Stormy weather

Amazing time lapse storm videos.

RIP Bert

R.I.P. Bert
 My friend Bert of Canada is dead, alas. Heart attack. He was 56.

Some of you may remember him from this blog, where he could often give amazing explanations to anything technical. He was a great friend, and a support for me when I was the most sick last year. (And I helped him a couple times.) But he was not well, it got worse, and in his last mail he sounded resigned. And recently I was contacted by his landlord, somebody who had been a help to him in hard times also. I called him today and got confirmation. Bert was one of the most brilliant men I knew, he read everything and remembered it all.

Are pretty women happy

I wonder if pretty women generally consider that it's an advantage in life to be one?

 On the one hand, we poor schmucks that men are, are always falling over our own feet to be nice to them, in the hope of even a nice smile. On the other hand there are issues such as envy, and unwanted attention... (Though it's also said that the prettiest women *don't* get asked out a lot because everybody figures he has no chance.?)

I hope you'll chime in. And don't hesitate to consider yourself a Pretty Woman, a healthy ego is no sin on my page.

Crowdfunding: buyer beware

My opinion on crowdfunding (Kickstarter, Indiegogo): It's better for the makers than for the buyers.

 I've bought like two dozen products by crowdfunding. My results:
 - a couple of products I like (but could have bought later.)
 - A few products which turned out to be no good for me.
 - Several products which I've just never used.
 - many products which took over a year to arrive.
 - A couple of products which did not work.
- And the most expensive product of all of them, a serious investment (a mid-market 3D printer), turned out to be an elaborate hoax, and I lost a hunk of money. (And I was not being stupid, the smartest tech guy I know bought into it too.)

 I guess the point is that the savings is not worth the great risk, usually. If a product turns out to be good, you can get this fact confirmed by reviews after it's on the market, and the price difference usually is not big.

 And by the way, I don't think I've been unusually unlucky. I don't tend to be. For example I've bought *many* things on eBay, and almost never have I felt cheated. Just one real example comes to mind, and Paypal got me my money back pronto, something which does not happen with crowdfunding.

Update:

Anonymous said... I don't think buying and saving money are the objectives of crowdfunding.

Anon, good point. There is often a social aspect of crowdfunding and so on, it's complex. I think crowdfunding basically is a great thing, it has enabled many good things to become real. 

 But there are also tons of projects which are simply commercial products. There's often no particularly socially interesting aspect, it may just be a new drone or whatever. And just like a normal investor needs a reasonable chance that he will get more back than he puts in, a crowdfunder needs a reason to buy now and to take the risk, and usually that reason is "get it cheaper now" or similar.
 And I was aware of that risk, but I had no concept of how real and how high that risk was, and I think many others are in that boat too.

You can buy too cheaply

It is said that you can pay too much even for gold; but you can also pay too little, even for plastic.

 The people I bought my apartment from had clearly bought the very cheapest rods and rings for hanging their curtains. Flimsy crap which was tricky to make slide, and which simple started falling down in recent times. So now we are re-hanging the curtains with new stuff which is much better in every way, slides easily, metal rods, won't fall down.

 Somebody once said something like: "you can always make something a little cheaper and worse. And the person for whom price is all he sees, he is this maker's legal victim." And the thing is, these much better materials weren't even expensive at all. So to save five or ten bucks and then to suffer cheap crap for years on end is just silly.

Se nu stiger solen

Danish choir. Gorgeous.

Pocket raincoat

I have found a brilliant product in (of all places) my fave book store: the EMERGENCY RAIN PONCHO. I like to walk about town carrying nothing outside my pockets, and it has often been ruined by the simple prospect of rain, prompting me to bring at least a bag-umbrella, and thus a bag. But this little package weighs nothing and fits in a small pocket, so my carefree and footloose walk style is undisturbed. I love it.

Be kind to children

You can get an idea of how your girlfriend will treat you later by watching how she behaves towards her little brother. 

I'm reminded of that sometimes with children. I think we need to generally treat children with more respect and politeness. 

For example I was at a place today, and two little children came in. They were smiling, happy, well-behaved. But if you listened to the way the adults spoke to them... "Do this!", "don't do that!", "go there!", "don't go there!" 

Any adult who were spoken to that way would be quite insulted, certainly I would. 

We speak to children that way for a very simple reason: because we can. Children are small and dependent on adults, they have no power. 

----

I once saw a mother and her girl, perhaps 8 years old. The girl was crying and did not want to go where ever they were going. She was earnestly crying, she *really*, strongly, did not want to go. The mother didn't care, she said "well, we go this week, maybe we won't go next week". The girl said "you also said that last week. And next week we'll just be going anyway too..." 

It just broke my heart. It was clearly an optional thing they were going to. And it would have taken a *very* important reason for myself to force somebody to go somewhere they clearly felt so deeply about not going to. That girl was in pain about it. 

[Granted, there could be data which might make me see it differently, but I find it hard to imagine.]

Winogrand: "Women are Beatiful"

A few photos from Gary Winogrand: "Women are Beatiful".
I've long wanted to make such a project myself. I would like to do it in Copenhagen.

New oddball camera

Here is a new oddball camera. Nice to see something fresh.

Portrait in wire-mess, fantastic

Look at this really exceptional artist.

super-compact

The Z-E1 is definitely one of the smallest compact camera bodies with exchangable pro lenses and pro sensor size.