Huffpost mentions that the Governator doesn’t have a motorcycle license.
Am I the only person who dislikes Arnold Schwarzenegger being Governer of my state who doesn’t understand the political importance of this? Is this a felony or something?
Sounds to me that he was just being stupid.
Moritz Petersen took this wonderful photograph on Flickr:
This sparked a discussion on C.A.F.E. on how he managed to get the wonderful star pattern on his night shot. Continue reading
Someone asked on Flickr if they should delete their camera raw files after converting to Adobe DNGs. Certainly you can see a strong pressure from Adobe to do so in order to save some hard drive space.
I don’t. Continue reading
Drew mentioned that Apple released an update to Aperture. This is probably the first of many though don’t expect anything major:
Aperture depends on the ImageIO Framework to do the file handling and Core Image to do the majority of the heavy lifting in the UI. So the largest changes should be expected when Apple updates the operating system, not Aperture.
It is sad that I have to resort to foreign outlets to be able to read a writeup of Iraq’s elections that is free of pundit sound-bites. That sadness is a different and deeper sort when I read the Independent’s analysis of the Iraqi election.
The neo-con justification for the Iraq War has always been to create a Reganesque “City on the Hill” for the Middle East and cause a reverse domino effect. Many of the brightest minds on the right were willing to sacrifice any means to create that end, even if it meant lying to us.
Though I worried this might be a March of Folly, I hoped I would be wrong. We put America on the path of an empire and all trajectory of all empires contains the fall of it. Maybe those who actually didn’t just use poly sci to fill a humanities elective would prove me to be naïve, for how could one college quarter of game theory compare to a lifetime of agenda setting? Continue reading
Last week, I wanted to create a translucent layer to grey out functionality on the site. To do this, create a div that covers the window and set the background color to black.
But how to make it translucent? This webpage on CSS opacity covers how to do this and many other useful things:
.grey_background {
background: black;
filter:alpha(opacity=25);
-moz-opacity:.25;
opacity:.25;
}
The “filter” rule is for IE (taking advantage of a very old feature that dates back at least 5 years) and the “-moz-opacity” rule is no longer needed for newer versions of Firefox and Mozilla which support the CSS3 spec. Safari also supports the spec.
I was looking for the English Nikon D70 manual (all I can seem to find is the Spanish version) and found that this FAQ pointed me to a PDF of the manual downloadable from Nikon Singapore.
The business section of the Merc today has two articles on the front page about HP’s nascent recovery under interim CEO Mark Hurd.
So many people base their measure of a person on what they heard about them than the evidence staring them in the face of incompetence of their actions—people’s high opinion of ex-CEO Carly Fiorina is an example of that.
What I found so interest was not the articles themselves but in the inset graphics. One part of one inset was fascinating:
Where HP intends to grow
- Distributed Computing: Companies increasingly are moving data off mainframes and onto distributed servers in multiple locations. HP sells servers and storage technology and services to help companies manage big computing tasks. It is also developing ways to automate data centers.
- Mobile Computing: HP already develops mobile technology such as notebook and handheld computers. Security features and its management software will becoming increasingly important
- Digital Printing: HP sells a wide range of printers for consumers and businesses, including pritners for digital cameras. It entered the commercial and industrial digital printing arena with acquisitions like Indico and Scitex and is also developing multifunction copiers/printers.
I met Adam Tow only once, briefly at the Apple Store Palo Alto opening in 2001. He was on the roof next door taking photos of it.
From what little I know about him, he has three obsessions: Macs, mobile devices and photography. That gives him a special star in my book. So it should come as no surprise that he announced Annoture which allows round-tripping between Aperture and iView Media Pro. Continue reading
In a NYT editorial concerning America’s use of not-so-clever redefining the word “torture” to deny that America uses “extraordinary rendition†and similar tactics to cause de-facto torture:
But that doesn’t make it any less disturbing that the United States government seems to have lost its ability to distinguish between acts that may occur sub rosa in some exceptional, critical situations and the basic rules of proper international behavior.
Sub rosa means “pledged to secrecy†and is a Latin phrase (literally “under the roseâ€) which is a Middle Age practice that referenced a Greek myth I had not heard of.1
I first looked up the word when I wondered why SubRosaSoft, a Mac software company, got their name.
In any case, it’s a cool word. Also notice that the title of the editorial: “Secretary Rice’s Rendition†is a play on the double-meaning of the word rendition. I wasn’t aware of the legal meaning until this year—I can only guess as to how that word managed the tortuous path from its dramatic origin to the strange meaning today.