Category: stuff

Software, toys, gadgets and computers

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 →

Posted on by tychay 2

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 →

Posted on by tychay 22

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

Complete my album

Complete My Album

It’s (almost) finally safe to make a single song purchase in iTunes Music Store. A new feature called Complete My Album will count your single song purchases to the purchase of the entire album.

Nice.

It’s currently a limited time offer. My guess is they’re going to see the conversion rate before deciding to make it permanent. That’s clever but annoying.Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Pair your remotes

One f’d up thing I ran into today is that every time I try to do anything on my Apple TV, my MacBook starts reacting to the remote (going in and out of Front Row for instance).

The solution is to take your remotes and pair them. What pairing does it it forces the computer or Apple TV to only recognize one remote. To pair your Apple TV, just go to “Settings > Pair Remote” with the remote you have on hand. To pair your Macbook, read this hint.

Here is another tip. If you want to turn off your Apple TV (actually, put it on stand by), think of it like an Apple iPod. Hold down the Play/Pause button on your remote for five seconds.

Posted on by tychay 0

His conversion is almost complete

I used to work with a guy named Haiping, a former developer at Microsoft who was hired just two people before me at Plaxo. He has some crazy C++ skills as well as is pretty damn good at that headshot thing in PC first person shooters. Last time I was in South Bay, I stopped by Plaxo and talked to him. Later that evening, I went to the Facebook Tech Tasting and met him again. Only this time, his tag said “Facebook.” Between those two times he had changed jobs!

The great thing about our former company, is that you get card updates. I like to accept/reject mine over the web interface and read this today. Read his Work Card Message:

My friend Haiping flips his job

A C++ engineer switches to PHP. A windows user switches to Mac. Now all I have to do is convince him to get a Nikon camera. Now all they have to do is port Day of Defeat to the Mac.

Posted on by tychay 6

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