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.

Posted on by tychay 4

Plaxo labs search (and birthdays)!

Plaxo search

Plaxo Labs search is working. Notice that I used the Plaxo search plugin which I installed in Firefox.

(Yes, apparently I need to use the deduper.)

Another surprising feature is a birthday view that was added to contacts:

Plaxo birthday list

Too bad I can’t sort by upcoming birthdays. 🙁 But notice that alert? Something about requesting birthdays from your contacts?

Plaxo birthday reminders

Score! Birthday requests are much friendlier than contact information update requests. Who wouldn’t want a birthday ecard in their inbox? 🙂

Finally.

Now if only Plaxo would give a free one day subscription to unlimited premium eCard sends to people on their birthday…

Posted on by tychay 0

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 →

Posted on by tychay 2

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.)
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Plaxo is evil. Plaxo is spam.

Disclaimer: I worked as an engineer at Plaxo a long time ago (in internet years… in human years it was five months ago).

In October of last year, an engineering colleague asked me about this whole “Plaxo is evil. Plaxo is spam” thing. At the time I went in to a long boring lecture about Plaxo and privacy/security. (I don’t need to go into it here, you can read this to get a taste.)

After sitting through it, he asked me this simple question: “If you didn’t work for Plaxo, would you use it?”

I answered, “I’ll do you one better. I’m not going to be working for Plaxo much longer, and I’ll continue to use it after I leave.”

“Good enough for me.”

[The power of connections. The power of search. After the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 11

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