Author: deadprogrammer
-
Hemmed by Book Nerds or But It’s Literature!
: “…all of the people who work in the book section are old, and know everything about all shitty books and treat me like i’m stupid because i thought that Hemmingway went in the general fiction section, when it’s literature (since EVERYONE knows that…) …” -
Uhhh, Ummm, Technically, God ….
This morning I was looking into ways to customize Ultraedit and came up upon this interesting piece of Ultraedit trivia:
… On March 18th 1996, we had received 11 “registrations’” for UltraEdit. This was a good day, and of course was an encouragement to us – But will it stop – is one product enough? This was tough, I didn’t have time to generate more products.
As I went to bed that night, I was praying about the situation, and I just felt like saying to God “If you give me 20 registrations tomorrow I will KNOW that I should quit my full time job, that it is your will”. As soon as I said this, I was excited, I felt sure it was going to happen. I also prayed for forgiveness if I was wrong to ask – I don’t like to try and make deals with God but really wanted his confirmation.
…
I got home later that day and checked the mail – No registrations! I was disappointed. I checked the fax machine, there was an order for 10! I couldn’t wait to log on and found additional registrations – a total of 21!!!I am embarrassed to admit, at this point, being a technical person, I mentally noted that 21 was not 20 – I had asked for 20
…
-
I Am Sorry :(
Sadly the Company is no longer in eBook business. On the other hand, because of this you can do much more with your eBook device than ever in terms of creating your own content.
iDEO designed descendants of Softbook (REB1200 and GEB2150) are probably the finest eBook devices that were ever available to consumers. Rocketbook descendants (REB1100 and GEB1150) gave a better bang for the buck, and were marvels of engineering in their own right. And now all you can do is hunt down some of them on eBay.
I am going to write more about hardware eBooks later, but for now enjoy this funny error message from my REB1200.
-
Chrysler Building : Peekaboo, I See You
Heh, heh. This is an interesting idea. I should try that.
-
One Hundred Views Of Empire State
So I was buying overpriced fotoclips at the photography museum shop. Then I decided to buy a few postcards for sending to my non-writing friends. The only one New York picture I liked half way was the one on Empire State Building with the subway globe. But then I quickly remembered the globe itself was half a block from where I was. So there it is. Zero creativity, 100% cliche. Saved 75 cents.
-
WML: The Perfect Teapot
After some research and trial and error I finally found the best tea making device.
It’s a Bodum Assam teapot. It has two advantages over the clay teapots. First of all it’s clear. It makes it very easy to judge the strength of your infusion. Second, the french press like plunger filter stops the infusion process, yet you don’t have to take out and discard tea leaves immediately. One drawback might be that the tea cools down faster than in a clay pot, but I actually like cold tea.By the way, I highly recomend Kitchen Kapers. I buy a lot of my kitchen gadgets from them.
-
Auto Moto Velo Photo
My two favorite photography books about New York are David Bradford’s Drive by Shootings : Photographs by a New York Taxi Driver and Harvey Wang’s New York.
You might have noticed a decorative border that I almost always put around my photographs. I first seen it in Harvey Wang’s book. I asked my photography professor in college about how that effect was achieved. She explained to me that Wang took his negative holder and filed down the edges. This projected not only the picture from the negative, but also a little bit of the edge and film sprockets onto the paper. Besides looking cool and framing the picture nicely this also was a way of showing off – this shows that none of his photographs were cropped. It’s like he was saying – look, my framing is perfect, cropping is for wussies. I am a wussie. I crop like there is no tomorrow. And since I am only using digital these days, I rely on a Photoshop plugin called Extensis Photoframe.
-
Lomographic Fotoclips
Lomography kind of reminds me of Feng Shui. Long before I knew about Feng Shui I used to follow some of it’s rules. For instance I have an absolute hate of sharp corners pointed in my direction. I usually arranged all my books and other objects so that there would be no sharp corners or edges pointed at me. Same thing with Lomography. When I was a poor college student I used to always carry a single use camera in my bag, and sometimes I would shoot “from the hip”. Even now I use my Powershot G3 in a similar manner. But even after reading a bit about Feng Shui and Lomography my adaptation of their techniques follow Sturgeon’s coefficient. I am not into hanging crystals on things and taking overly abstract pictures. I still only do what feels right.
Anyway, Lomography is a big business these days. One of the outragiously priced products that I recently purchased and like a lot are stylishly misspelled fotoclips (~$10 per 100). They are tiny and somewhat badly cast pieces of plastic that allow you to make 2d and 3d murals out of your pictures. These would work great for
and his wall of postcards and ‘s “webcam” pictures. Lomo has one of these retarded shopping cart engines that doesn’t let you easily link to products, so use froogle to score some.
(both pictures taken from lomography.com) -
Z-Ray Vision
Man: “Psst, you want to buy organ? Fresh and cheap, ready for transplant.”
Fry: “Ooh, what’s this?”
Man: “Ah, is x-ray eye. See through anything.”
Fry: “Wait a minute, this says z-ray.”
Man: “Z is just as good! In fact is better, is two more than x!”
Futurama episode 1ACV07 – My Three SunsWell, you all know that I consider Canon Powershot G2 and G3 the best digital cameras a normal person can actually afford. You also probably know that I pay close attention to naming schemes. So here’s a little story with a surprise ending for you.
The granfather of the camera I like so much was Pro 70, which was the first camera to have a flip screen.
The next one was called Powershot G1. It was a very popular and well designed camera. It’s sensor was very sensitive to IR radiation which makes it probably the best digital camera for infrared photography. The biggest complaint was the color of the body. Most photographers hate silver plastic.
Next up was Powershot G2. It was almost identical to G3 with slight changes to UI and optics. Most G2s were made out of the same ugly silver plastic, but there was a special all black edition. I was lucky enough to buy a black G2. I had to order it from Canada.
Powershot G3 was the next camera in G series. Again, slight changes in UI, optics and more significantly a 4 megapixel sensor. Again, silver. Will they ever listen?
Now, the next camera is called Powershot G5. It has a 5 megapixel sensor which according to reports is a bit crappier than the one in G3. At least they dropped the silver plastic.
But wait, what happened to Powershot G4? Did it suffer the fate of Netscape 5? The rumour floated around that G4 was trademarked by Apple. Well, Apple has a Powermac G5 also.
The correct answer appears to be this:
“The word “four” is read as “si” in Chinese Mandarin and “shi” in Japanese, a close homonym for the word for death in both languages and in the Cantonese dialect spoken in Hong Kong. “Hmm, I wonder how those Powermacs sold in Japan and China.