I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Facebook for quite some time now. To its credit, it has allowed me to keep up with my extended family in ways that I’ve never been able to do before. Twenty years ago, my parents would have found out about a niece’s impending wedding only when they received the invitation or through a chance conversation. Today, I can watch my niece online as she’s deciding on a wedding date, choosing dresses, and enjoying the whole process with her sister.
The downside of Facebook is that its relatively static; because I only have a few friends “in real life” (IRL), it’s not updated very frequently. FriendFeed, on the other hand, is updated constantly with news, banter, photos, and so forth.
To use a poor analogy, FriendFeed is like a coffee shop that I can visit several times a day to meet and greet my online friends; Facebook is more like church, where I can see my (extended) friends and family every Sunday morning.
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Introspection, Web/Tech facebook, relationships, Social Media
Some quick thoughts after about 30 minutes of playing with my new Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 that arrived this morning:
- It’s very lightweight.
- The RAW format is not supported by Apple Aperture.
- When you press the shutter button, it takes the picture. I’ve always thought this was a good thing, allowing you to capture a photo that may not wait for conditions to become perfect.
- It’s really very lightweight.
- “Film Mode” takes some getting used to; basically, it appears to let you switch between Standard, B&W, and Saturated. Think of it as Kodak Gold, Tri-X, and Fuji Velvia.
- The lens is incredibly contrasty. See sample images below.
- The sensor/image stabilization/lens lends itself to very crisp, sharp images.
- My wife calls the body color “puke red.” Hopefully, that means it won’t attract thieves. To me, it says, “$50 cheaper than black!”
- The dipotre adjustment for the (electronic) viewfinder is great; I can use it without glasses.
- Did I mention how lightweight it is?
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Gadgets, Photography lumix, panasonic, Photography
Since everyone else is doing it (yes, if they all jumped off a cliff, I’d do that, too), here are my fearless predictions for the coming year:
- Apple will release a new or upgraded device and everyone with an Apple ID will rush out to buy it while the rest of the world wonders what the big deal is.
- Spammers will increase the volume of unsolicited commercial email they send out.
- A nationally-known politician will be involved in some sort of a scandal.
- A Hawaiian will become President of the USA.
- Yahoo!, AOL, and Microsoft will continue to wonder what they can do as Google increases market share. One of them will buy something.
- Some investors will lose large amounts of money on the stock market, while others continue their losses.
- Some newspapers will stop producing print versions, while others will stop altogether.
- Someone will build a car that runs on beer, and people will beat the crap out of him or her for it.
- Astronomers will discover and name a significant new object beyond the borders of the solar system.
- A very cute animal will be born at a zoo, and we’ll all be bored after weeks of seeing its picture every day.
- Verizon will open up its FIOS service to an additional 240 new homes.
Yeah, well, there you are. Have a blast with that, and be safe.
Introspection, Stupidity, Web/Tech annual, prognostication, year
One of my favorite cameras of all time is my Contax G1 (top photo). As you can probably tell, it is not an SLR (through-the-lens) camera; instead, it’s a 35mm “autofocus rangefinder,” similar in concept to the well-known Leica, but using autofocus technology instead of relying on manual focusing.
The Contax G1 was introduced to the world in the early 1990’s. I got mine when I lived in England around 1998. (Actually, I sold the original one, regretted it, and got another when I came back to the USA in 2001.) In addition to the innovative autofocus rangefinder focusing system, it also had superb lenses by Carl Zeiss.
The rangefinder format has significant advantages over the SLR, especially for wide-angle lenses. The SLR requires a mirror that forces the back of the lens to be several inches away from the film plane; this requires lens manufacturers to design lenses that retro-focus. For example, a 24mm lens would optimally only need to be 24mm from the lens. However, because of the SLR’s design, a 24mm lens focuses to a point and then has additional lens elements that widen the focus to ensure that it reaches the film plane, which is about 50mm from the back of the lens. All that extra glass degrades image quality; on a rangefinder, there’s no such limitation, so lenses are simple and very, very contrasty. You can see examples at my website, the Contax G pages.
Another advantage of rangefinders is that they can be made very small and lightweight because of the lack of the SLR’s mirror box. So a rangefinder is a perfect “everywhere” camera. One of my favorite dictums is that a camera in your hand takes far better pictures than a hugely expensive piece of equipment back at your house or in the car; rangefinders are so small and light they can easily survive being thrown into a briefcase or laptop backpack, and thus are always available.
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Gadgets, Photography canon, panasonic, Photography, rangefinder
Our family is now the proud possessor of a Samsung 32″ HDTV. As I expected, there’s no easy way to slowly and gradually migrate from the older, analog realm into the digital high-def community. So we’re also upgrading the DirecTV DVR, cables, and a number of other smaller items.
We also splurged and got an AppleTV; this is a little set-top box that we can use to show our downloaded movies, TV shows, and other content on the new TV. Somewhat surprisingly to me, the ability to display our photographs has been the real hit of the transition. My wife and son really enjoy looking through our 7,000+ digital photos on the big screen (with background music).
The DirecTV HD box will be installed next week; the rest of the HDMI cables should arrive today (so we’ll be able to view DVDs in their full upscaled glory).
What did you get for Christmas?
Gadgets, Video gear, hd, television
I’m really torn about Evernote. It’s a beautiful concept: keep your notes, files, etc., always available, on any platform, and through the web. I run it on my Mac as well as my iPhone, and it does exactly what it says it does. If I’m away from my Mac, I can take notes on the iPhone and they’ll get synchronized back with my Mac over the ‘net.
That’s the good stuff.
The problem is that Evernote sucks at taking notes. I’ve tried numerous note-taking applications before; some of my favorites are Circus Ponies Notebook as well as Aquamind’s NoteTaker. Both applications have a vastly superior interface for actually taking notes. They support outlining (in multiple ways), creating checklists, taking audio recordings, and so forth. (By the way, why does the Evernote iPhone app allow me to create a voice note but the Mac version doesn’t?) In contrast, Evernote provides a big, empty text box with some really hard-to-use buttons for formatting. Nothing intuitive or useful about it.
Evernote indexes everything (ok, not everything—it sadly does not index the voice notes), including text scanned from uploaded images. If it actually had a decent note-taking interface, it would truly be the killer app.
If only.
Gadgets, Web/Tech productivity, syncronization, webapps
Brian has just launched something cool at Yahoo! Finance.
So we just finished pushing out the latest addition to the world dominating Yahoo! Finance site. A freshly minted, oh so sexy update to the currencies section of the site. There are some really cool interactions for seeing charts across popular currency pairs, and if I may say; the hottest looking currency convertor on the web.
Rock on!
Announcements, Web/Tech finance, upgrades, Yahoo!
As you may (or may not) have noticed, I’ve upgraded this blog by adding the IntenseDebate plugin. However, it seems to have terrible problems with Webkit/Safari; I can’t login to my IntenseDebate account using Safari, which kind of makes it difficult for me to comment on my own blog.
Any suggestions? I’d love to know why they don’t support Safari.
Web/Tech comments, javascript, safari, wordpress
This blog is now equipped with Google Friend Connect, a MyBlogLog clone from our friends up in Mountain View. Somewhat unsurprisingly, my first new member is a spammer.
Web/Tech google, Social Media, spam
My Smart Fortwo
Last June, when gas prices were still in the midst of their long climb upwards, I placed a reservation for a Smart Fortwo. I’m currently driving a Jeep Wrangler that gets about 17 MPG; when the price of gas was $4.00 per gallon or higher, I was spending a lot of money each week on my 70 mile-per-day commute.
The Smart seems like a robust little commuter vehicle, and that’s what I’m intending it for. 99% of all the driving I do is to and from work with only me in the car; the Smart should save a bundle of money, even considering the fact that I’ll have a new (very small) car payment.
The reservation system is interesting; I paid $99 for the privilege (fully refundable), and they originally told me that my delivery date was Oct-Dec, 2009. Since then, however, it’s been steadily retreating, and now it stands at Jan-Mar, 2009. I have no definitive answers, of course, as to why the date has been changing. Perhaps SmartUSA has added additional manufacturing capacity. Perhaps the general economic climate has made it unfeasible for many people to purchase a new car, even one as inexpensive as that.
In any case, I’ll (hopefully) soon be in possession of one. Red. I’ve always wanted a red car.
Gadgets autos, cars, fortwo, red, smart
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