The New York Times had an interesting article on the Labour Party and Tony Blair.
Apparently as Tony Blair gets pushed out, Gordon Brown will be replacing him. The article then talks about the uneasy alliance between the two:
Tony Blair exits
The moon… hypersaturated
I noticed on digg an interesting thread on the color of the moon with an amazing photo taken by Noel Carboni:
Three new dSLRs and “camera feel”
David Pogue writes an article about three new dSLRs that I’ve been talking around in this blog.
They are:
- The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi ($800) with Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens ($900);
- the Nikon D80 ($1000) with AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED kit lens ($1300);
- hte Panasonic Lumix DMC-L1 with Leica D Vario-Elmarit 14-50mm f/2.8-3.5 O.I.S. kit lens ($2000)
I love the article because there is little bias and he explains the differences in terms most people can understand. (I delve into the technical too much to be a Dave Pogue.)Continue reading
Patriotism is not blind devotion
“Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.
A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience…”
—Rocky Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City
This is in response to Rumsfeld’s speech in that same city equating dissent with appeasing the Nazi’s. To understand the context, Salt Lake City is the capital and largest city in the state of Utah which is the most pro-Bush state in the union and one of the few places where he still enjoys a positive approval rating. This city and state is also the home town of my mother’s family.
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Aryan Fever
Someone from Taiwan told me their sister isn’t digging some guy because he’s Asian and she’s not into Asians.
This, of course, reminded me of “Yellow Fever.” What’s weird about that mockumentary is that it isn’t about “Yellow Fever” since that’s when a white guy is digging some East Asian girl.
What do you call it when a asian girl only goes out with white guys?
I asked my good friend Redgee for what they call it—after all, if anyone should know it should be a Filipino. 😀
First he suggested “twinkie” but that wasn’t quite right. He didn’t know so he coined the term “Aryan Fever.”
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Hatin’ Katie
Am I the only person in the world who simply thinks that the Katie Couric thing was just a pretty good retouching job?
(Some people say that this isn’t retouched and then go into a spirited defense involving anamorphic film. Haha you guys are funny! I bet you believe that those girls on the magazine covers at the checkout stand really look like that.)
Sure, I think as much as the next guy that someone as vapid as Katie Couric being anchorwoman for CBS is a sign of the Apocalypse, but puh-leez…Continue reading
Light Painting
This movie is simply amazing. To understand why, you still have to know what “light painting” is.
Basically, the concept is to take your camera and put it on a tripod and set it on bulb exposure. You open the shutter, then take a lighter, matches, or a flashlight and paint the scene (or doodle), and then close the shutter.
These people did that, did it again, and again, until they had made a stop-motion movie!
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memcached
Question: Hey, my friend at Y! vertical search is looking for a decent memcached library in PHP but he says apparently too many of them. I haven’t even looked at the problem since I’ve never hit that sort of load with my session store yet.
Any suggestions of one library/code snippet in particular? Something quick and dirty.
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Canon is the only brand…
Reid Stott, an unapologetic Canon photographer, quotes: “Canon is the only D-SLR brand to own and manufacture the sensor, processor and lenses in house.”
How come when I read that I think to myself the days when Apple was the only personal computer brand to have their own design (industrial, chipset, architecture, protocols), software operating system, and manufacturing “in house”?
How did that turn out for them again?
Nikon’s compact digital (S)uccessor
Photokina is coming and the pre-announcements are coming with it. Today it’s Nikon’s turn.
I thought I’d pick out one camera to mention: The Nikon Coolpix S10.
It’s only one of many Nikon compact cameras with Vibration Reduction built in. The other cameras are the thin, periscope style S7c and the more standard compact L5. (The S9 and L6 don’t have vibration reduction.)
By the way, Nikon’s designations are quite confusing. The key is understanding that Nikon uses the letter designation to denote the budget for the camera: L = budget, S = stylish, P = professional. Then the number after it is in order by time. This leads to confusion like the L6 being worse than the L5 and the S7c being an S8 with WiFi, and both being better than the S9. And the S10 being completely different than the S8 or S7c… more like a newer S4. Very silly!Continue reading