but you must activate it every time you switch programs (PITA). They are working on a total rewrite of it that will work with the new input system and I guess I can wait for that.

I am a big Battlefield 1942 game fan. This is an older game but in my opinion still one of the best ever made for Mac, especially with the Desert Combat ad on made by other fans. Well it was pretty crippled on my Intel machine since it was designed to run on the older Power PC chipset. To get a descent frame rate I had to run the video quality way down to keep it from lagging. It was just usable but I have played it like that hundreds of times.

Well I kind of expected it to not run on Snow Leopard at all. I was very surprised that it loaded up and ran just fine, in fact I noticed the frame rate was up a bit so I started taxing it by increasing the video size and quality. Basically I was able to just about double the quality and still get a descent frame rate so it's like having a new game.

I will post more info good or bad as I stumble across things with the new operating system.

Lightwave 3D and Stock Photography

I create a lot of high resolution images that are sold on stock photography sites. What I make are not photos but these sites sell images for the advertising industry and my images fit that need.

I have been using Lightwave and Photoshop since the early days of Lightwave. I think my first version was 1.4 or something like that.

While I love creating the images, I hate some of the rest of the procedures. You see I have to add key words so people can find the images, each image must be given a unique name and each must be categorized.

Then I must upload the images to the sites where I sell them (about 6 sites right now) and each site works differently and each has there own set of categories and requirements for keywords and names. So almost every image needs a bit of work on each of the different sites.

Now this is not a real big deal if you are uploading each image as I make them but as I am finding it's a very big deal when I need to upload all my images to a new stock site.

I just started with Dreamstime.com a few days ago and while their setup is pretty strait forward I still must edit every image to match their setup and I have close to 1,000 images.

Over the past few days I uploaded 200+ images and I can say that I hate this part of the job. I worked on it for many hours but it feels like I have been doing it for months. And I am not even 1/4 of the way through my portfolio.

I'll post more on this later.

NBM Trade show

I went to the NBM trade show today with a friend. This is a trade show for: Sign business, awards & engraving & print wear.

This show was proof (as if any was needed) that our economy is way down. First off this show is normally tough to get around in because of the crowds but this time you could leisurely walk around without dodging people every 2 feet.

Secondly they put tables in the unsold space for people to sit and grab a snack, normally there are a few tables and many people end up standing to eat and many also end up sitting on the ground to rest their feet. This time they had about 20 tables with 4 to 5 chairs each and less than 25% of them were being used.

Yes I am saying the place was empty. Fewer exhibitors than I have ever seen and even fewer attendees. The good news is that the attendees that did go got the full attention of the sellers where in the past you had to fight your way to some of the booths to ask a question or two.

While the offerings were few I did find a few items of interest to myself. One company had some inexpensive (key word) super tiny LED's on a 3' string with a battery powered driver box on the end. The LED's were about the size of a cooked grain of rice and very bright, they had white and blue on display. With the driver box you could make then on steady, flash at several rates and fade in and out all for $15 a string. You can not get them longer but you can cut them shorter if needed and the wire is a dual white wire that reminds me of very old earphones that you could get for transistor radios (tiny).

Another product that I found of interest was some adhesive backed vinyl (sign vinyl) that is a little thick and is black... So what's the big deal, oh the face of it is a chalk board. Basically cut it and stick it on any solid surface and you have an instant chalk board, write on it with school chalk and wipe it off...

This same company also had white vinyl that makes an instant dry erase board. Not sure what these would be good for but I will try and think of something.

Zerowater filter pitcher

I recently bought a ZeroWater filter pitcher to hopefully replace the use of bottled water. They include a little device to measure the dissolved solids in the water as a measure of how good the water is.

They claim that the water out of the filter will read 000 to start (thus the product name). And they tell you to change it when you get a reading of 006.

Well after following the instructions to the letter our first batch read 004. In the manual they say if it does not read 000 to take it all apart clean it again and try again. I did, I was extremely thorough about it and still the result was 004.

But the water tasted good so we decided to ignore the reading. Well the love of the water was short lived, a week and a half into the new water and it started not tasting so good, by week 2 we could not drink it, it had a nasty sour or tangy taste to it, much worse than our tap water alone tastes.

So I took another reading and it was at 030, way beyond the 006 level they suggested to change the water at. How could this filter last less than 2 weeks?

Looking back on it the company never gave any hard rules as to how long the filters would last, they hinted at months and the commercials made you think it would last a long time but 2 weeks?

Well I put in a second filter and while the water tasted better again the reading was still not 000 it was closer at 002. I have emailed the company asking for any advice or explanation.

After getting the sour taste I did some searching and found a few people mention it and they both felt or found mold growing in the filter. Now our unit was always kept in the fridge when water was in it. I will wait to see what the company says and post it back here. For right now I would not recommend this system to people due to it's short life and at $14-$17 a filter it could be more expensive than bottled water.

Proper Soldering

I was prepared to write an article on proper soldering today. I was also going to take some photos to go along with it. But while I was researching the subject a little I found someone beat me to it and has the best soldering video and photos I have seen.

I have to hand it to him for covering the subject very thoroughly and giving clear and easy descriptions on soldering.

So instead of me re inventing the wheel I just decided to post a link to the site that already did it right.

http://www.curiousinventor.com/guides/How_To_Solder

Micro Stock Photo business from my view

While I don't claim to be an expert in the micro stock photo industry I do consider myself to be very observant and I tend to be able to figure out what is going on, on both sides of the fence where as most people tend to see things from one perspective only.

While I have about 1,000 images across 4 micro stock sites I am most passionate about Fotolia.com and since I see a lot of new users there having trouble getting files accepted and getting down right mad about it I thought I would explain a little bit about why it's getting harder and harder to get images accepted.

First off micro stock sites are fairly new to the industry and in the beginning there were not enough images to go around, stock sites need to have lots of images to attract buyers so in desperation they would accept most any half way descent image to build their library up.

Well the amateur photographers got the message that they could sell their images for money and they flocked to these site by the thousands. Pretty soon the sites were getting flooded with images and realized they needed to be a little more choosey.

After this it seems the flood of images was still getting bigger and they decided to start accepting only the cream of the crop so to speak. This would allow them to better their library and get more buyers. To the hobby photographer this seemed like the end as they could not get many pictures accepted.

Some saw it more as a challenge to hone their skills but most tend to see it as them against us when in reality if Fotolia (and other sites) can get a better library of images to offer then they will draw more customers and the photographers will sell more images. It's better for everybody all the way around.

However this also means that some people that lack talent may get left out. I am sorry but this is a good thing, not every person with a camera should be shooting photos for the advertising industry. Lets face it if a designer is looking for a photo and he has to wade through thousands of so-so photos to find the one great one he needs he will be less likely to come back.

In the end I think people that want to submit to stock sites need to either suck it up and hone their skills or leave it to those that will. If you are considering stock as a new source of income, please spend a few hours a week (yes I said it) looking through the top selling photos. Determine what subject matter sells and look at what the top sellers look like in quality. Then pick a subject and shoot until it looks as good or better than what you found in the top sales and submit it. If you can't get your images to look that great then maybe you should not consider getting into stock.

To see my Fotolia images go here: http://www.fotolia.com/p/199552

A word about me 6/26/09

My name is Terry Morris age 45. I have been an electronics guy since age 6. I got into computers at about age 19 and have been a technology geek ever since.

For a living I started out fixing electronics and have worked in the coin-op industry for most of my life. I have repaired everything from arcade games to slot machines & juke boxes.

I got my first business license at age 10 and had a hard time convincing the license clerk I was "not lost" when I was applying.

I have also been into computer generated graphics since my early 20s. And recently got into 'stock photography' for the advertising industry.

I work from home and am very diversified in what I currently do to earn a living. My main focus is my company UltraDome.com where I produce epoxy doming equipment that sells all over the world.

Each time I blog here I will focus on subjects that I know and try to be a resource for those wanting to know more about these subjects.

Since this is my first blog ever it is more of an introduction and me trying to get my feet wet. My next blog will be a little about my view on the micro stock industry.

Thanks for reading!