Category: arts and letters

The pocket digicam

I haven’t written about photography in a while. This is probably a bad sign for my soul because it means I haven’t been shooting much lately.

I am in the market for a new digital camera and was wondering if you could recommend a worthy one. I’m far from a pro, so a basic point and shoot of awesome quality, reasonable price, and lightweight for 100 lb. weaklings would work just fine for me. Someone said I should get a Sony Cybershot. Any recommendations?

I’m always getting e-mails and IMs like this. Because I carry around an expensive camera, people assume I have an opinion. It’s been years since I’ve actually written about this and I don’t even shoot this sort of camera anymore. So what advice to give?

Continue reading about Entry level camera purchasing advice after the jump

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bromance

I’m sorry I missed this word.

From DoubleX:

I agree that the Kirk/Spock dynamic was the richest in the film. But there’s another key relationship that I thought was even more fascinating—the one between Spock and Lt. Uhura. First off, it’s fantastic that Uhura finally feels like a major character, even though she still hasn’t graduated to wearing pants, and even though much of her role here is to provide romantic relief from the bromance and the action scenes.

(The rest of the article is similarly hilarious.)

insp_sexual_tension

From Star Trek Motivational Posters

If he got rid of the bromance, then J.J. Abrams would see some really outraged Trekkies.

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Writing and speaking

Terry-ist

I can’t find the conference speaker badges so this will have to do. The fact that it feeds my ego doesn’t hurt either!

Paul wrote something nice about me. In fact, it’s so very nice, that I can (almost) forgive him for listing me sixth. 😉

Reading his description reminds me how grateful I am every time someone reads my articles. Writing is a craft that I’m not very good at and have to work at constantly. I hope my logorrhea has, in a small way, created a little context for you and perhaps inspired some of you to blog more.

Because when I’m not trolling the internets for my name, I’m reading your blog… and growing.

Mad talks

Paul also mentioned my that I’m a conference speaker.

In light of this, I better mention that in a couple weeks in Chicago at PHP|tek, I’ll be bookending the opening keynote of Andrei, my (a)cross-street rival, with the closing keynote. I have no idea what I’ll be talking about so this should be interesting!

After that, I’ll be racing to Berlin to catch up with Andrei, in order to give two completely different talks at the International PHP Conference. I’m noticed that Thies Artzen will be there—I’ll finally get to see if the rumors of him mellowing out are true.

Maybe Keith Casey will let me dry run my Berlin talks at the PHP|tek Unconference (I hope so). Even if not, I should probably participate in the Pecha Kucha—my speaking skills have deteriorated noticeably.

What killed the whom

Finally I noticed that in an interview, Andi Gutmans, the “nd” in Zend mentioned my company:

The Java disruption by PHP is well under way. PHP is everywhere, and Zend’s solutions are being used in business-critical deployments by companies such as Tagged, Fiat, BNP Paribas, and Fox Interactive Media, to name a few. The strategic adoption of Zend in larger accounts, often in favor of Java, is related to our strong return on investment and shorter time to market.

(I guess this means I’ll finally have to figure out the difference between him and Zeev, the “Ze” in Zend.)

One thing the writer, a Java developer, doesn’t notice is that a significant fraction of Tagged is Java. This wasn’t the case when I joined the company, but it was an architectural system I made because there are some things PHP isn’t good at.

If I had to guess, when Andi is saying “Java disruption,” I think he really means “Java/J2EE” disruption. It’s a minor distinction…and one of which I’ve been attacked for when I say “Ruby” and really mean “Rails.”

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Vee-oh-la

Voilá!

I am forever reminded of the French section of my Latin I class when reading the first lesson, J— pronounced this “Vee-O-La!”

If it isn’t obvious from the repeated mentions of me almost failing French I, I’m glad J— was called to read that day.

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Making it personal

Media moguls—journalism moguls, anyway—need two sets of skills. They have to be able to select and package material from the world in a way that gives it order and narrative drive and swagger. They also have to forge, through creativity, cunning, and force, a set of arrangements with customers, competitors, governments, advertisers, production facilities, and distribution networks which can generate a lot of money. Even in an era of focus groups and marketing research, any news publication that attracts an audience has to have a personality, which means that it has to bear the stamp of a real person.
—Nicholas Lemann on Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolf Hearst, Barney Kilgore, and Rupert Murdoch in “Paper Tigers”, The New Yorker, April 13, 2009

[To a friend on what I liked about her latest blog posting.]

“It’s like the Lauren ad from Microsoft. Using the recession to talk about things holds a lot of serious interest,” I said.

“That’s what I think too,” my friend replied, “But I remember when I used to make references to it in posts for someone else, the editor would always delete them.”

“He hails from a school that’s outdated. The biggest blogs make it personal. Take Orangette—that’s a blog about cooking. Why is it one of the most popular blogs? Or ZenHabits—how did it in two years become one of the top self-help sites?

“When I write personal articles with wide application, they take off on FeedBurner.

“It’s about making it personal, without taking it personally.

“My problem is I always take it personally, 😉 ” I finished.

She laughed. “Well I already know what I’m going to write tonight!”

Posted on by tychay 0

My first R rated movie

Me: I’m an innocent.

Mager: I believe you are secretly not innocent.

Me: I have gaps.
Me: Hmm… I should blog that.

…

Maybe I should have saved this for a Seven Things post, but my first R-rated movie was Quest for Fire. I saw it with my mom.

Here’s what happened.

My dad felt that it would be okay if my brother saw an R-rated movie for his birthday party, but there was no way C—’s mom would allow C— to see Porky’s. But, somehow Quest for Fire was okay because it was “an art film.” My mom had to chaperone my-brother’s-friends-whose parents-weren’t-cool-enough-to-let-them-see-Porky’s… and me.

…

My brother finally did catch my first R-rated movie in cable when he was in college. Of course he was shocked because Quest for Fire puts Porky’s to shame.

When he recounted that observation to my parents, I added, “I remember seeing that. I hated it because there was no speaking, only grunting.”

“Haha! You were like nine!”

“That was a horrible movie!” Mom rejoined, “I had to put my hand in front of Terry’s eyes for nearly thing. And he kept shouting, ‘Mommy, mommy are they done pumping yet?’ The whole theatre could hear it. I was so embarrassed.”

Ahh! Quest for Fire—one of those movies that makes you wonder What the fuck was MPAA ratings board was smoking at that night?

Quest for Fire in Hulu

Kid Tested, NotNSFW! Watch the movie. Jean-Jacques Annaud lays the smack down on the pr0n industry when he gets rid of the dialog entirely.
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