What I like is the robotic sleds, very kewl.
Also the wireless power for the tools, coming from induction via the floor.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Laurie on 'pad
Photographer Laurie visited me today, and like usual we had a grand old time talking gear and all kinds of stuff. Here he is checking out something on his iPad. No wait, it's mine 'cuz it's in my stand. It's the Fellowes Wire Study Stand. It folds flat, and it'll hold the 'pad even if it has a rubber cover on.
It's a Canon S90 in the foreground, and it's photographed with iPhone 4.
I took it with HDR (contrast- reduction), which you see below, but in this case I think the HDR version, though it caught detail in the window, actually suppressed contrast in the mid-tones a bit too much, so I prefer the other one.
It's a Canon S90 in the foreground, and it's photographed with iPhone 4.
I took it with HDR (contrast- reduction), which you see below, but in this case I think the HDR version, though it caught detail in the window, actually suppressed contrast in the mid-tones a bit too much, so I prefer the other one.
Prolong The Life Of Your Battery: Abuse It
Prolong The Life Of Your Battery: Abuse It, TMO article.
The worst thing for your battery is to leave it plugged in all the time.
Conversely, the best thing for your battery is to “abuse it". By that we mean to use it as erratically as possible. Drain it, charge it, drain it halfway, charge it to 80%, drain it to 30%, charge it all the way up, etc. It’s those use-cases where we’ve seen batteries do their best, believe it or not.
-
Conversely, the best thing for your battery is to “abuse it". By that we mean to use it as erratically as possible. Drain it, charge it, drain it halfway, charge it to 80%, drain it to 30%, charge it all the way up, etc. It’s those use-cases where we’ve seen batteries do their best, believe it or not.
A few qoutes
You try to give away what you want yourself.
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
We are each responsible for our own life - no other person is or even can be.
-- Oprah Winfrey
Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
-- Hugh Elliott
-- Lois McMaster Bujold
We are each responsible for our own life - no other person is or even can be.
-- Oprah Winfrey
Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds.
-- Hugh Elliott
Monday, September 20, 2010
Interesting upcoming Fuji camera
It has an optical viewfinder, and is supposed to be compact while aiming at the highest possible image quality. It has a fixed lens, slightly wide, a good choice.
Miserere writes about it. I haven't read it yet, it's time for my vampire nap, but he knows his stuff, so.
-----
Talk about old-fashioned, witness this current campaign for a cheap film camera, of all things. Gotta admit, it's insanely cheap.
Aptus back breaks resolution barrier
Aptus back breaks resolution barrier, article.80 megapixels, holy mama. And the files are almost half a gigabyte each! That's five hundred times the space I had on my first Mac in 1995 for only one file, that's just insane.
I don't need that, methinks, but research into such super-resolutions is bound to have a trickle-down effect into smaller cameras, because they need new solutions to everything (noise suppression etc), every time the pixels get smaller.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
A composite photograph
This is a composite picture I photographed (for eReader Joy) and combined in Photoshop, to show an idea of what a Kindle with a color screen might look like. It took a lot of fiddling and skewing to get the perspectives to match, particularly since the photos were of two devices of different sizes.
(Canon 5DII, 50mm F:2.5 macro.)
(Canon 5DII, 50mm F:2.5 macro.)
Cities and Ambition
Cities and Ambition, Paul Graham article.
Highly interesting article about how places/collections of people influence you, strongly.
Funny thing: I got out of Denmark, despite really loving that country, for one reason: it has one flaw, that partly by its taxation and partly by popular mental attitude, it's very down on ambition. Better not stick your head up.
So you'd think I'd move to a place which encourages ambition, like London or New York City. But due to location of friends and "accident", I ended up in a town in Northern England. Hardly the center of ambition. That's different than Denmark, by the way, Denmark has ambition, but suppresses it. Here, there simply is no ambition, so there isn't that tension.
I realize now that that was exactly the point. There are no accidents. I've been feeling for what message this town sends and it seems to me to be: "Relax. Have a pint".
And I didn't know it, but it was just what I needed. As you may pick up from the number of sites I have, I'm woefully mentally hyperactive. (I wish some of that was physical!) Almost painfully so. So imagine I had moved to NYC. I would have crashed! Not kidding. Overheating.
The great message I needed, and still do, is "relax, have a pint". OK, so I don't drink beer, but the tone still works. I used to have only disdain for tea, and drink coffee copiously. But now I find to my surprise I actually drink more tea than coffee. And not even all that much of either. Just a symptom of becoming more relaxed. More contemplative.
Others of course need other things, and we all need different things at different times. And I think we are naturally attracted to the places which give us what we need. If it seems wrong at the time, perhaps what you want and what you need are two different things?
"Maybe the Internet will change things further. Maybe one day the most important community you belong to will be a virtual one, and it won't matter where you live physically. But I wouldn't bet on it. The physical world is very high bandwidth, and some of the ways cities send you messages are quite subtle."
Highly interesting article about how places/collections of people influence you, strongly.
Funny thing: I got out of Denmark, despite really loving that country, for one reason: it has one flaw, that partly by its taxation and partly by popular mental attitude, it's very down on ambition. Better not stick your head up.
So you'd think I'd move to a place which encourages ambition, like London or New York City. But due to location of friends and "accident", I ended up in a town in Northern England. Hardly the center of ambition. That's different than Denmark, by the way, Denmark has ambition, but suppresses it. Here, there simply is no ambition, so there isn't that tension.
I realize now that that was exactly the point. There are no accidents. I've been feeling for what message this town sends and it seems to me to be: "Relax. Have a pint".
And I didn't know it, but it was just what I needed. As you may pick up from the number of sites I have, I'm woefully mentally hyperactive. (I wish some of that was physical!) Almost painfully so. So imagine I had moved to NYC. I would have crashed! Not kidding. Overheating.
The great message I needed, and still do, is "relax, have a pint". OK, so I don't drink beer, but the tone still works. I used to have only disdain for tea, and drink coffee copiously. But now I find to my surprise I actually drink more tea than coffee. And not even all that much of either. Just a symptom of becoming more relaxed. More contemplative.
Others of course need other things, and we all need different things at different times. And I think we are naturally attracted to the places which give us what we need. If it seems wrong at the time, perhaps what you want and what you need are two different things?
AlternativeTo
I've had AlternativeTo.net recommended. Looks interesting, and it's multi-platform.
"AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you great alternatives, based on user recommendations."
Update: Maybe it has some holes. For instance it had no recommendations for iPad Safari alternatives at all, despite there being half a dozen browsers for the 'pad.
So I googled for reviews, and found Perfect Web Browser, which seems very promising indeed (my post about it).
"AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you great alternatives, based on user recommendations."
Update: Maybe it has some holes. For instance it had no recommendations for iPad Safari alternatives at all, despite there being half a dozen browsers for the 'pad.
So I googled for reviews, and found Perfect Web Browser, which seems very promising indeed (my post about it).
Saturday, September 18, 2010
A new form of animation
[Thanks to Deltacubed]
This is just wonderfully nuts.
Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.
(Click the four small arrows to view full-screen.)
The Fat Man Conundrum
Or: the trolley problem. Article.
This article has the best example I've yet seen to illustrate what a strange relationship humans have with morality, especially when killing is involved.
I would tentatively suggest that the two cases are the same in terms of pure ethics, the only thing separating them is how active you have to be. Killing stirs up our subconscious guilt, and the stirring is directly related to how actively we are doing it.
This article has the best example I've yet seen to illustrate what a strange relationship humans have with morality, especially when killing is involved.
- Invented by moral philosopher Professor Judith Jarvis Thomson, who taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Case one: A runaway tram is heading towards five people tied to tracks. You are a bystander. Would you flick a switch so it turned down a line where one person was tied to the tracks?
- Case two: Same problem, but you are watching from a footbridge. You could push a fat man next to you off the bridge, and his bulk would stop the tram. Would you do it?
I would tentatively suggest that the two cases are the same in terms of pure ethics, the only thing separating them is how active you have to be. Killing stirs up our subconscious guilt, and the stirring is directly related to how actively we are doing it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)