Sunday 01/29/06
A big collection of quotations for learning and programming. Nice.
Thursday 01/26/06
Arthur Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy shows you how to derail Internet discussions. Well, considering it was first published over a hundred years ago, he wasn't actually talking about Internet discussions, but the subject matter sure looks mighty familiar to anyone who's participated in online forums...
A man, a fence, an empire: Rick Preble took a pile of scrap lumber and turned it into a global business manufacturing and selling decorative postcaps for wooden fences. One of the better rags-to-riches business stories I've read lately.
Wednesday 01/25/06
Fewer journalists, more professionals.
For the past couple of years, journalism trade publications have been filled with hand-wringing, who-is-a-journalist essays, which invariably call upon traditional journalists to do a better job of distinguishing themselves from their less credible counterparts in the non-traditional media. But their prescriptions rarely go far enough, in part because they address the wrong question.Instead of asking "Who is a journalist?" they should be asking "Who is a professional?"
They're talking about photojournalism, but the point applies throughout the journalism field.
Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics. More Web pages use the "worthless" revist-after META tag than use the bog-standard EM tag, and other surprising facts about the Web.
Money tells you the best time to buy cars, video games, toys, houses, TVs and electronics, and airline tickets.
Tuesday 01/24/06
Olivo Barbieri's aerial photos look like models, but they're not. The use of a tilt-shift lens allows him to throw even distant objects out of focus, a feat virtually impossible to do with a regular lens and more typical of macro photography.
Update: The Bitter*Girls is a collection of similar photos by a Japanese photographer or photographers (I don't read Japanese, so I cannot tell). Want to build your own tilt-shift lens and save hundreds? Sure you do.
Good news, everyone: Billy West has spilled the beans about a deal for four full-length, direct-to-DVD Futurama movies. Production begins this summer.
Monday 01/23/06
Some absolutely outstanding photos of Africa by Alexs Bernasconi here, here and here. Note that these images are cropped to fit in the message area in the DPReview forums; click each image to reveal it in its full glory.
Friday 01/20/06
Beautiful photos of fungus.
Drunkenbatman tells you why the Jabber instant messaging protocol is interesting and important.
Excellent article on Google in the London Review of Books.
Friday 01/13/06
So I went to Macworld this past week. For me the new computers were a yawn. The iMac isn't for me, and I got tired of waiting for Apple to produce the portable I wanted and bought a Windows subnotebook/tablet, a Fujitsu LifeBook P1510D, last fall. (While the Fujitsu admittedly runs Windows, the hardware is fully sweet enough to make up for this shortcoming.) The new Power er, MacBook Pro lacks a modem, an incredibly stupid omission for a portable. "There's no room" won't cut it, not when they replaced the PC Card slot with the smaller ExpressCard34 slot. (Which, by the way, is too narrow for a CompactFlash card to physically fit, so you'll need an external card reader for your camera memory cards. This is not a Power MacBook Pro for photographers. Good thing Apple's not trying to cater to photographers, it's not like they make a pro photo app or anything. Oh wait.) As my roommate at the Marriott said, "what we have here is a $1500 laptop for $2500."
Anyway, some people may buy one or the other of these machines. Guess I'm no longer in Apple's target market.
On the one hand, I appreciate why Apple made the new iMacs and Power MacBook Pros look exactly like the old ones. It's a way of saying "it's still a Mac despite the Intel Inside -- see, it even looks the same." But y'know what would be cool? Colored iMacs again. But this time bold, bright colors, like sports cars. Glossy red, yellow, blue, black, in addition to the white. Hell, hot pink and baby blue, like in the '50s! Or iMacs in wood finish, from birch to ebony. C'mon Apple, think different again.
iPhoto 6, on the other hand, looks pretty sweet. Apple may get some iLife upgrade money out of me for the first time in a couple of years. At least until Lightroom ships.
Now more than ever, I go to Macworld for the parties and the people, not the new products. The show itself was only in one hall in Moscone this year, which was just pathetic.
