“Out-Googling” Google

A recent article in the New York Times discusses a bunch of Google competitors.

Is this me or does this sound so 2002?

I wonder if “out-googling” Google is such a great idea in the first place. If barrier to entry is truly as low as the article claims, then why do it at all? It seems that anything you carve isn’t sustainable.

I’m no business genius, but I prefer the Prego’s Approach.

[Getting from spaghetti sauce to internet search by way of some dancing bunnies after the jump.]Continue reading

My cousin Ivan

Morning coffee seemed like a good idea. I never have a regular sleeping schedule, I had 18 holes ahead of me (for the first time in two years), and it was 7 in the morning.

My father says hi to man behind the register. He asks about me.

“I live in the Bay Area,” I respond.

“Oh? You go to school there?” (I get that a lot.)

“No, I work there.”

My father then says to me, “This is Ivan. He calls me ‘Uncle’ so that makes him your cousin. That’s how it works, isn’t it?”

Ivan laughs.

[Habits and more breakfast memories after the jump.]
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Cingular’s new smartphone

Since I don’t get to watch broadcast/cable TV much, I’m getting my fix from my father’s new DISH Network. Besides the obvious debut of hard alchohol adds, one for the Samsung BlackJack caught my eye. Perhaps it’s because I’m planning on switching services to Cingular.

Samsung BlackJack

But since I set up the 802.11, I just popped open my computer and searched my newsfeeds. This review came up. Hmm Windows Mobile and crap for battery life? No thanks.

I think my first choice is still the Treo 680 to replace my Tungsten T|X which I hoped would be my last PalmOS model until they transition to Linux. I’m still not enthusiastic about giving up 1/3 of my resolution and the 802.11 though.

Leica and Aperture. Don’t you think it’s about time?

Some of you remember my my strange hack for getting the LX1 working in Aperture.

A year later, and I still have to do that. This model has since been replaced with the Panasonic DMC-LX2 (a.k.a. Leica D-LUX 3) which on paper sounds like this same trick should work for the RAW files. I don’t know, so I haven’t tried but this Flickr thread made me think.

This is total B.S. Why do I have to resort to using an Adobe product to get this to work at all?

[Why Apple should support this after the jump]

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That Teflon causes cancer thing

What did I cook this in?

Sweet and Sour Chicken closeup

Sweet & Sour Chicken closeup
Sunnyvale, California

Panasonic DMC-LX1
1/30sec @ f/2.8, iso 200, 6.3mm (28mm)

From: 11/24/05 11:24 AM

Yesterday at work, I had a long discussion on whether or not Teflon causes cancer. The paranoia is best outlined in articles such as this. (Nora, stick to romantic comedies, because I’m going to rip you a new asshole by the time I’m done with this article.)

Basically I decided to “call bullshit” based on what little I remembered of my college organic chemistry class (misspent pre-med youth), I couldn’t see how anything in the body could react with polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon® = DuPont’s trademark of PTFE) or keep it from passing right through our system.

When I got home something they mentioned rang a bell. Almost a year ago there was something about how some teflon-like lining of popcorn bags were being pulled—something about how the oils in popcorn butter leach the stuff out.

Uh-oh! Better do some research.

[More than what you want to know about non-stick cookware after the jump]Continue reading

Photoshop CS3 Beta

Sent this to some of my friends two weeks ago…

I don’t know if I remembered to mention this but Adobe CS3 is in public beta. It requires your Adobe CS2 authentication to use past two days.

One big thing is that this version is native on Intel Macintoshes. According to the latest benchmarks it now runs slightly faster in the Mac OS X operating system than on Windows (same hardware).

Here is an article on some of the new features. One big one for us photographers is the new way of doing black and whites.
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Hoya-Pentax

Catching up on some of my RSS newsfeed, I see that Hoya will buy out Pentax to create Hoya Pentax HD Corporation.

I think this makes a lot of sense, Tokina (a Hoya trademark) already markets Pentax-designed lenses for the Nikon F-mount and Canon EOS-mount. My next lens purchase is going to be a Pentax-designed Tokina.

Most of us think of Hoya as a company that makes really nice filters at a reasonable price. But they also are the Hoya, Kenko, Voigtlander and Slik brand names. If my eyeglasses lenses are any indicator, Hoya is a huge optics company.

With the backing of this giant and the introduction of the K-100D and K-10D, who else thinks Pentax will soon claim the #3 camera spot from Olympus?

Lens QWERTYUIOP

Found on Flickr:

Ok so the deal is right now I’m looking at either a Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 or a nikkor 80-200 2.8. But I see there is the AF-D and the AF-S version of the Nikkor. I can’t find the AF-S anywhere on B&H or anything.. is this an older model? What are the pros and cons of af-s and af-d? Isn’t af-s for single shots and af-d for continuous shooting?

Please help as I’m pretty much a noob at all of this newfangled fancy lens stuff.. what with all the “dg” and “apo” and “hsm” and “d” and “qwertyuiop” lenses

The problem is the AF-S is now sold under 70-200mm, not 80-200mm which is discontinued. AF-S’s are a newer model.

Your first confusion is that Nikon has overloaded the “AF-S” term. On D70-level camera’s “AF-S” stands in contrast to AF-C and stands for single and continuous focusing (which is actually overloaded with two distinct focusing features that are separate on a Nikon D200-level camera).

On lenses, AF-D is actually now just “D” and stands for the addition of distance information delivered through to the metering system. This assists greatly in flash metering. In many new lenses this has been repalced with “G” where the aperture ring has been removed for a cost savings (and thus requiring camera bodies that can control the aperture electronically).

“AF-S” stands for an internal piezoelectric motor included with the lens, (Nikon calls this a Supersonic Wave Motor or SWM).

In this case you are thinking of a lens that would be tagged on the Nikkor group as 70-200mm f/2.8G VR and whose official name is the 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor, a lens I own and love.

In the older 80-200mm models, there are three that are tagged in the group: 80-200mm f/2.8D (the AF-D you allude to), the 80-200mm f/2.8D new (an improved design introduced in 1998 that allowed for faster internal focusing and added a tripod collar), 80-200mm f/2.8D AF-S (the AF-S you allude to). For the sake of completness there was also an 80-200 f/2.8 AF and 80-200 f/2.8 AI-s, but nobody shoots with those anymore.

[A breakdown of lens acronyms after the jump]

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