Reading my height

I got my kitchen closet shelving today. (It’s actually a coat closet, but I’m turning it into a kitchen one which says something about my priorities.)

In about 3rd grade or so, we had to write down a self-description. The teacher gathered the cards, read them, and the class would try to guess who it was about.

My description started out: “I am 3′ 11″ tall…”

That’s about all I remember and it’s just about as far as the teacher got before the entire class guessed it was me. While I thought it was a pretty impressive number, I was still the shortest kid in my grade.

I’m standing in the elevator reading the side of a box I’m hauling up to the apartment. The shelves are 48″ long, an inch longer than I was at the time, and how this event comes back to my mind unbidden.

Posted on by tychay 0

Gizmodo should stick to gadgets

It always annoys me when Gizmodo writes about digital photography. Mostly because they get almost nothing right.

Case in point: their article on today’s Lexar UDMA CF cards, which has three egregious errors.

First, I would believe that CF at PIO-5 (aka 133x) is already close to SDHC’s theoretical max speed and faster than any SDHC card out there, so it’s hardly “playing catchup.”

Second, there is already a camera that supports this card: the Hasselblad H2D and H3D. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the MF digital backs support UDMA. Sure they’re expensive, but they are not “theoretical.”

Third, UDMA is supported in the newest CF reader from SanDisk. This means that you have a practical advantage today in download speed to an external reader. Who would have thunk?

I know if they had bothered to read an article I wrote last year, they could have avoided foot-in-mouth disease.

Posted on by tychay 0

I’m a simple guy

Because I haven’t moved in yet, there is a dearth of good books at my place. In light of that, I finally picked up a Redbook. No, I don’t mean I’m interested in how to find my inner sex goddess, I mean I wanted to see what IBM’s developer tech support has to say.

This one is called Developing PHP Applications for IBM Data Servers. And that’s a tad ironic because I’m using Oracle. As Chris is fond of saying: people are born with either an I or and O stamped on their foreheads.

I was born with “cheap ass” stamped on my forehead since I’ve tried to stick to MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. But flipping through the book makes me make an observation from the cheap ass camp.

[Getting me to switch after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 4

True Trucker

Toyota ultimately decided to pursue customers it calls “true truckers.” True truckers aren’t ordinary pickup owners; rather, these men are the Platonic ideal of truck-driving authenticity. They might work on the ranch or the construction site; they might fish for bass every weekend. “They’re the taste makers, the influentials,” Ernest Bastien, a vice president of vehicle operations, told me in San Antonio. “I think all consumers are influenced by professionals. The professional uses a certain tool, and then they want it, too.”
—Jon Gertner, “From 0 to 60 to World Domination, The New York Times

Posted on by tychay 0

Costco camera thought of the day

I noticed recently at Costco that they’re selling the Canon Rebel XTi with 18-55mm and the Nikon D80 with two lenses kit.

That’s silly. The D80 + 2 lenses (28-70 and 70-300) cannot compete against the Rebel XTi (+ 18-55) in a store like that. For one thing, they’re the same 10 megapixels. The D80 kit works out to be much more expensive (around $1200 vs $900). Sure there are differences, but the lenses aren’t even connected to the cameras so who is going to notice the larger and brighter viewfinder or better construction? And really, is this market going to care about those things? All your typical Costco buyer is going to see is that the D80 looks to be the same camera for a lot more, breaking the $1000 barrier is a big deal nowadays

It should come as no surprise that last time I passed by, the XTi was sold out.

Continue reading about A better strategy after the jump

Posted on by tychay 8

Clever HTTP

I was looking at FirePHP today, trying to figure out what the point is, because the screenshots they keep directing me to are a joke.

Here is a better summary:

Basically it is allows PHP scripts to send debugging (or profiling) information to Firefox’s Firebug without having the write to the page itself.

How it does this is quite clever.

[More on FirePHP after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 12

POW makes Ajaxian

Dave told me his website was getting stumbled.

The reason is he made Ajaxian:

FirefoxScreenSnapz001

Congrats. I love Ajaxian even if you have to wonder with all the Web 2.0 koolaid they drink there what’s going to happen when they have a James Jones moment.

Dave, as your first user ever, you have to convince me why I need to use it. I’m sure one of these ajaxnauts can figure out something useful to do with the extension.

[Personal stuff after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 1

Amazon Prime a**hole

I paid for Amazon Prime because I’m rich and lazy. Besides, I spend about 15 hours a day at work, now.

This means whenever I have an urge to get a spatula, I just order it and it gets sent two day shipping at no charge. (Yes, I’ve actually done shit like that.)

But the new thing is they tried to sell me digital access, which, while a neat idea, is like a dumb ass version of Safari so no thanks.

Doing that must have caused a big mess up in their order flow because it just sent the stuff to my old company using my old billing information. I went to my accounts page to correct it but because the Amazon Prime thing, my order was being processed and I couldn’t cancel.

Dave IM’d and said it was a convenience tax.

(Just think what would have happened had I had 1-click turned out.)

[Updates after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 7