A collection of digital wonders and some other stuff
I’m having a great time here in Mexico. We’re keeping extremely busy going to the beach and lounging around.
Today we hit up El Eden and the Preditor Set restaurant. I’ll have some good stories to tell when I have more time.
In the meantime—my Mexico 2006 flickr set.
For my birthday, coming up in a week from today, my mom got me a new digital SLR camera! I’m still learning all the settings, but I’m loving every minute of it.
It’s a Nikon D70s. I also got a few accessories for it, including a polarizing filter, a camera bag, and a 1gb memory card.
I’m a little hesitant to take it with me on my trip to Mexico, but I got it a week before my birthday so I could do just that. I’ll be watching it like a hawk; at the same time I think it will be worth it.
Here are 12 winter photos I took with my new camera.
I love Malcalm Gladwell’s writing and reading an ESPN interview with him only helps to reinforce my impression of him—he’s brilliant.
This week’s exchange is with Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author of “Blink” and “Tipping Point” as well as the longtime cleanup hitter for the New Yorker. You would never think that the most successful nonfiction writer alive would double as a huge sports fan… but he does. So I couldn’t resist the chance to exchange e-mails with him intermittently over the past six weeks.
Check out “Curious Guy: Malcalm Gladwell”, part I and part II.
I’ve been working on a hockey fan site for the Halifax Mooseheads—http://halifaxherd.ca. When I started, I was a little worried that I might be overdoing it with the amount of red and black that I was putting in the design, but I think it actually turned out quite nicely.
Not only did I come up with a standards compliant design that fit with the motif he was looking for, but I also set him up with a copy Word Press so that he is now completely in control of his content. WordPress is great because of the amount of customization available through plugins (and brute coding—if you’re into that sort of thing). WordPress also makes it extremely easy for updating and modifying your site. It’s hard to believe something so valuable is available as a free download. Sometimes the free choice, is the best choice.
The site owner still has a couple of things he’d like me to help him with, but Moose Crossing is up and running and (in my opinion) it looks pretty sweet. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
“Susan thinks she could be a DM. She was like, ‘how hard can it be? You just have to tell the story’. phfff. She has no idea.”
Using digital technology is a great way to share life’s little adventures. A digital camera, a flickr account, and a blog are pretty much all you need, to show off those great vacation photos from Hawaii.
You don’t even have to actually take your own pictures. That’s sort of what someone named Judith decided she was going to do. She went on a trip to Hawaii and things were going great until she lost her very expensive camera.
However, since Flickr is full of pictures from Hawaii, she decided to create a trip journal with the pictures of strangers who had taken similar photographs. Things weren’t great but she was making the best of a bad situation.
But then something unexpected happened! Things were great again because she was contacted by someone (from Canada I might add) who had found a camera which fit the description perfectly.
But then things were bad again because the people with the camera decided they’d rather not do the right thing after all. (Can I just mention how embarrassing it is that they are from Canada?)
The Internet mob is raging and they want names, email addresses and police action! Judith has decided to refrain from publishing personal information but that doesn’t mean she’s not still trying to get her camera back.
And if that weren’t enough, check out this weird twist over at BoingBoing “some guy claiming to be a “lawer” (sic) is “threatening legal action” against Corry Doctorow for publishing the story. Apparently, the so-called barrister doesn’t know the difference between “libel” and “slander” nor does he apparently consider the part of the libel statute that requires that a plaintiff be referenced in a way that is identifiable to be a factor.
The reporters have started leaving comments on Judith’s blog asking for interviews. I predict that this is a story we’ll be hearing more about, and I hope that the crummy people change their mind and give back the camera. It’s the least they could do after making us Canadians look so bad.
In 1975, the group Electric Light Orchestra (aka ELO) released an album titled Face the Music. The first song on the record is called Fire on High. It contains a backwards message at the beginning of the song. When played backwards the message, “The music is reversible but time is not. Turn back, turn back, turn back, turn back” is heard.
Fire on High is the most recent addition to my backmasking page.
“When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.”
-Jack Handey
Here’s a neat little project that anyone can do: make battery powered magnetic LED “throwies” that can be thrown and stuck to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighbourhood.
A throwie is made from a 10mm diffused LED, a small lithium battery, and a rare-earth magnet all taped together. They cost about $1 to make and the batteries last about a week.
Instructables has a page of step-by-step instructions to make your own throwies.
Also, check out throwies in action.
The Song Tapper is a neat web application that can help identify a song that maybe stuck in your head, but maybe you don’t remember the name of it. The way it works is to just tap the spacebar to the rhythm of each syllable in the lyrics of the song you want to identify and then the server returns several possible names and artists. It’s fun and surprisingly accurate.