Updating the college application for the MySpace generation

At dinner after the Facebook Lunch 2.0, a bunch of us at the table were trying to guess people’s ethnicity. Being in California, the correct answer might be like “part Paraguayan, part Uzbek” and shit like that. Half the people I know probably fucked up the scantrons when they applied to college and had to fill in the ethnicity bubbles.

Which got me thinking that colleges should just ask the same questions they do on your social networking profile. That way, when you get accepted, you can save yourself the work of making a Facebook profile.

Ethnicity? How many times did you looked at it and said to yourself: What!? The have a box for Eskimo and not for _____? Relationship status is a hell lot more useful in the real world. It’s going to tell me if I’m going to get a message from my friend that reads, “Are the food and drinks free?” (In a Relationship, Looking for Friendship) or “Are there any girls there?” (Single, Looking for Women). (Married? When was the last time you got a text from a married person? BTW, they should add a “With children” box to the Married profile to increase its utility.)

And with all the strange grade inflation going on, really, you can find a lot more about a person from the music they listen to, the books they rea… “Hello? Hey man. Are they hot? Hold on for a minute.

And hotness can cross any ethnic line.

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Making it rain (a story with three "Mark"ed bills)

Tagged has a Cherry Coke promotion which pretty much works with any website out there. In honor of this, I pimped out my profile with some raining cherries—I mean once you get over all the pr0n on my profile, that I’m too lazy(?) to delete. 🙂

Mark #1

Apparently there was a reward for getting Mark hired and I was the lucky recipient of it. In a move back to our gangsta roots, Greg gave me most of it in the form of a brick of 125 $20 bills. Time to really make it rain!

Making it rain

Making it rain
Tagged, Financial District, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/200sec @ f/2.8, iso320, 16mm (24mm)

(Best viewed large on black)

[More raining and Tagged is hiring after the jump]Continue reading

Aperture supports Panasonic/Leica

I noticed in the release notes of the Mac OS X 10.4.10 update today:

  • Adds RAW image decoding support for the following cameras: Panasonic DMC-LX1, Panasonic DMC-LX2, Leica M8, Leica D-LUX 2, Leica D-LUX 3, Fuji S5 Pro, Nikon D40x, and Canon EOS 1D Mk III.

Since Apple Aperture uses the same RAW decoding. That means that I no longer have to do that crazy hack to get my LX-1 RAW files into Aperture. I blogged about this earlier, so I’d like to say, “Thanks, Apple!”

Coincidentally, I almost purchased a Fuji S5 Pro. I bought lenses instead. You really have to have more lenses before you can justify a purchase of a second body, right? 🙂

I think the Leica M8 is a sweet camera for the photo buff who has gobs of money to spend. I mean besides the body, the lenses are astronomical. Or is it just me? I don’t know. I’m just thinking the days when I shied away from Nikon because I thought, “their stuff is too expensive.”

Aperture Users @ Flickr discussion

2007-06-14 My ten seconds at WWDC

A friend of a friend hooked me up with a WWDC pass. Shhh… The real reason I went there was to meet a friend, but he had to miss out that day because of bugs and a release. (I won’t name names, but you suck!)

Unfortunately, I was too tired from driving back from Lunch 2.0 and errands to make it there for much of it. Actually, I caught exactly 5 seconds of the last talk’s Q&A on Dojo Toolkit. It’s probably for the best since Alex doesn’t need to hear me rant about Dojo for the hundredth time. My host scored me a free pass to the Apple Bash after the event just before they went off to dinner and I had to head the other direction to sflickr.

As I was passing Yerba Buena Gardens, an Apple Person In Black saw my bash band and said, “Right this to the Bash, sir.”

“Thank you. But no thank you, I’m skipping the party.”

My ten seconds at WWDC (2007-0048 12)

My ten seconds at WWDC
SOMA, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X PRO 16-50mm f/2.8 DX
1/160sec @ f/4.5, iso100, 17mm (25mm)

[OSCON, Microsoft, and Apple after the jump]Continue reading

I just like hearing my name

As I told Ed Finker,

“Newbie, did I forget to tell you he just likes it when people say his name?”
—Dr. Cox, Scrubs Season 5

Unfortunately, Ed didn’t oblige me like he did last time. But luckily for me, Sean and Paul did. 🙂

With Cal’s PHP Abstract now on the air, the busy developer may be wondering which they should listen to. It’s simple, if you have to choose, I’ve been mentioned three times on Pro::PHP Podcast and not once on PHP Abstract.

Verdict: I recommend Pro::PHP Podcast 😀

terry chay

terry chay” by kbconference

This is me at ZendCon. You”ll notice that I have the lens on my D200 that the two are talking about. (Fire engine red… gotta love Canon.)

[Paul and Sean are the Kevin and Bean of the PHP world after the jump.]Continue reading

The Wedding Lens Song

Haven’t blogged on photography in a while. Sorry

On [2006/12/31 6:48PM], I sat on an article that I started months before. Good thing! because it would have been embarassing to blog on something I wouldn’t get until six months later!

Back then, Boris speculated on what my next lens was going to be.

Here is the answer:

Ahh, new lens

Ahh, New Lens
Tagged, Financial District, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Tokina AT-X 165 PRO DX (16-50mm f/2.8)
1/15sec @ f/2.8, iso 1250, 50mm (75mm)

Can you believe I haven’t bought any photo equipment in half a year?

[Wedding lenses and the Tokina AT-X 165 after the jump.]Continue reading

Ethan’s Baptism and Party

Mother and son

Mother and son
St. Joseph Parish, Mountain View, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-.56G VR
1/60sec @ f/5.3, iso 3200, 120mm (180mm)

.

Dave invited me to his son’s baptism. I put on a shirt and tie and drove down to South Bay.

I showed up early, had to drop off some stuff at Goodwill, and ended up loitering outside the church messing with Google WiFi. By the time I figured out that all the other people there were doing this weird makeshift flea market thing and everyone else was already inside, mass had already started!

Afterward, it turned out Mark was moving to San Francisco, so I went to the party for a short while and booked it back to SOMA to help him move.

That meant a couple more people got to see me working the shirt and tie…Ahh, East Coast strikes again.

(Mark and Rose bought me dinner at Koh Samui and The Monkey in SOMA.)

Discussion and Democracy

“…our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future…Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.”
—Al Gore, from The Assault of Reason in Time Magazine

I started this blog after the 2004 election with a purpose to “write to create context for another to think.”

Whether it is morals, politics, technology and industry, or every day life, each of us has both a right and obligation to participate on the public forum. Thank you, the reader, for taking some of your time to be a part of this conversation.

Live preview

There was an interesting question of the D200 user group:

I know its just been 2 days since I bought my D200 but am I missing something or is there no way to shoot while screen is on?

I dont want to look in the viewfinder in every picture I take, there must be a way that I couldnt see in the users manual… 🙁

Okay, I can see all you SLR users there smirking. The person just bought a $1400 camera and doesn’t know that SLRs don’t do that sort of thing because the reflex mirror (the R in SLR). But things have changed a lot. Are we sure we’re not being snobs for smirking?

Golden flight

Golden flight
San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR
1/90sec @ f/22, iso 125, 18mm (27mm)

Maybe if I had live preview on a swivel mount, I could have gotten the horizon right?

I know of at least three ways newer SLR cameras get around this problem:

[Understanding live preview after the jump]Continue reading

EVE online

Since I was working on a web-tool to detect and clean HTML embed codes, Firefox was experiencing some intermittent crashing. Today I loaded up my page in Safari, seeing the site for the first time in weeks without my banner ad blocker:

Eve Online, Afro Samurai and other Tagged madness

The banner ad is for Eve Online which is a MMORPG imported from Korea. Someone I know just accepted a job for a similar company so this is a big shout-out to you (you know who you are).

BTW, Afro Samurai did a takeover a couple weeks ago. I decided to change my tagged profile theme to the promo. It’s a pity that I don’t get cable and this isn’t on iTunes, because it looks like an interesting show.

(I had cable until yesterday, but didn’t know it since I never connected it. I found out today when they left a note on my door saying they cut it.)
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