A very funny look at studio photography in the '70s. The photos and captions are just great.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Nonja (1952-2007) RIP
I was sorry to learn that Nonja, the world's oldest living orangutan died Saturday at Miami's Metrozoo. She was 55 years old and was not suffering of anything more than arthritis at her advanced age, according to Zoo authorities.
I saw her many times at Miami's Metrozoo as you can see on this photo from September 2007
We'll miss you Nonja.
January 1st Airline Battery Ban
New TSA regulations banning rechargeable lithium batteries as checked luggage goes in effect January 1st.
You can carry batteries inside your devices (phones, ;aptops, ca,eras, mp3 players). Spares have to be carried with you in your carry-on baggage, and you may not carry spares in your checked-in luggage unless they are inside the devices.
This is more paranoia from the government. They are afraid of fires. Whats next? Sedate us and carry us in strait jackets?
The rule comes with a chart.
Let's look at this from an engineering perspective.
My Nikon camera battery is rated at 1500mAh (current time, or IT) at 7.4V (voltage or V). The formula for power capacity in watt-hours is :
PC = IT x V
Therefore, the battery's power capacity is 11.1 Watt-hours.
Note for those folks who don't play with these units, mA is milliamperes or 1/1000 of an ampere, the unit for current flow. We'll come back to this issue later.
This is below the 100 Watt-hour threshold. To meet the threshold, I need nine of these batteries. All of my spare batteries are in the plastic "sleds" that they are sold with - note that the isolation of battery contacts is another very important part of the TSA directives.
The open question is how the aggregate is managed by TSA, and how we can provide TSA with definitive information to show that the batteries are below their thresholds. Unfortunately, most manufacturer's sites for the do not show the technical specification for the battery with a watt-hour rating.
We're all going to be needing to be able to explain the battery systems to TSA, or not to have spare batteries in our carry-on bags. As pleasant as some TSA folks can be (or not), it's highly likely that they will not have been trained on units like mA, A, or watt-hours anytime soon. Understanding the issue of Li gram equivalents is going to be like advanced doctoral studies for most of the screeners, so we should be prepared to have to either throw away spare (expensive) batteries at the security checkpoint or to not bring them any spares on these trips.
Wait till the insurance company finds how many rechargeable lithium batteries I have lying around the house. Then I'll be in trouble.
This sounds like one of those stupid decisions by committee.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Penn and Teller Explain Sleight of Hand
Penn and Teller explain one of their tricks. (YouTube)
I saw them live in their Las Vegas show. Well worth it.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
How many megapixels do I need?
As a photographer, I get asked about cameras from time to time. One question has to do with how many megapixels are needed to get a decent print. My answer is generally that megapixels do not matter as much as other features of a camera. It is only valid when you want to print extra large sizes where it starts to be a factor (or also for big crops but that will degrade resolution and print size).
Generally speaking any recent camera that has 5 megapixel or better resolution will do fine in the common sizes such as 4x6 and 5x7. Even when you get to 8x10 it is hard, or almost impossible to tell the difference between at 5mp and 10mp camera.
Thom Hogan wrote a very good article and chart on this subject, that might be helpful to help you understand the relation between megapixels, resolution (dpi) and print sizes.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The 100 year old photo blog
Shorpy, an amazing portal into the past. 260+ pages of vintage photos. A must see.
Asteroid could hit Mars January 30
A newly discovered asteroid has a 1 in 75 chance of hitting Mars on January 30. The original odds were put at 1 in 350 then 1 in 75, which are unusually short odds. They say they could refine it even closer in days to come.
The information comes from Near Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The size is estimated at around 50 meters (160 feet) across. It might be a miss (most probably), but if it hits, it could have a force of 3 megatons of TNT.
Looks like we may be in for a show in late January.
A couple of software development gems
A couple of posts caught my eye as very useful this week. One is Doug pointing us to John Robbin's Code signing in Vista, cheaper and easier than you thought. I don't do apps for Vista as we are still in XP at work but I use Vista at home and the "an unidentified program wants access to your computer" message gets old fast and it does look a tad unprofessional.
The other one is "Updated ASP.NET wwCaptcha Control on the WebLog" by Rick Strahl. Quick an easy way to add CAPTCHAs to your webpage.
Photo of the day
Great Blue Heron in the early morning light at Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Alt.Santas Put the X Back in Xmas
Why is there one Santa, with no competition in a country no two people order the same coffee drink?
Lore Sjöberg gives us an answer with a set of other possible Santas, to improve on the current Santa monopoly.
I like the Atheistic Santa's gifts: a set of wooden periodic-table blocks and a scale model of archaeopteryx.
(Via Pharyngula)
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Ennio Morricone's theme of "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"
Ennio Morricone's "The Ecstasy of Gold" from the movie "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly".
(Via C&L)
Monday, December 17, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Saturday, December 15, 2007
FSX SP2 released
Microsoft has released Flight Simulator X SP2
Here's the download link in English:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/6/9/d69519cc-b2bb-44c1-84d3-b9f77507f813/fsx_sp2_ENU.msi
For other languages (many are offered), here's a complete list.
Note that SP2 has the same functionality as Acceleration, without the additional aircraft and missions.
Jon has a list of fixes included.
(Via Jon Patch)
Photo of the day
1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing
Las Vegas Auto Collection at the Imperial Palace Hotel
Friday, December 14, 2007
Photo of the day
1963 Jaguar E-Type at the Las Vegas Auto Collection at the Imperial Palace Hotel
When you visit Las Vegas, do not miss this huge collection of antique and classic cars.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Gift for geeks list: 2007 edition
Jeff at Coding Horror published his annual gift for geeks: 2007 edition list.
Don't miss it. There's some good stuff in it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Photo of the day
Let's see. This past month I visited Las Vegas and Southern Utah, then Thanksgiving at Disney World in Orlando and visited with photo friends to shoot the Central Florida wetlands. With the gorgeous weather this time of year (sunny, drier and 72F to 82F during the day) I'm visiting the local wetlands on weekends, therefore I have lots of new photos to share.
Today I'll show a nice looking bird found at Animal Kingdom. Enjoy.
Masked Plover
As always they are all in my gallery.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
CompUSA goes out of business
End of the line for CompUSA
The irony of a big-box store, after pushing mom&pop stores out of business for many years, has now been pushed out of business by bigger-box stores...
Friday, December 07, 2007
Photo of the day
Gertie the dinosaur
I always loved Gertie since I saw the cartoon decades ago. Most people who visit Disney's MGM see Gertie as an ice cream shop sculpture, and have no clue about the reasons for paying a homage to her. In short, Gertie, the brain child of early cartoonist Winsor McCay was the star of the first animated cartoon in 1914.
Here you can see the complete McCay's movie on the making of Gertie, from 1914 (You Tube).
You can see Gertie from 1921.
Here's a shorter version of "Gertie the Dinosaur" from 1914 (YouTube).
If you are a movie and cartoon buff, you'll love Gertie, the one that started it all.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Coding Horror: Please Don't Steal My Focus
Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror a has a good post on software that steals your focus. Talk about nasty! Besides being very annoying and cutting productivity, it is potentially dangerous as he attests.
I love this comment by Jack:
We don't need no pop-up windows,
We don't need no modal box,
No focus-stealing bad behaviour,
Coders leave my apps alone,
Hey! Coders! Leave my apps alone.
Whatever happenned to instaling updates that don't require an immediate reboot? Microsoft should learn from this.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Monday, December 03, 2007
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
Article: What’s Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms?
Rick Strahl [MS MVP] has written an outstanding article for CoDe Magazine (What’s Ailing ASP.NET Web Forms?). It explains his views on the pros and cons of the current MS ASP.NET technology and it has the best description I've seen so far of Microsoft's upcoming ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) paradigm. An excellent read.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Photo of the day
Horse in Southern Utah, on the road from Zion to Bryce
35mm - 1/800s - F/4 - ISO 100
Monday, November 26, 2007
Using Google to Crack Hashed Passwords
This interesting article teaches (again) the value of using good passwords. This attack would not need searching for a hash. A dictionary attack would do too with such a lousy password. Will they ever learn?
Note: Also bad on the part of WordPress for not salting their passwords.
(Via Bruce Schneier)
Photo of the day
Great Blue Heron
Shot this weekend at Viera Wetlands (near Titusville, Florida)
250mm - 1/1250s - F/5.6 - ISO 200
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Photo of the day
The Bellagio with Caesars Palace on the right, during my recent trip to Las Vegas
24mm - 1/125s - F/10 - ISO 100
Installed Visual Studio 2008
Downloaded VS 2008 in about 3 hours and burned to a DVD as I mentioned before. Tried to install in my older XP Pro PC and it gave me an error. I then switched to my new Vista Ultimate box and it installed without a hitch.
No time to play with it now. I'm leaving in a few minutes to spend the Thankgsgiving holiday with the mouse in Orlando, then meet some photographer friends in Viera Wetlands (Melbourne, FL and Merrit Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville, FL).
Have fun and enjoy the weekend!
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Steps to Uninstall VS 2008 Beta2 before installing VS 2008 RTM
I downloaded VS 2008 Professional last night. It took about three hours and went smoothly. Burned it to a DVD early this morning before leaving for work, so I did not have enough time to install. That comes next.
Scott Guthrie has published a good set of instructions on how to Uninstall VS 2008 Beta2 before installing the VS 2008 Final Release.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Ken Levy posts photos of his early long-haired look
For all of us fans of Ken Levy: he wrote an intro to the special CoDe Focus issue on Visual Studio Extensibility (VSX), as part of his (fairly new) job as Program Manager for Visual Studio Ecosystem.
The funny thing, which he pointed me to when I spent time with him at DevConnections 2007 last week in Vegas, is that he posted three pictures of him, one fairly recent as he looks now and two from his long-hair days, one of them when he was very young before he started in the Fox world. Check it out.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Released
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 today! You can download it if you have an MSDN subscription, else you can download a 90-day free trial.
If you want to use the free Visual Studio 2008 Express editions (which are much smaller and totally free), you can download them here.
If all you want is the .NET Framework 3.5, you can download it here.
See Scott Guthrie's post for details.
Security experts: NIST encryption standard may have NSA backdoor
From ArsTechnica:
"According to security experts, an algorithm for generating random numbers that is included in an official standard documented by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could potentially include a backdoor planted by the NSA."
Interesting article, based on another one by Bruce Schneier.
WW II's Colossus Has Been Rebuilt
WW II's Colossus has been rebuilt. Not surprisingly, a modern PC is faster.
(Via Bruce Schneier)
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Back home
Back from vacation. Attended a great DevConnections conference in Las Vegas. Met several friends among the speakers and attendees (Rick Strahl, Julia Lehrman, Dino Esposito, Ken Levy, Markus Egger, Ellen Whitney, Miguel Castro, and finally got to meet Tracy Holzer too!)
The rest of the trip was a vacation in Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion NP and a few other places. More on that later.have over 1600+ photos to process, so it will take time. And a new computer just arrived to boot! (more on that later also).
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Going to Devconnections!
I am leaving this weekend to attend the Devconnections Conference in Las Vegas, then take a vacation for a few days in Bryce Canyon National Park in Southern Utah.
I will have very limited, if any, net access so I won't be able to post much. Expect some photos when I return.
If you attend Devconnections and see me, introduce yourself and say hi.
Friday, November 02, 2007
Thursday, November 01, 2007
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