The mantis cannibalism myth

The mantis cannibalism myth.

Interfaces, a rant, and Buffy

"I'm just not the one to settle. It's like when I go shopping, I have to get the most expensive thing. Not because it's expensive, but because it costs more."
-- Cordelia, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

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I am so tired of the lousy interface on electronic media, like DVDs and players. For example, whether it's the fault of the programming of the discs or of the players, the fact is that something as simple as the Subtitle button usually does not work, either on my Blue-ray player or my moribund HD-DVD player. I mean, what the heck? They have the standards all lined up, why don't they just follow them?

And I just started re-watching the complete series of Buffy The Slampire Conveyor (on DVD, but in my blue-ray player), and after the first episode I checked out the commentary track... and then when I started watching the second episode, I could not get rid of it! No matter how I restarted the episode or even the machine, the friggin' commentary track was still on. Through experimentation and intuition, I realized that if I changed the audio language to French and then back to English, probably the commentary would be gone. And it was. But how stupid an interface is that. I mean, the engineers are making machines and discs for a multi-billion dollar industry, you'd think they would take the care to get the basics right?

I could continue for pages about the menu interface on the DVDs and the layout of the remote controls, but I'd get bored, and you already are, so I'll try to calm down.
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By the way, why Alyson Hannigan (Willow on Buffy) is not The Next Nicole Kidman yet, I don't know. She is awesome.

Fortunately I now discover she is having new success on the highly praised "How I Met Your Mother" show, which I've hurriedly ordered.

And this is promising. :)

Alyson on YouTube is a mixed bag, but this is kinda cute. (Where do talk show hosts get those questions from though? They are all over the place.)

Update 16.3: I found a few old fave pics of Alyson. Goodness me.

Green players

David Pogue's newest video, about "green" MP3 players, is a hoot and a holler. It's a bitch trying to find a permanent link for these videos, but currently this one is featured on the right side of this page.
(If you subscribe to the video blog via iTunes, you get higher resolution.)

Standing out

Stephen Shapiro on how to stand out.

Blue-ray article

An article about Blue-ray. It's pretty good, even with the headline "After Winning the Format War, Blu-ray’s Future Looks Bright"... No, really??

Funny detail: after the advent of DVD-players for prices not much more than those for a pack a cigarettes, the technology owner this time around are not giving licences to Chinese manufacturers! :)

Liebhaver cameras

Digital cameras have reached maturity in just a decade. My breast-pocket-sized Canon Ixus 960 (or SD950 in the USA) has image quality to match any camera I've ever used, an astounding feat.

Now I'm just waiting for somebody to make digital cameras which look as nice as for example this Zeiss Ikon ZI, which is new, but it's a film camera. Dang me if I'm gonna run around getting film developed and scanned again.

("Liebhaver", is a danish-germanic word meaning something you own just for the love of it. Beautiful things for those who can afford it, in other words. Collectors' items in the best sense of the word.) (The worst sense of the word would be items which are made solely to prey on people who consider themselves "collectors". Like the same comic book in five different covers.)

(Mike J's review of the Zeiss Ikon inspired this rant.)

Custom camera leather

Here's a cool site which Bert alerted me to.

Alphonse Mucha Masterworks

I've just bought and started reading Alphonse Mucha Masterworks.

It is informative and a big hardcover book with quality color illustrations throughout. And I can't get over that the list price in the UK is only £20, with Amazon selling it for £14. How is this possible?

Mucha is one of the artists I admire most, in terms of technique. Man, how did he do all that precision decoration work? (If anybody knows...) I'd like to do something similar, but even on the computer it seems daunting.

(I would have included a link to high-quality scans of his work, but I didn't find much.)

Bert said:
"how did he do all that precision decoration work?"
I guess that part of the explanation is given by the picture on this page. He worked on large surfaces.

Hopping off the rocket

I think that one of the factors which prevent many people from attaining success is quitting on a success.

Seven years ago I was talking to an old friend, and he asked me how long I'd been doing DOMAI. I said it'd been four years. So he asked me: "so what do you plan on doing next?"

"Next?" I said. He then said that most people he knew, when they'd been doing something for three to five years, then moved on to something entirely different.

I forget what I said, but it may have been something on the lines of: "I have a fun business, not too difficult, and it's earning good money. Why would I go do something else?"

I'm sure people have many explanations for why they changed tacks in the middle of something successful. But I suspect that the real reason is not rational, but compulsive. Otherwise it would not be so ubiquitous when it's clear that one of the main factors in achieving success is keeping doing something and get better and better.

A schedule

"A schedule defends from chaos and whim."
-- Annie Dillard

This is funny, because in my life it is totally opposite. I can't imagine having a schedule.

It seems that many people need a well-ordered schedule to be productive. They need to have put down exactly what they will be doing each hour of the day. And they need a big chunk of time for each task, otherwise they won't get anything done.

Whereas for some reason I seem to be most effective when I have no clue what I'll be doing from one minute to the next. Whenever somebody asks me "so what will you be doing today?" I have no answer for them.

Of course it helps that I've arranged my life so I'm not dependent on anybody else's schedules. If I had to meet up with others and so on, I'd have to plan ahead.

I think that my interest is very fickle, changing rapidly and often. But what it is on at the moment, it's on strongly. So I work fast. I wonder if most people have a strong tendency for work-avoidance? So that if they don't know absolutely that the next two hours is for doing so-and-so task, it will not get done?

Rejsen Til Saturn

It seems that the Danes are making an animated feature movie of the most unlikely book imaginable: The Trip To Saturn (Rejsen Til Saturn), an odd little satiric comic strip from the seventies.

Despite being mostly in English, the trailer is clearly aimed at a Danish audience, and I think you have to be Danish to get it or find it funny. But then again, maybe not, and it looks cool.

Near the end he says "det kan kun gå galt". It means "it can only go wrong", and it's a Danish expression similar to "what's the worst that can happen?" Except of course in this context it's expected to be taken more literally, as a joke.

D300 review

Nikon D300 review by Thom.