Category: arts and letters

The key to beauty

According to Popular Photography’s blog, apparently the key to feminine beauty is either Photoshop or over-exposure mixed with either high key or low key lighting.

I’m kidding, but it’s a nice tip. I have to remember to try “dialing to 11” my meter next time just to see what comes out. Before this, I was depending on happy accidents:

unknown tree flower

unknown tree flower
Mountain View, California

Nikon D70, Lensbaby 2.0, Tokina .45 macro
f/2 at 1/2500 second, iso 200, 50mm (75mm)

(Yes, I know the photo isn’t of a woman. I’ll have to work on that.)

Posted on by tychay 0

Barcamp Sacramento

BarCamp Sacramento, June 2-3

Adam Kalsey and Scott Hildebrand of SacStarts are holding a BarCamp in Sacramento on June 2nd and 3rd.

BarCamp is a conference where the participants are the speakers. Show up, sign up to give a session, and get going. There’s lots of networking in the halls, food, great conversations, and you’ll even learn a thing or two.

I love the price (free) 🙂 I’ll be there, maybe you should also. Maybe I’ll dig up an old talk or or test drive a new one (no doubt there will be some PHP involved in mine).

Show your support for the Web people a little further inland and signup!

Posted on by tychay 0

PHP (and mac) pinup

I was catching up on some of my newsreading when I ran across this article, with the quote:

Is this quote for real?

Image from Macenstein and model from Suicide Girls. (horny php guy desktopper)

I thought I’d make it into this desktop image as a shout-out to all you (male) PHP devs out there. (There was an old PHP image I saw about five years ago sort of like this…those of you who remember, know what I’m talking about.)

(Passing thought: this person has been a PHP developer longer than me.)

[Commentary after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

Ed Finkler agrees with me

From Pro PHP Podcast:

Q: What do you think are the three largest failings of PHP and Security?

“I agree with some things that Terry Chay has said about this: that the things that tend to make PHP insecure also tend to be the things that make PHP easy to work with.”
—Ed Finkler, PHP Security Expert, CERIAS

Thanks Ed. 🙂

Listen to the podcast. It’s a realistic assessment of the state of security in PHP.

[Some comments after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 6

This happens way too often

“It hurts me to confess it, but I’d have given ten conversations with Einstein for an initial rendezvous with a pretty chorus girl… And how often, standing on the sidewalk involved in a passionate discussion with friends, I lost the thread of the argument being developed because a devastating woman was crossing the street at that very moment.”
—Albert Camus, “The Fall”

Posted on by tychay 4

Another Search Startup

A friend sent me the homepage of yet another stealth search startup. This company plans on using NLP.

My comment:

“Hmm, I should send [the URL] to Dave. He loves it when a bunch of braniacs get together to make an ASS [Another Search Startup] of themselves.”

New term I just invented. I hope it catches on. 🙂

Posted on by tychay 4

LinkedIn Haikus

I decided to dress up my latest LinkedIn invitations with some poetry:

Found new connections.
Send mail into the ether.
LinkedIn Spam Is Fun.

You liked this haiku?
Then add me to your network.
(We’re both on LinkedIn.)

Posted on by tychay 8

fo shizzle

In an e-mail recently someone used the phrase “fo’ shizzle.”

Now having worked at Plaxo I’ve heard the term and seen it used when we play Counterstrike and such, and it’s used on television more, but I never saw it written out. For some reason print or e-mail is different than chat or IM. I have a distinct recollection of when “da bomb” (1994) or “so ghetto” (1998) reached that point, followed by a quick musing of where the hell the term came from—I mean besides the obvious answer in this case: Snoop Dog.

Urban Dictionary provided it to me:

“fo shizzle ma nizzle” is a bastardization of “fo’ sheezy mah neezy” which is a bastardization of “for sure mah nigga” which is a bastdardization of “I concur with you whole heartedly my African american brother”

I love the internet.

Posted on by tychay 0

Sensing a great disturbance in the force

…of my 2008 budget.

“Depth of field” huh?

Pentax 645D prototype (200609-06)Pentax 645D prototype rear (200609-08)

A Pentax medium format digital camera. 19 or 31 megapixel CCD sensor with 1.4x crop factor in 645 format (44mmx33mm). Basically that’s twice the image area of 35mm “full frame” or .7x “crop factor” 35mm equivalent. Just saying this just shows the total futility of thinking in crop factors. Both use an offset microlens technology that first saw light of day in the Leica M8 to deal with vignetting.

Price (estimated): $7-12k. It’s Pentax so you know it’ll be much cheaper than that the Hasselblad H3D (48mm 39mp $32k, 48mm 22mp $27k and 44mm 31mp $25k), and the Mamiya ZD (48mm 22mp, $12k est.). On the other end you have the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II (36mm, 17mp, $7.4k). Another reference point is film 645 format cameras are around $3k.

Also known are multi-channel readout, SDHC and CF media support (I hope they’re using UDMA instead of PIO). 1/4000s max shutter speed in a leaf shutter. Probably a max ISO around 800. The usual suspects: AE and AF lock buttons, bulb, MLO, cable releases, flash sync. Burst speed and buffer is unknown (a fast camera in medium format digital is is 1 shot in 1.5 seconds).

While we are dreaming wishlist: Pentax sensor-shift-based shake reduction in a medium format digital. I’d open my wallet this year if it had it. Seriously.

[Lenses for medium format cameras after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 2