Argh!

I lost all my photos today.

The net result is I lost about one and a half months of photos permanently (around 1000 images), about six months of originals that haven’t been burned yet to disk, lost days of work, and shot up my entire backup regiment.

I’m also one crash/corruption from losing everything.Continue reading

Torture and civilization

“Ensuring torture is totally banned under American law is a touchstone issue that defines our very civilization, to include its continued embrace of Englightenment values, a belief in progress in the face of adversity, and ensuring that our most odious enemies are not successful in having us sully our human rights leadership, one so hard earned through the Cold War.”
—Greg Djerejian, Neoconservative, “Has Waterboarding been banned?

The Starship Zend-erprise

Hello

Thank you again for submitting a proposal for speaking at the Zend/PHP Conference in October. We have had an overwhelming response to our Call for Papers and, as a result, have had a difficult time in deciding which proposals to accept. After examining your proposal carefully, I am writing to inform you that it was not accepted in the first review cycle. However, we are placing it on a waiting list for further consideration.

Most importantly, thank you for your patience as we investigate expanding the Conference schedule and thank you very much for submitting a proposal to speak at the Conference.

Ahh, the standard rejection letter! But how I got it is anything but standard and that’s what I want to muse about in this article.Continue reading

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:

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.
Continue reading