Mike Johnston, former writer of the weekly opinion column Sunday Morning Photographer, has launched a blog to talk about photography.
Check it out: The Online Photographer.
Cat eyes (and flash)
“First picture of Pounce” by tychay
( Olympus C-2500L ) ƒ3.1, 1/60sec, iso 100, 18.6mm (56mm), built-in flash
( Olympus C-2500L ) ƒ3.1, 1/60sec, iso 100, 18.6mm (56mm), built-in flash
Anyone who has taken a flash photo of their cat is aware of the cloudy yellow/green reflection in their eyes. Such was a topic of discussion on Flickr Technique.
The reason for this is that cat eyes have a reflective coating in the back of their eyes called the tapetum. Nocturnal animals have this so that light passes twice through the transparent rods/cones of their eyes creating a second opportunity to absorb the photos and resulting in better night vision—at the price of some acuity of vision because of the folded optical path. Light comes from two distances and cats are far-sighted anyways.
Pretty neat piece of evolutionary engineering.Continue reading about red eye in photography after the jump.
Real live Julie Keatons…
Scrubs from Zap2It/CBS.
The future Marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics corporation or proof that one industry has just too much money? Yet again, the pharmaceutical industry puts us horny computer nerds to shame.
(A major difference is you can ignore my advice on what computer to buy, but You can’t be so cavalier with your doctor’s prescription.)
In related news… Scrubs Season 2 is out on DVD. As Dru would say, “So good.”
Relationships and Politics
A friend of mine went out on a date with a SUV-driving, Fox News-watching conservative Republican. I wonder if he shouts at his television set or gets angry when people impugn his man?
I made the mistake of commenting:
Reminds me of an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm which I never saw because the last time I had television was when a room mate would watch Fox News on it. With a name like “GB”, I guess his political leanings are understandable. Does he go by his middle initial, “W”?
My brother once told me that he thought young Republicans were pathetic because as you got older you can always get more conservative—I blew that idea out of the water by getting more liberal…
You should’ve taken a picture of him for posterity before his species becomes extinct.
Bad Terry, never comment your political leanings on someone else’s blog! Bad! Bad!Continue reading
Apple Aperture “Now Shippingâ€
Caitlin noticed this today:
I’m so excited about the release of this product that I started a Flickr group just for the hell of it which is strange for someone who is going to have to live a little vicariously—I’m probably skipping this release and buying the 2.0 like I did with Apple Keynote.
What I’m having for Thanksgiving
If anything should be indicative of a my right-wing gen-x background, it should be this simple fact: I did cross-ex debate in high school. One result of that is my Thanksgiving meal: a burger at Jack-In-The-Box.
The University of Pittsburgh tournament is held on Thanksgiving weekend. This is not a big deal normally for a Pittsburgher such as myself, except that for those last three years in high school, my family shared Thanksgiving with my relatives in Chester, New Jersey. I have nothing to show for this except a bad junk food Thanksgiving habit.Continue reading
The two wings of American political discourse
I was reading the latest two entries in the Letters To The New York Times blog written by someone under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout and I was struck again by how well-written they are. While the articles have the very liberal bent, most such left-wing blogs have too much MacBethian defeatism that is missing here. The precision of language and the ability to “stay the course” during the entire essay puts my random meanderings to shame. I wish I could write so well.
TimesSelect thought of the day
As I mentioned earlier the Op-Ed articles which are behind TimeSelect paid-for subscriptions. I noticed that they have nearly completely fallen out of the Time’s “Most e-mailed” newsfeed. Before it seemed that over half the Op-Eds would be on this feed.
I wonder if the impact of these columnists will diminish?
Nikon posts record profits (again)
I read on PhotographyBlog that Nikon posted record profits from February to September 2005. The D70’s sequel the D70s and the surprising D50.
I know this sounds like cheerleading, but remember that half of my decision to purchase a D70 was based on which companies would be around after the expected fallout from the impending dSLR smackdown.
Perfecting Watergate
Comparisons of how the Bush Administration is the the worst part of Nixon’s Watergate are like a bad hooker—cheap and easy.
The “paper of record†has an interesting article about the RNC front-organization, Progress for America. Basically, this group is heavily funded to rubber stamp anything that comes out of the White House—promoting John Robert’s nomination within 7 minutes, Harriet Meiers within 11 minutes, and having Sam Alito’s promotion ready before it was even announced. It’s very easy when half of your “grass roots†funds come from the same top 15 multimillion dollar donors as the President, your board consists of former Bush campaign aides, and your employees are part of the revolving door of Republican lobbyists. They have a term for that stuff in the tech world.
It’s called Astroturfing (as in “fake grassrootsâ€).