July 2007 Archives

No, the picture posted on July 27th is not a picture of a wet surface. In fact, in the picture is no water on any surface at all. The surface is completely dry. But yes, the surface reflects the light coming in from the balcony doors. Below are two pictures that reveal the contemporary glass dining room table located in, well, yes, the dining room! I know; it's odd. Perhaps that's why I like it so! In addition to the unique glass, I love the pedestal as well.

This was sent in from a friend on the coast:

Insatiable is not sustainable!

(Click to enlarge)

The answer will follow in a day or two.

I have frequently heard this sentiment expressed from visitors to my home. Well, in past years. Today Atlanta is being developed at such an extreme rate, the green of trees is becoming a mere memory. I returned from Boston to find all of the trees across the street from me marked with a large flourescent orange "X" for destruction. High rise developments will replace them. Up the street two large areas have just been cleared of trees for similar "luxury" developments. These were old, tall, grand trees.

So I decided to create this little photo essay. Below is a picture from Google Earth of the area in which I live. (Clicking on the top picture of the area will bring up an enlarged view.) Each colored dot is where I was standing when I took the picture numbered with the same color. For example: the red dot near "1" is where I stood facing the number "1" when I shot the picture below called "1: Near the Church." The green dot is where I stood when I shot the two pictures "3: North Woods" and "4: South Woods" and so forth. Clicking on the pictures below will also open a window with a larger picture.

Obviously several of these areas have already been developed since the Google Earth satellite image was loaded. I'm not against progress; I'm just a tree hugger!

Google Image of the Neighborhood

1: Near the Church (All trees destroyed)

2: Across from Another Church (All trees destroyed)


3: North Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


4: South Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


5: Condos Part 1 (All trees destroyed)


6: Condos Part 2 (All trees destroyed)


7: West Woods (All trees will be destroyed)


8: Already Developed (All trees destroyed, these planted)


9: Development Now Underway (All trees destroyed)

Amazingly, a 109 this morning. I haven't awoke to a normal blood glucose for many years! I should have become the bionic "mac" sooner.

A friend of mine called attention to the title of the post below. It couldn't have been a typo as the "c" key and the "n" key are not next to each other. Hmm...

Today I became a bionic man. I am now tethered to an insulin pump. The doctor's office asked that I not take my morning insulin. So my blood glucose was high this morning. After a couple of hours on the pump I was in the normal range, where I have remained all day. At dinner tonight I had a blood glucose of 97!! This is shocking! I don't recall the last time I was below 100 other than when having a low blood sugar "episode."

And I love the new Paradigm Link® Blood Glucose Monitor that came with the pump. I chose the black model. It automatically beams the reading into the pump. All I then have to do is enter the number of grams of carbs I am eating and the pump recommends the correct bolus dose of insulin. Very cool.

The nurse that trained me on the pump today was very helpful. She also taught me how to test on my arm. I am willing to bet money that I would not have been so bad at testing if I had known how to do this sooner. It doesn't hurt at all. In fact, I don't even feel it!! Honest to god!! If someone had told me this I wouldn't have believed them.

And only the tiniest amount of blood comes to the surface of the skin. It seems that the new testing monitor virtually only requires a single molecule of blood to suck it up onto the testing strip. In 3 - 5 seconds the monitor provides the reading and beams it to the insulin pump. I love this!

And finally, I can never remember to check my blood glucose. In fact, more times than not, I forget to even eat lunch. The insulin pump vibrates to remind me when it's time to eat. It even vibrates 2 hours later to remind me to check the blood glucose level again. Since it doesn't hurt and is a very quick process, I don't mind doing it nearly as much!

So what's the down side? The cost of the testing strips is absurd. My insurance only provides an 11% discount, so the difference is the "co-pay." They should call it the "you-pay." I will have to learn how to count the grams of carbs I eat. I am not good at determining the portion size. And I'll see how sleeping with the pump goes tonight.

Oops! I'm vibrating. Time to check my blood glucose level. Dear god, only 156 two hours after dinner!! This will be a very interesting journey.

This joke is making the rounds again.

The secretary of defense notified the president this morning that three Brazilian troops had pulled out of the coalition forces in Iraq. President Bush gasped and, with terror in his eyes, asked Karl Rove under his breath, "I forget, Karl...just how many is a Brazilian?"

I'm reading Al Gore's latest book, The Assault on Reason. He states that he doesn't doubt George W to be a very intelligent man. Mr. Gore explicates a very thought-provoking and compelling look at a much deeper and more complex set of problems that have served to create the times in which we live. Even if you are a Republican that deeply supports the president, this book is a must read! I highly recommend it.

I've been in Boston all last week. It was generally rainy and overcast. Upon returning to the sunny south...

Shockingly, yesterday I noticed that the angle of the sun was definitely different, casting longer shadows that portend of Fall, a favorite time of year! I love it! And today the weather was so unseasonably cool as to be fantastic! In the breezy low 70ºs.

Florentijn Hofman seems to be so infatuated with rubber ducks that he made this giant rubber ducky for "Loire Estuary 2007," which is an outdoor contemporary art exhibition taking place in France. The exhibition features the works of 30 artists from around the world. If only Ernie from Sesame Street could see this, I'm sure he will be heads over heels. 1 more pic after the jump.

Source: Wooster Collective via: Giant Rubber Ducky By Florentijn Hofman

If you're one of the elite who rolls with an iPhone, you should really put some effort into allowing that beautiful screen to live up to its potential. For instance, try this.

Take a photo of your friends smashing their face/hands up against some glass (or have them scan their face/hands) and then apply that image as their contact photo in your iPhone. Then when they call, it'll look like they're trapped in your phone. Good fun!

Source: Fun With iPhone Contacts’ Photos Via Photojojo

Technorati Tags: fun, iphone

I need to add this to my places to see list! Check out his post linked below as it contains several incredible shots!

The Coyote Buttes are part of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument and are half way between Kanab (UT) and Page (AZ). It is one of the least visited south Utah Parks and the reason is that is it is so precious that the Bureau of Land Management only gives out 10 permits a day!
It took us three years to get a permit, but it was worth it!

And once you visited it, you'll know why it is restricted. The slickrock is so fragile that it can easy be trampled! So no directions where to find it and if you get a permit, don't stay in "the Wave"! The surrounding landscape is amazing too! Good luck!

Source: ArnyZona Photography

As you can see from the plethora of postings below, I've been catching up on my RSS feeds, reading, podcast listening, and posting. Enjoy while I go exercise and listen to my remaining 818 unheard/watched podcasts! I love that my AppleTV can stream all of them from my iTunes over the home network!

One of things I am really hoping I will do in my quasi retired state (as in I will be tired again) is keep caught up on all of my required inputs.

Fantasy, I know!

Oh, the power of time and place...

Source: Flickr

I know this post will anger some people, but frankly, I don't care. I've had enough and have to vent. I felt empowered to write about this because of an article just published by abcNews: American Family, entitled, More Public Places Are Designating Kid-Free Zones. Clicking on their picture will take you to their article.

I'm disgusted with parents who fail to parent. And I've felt victimized by this issue 3 times in the last 5 days. Eating in a restaurant should be a pleasant experience, not one made unbearable by bratty, badly-behaved children whose parents completely abdicate their responsibility to control their childrens' bad behavior in public.

Now, I'm not talking about the typical noise children are going to make. I'm talking about the kids in the booth at the other end of the restaurant that were standing, jumping up and down in the booth screaming at nearly-deafening levels before I took my seat, while I ate, and after I left the restaurant. I'm talking about the child that was crawling all around the floor of the restaurant while the parents paid no mind. I'm talking about the child that kept banging non-stop against the back of the booth my friend was seated in. I'm talking about the child that pitched a fit screaming she didn't want the spaghetti that she had ordered after it arrived.

One situation was so bad, the patrons lingering so long, that finally the manager came up to the table of women and very graciously said, "Is there anything else I can get for you ladies?" When they replied "No, thank you.", he then said against the background noise of their screaming children, "Well thank you for coming, and please come back to see us." In other words, "Get the hell out of here!" When they stopped by the dessert counter on the way out, and the children began screaming again, the manager just rolled his eyes in disgust as did I also!

Parents, if you're going to take your children out to public places, make them behave appropriately! Get with your job!! This is your responsibility! Public misbehavior is not a right, despite what that mother thinks when she and her child were taken off of the recent AirTran Flight because her child wanted to pitch a temper tantrum. Go AirTran!

UPDATE: Make that 4 times in the past 6 nights! Repeatedly screaming so loudly from the other side of the room as to actually be painful to the ears!

I read the article printed below about a month ago and didn't have time to post it to my blog. I have compared my income-earning potential with my fathers. I've always marveled at the difference. Sure, I make probably five times what he made, but my standard of living isn't nearly as high when you measure the square footage of the houses, the car(s) comparisons, etc. He worked in corporate America; I chose a career in public education. Maybe that says it all. I don't know. (Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed my former career.)

George W would have us all believe that the economy is purring along and everyone is doing great. I don't think so. I think globalization is having an impact. At any rate, the entire article below:

I came across this CNN story about how guys in their thirties are doing compared to their fathers, and it triggered some hard memories.

American men in their 30s are earning less than their father's generation did, challenging a long-held belief that each generation will be better off than the one that preceded it, according to a new study published Friday...

Relying on Census Bureau figures, the study's authors found that after adjusting for inflation, men in their 30s in 2004 had a median income of about $35,000 per year, for a 12 percent drop compared with $40,000 per year for men in the same age group in 1974.

That stood in stark contrast to men in their 30s in 1994, who earned 5 percent more than their fathers did.

Similarly, American families, which experienced a 32 percent increase in income levels between 1964 and 1994, saw household income growth slow to 9 percent between 1974 and 2004, according to the report.

"There is clearly some story here that [U.S.] productivity gains are not trickling down to the median family," said John Morton, a co-author of the study and the managing director of economic policy initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts.

This took me back to the early sixties, when I was in junior high school.

Dad was making about twelve to fourteen grand a year at Disney. When you tacked on the royalties from his Christmas cards, the art shows, the royalties from the little indie films he did, he was up around twenty five to thirty grand per year. Thirty-five grand in a really good year.

This put us in the top quadrant of middle-classdom. Mom was stay-at-home. The family spent a big chunk of each summer at the beach. I'm told by my surviving parent that family income fluctuated wildly year to year, but I never noticed any difference in our living standards from the vantage point of the eighth grade.

Twenty-five to thirty-five thousand a year.

You make that kind of money now, you live in a studio apartment and drive a third-hand car. You clip coupons. Eat in a lot, with an occasional splurge at Burger King or Sizzler.

And if you're going to work in Toonland, expect big years and small years. Expect layoffs. As part of an extended family that's been in the animated sector of show biz for seventy years, I can tell you that it's a cruel business. Just when you think you've got stability and a rising standard of living, it can all get yanked away in the wink of an eye. All it takes is a couple of under-performing movies or a cancelled t.v. series.

I have no desire to start printing up money. I don't ever plan to do so. But this technology can be used with anything that is printed from a laser printer, not just the feeble attempts to print George.

I watch way too much Court TV Forensic Files and have noted that most of the cases featured are from about 20 - 30 years ago. I've wondered quietly to myself, "What technology and techniques are available to criminalists today that would never be featured on this program so as to give them away to the public?" Add this one to that list!

Cory Doctorow: Seeing Yellow wants you to call your printer's manufacturer and ask them to stop spying on you.
We've known that our printers are spying on us, ever since the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the secret codes in the output of color laser printers. These hidden codes -- apparently placed at the behest of the Secret Service -- identify the serial number, make and model of the printer that printed them, as well as a date and timestamp.

What we didn't know is that if you ask the manufacturer of your printer to stop spying on you, they respond by ratting you out to the Secret Service as a dangerous subversive, and a few days later, the SS will show up and ask you why you care about your privacy.

Seeing Yellow -- a project from the MIT Media Lab -- wants to put a stop to this by overwhelming the manufacturers with complaints from their customers, so many that they can't turn us all into the SS.

Source: Seeing Yellow: call your printer's manufacturer and ask why they spy on you

This photo collection of VW bugs is indicative of just how much the bug has endeared itself to the world--despite its origin.

Can you tell that I am about to launch into some serious production and encoding projects over here?! I know this bores many of my readers out of their minds, but Mark, you probably need the info, and I need to keep track of this as a reference guide.

This article, by Jesse David Hollington over at iLounge, is very informative and a tad lengthy. I am including a few charts from the article here in this post in case their archive doesn't last long. Jesse does an excellent job of illustrating aspect ratios visually and provides data for the video iPod, AppleTV, and iPhone. He also presents detailed information about resolution, bit rate, file size, anamorphic encoding, and then offers some recommended resolutions settings for typical content formats. As the number of formats is growing, this article is very helpful! The link to the article as at the bottom of this post.

... Even today, however, the video formats supported by the iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone are relatively limited compared to the number of formats available on the market. This means that just about any content that you want to view on these devices is going to require some type of conversion process. The advent of these new devices has complicated the landscape even further, since more options are now available for both the viewing and encoding of videos, but with these changes come more considerations about how to encode video for the best possible viewing experience. ...

Source: The Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats | iLounge

I came across these two iTunes visualizers that seem to be popular at the moment. So I downloaded them. Pretty coo, actually. It would even be more cool if my AppleTV could play these as the screen saver instead of just photos or album art.

One of the programers is funny:

I make no guarantees that this won't break iTunes, your Mac, your car, or your cat. Numerous people have been using it without problems so far. Then again, maybe you're special...

The visualizers are: Gas Light over at Steel Skies, and Magnetosphere over at Barbarian Software. Here is a screen shot from each. Neither does either justice.

No wonder Apple's stock is at all time record highs! This device is not just a practical solution people have craved for years, it's a brilliant strategy for Apple!

According to a survey done by Interpret of Santa Monica, CA, half of iPhone purchasers switched from another carrier, and 35 percent of those paid an average of $167 to break an existing cellular contract. Interpret’s chief strategy officer, Jason Kramer, calls the survey findings to be “pretty much off the charts.” In addition to the carrier numbers, 90 percent of iPhone owners said they were “extremely” or “very” satisfied with their phones, while 85 percent said they were also “extremely” or “very” likely to recommend the device to others. Interestingly, three out of ten iPhone buyers were new to Apple, and for an even more surprising 40 percent, the device represents their first iPod.

Source: Survey: 50 percent of iPhone purchasers ‘switchers’

Everyone seems to want in on the action now that the Apple iPhone device has lived up to all of the hype. But where was Verizon when they were offered the deal with Apple? I don't think this is as easy as everyone wants to make it sound. From what I read in the blogosphere at the time, Verizon wasn't willing to let Apple dictate how the visual voicemail would work. It was about who controls the way the platform works. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. But undeniably, the iPhone is making an impact on the way consumers want access. The whole telecommunications industry is scrambling. I think this is just the beginning. Way to go Apple!

But let's get real. AT&T has enough money and political influence (said nicely) to keep their monopoly on the iPhone for at least a while. Oops! Did I use the "M" word?

So a friend of mine has been trying to convince me that the next big thing in educational technology (within 5 years or so) will be avatars going to virtual schools in a 3D space like Second Life. Schools and organizations are already buying islands in Second Life for their virtual learners.

I don't know what to think about this yet. I have never been a gamer per se. I tried Sim City a decade ago. After sinking an ungodly amount of time in the game, which was a hell of a lot of fun, I decided I was not being productive and have avoided them ever since.

I know Google is doing some amazing work with 3D realization of actual places, using 3D models of buildings. They are now even developing technology to take a variety of user-created digital photos of a particular place and render them together as an actual 3D representation of the place. Avatars will be able to "walk down the streets" and actually see what the mapped places really look like in the real world represented by a shockingly realistic virtual space.

Maybe my friend is right. Maybe the techno-enthusiasts at NECC 2007 are predicting the future in an effort to create that future. Maybe these virtual tools will be so seamless and transparent to the students a decade from now that going to school as an avatar will not be so cumbersome and so complicated as to get in the way of and distract from learning. Maybe it's all just nonsense or a phase. Maybe human interaction isn't necessary in the real world? Maybe I'd better shut up.

At any rate, I was sent this little animated gif of myself to welcome me into this next leg of my journey. The hair color wasn't exactly right and the glasses were all wrong. So I went to the site and killed about 30 minutes. To get the shirt and shoes I really wanted, I would need to spend about $30 of non-virtual money! Can you imagine such a thing?! But now, with my new hair color and glasses (free, I might add) I look good!

It's just too much! :o) Oh, and yes, clicking on the picture will take you to the site where you can create your own avatar.

I just upgraded my MovableType installation to 3.35. I'm posting this post because, well... I needed an excuse to post something to confirm my blog is still a happy blog. If you can read this post, it is! Here are the three suggested things to look for in hiring someone that is really great:

First, drive. I define drive as self-motivation -- people who will walk right through brick walls, on their own power, without having to be asked, to achieve whatever goal is in front of them. ...

Second criterion: curiosity. Curiosity is a proxy for, do you love what you do? Anyone who loves what they do is inherently intensely curious about their field, their profession, their craft. ...

Third and final criterion: ethics. Ethics are hard to test for. But watch for any whiff of less than stellar ethics in any candidate's background or references. ...

Source: blog.pmarca.com: How to hire the best people you've ever worked with

Nielsen/Net Ratings, a growing web traffic tracking project, announced this week that it’s going to abandon the page view as its primary metric and instead use “time on site.” Rich media on a web site, like video, is becoming increasingly important! In time will media consumption be primarily done through the internet? This move by Nielsen indicates the possibility.

Quickly delete large amounts of text on the iPhone:

This doesn't appear to be covered in the manual, so I thought I'd pass it along. When you're in the iPhone's text entry mode, if you hold the Delete key down, it will delete letter-by-letter for a few seconds, then it will begin deleting entire words.

This is great when replying to e-mails and you want to trim out the unrelated content.

[robg adds: I wouldn't describe the process as "quick," but "quicker than letter by letter." Being able to select a chunk of text would be the best solution; one press of the Delete key would then make it vanish.]

I found several of the 21 secrets helpful and am posting four of them here for those who missed the article.

2. Get a bigger keyboard for Web browsing
Like any other iPhone function requiring data entry, tapping Safari’s address bar summons an on-screen keyboard. However, if you rotate the iPhone horizontally before tapping the address bar, the Safari window will switch to horizontal mode; then, when you then tap the address bar, the onscreen keyboard also appears horizontally. More important, it will also be much larger than the standard vertical keyboard, making data entry a little easier. By the way, Safari is currently the only iPhone application in which this horizontal keyboard appears. (Also worth noting: If you summon the keyboard before rotating your iPhone, then Safari won’t rotate.)—DAN FRAKES

4. Share your URLs
If you want to send the URL of a Web page you’re viewing to a friend, tap the Address Bar, then tap Share. A new e-mail message, containing the URL, will open in Mail; just choose a recipient(s), add any comments you want to include, and tap Send.—DF

6. Make a call from Safari
If you find a phone number in Safari that you’d like to call—say the phone number at a restaurant you’d like to make reservations at—there’s no need to jump to the phone component. Just tap the number; iPhone will dial it for you. (This is also the case with phone numbers and URL embedded in e-mails and SMS chats; tapping either one will place a call or open a Web page, respectively.)—PHILIP MICHAELS

7. Find out where those links go
When in Safari, holding your fingertip down on a link instead of tapping it produces an information balloon that displays the underlying URL. The same thing happens in Mail when you hold a link, which makes this tip much more useful. Now when those “account update” e-mails appear, you can press and hold on the link to find out if you’re really going to be taken to the site the e-mail claims.—DF

Source: Macworld: Secrets: Twenty-one favorite iPhone tips

Well, I just had my first scare with my blog. I deleted an old domain name that I thought was no longer in use. Oops! I had hosted the database for my blog on it! Fortunately, the good people at DreamHost explained how I could reassign the database to another host name. I'm now back in business after being down for several days!

I know just enough to be dangerous and not enough to figure out some of this!

WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.07
CULTURE : LIFESTYLE
The Best Geek Vacations: The South Pole, Chernobyl, Tatooine
Christopher Null 06.26.07 | 2:00 AM

1 Tokyo
Skip the pachinko parlors and fish market, and head straight to Akihabara — the ultimate red-light district for gadget fetishists. After that, take in either the Ghibli (dedicated to anime kings Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata) or Bandai museums. Don't forget to save a day for the Sega Joypolis!

2 Chernobyl, Ukraine
The highlight of the Chernobyl bus tour: Prypyat, a town whose 47,000 inhabitants had to split within 36 hours of the meltdown. While wandering abandoned schools and other buildings, keep an eye out for freaky mutant plant life and salty squatters who have taken up residence in the "exclusion zone."

3 Palo Alto, California
Silicon Valley's ground zero is within spitting distance of the most influential tech companies, from Apple to Yahoo. Other attractions: gawking at the famous Hewlett-Packard garage, touring the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, and sneaking into the Google cafeteria. And if you visit SF, feel free to admire Wired's offices... from the street.

4 CERN
Jet to Switzerland and watch artisanal physicists actually make their own antimatter (samples not available). Who knows, maybe you'll spot the subatomic Higgs boson while peering into the Large Hadron Collider — 17 miles of super conducting magnets! Word to the wise: Book at least four months ahead.

5 Mauna Kea Observatory

Hawaii doesn't have to be about boring activities like lying on the beach sipping mai tais. Instead, rent a 4x4 and trek to Mauna Kea, one of the most striking observatories on Earth. Stop at the visitors center, where you can view sunspots during daylight hours. Leave the surf shorts behind: At an altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, it can dip below freezing after dark. (Photograph by: Richard Wainscoat)

6 Sidi Driss Hotel
Welcome to the underground dwellings that were Luke Skywalker's Tatooine home in Star Wars. They're in the burg of Matmata, Tunisia, and are now lodging geekotourists. What else is there to do? Day-trip over to the nearby town of Gabes, which — despite what you may have heard — is not a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

7 New Zealand

A tour of The Lord of the Rings' shot locations is as close as you're ever going to come to meeting Gandalf. Guides will show you Matamata (Hobbiton), Kaitoke Regional Park (Rivendell), and Mount Sunday (Edoras, home to the horse-lords of Rohan). Eight-foot broadswords sold separately. (Photograph by: Declan McCullagh)

8 The South Pole

It costs around $5,000 and can be damn cold (minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit in winter), but a cruise around Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station will warm any geek's heart. Alternatively, sign up for a working vacation at McMurdo Station. It has the bleak landscape and soul-numbing chill, but there are bars to go to at night! (Photograph by: National Science Foundation)

Source: The Best Geek Vacations: The South Pole, Chernobyl, Tatooine, at Wired Magazine

This is an interesting post from Hemmy.net. I wonder what the animators' union thinks about this? The post at Hemmy has several pictured examples.

Disney reuses its animation but this is hard to spot unless pictures are put side by side for comparison. Here are pairs of pictures to be spotted for animation reuse. 24 more pics after the jump.

We think much too little about sustainability.

... Päster, who's a sustainability engineer, has tried to calculate the true cost of bottling and transporting a one-liter bottle of Fiji Water to America (it's the latest fashionable mineral water, not available yet in Europe, at least to my knowledge). Apart from the trail of fossil fuels burned and greenhouse gases emitted, the most spectacular result is that manufacturing and transporting that 1-kg bottle uses 6.74 kg of water -- 7 times more than the content of the bottle. (See details here). ...

Source: Global bottled insanity

I'm filing this away so I don't forget to try it.

Due to space constraints, the virtual keyboard on the iPhone doesn't include any punctuation. Instead, you press a .?123 key to bring up the numbers and punctuation keyboard. However, this is a bit of a pain when typing an email -- adding a comma or a period requires three taps: one to bring up the alternate keyboard, one to press the period, and another to return to the normal keyboard.

However, Andrew McCallum sent a tip to David Pogue, who then published it on this page that makes the process much simpler: instead of using a tap-release, just tap-and-hold the .?123 key, then slide your finger onto the period (or comma). As soon as you touch the period or comma, it's inserted into your text, and the normal ABC keyboard returns! It takes a bit of practice to get used to this action, but once you do, it's much faster.

Source: Easier typing of periods and commas on the iPhone

While walking today, I came upon a fork in the road. (You get it, right?)

And earlier, when I walked by my Prius, even though is was dirty, it wanted me to take its picture. I did.

Last year at this time I was in Tromsø, Norway. It was freezing cold. This year in Atlanta it was unseasonably cool, very nice! Here's a photo journal of some of my day.

I began the late morning with a walk in Lenox Park, a favorite. The baby duck is so small he would fit in the palm of my hand. The AT&T logo really does look 3D! And those roots look like some alien plant formation.

My day ended at the end of my driveway overlooking the fireworks over Lenox Mall. This is the first time I've ever tried to shoot fireworks and one of the few times I've had my camera completely in manual mode, adjusting all of the settings--not too bad for a first attempt. I must confess that my zoom lens was a little too tight for the shots, but once the fireworks began and I realized this, I didn't want to miss any shots by changing the lens.

Click any picture to enlarge

• <cool>Under: "Probably the Last to Know:" I just discovered that I can email photos from my phone directly to this MovableType blog. Cool! I'll have to try it on my iPhone.</cool>
• <grrr>If you buy an iPhone, plan on buying one of these adapters. Why on earth did Apple recess the audio plug so deeply so as to make my car plug and my UltimateEars earbuds no longer fit in it? </grrr>
• <whine>I want copy and paste on the iPhone!</whine>
• <BIGwhine>And where is my iCal ToDo list?!</BIGwhine>
• <smile>But I discovered TaDaList. A socialweb to do list that is browser-based. Now your spouse can change your to do list on the fly while you are out doing the list. The leash grows heavy!</smile>

Me thinks the noise machine is up and working again: major summer terror attack on the US planned, Bush a bit depressed, the 4th of July, oh...I get it. They want to distract the American people from what he is really up to. Am I supposed to feel sorry for this man?

He just, yet once again, thumbed his nose at the American legal system by effectively pardoning a convicted criminal: Scooter Libby. (But he still has to pay his fine! Hah!!) And W wonders why the American people have rejected his failed attempt at leadership?! Get real! As a whole, I'd have to say that we are a law-abiding people. Bush simply thinks he is above the law. The nation finds this unseemly.

The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public.

Source: A President Besieged and Isolated, Yet at Ease - washingtonpost.com

Last week was incredibly busy but a lot of fun. I had the opportunity to present the closing keynote at the NECC 2007, which registered about 18,000 people I'm told. Also, through a special partnership between NECC 2007 and KZO Webcasting, I had the great pleasure of being interviewed, along with Hall Davidson from Discovery Education, by Chris Walsh of WestEd at NECC Live!'s Program Video-On-Demand. This webcast, and many others, are hosted on the kzowebcasting site for a full year. Pretty cool resource!

I just take pictures of ordinary places and things. These photos are challenging me to take more creative pictures that affront perspective and assumptions. Photography as art...

Sources: Creative Photography at Hemmy.net and Creative Photos By Chema Madoz

I can't imagine working in a salt mine in what is presumably the desert in Iran with this full head of hair and a beard! Well, I can't imagine working in a salt mine at all! But this 1,800 Year Old Mummy found preserved in the salt apparently did just that.

Archaeologists discovered an 1,800-year-old mummy of a 3rd-century man, a salt-mine worker from northwestern Iran, whose body is preserved in salt.

During the Roman Empire period, just after the fall of Parthia, a salt mine worker from northwestern Iran lost his life following a catastrophic rock collapse. Approximately 1,800 years later, the man’s body — preserved in salt — was discovered in the very spot where he died, according to recent Iranian news service accounts and to a report issued by the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies.

Source: Link - via Spluch (Via Neatorama.)

I thought this little tidbit was interesting: a list of the top 30 cities for blogging. Now how did they amass this data?

1. New York
2. Los Angeles
3. London
4. Chicago
5. Rome
6. Madrid
7. Toronto
8. Houston
9. Washington
10. Atlanta
11. Paris
12. Seattle
13. San Diego
14. Austin
15. Minneapolis
16. Denver
17. San Francisco
18. Portland
19. Dallas
20. Singapore
21. St. Louis
22. Jakarta
23. Brooklyn (NY)
24. Philadelphia
25. Mexico City
26. Montreal
27. Beijing
28. Moscow
29. Mumbai
30. Columbus

Source: Lunch over IP: Where blogging happens

I have often thought that the inconsistencies in our lives make us a little more complex and therefore more interesting. I tend to be extremely dull and predictable because I have so few. :o) (OK, so I'm making a lame claim to sainthood ...)

Well, a friend just pointed out to me one of my contradictions, and in such few words as to really drive the point home. He wrote: "For someone who can't stand to talk on a cell phone, it is odd that you camped out for one." Hmm, he has a point.

Of course I justified this contradiction by calling the iPhone a "life management tool," not really a phone at all. Does that work? And the expression "camped out" is such a strong use of language. I more prefer thinking of it as "delaying other activities."

So I'm grasping at straws, thin ones at that.

When I activated my iPhone, in what felt like a seven month process, I was shocked to see how much I actually do talk on the phone. Granted I am losing roll over minutes every month, but in this past billing cycle I have talked 476 of my 500 regular weekday minutes, but only 125 of my 5,000 weekend minutes and 0 of my 1,685 rollover minutes. So I spent 601 minutes talking to people on the phone: ten hours of my life babbling away in one billing cycle.

Now this is clever! More CD Art from the source: DCP.

Jeff Croft wrote this little article that I think is helpful. I want to post for my future reference when working with video projects.

The bottom line is that progressive scan has about about 50% more vertical resolution than interlaced pictures with the same number of lines, and does not show the aliasing artifacts associated with interlaced video.

In marketing materials, progressive and interlaced video are abbreviated p and i respectively. They are usually preceded by a numeral, which is the number of pixels (or lines) tall the image is. Since the typical screen aspect ratio is 16:9, you can figure out the width of the image accordingly.

I really liked the Matrix, well, I still do! It was one of those mind-blowing movie-going experiences. The directors, truly brilliant brothers, went to the cutting edge of their craft and even changed the art of videography with time-remapping special effects which are now common place. At any rate, I am including these photos taken by Jeremy Keith, the author of adactio.

Jeremy went down under for a web development conference and visited each of these locations shot in the films. He then does this really cool geotagging thing with a map of google. (So this guy knows way more about web development than I ever will!) So as you click on the thumbnails he has in his post, it locates them on a map of Sydney and opens the photo in a larger version he has posted on his Flickr page. What I especially like: he placed himself or someone else in the exact location of the picture as one of the characters in the movie for his pictures. He then splits the picture: the top is a scene from the movie; the bottom is his recreated scene. I love it! Brilliantly cool.

I am including links to his larger Flickr pictures here and the little thumbnails down below to get you interested enough to visit. OK, so most of my readers are not as interested in The Matrix as am I. But, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, I too will find myself down under shooting lots of pictures. I suspect they would include these as well.

• Campbell Street and Elizabeth Street
• The Crosswalk at Martin Place and Pitt Street
• The Fountain at Martin Place and Pitt Street (lady in red)
• The Metacortex Building at Margaret Street and Carrington Street
• The Military Controlled Building at Philip Street and Martin Place
• The Phonebooth at Hunter Street and Pitt Street