Thomas Chamberlin asks an interesting question in the Flickr D3 user’s group:
“With the D3 and D300 we are now offered lossless compression, no compression, or compression with loss for RAW files. Nikon says there is no effect on image quality using lossless compression. The file is compressed 20-40%. Write times are faster than with no compression. How can they compress the file 40% and not affect the image quality? What is lost and then regained?
The great thing about getting a new camera is that I get another chance to put “on paper” words that lost to the ether.
My digital bodies
North Beach, San Francisco, California
Panasonic DMC-LX1, Ultrapod
2 exposures at .8sec @ f/3.6, iso 80, 11.6mm (52mm)
From right to left. The Leica M8 shoots RAW into the Adobe DNG format (not sure of the compression), the Nikon D70 which introduced lossy NEF compression, the Nikon D200 which shoots lossy and uncompressed NEF RAWs, the Nikon D3 which shoots lossy, lossless, and uncompressed NEFs in both 12 and 14-bits. The photo was taken with a Panasonic LX-1 which shoots a Panasonic/Leica RAW file format that is uncompressed and 13x larger than the JPEG sidecar file! Ironically, I processed this image, by accident, from the sidecar files instead of the RAWs, even though it was shot at ISO 80.
[Weighing in on lossy RAW after the jump.] Continue reading →
We use YUI at Tagged because that’s what I chose. We lost a couple front end engineers at Tagged so I’m having to pick up the slack—this means actually having to learn the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) in earnest. So I whipped up this diagram of YUI 2.5:
“What?!” You say. “Someone set us up the bomb? How could you make a choice and not know everything about it.”
Yes, I made the architecture decision to use YUI without knowing it in detail. However, I believe that sometimes when examining architectures you miss the forest from the trees.
[The philosophy of architectural choices after the jump.] Continue reading →
New camera, lens, and software…
First D3 photo
North Beach, San Francisco, California
Nikon D3, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S
1/15sec @ f/2.8, iso 420, 14mm (14mm)
[There is a jump.] Continue reading →
S—: Hey, Terry. She broke up with me last night.
Me: I didn’t know you were dating someone.
S—: Can I join your Afraid-of-Women club?
Me: You have to be the one to break it off first. It’s like
[More relationship strategery after the jump.] Continue reading →
I love bags.
I guess it’s not that unusual. Now being a geek with no taste, I’m not very imaginative. But now that my camera is too big to fit in the ’s (which replaced my whose strap I wore out at the stitching).
Because of this, it was pleasant to run across this on Timbuk2’s website:
[Thinking about Timbuk2 after the jump.] Continue reading →
Someone took exception to me saying:
“I have yet to read a good “” book.”
…with the lines:
“I think that’s a bit of a hard knock of the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I’ve had a number of books which I’ve really enjoyed from them; The Pragmatic Programmer and Practices of an Agile Developer spring to mind.”
Hehe, he caught me! Oh, I didn’t lie—I just never actually finished a single one of their books. 
I started reading the and The Pragmatic Programmer mentioned, but I put them down in disgust.
This book is the book that crappy books.
[But that won’t stop me from peeing on your programming religion after the jump.] Continue reading →
This popped in my e-mail box just now:
Subject: Anyone know a top Rails programmer for Tech Advisor role
Could be as little as one hour per week? Great opportunity for this person to inherit vp of engineering position once we get funded. We are close to launching, and hopefully to being funded.
…
This is wrong in so many ways. You know, when your Vice President of Engineering is going to be a … ?
[Being the first engineer after the jump] Continue reading →
…a place to send all the people who washed out coding PHP.
I haven’t read this book so I can’t comment, however, I have yet to read a good “Pragmatic Programmer Series” book.
The one all the Rails developers , is , I am .
Please buy this book.
Not to emphasize the obvious, but if you can’t build a website in PHP, you must really, really suck. Be sure to and on your way down the .
Don’t miss my book: you’ll be needing it next year.
Last week, the politics of fear ended:
“Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.
“If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations — including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11.
“I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.
“We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.”
—U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, “Letter to President Bush regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” February 14, 2008
[A requiem after the jump.] Continue reading →
E-mail received.
I am writing to introduce myself and see if you would be interested in talking with me.
My name is [redacted] and I am in Candidate Generation at Yahoo! for our Engineering, and I wanted to touch base with you to see if you might be open to hearing from us about opportunities we have currently.
I came across your resume on the web and I wanted to check in with you.…
Okay Microsoft is trying to assimilate you, you just fired 10% of your engineers, , but most of is intact… and you are trying to hire me for a low-end developer job at the same time.
You got balls, Yahoo, I’ll .
[my reply after the jump] Continue reading →
