Reflective blinds

Here's another of the Highly Useful products I like to mention sometimes: reflective blinds. They aren't that common, oddly, I had to ask for them specifically. They are covered with a special reflective crystaline material on one side, so they reflect the great bulk of the heat of sunlight. They are amazingly effective. If you stand by a window where the sun is blazing in on these blinds, you can barely feel the heat at all.

I had asked about metal blinds, but the thing about those is that while they do reflect a lot of light, they also heat up, so they convert a lot of the energy into infrared light going into the room. So they are not at all as effective as these.


Jonathan informs:
We've been trying to push these blinds for some time as the benefits are fantastic. The problem is that a lot of people don't know they would really want these blinds and if they do have a problem with a room in their house in the summer, they just don't know there's a solution out there.
The premium is around 15%-20% of the cheapest vertical or roller fabrics you can buy. This premium is about the same premium that's charged on blackout materials for both vertical and roller blinds, so it's certainly not exorbitant and should fit within most people's ballpark of what a premium product should cost.
Jonathan, Click4Blinds

Fears, real and imagined

Fears, real and imagined.
"Regardless of how many years we’re under the constant “orange alert,” the real chances of dying in a terrorist attack are slim to none. According to the AEI-Brookings Joint Center, even if there were one terrorist hijacking per week, your odds of perishing in such a conflagration would be just 135,000 to 1. Still, we go through the charade at the airport, grand theater orchestrated by the Orwellian-sounding Department of Homeland Security that’s aided by technology that looks like it’s working but still lets through 60% of undercover agents carrying fake bombs."

Dvice sometimes has amusing/interesting posts, but it's not very well written, I've noticed. For example in the above paragraph (which has a good point), "conflagration" is used as if it means "disaster" rather than "large destructive fire".

Man sometimes have sudden bursts of sanity. I wonder how long it will be before a major airport will realize that they can much more economical and competitive if they remove security checks totally.

Photo retouching

Article on photo retouching.

I like the phrase: "Hugh Hefner boldly used the techniques of airbrushing to define his surreal concept of the “girl next door”."

No kidding. I am not sure what is the scarier thought: that most people prefer something overtly fake, or that most people can't tell the difference? I wonder which it is.

The tender hero

Just a little more bitching about a superhero I have a love/hate relationship with, and who shall remain nameless. (Though it rhymes with Fluffy The SpamFire Layer.) It happens again and again in many forms: this time she knows that either she kills a person close to her, or every person in the world suffers and dies, including that person. Her choice: protect that person to the end of the world and beyond.
This is a hero?
Damn, I'm a broken MP3 file. I better stop now.

Update: sorry, couldn't stop...
Humans have so much invested in the Holiness Of Life that when you do have a hero who can kill, you usually have somebody who probably enjoys it, and who over-does it. Like The Punisher or Dirty Harry.

Allan Moore does it well, though, in Miracleman. There's a psychotic superperson who goes on a killing rampage and who is basically unstoppable. But he turns temporarily into an innocent, vulnerable boy (like Kazam does), and Miracleman kills him. With great regret, but he does it.

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A good part of Fluffy from season five: Michelle Trachtenberg. A powerful actress and a highly accomplished person academically too.

Union Station security

Why has the world suddenly gone bonkers paranoid about photographers? Newest chapter: Union Station, DC. (Warning, the sound in this video is really loud.) (Why do sites usually tell us to "turn up our sound" when they link to a video? In my experience I have to turn my sound down.)

Thinking about it, this is another benefit of the new-generation pocket cameras with image stabilization and high picture quality: using such cameras in places like this, you are much less likely to be bothered by security forces, since you look like a tourist rather than a serious photographer or a terrahrist. And yet the pictures can be professional quality.

Update: a congressman comments strongly.

How to improve photographs for beginners

How to improve photographs for beginners.

Candy songs

Wow, man, I just figured out that songs like My Boy Lollipop and I Want Candy are not really about candy! I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!



Apparently this video is a classic. I'm not sure why. But then it seems to me that rock videos from the eighties pretty much sucked all over.

A nice punky version from Good Charlotte. (Though I do think this song should be sung by a girl.) Used it Not Another Teen Movie, which is excellent.

There was another version I found as MP3 and liked, nice girl voice and nice instrumentation, until I saw the video and found out it's not a girl singing but apparently a 12-year-old boy... ew.

This seems to be one of those songs which have been covered endlessly. And while some of the boys sing about boys, some of the girls sing about girls. I wonder if Melanie C is gay or if she changed it to get attention.

Interfacial

Operational interfaces are very hard to make well, that's clear. Here's an example of a poor detail in an otherwise well done design and interface.
On the Canon Ixus camera, if the camera achieves correct focus, there's a beeb, and the focus frame is green. If it can't achieve focus, there's a slightly different beeb, and the frame is yellow. Both these differences are way too subtle, I did not notice at all until I stumbled over these data in the manual. And I've used Ixuses (Elph) for years.
At a minimum there should be a blinking light, or the focus frame should be blinking. And they might even add "can't focus" in blinking text on the screen or summin like that.

Real-time model airplane video

Real-time model airplane video. Looks like a fun way to get a flying experience without risking life and limb. And if you put it in a model helicopter, you need not be zipping by all you're looking at. (There's even a simple "helicopter" with four small soft propellers, which is harmless even indoors. I forget what it's called.)

The truth about cell phones

You heard cell phones fry your brain? The truth is much worse.

Rainy weather thankfully

Rain enhances colors because all the dispersing micro-reflections get cancelled in lieu of bigger ones.



Update: it turns out that regular commenter Alex is not a bad photographer.

Passions

I've never been one for soap opera, except for a brief flirtation with Victoria Principal (not to be confused with principal Victoria) when I was a kid. But I got a little curious about Passions because it was mentioned repeatedly on Buffy. And it apparently has a lot of supernatural elements. But frankly I don't think I could stand all the romance and all the melodramatics.
Also, who has the time: five hour-long shows per week?! Man, it's gotta be junk, no? I can't imagine anybody producing quality storytelling at that pace.

From wikipedia:
"In 2005, so many plotlines came to involve an element of rape that fans began to refer to that year as the "Year of the Rapes".[citation needed] Early that year, Paloma Lopez-Fitzgerald was sexually assaulted and nearly raped during a club raid. The show then carried a plotline over whether they should do a rape test while Paloma was in a coma (at the time she was a virgin) and Jessica Bennett was also raped a few weeks later while at a club. Also early in the year, Alistair Crane repeatedly raped his wife, Katherine Crane, while at the Crane Compound. Late in May, heiress Fancy Crane was nearly raped by a man in Las Vegas who demanded "payment" for letting her into a party after she lost her invitation. During the tsunami and later in November, Liz Sanbourne attempted to rape Julian Crane at knifepoint. In August, Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald was raped by Alistair Crane when she refused to pay him (with sex) for helping her with visitation of her infant daughter, Jane; Theresa later married Alistair, and he continued to rape her throughout their marriage."

Gee! Saucy stuff for the housewives!
I've heard from people in the know that rape is de rigueur in romance novels. And not only that, but it's the hero who rapes the heroine, and later gets her in the end, as it were. Not sick at all. No wonder these women freaks out if their husband likes to look at naked girls on the Internet, they are so morally superior.