Category: arts and letters

From Photo to Finished—Automattic

10 Minute Lightning Talk for the Automattic Meetup at Seaside, September 2010

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

For this presentation I chose the subject of photography. Specifically, taking one photo from start to publish describing how I took the shot and the editing steps I chose.

Like many bloggers—Automattic is also known as WordPress—I’m passionate about photography and I felt that many of the other people it the room might be interested in it also—our founder and CEO’s online handle is “photomatt.”

I hope you enjoy this presentation!

This was the second presentation I gave that day. I composed it just after I finished the first.

Photo to Finished

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This presentation will be expanded into a post around Christmas. Look for it!

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Tales of Virality—Automattic

Presentation given as Flash Talk at Automattic Meetup in Seaside on September 2010

Presentation is given as an Ignite Talk format (20 slides x 15 seconds/slide = 5 minutes. Autopush.)

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

In the e-mail requesting submissions, Matt mentioned that Scott Berkun “did a very cool post and video on giving ignite talks, so I modelled this talk after that.

Sorry, I don’t have the audio file for this—I forgot to record one!. But this is the only talk that is fully scripted out and I included that with the file. 🙂

Hope you enjoy it.

Tales of Virality—Automattic

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Update:

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Nikon D3100

Last month, a friend asked me purchasing advice on a Nikon D5000. I told him, “Don’t. Nikon will be introducing a new D3000 replacement before Photokina.”

Today, Nikon has officially announced the Nikon D3100 entry level dSLR camera.

353_25472_D3100_front

If you recall the big spreadsheet in my complete guide to purchasing an entry dSLR camera (etc), the big specification upgrades are: 14 megapixel, 1080p video and continuous AF.

Two other overlooked features of the D3100 are the improved ergonomics: the shooting mode is now chosen with a dial, and a lever now activates the movie mode. Both are going to be very welcome (for reasons I explained in my guide above).

Continue reading About the D3100 after the jump

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Weapons-grade wingnut

The comments on Balloon Juice can get quite witty. I love the imagery and alliteration in the following:

Wow. That’s some real weapons-grade Wingnut there.

That was used when talking about a purity purge going on over the “ground zero mosque” which is actually a community center with a prayer space. Another commenter wrote:

Calling this a mosque is like calling a casino in Las Vegas a cathedral because it has a wedding chapel.

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Sunrise at Mt Whitney

August 11, 2002

I took one look at the crowds at Trail Camp and said, “There is no way we’re stopping here” so we climbed the 99 switchbacks, and pitched our tents at 14,000 feet in the dead of darkness. Because I hadn’t acclimated to the altitude, I woke up hours before sunrise and prepared my camera for an attempt to make the peak in time for the sunrise. Hearing me rustle in the tent, Tim woke up and said that he’d accompany me.

Since we only had flashlights for a guide, we got lost and ended up doing Keeler Needle instead. Even in the dark, I could tell we somehow ended up on the eastern slope—you suddenly feel the cool air coming from your left and know there is nothing there but a gaping void. Because of my acrophobia, I just lit the rocks in front of me with my headlamp, took one step in front of the other, and prayed.

When we righted ourselves, the light was starting to change and Tim ran ahead to make the peak by dawn. I slogged on, out of shape and out of breath.

Less than a quarter mile from the peak, I could see the sunlight peeking through the cracks in the slope. I wasn’t going to make it. So, I found a gap in the trail, set up my tripod and prepared to shoot the sunrise.

Sunrise at Mt. Whitney

Sunrise at Mt. Whitney
Mt Whitney, Inyo National Forest, California

Olympus C-2500L
7 exposures, exposure data missing

It took seven photographs and a stitch to encompass what I saw that day, and I still missed the cliff that I was peeking through.

Continue reading about my Mt. Whitney hike after the jump.

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The unforgiving bush

My wife cannot orgasm from oral sex. I have been told that my technique is awesome, but nothing seems to be working. Please tell me there’s a way.

I passed your letter around the sorority house, and after the laughter died down, it occurred to me that perhaps not all of the women who had praised you in the past were lying. I consulted my trusty feminist bible (I Love You, Ronnie: The Letters of Ronald Reagan to Nancy Reagan) and was able to ascertain that your wife could have some issues including, but not limited to, body insecurity, mixed feelings about oral sex, pressure to orgasm, and the guilt that she feels while watching you soldier on through the unforgiving bush in a battle that never ends.
—clipped from an Esquire article

And here, I thought that was called humping.

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So Meta

I was reading Smithsonian’s 40th anniversary issue when I ran across this article on the future of reading.

Smithsonian on the iPad

Since I was on my iPad, I had to take this screenshot.

Get Zinio for the iPad, zoom in on what interests you, take a screenshot of it, and add it to Evernote.

“In my day, we clipping interesting articles with scissors and put it in a folder—a real physical thing made out of cardboard paper—and into something called a filing cabinet. That ‘desktop’ thing was just a metaphor for real physical stuff we used.”

“That’s crazy talk, grandpa!”

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Retinal burn

I suppose musings like this are very common among Apple haters. Basically the complaint boils down to:

“325dpi? Bah! Even a 1986-era laser printer does 300dpi and my newspaper does at least 600dpi. Until you get there, the print is smudgy and causes eye-strain.”

Apple - iPhone 4 - Learn about the high-resolution Retina display

The facts in the Apple’s advertising blurb are 100% correct. If you have a beef, don’t take the advertising head-on. The whole thing is essentially a misdirection in all but a few cases.

What a crock of shit.

Continue reading about eye acuity and displays after the jump.

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Family Photos

Take photos of your family.

Bernadette’s 1st Communion

My mom, aunt, and uncle in Kyoto Japan 1941. My other aunt (who hadn’t been born yet) sent me this photo today.

Distance is no object—that’s why we have Skype and screenshotting (Cmd-Shift-3 on the Macintosh).

Ken, Dad, and Mia on Skype

My brother, father, and sister-in-law in Providence 2010.

I’m going to try to use ScanCafe to digitize my parents old photos quickly. I am receiving it as “a thank you gift” during KQED Public Radio’s last pledge drive. The idea is they send you a box, you fill it with photos and slides, and then they give you DVDs with them digitized.

We’ll see how that goes.

Update: Here they are (and some of the ones here).

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