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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.

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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)

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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 Suns

Well, 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.

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Mmmmmkay?

Yeah, I’d like to give a plug to the following syndicated accounts that currently have only one reader, mmmmmkay? There are lawyers, doctors, famous Microsofties and other assorted geeks in the mix. I bet you’ll find something interesting there.














So I’m gonna go ahead and give a special plug to a Scientific American feed – which was created by someone very dear to me.

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The Glory Of Bakelite Phones

I bought a nice old black bakelite rotary phone on eBay for a dollar. After cleaning the phone from half a century of crud and splicing in a modular jack I plugged it in. Guess what – it still works!


(image taken from this auction)

Ahh, the forgotten sound of the clickety-clack of the rotary dial. Do you still remember it? And this phone _will_ work in a blackout. I think I’ll buy another couple of phones just to rip out the rotary dialer and play with it. I wonder if the robotic dialer they showed in the first Matrix movie was something that actually existed. Dialer pens on the other hand existed for sure:


(image taken from this auction )

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I Will Survive

I went on a used book shopping spree last weekend. Among other things I ordered Stingray : The Lethal Tactics of the Sole Survivor and 101 Survival Secrets: How to Make $1000,000, Lose 100 Pounds, and Just Plain Live Happily. I have a whole shelf in my library dedicated to psychological warfare books. And the original Survivor was probably the best piece of psyop action that I have ever seen on TV. Although the books seem to be of bathroom reading quality, I just could not pass them up for a dollar twenty five + shipping.

I also learned something interesting about the Survivor theme song, Ancient Voices. The chant that goes “ei i oh – e – eoh e – ohli – la a i i oli oli” sounded kind of Russian to me. And guess what – I was not mistaken.

“Landau was quoted as saying the theme was “part of an ancient Russian folk song that I’ve totally bastardised” by Entertainment Weekly in June.”

I think what he means by that is that he used a generic chant of “oy luli-luli-luli” that is very common in Russian folk songs. Sort of like Russian “yippie-ka-yee”.

While I was searching for links I found this funny story on Usenet.

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Call Me Dr. Uncoherentrant Rafi

My brain is completely fried. I spent the last two weekends writing horrible XSLT templates for work. This Sunday I was I was listening to Survivor soundtrack, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Doc Watson cds. Big Drama on the Survivor CD goes especially well with my mood right now. I hate XSLT.

Lost a few pounds. Not eating in the evening and running seems to have nudged me off the plateau. In fact, I am going to the gym right now.

In other news: the doctor’s office with a phone number that is similar to my work number is back in business! The new doctor’s name is either Rafi or Ravi.

Reading The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson. All I have to say, this is going to be the subject of the next “Best Sci-Fi You Haven’t Read” article. , if you are reading this, check out Night Land and Hodgson’s biography. Good stuff.

Why did I get into an argument about abortion with ? I don’t have any spare brain cycles for that. What will I do next, start arguing about animal rights with MIA ? Am I turning into ?

Wright’s book The Golden Age seems to be on a Hugo list at NESFA. I know it’s worthy of a Hugo and I think Gernsback would have agreed too. Heh heh, interesting how spellcheckers suggest “greenback” for “Gernsback”.

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Airconditeonery

These real smart real estate agents were havening a strategery : let’s use that computer thing to put together a flyer and post it in in the office window. And this evening I brung my camera with me and took a picture of it:

Mantainence and airconditeonery. Leny and Boris lerned rite real good. And what an economy of words! Oh, and the amazing mathematical formulas. This is advanced real estate calculus, don’t even try to comprehend it.

Real estate broker’s fee is 5 percent to 7 percent of the sales price. That’s pittance for the services provided, wouldn’t you agree?

A phrase that I hear a lot these days is “Well he used to be a programmer, but now he is a real estate agent”.

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Real Weight Loss With Deadprogrammer, Fair and Balanced

I’ve been working late and on weekends, but I still try to run with a Polar heart rate thingy almost every day. These workouts in the Newscorp gym make me feel “fair and balanced” all over. I started stretching out more, but I still can’t run for longer than an hour at 4 mph because my right knee starts to hurt. says that I am a wuss, but I am not going to listen to him.

I haven’t seen much weight loss (3 or 4 lb at most) since I started running, and that’s a bit surprising. I am still on the Atkins diet too, so that’s doubly surprising. I am trying a new strategery though: a heavy low carb breakfast, a salad for lunch and nothing for dinner. That should work.

The gym that Rupert built is amazing. All machines in it have a very nice usability feature: all adjustable handles, pins and levers are color coded yellow. Steve Krug would have loved it. The treadmills can link up to a wireless Polar heart rate monitor strap. Supposedly all of those machines can work with a special chip thingy which would record your workout stats. I am going to look into getting one of those.