Well said! Here are a few other tips
on
Upgrade Your Dog
·
· Score: 1
Very well said, Steve. A couple of other tips:
1) Get a crate and use it! By using a crate you shrink the size of the "den" immensely.
2) It'll be rough on you, but your young puppy should not be played with unless he's first gone to the bathroom outside. Take your puppy from the crate directly outside to do his business. If he does, treat, praise, and play. If he doesn't, back into the create for another 10-15 minutes then try again.
As others have mentioned, an enzymatic cleaner is a must. You will have accidents, and cleaning them up thorougly will prevent another accident in the same spot.
It's also helpful to train them to go on command. You'll look like an idiot doing this, but when you've got your puppy outside and they're getting ready to go say "Potty!" (or whatever word you want) and praise profusely. Before you know it you'll say "Potty" and they'll unleash whatever's inside.
It's almost enough to make me give up my Canon. Almost, except for all those pesky Canon lenses I have...:)
"External GPS units that adhere to the NMEA 0183 specification are supported (the new MC-35 adapter cable, which connects to the 10-pin remote port on the camera and provides both an RS-232 serial port and 10-pin remote port, is required); latitude, longitude and altitude can be stored in a photo's metadata. The D2X's date and time can also be set automatically when a GPS unit is connected"
Full walkthrough of the new features in the D2x at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-6459-7204-7205.
The altitude information is available from the Forerunner unit so it'd be easy to add it too. That's all the information you get from the XML stream though (lat, long, alt). It doesn't give you direction, and the Forerunner unit used doesn't support things like barometric pressure.
I wrote an app that tags my images based on GPS coordinates from my Garmin Forerunner. If you look in the EXIF spec you'll find that there are tags for latitude, longitude, and altitude (all of which the Forerunner gives you).
If you're using GDI+ on a Windows machine you can add the tags into your image pretty easily using either native code or your favourite.NET flavour.
If you're fortunate enough to live in the Pacific Northwest chances are your local cable company carries a CBC affiliate from Vancouver, Canada. The CBC olympic coverage is MUCH better than on NBC: they actually show atheletes from other countries, and some of the lesser known sports.
I'd actually add a fourth, which is kind of your first but a very specific instance: merging traffic. Ramp metering helps somewhat, but not enough. The wedge of slow traffic caused by people braking to let a car in, and then that car promptly trying to weave over to the "fast lane" causes enormous problems on my commute.
Once you pass the four on-ramps where the bulk of the traffic comes from it is smooth sailing to work, regardless of traffic volume.
Re:Photo and PIN on Cash Card / Credit Card??
on
RFID MasterCard
·
· Score: 1
I have a friend who has "CHECK ID" on the back of his card. I watched in a store once where the clerk actually held the credit card up against the signature my friend signed on the slip, compared the "ASK FOR ID" to the signature on the slip, then accepted the sale no questions asked.
Go figure.
Neil
Oddly, there is still a delay difference
on
Beyond Megapixels
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not one that I notice, but apparently there's enough of a difference between a film and digital SLR to give Sports Illustrated photographers trouble:
For the photographers, shooting digital forced some of the same adjustments that their wire service and newspaper brethren had already made. "The shutter delay is definitely greater on the digital cameras," says staff photographer Damian Strohmeyer. "You know you're shooting the quarterback as he cocks his arm, and you think you've got it, but you look later and say 'where's the one with the ball in his hand?'"
The problem with focusing solely on pixel count has been veryeloquentlyexplained by Michael over at www.luminous-landscape.com in three separate editorials.
He's been reviewing the current crop of 8MP digital cameras and writing about their usability and ability to be a tool for digital photographers. This has resulted in a ton of heat from brand afficionados as he often knocks a camera for its usability issues, even though the image quality when viewed at 100% on a screen might be better than another camera. There's much more to making a good camera than just pixel count!.
Up to 80 parking meters are out of service on any given day, Krawczyk said. The pay stations are much more reliable.
The article also talks about how Portland made the same switchover, and the successes they had:
"They've worked wonderfully for us," McCoy said, adding that "Seattle people have been down here on a number of occasions" to study the Portland pay stations. Portland's pay stations have been less expensive to maintain than the oft-malfunctioning meters. And the credit cards have reduced the costs of handling coins, he said. "From a customer perspective, having the ability to make card transactions has been the big benefit down here," he said. About 50 percent of Portland's parking revenue now comes via credit cards.
For people in digital camera circles this is likely old news, but my latest hack was last night. I removed the 4GB Microdrive that came in my MuVo2 (total was $198 including taxes and shipping), formatted it appropriately, and shoved it into my 10D. Now I've got room for 588 RAW images on a single card.
The other half of the hack was to get my old 1GB microdrive working in the MuVo. It required a reformat of the drive, and a re-flash of the firmware to get the magic files back on the drive.
Earlier this year I was doing a lot of travel, both with a laptop and a bunch of PDA-type devices, and desperately needed to replace my crappy old laptop bag. I shopped around ebags and decided to get the High Sierra A.T. Gear case. It's discontinued now, but ebags still has some left, as well as the newer models. Note that the link is to one with wheels. Mine is without.
I like it because it's got a removable inside second bag for the laptop that I can use to carry it around inside work, and then just use the bigger bag when I need to schlep stuff home or on a trip. The little pockets on the front are perfect for carrying all my PDA stuff. I thought the backpack straps would be useless, but I've used them several times in airport and they're quite handy. The only downside is the shoulder strap can be a bit tiring on the shoulder when the bag is full, but I've never found a laptop bag that isn't.
If I were to do it again I'd get the version with wheels. And the funky orange version. The blue I have is nice, but it's a bit tame:)
Argh. I just typed in a whole post and lost it. *sigh*. Here goes again...
I have the Canon 10D, the older sibling to the new Digital Rebel. I love it. I won't rehash what others have already posted and had modded up, but here are some additional thoughts.
The Digital rebel doesn't have any of the items that concern you. As with any other SLR you can do manual focus, manual aperature, manual shutter speed, or let the camera do it. You can add an external flash, and you can swap lenses. I switched from a old Canon film SLR, and love my new digital world.
Here are some other random thoughts:
1) Remember that the digital Rebel really is an SLR, so you'll need to be a bit more knowledgable about things like shutter speed, camera shake, and depth of field. Don't blame the camera when you take a shot at 1/20 and it's all blurry from camera shake:) Also, don't expect the entire image to be tack sharp f/4.5! I'm not saying you don't know this stuff, but lots of people have made the jump to the 10D and complained about poor images when in reality it was one of the above two issues.
2) Just the camera won't be enough:) Before you know it you'll need a camera bag, a tripod, a big CF/microdrive, a copy of Photoshop, extra batteries (www.sterlingtek.com will save you a ton; I have two, they rock), and on and on and on. It's an expensive hobby, but it's a lot of fun!
3) You'll want more than one lens before you know it. Check out the Lens form at www.dpreview.com to find some good suggestions for inexpensive starter lenses to build your collection. Of course, if you have a wad of cash, by all means get the L glass *grin*.
4) Costco is a great place to print out your lovely digital pictures. They'll do 12x18" prints for $2.99. What a steal! 4x6" prints are only $0.19. The quality is incredible, too. The best part is all Costco printers are profiled by www.drycreekphoto.com, so if you have good colour calibration for your monitor you can ensure your prints will look like what you want before printing.
In short, yes, now is a good time to buy. Get the Rebel, and enjoy!
Buy.com has it for $89.77 with free shipping. If you set up an account at fatwallet.com and order through their referral link you can also get 2% cash back.
The question is - will the drive perform despite having only 2mb of cache, and running at 5400 rpm?
Well, you could always try reading page 4 of the article where they give the benchmark results. Actually, that's pretty much the meat of the article. Or, if you're too lazy to read page 4 and look at the pretty charts, you could just read the conclusion:
Even if the DiamondMax Plus 300 GB isn't nimble enough to take on the faster-spinning flagships from Western Digital and Maxtor, its overall performance is respectable for a 5,400 rpm drive. Above all, the excellent data transfer rates are certainly welcome.
Actually, I've used film cameras for years (my 10D is actually a replacement for my old Elan IIe), and definitely do have a grasp of the items you mention. And while I'm not an expert at Photoshop, I've used it for about as long. My point is simply that the original post said "there's nothing left to improve in Photoshop". I simply pointed out one area that could be improved to make Photoshop more immediately useful to a wider group of digital photographers.
Courtesy of Digital Photography Review. They go into all the new features that apply to digital photography, and have samples of how they work with real-world photos.
Sorry, but have you actually tried to use Photoshop 7.0 to process images from a digital SLR like the Canon 10D? I have, and I can tell you I'm eagerly awaiting Photoshop 8.0.
Adobe has no built-in support for RAW image processing, you have to buy their $99 add-in, and even that doesn't support the Canon 10D without gross hacks. With Photoshop 8.0 this should now be included and cleaned up.
Photoshop 7.0 still only has rudimentary support for 16-bit editing. Try going and applying the vast majority of the filters when working with a 16-bit image. Sorry, out of luck, need to drop back to 8-bit.
Want to resize your picture to a specific inch dimension and resolution so you can print out your digital print at your favourite Costco or on your home printer? Sure, it's possible, but it's not exactly obvious how to do it.
Photoshop 7.0 went a long way to helping web designers use Photoshop for web content. Hopefully Photoshop 8.0 will go just as far to make it a valuable tool for digital photographers.
Why do you have insurance on your credit cards? By law you are only liable for $50 worth of spending if someone steals the number, and many credit card companies set the liability to $0. If you are worried about dying and leaving the debt to your dependants, that's what life insurance is for.
I participated in one of these about a year ago before (I didn't realise it was called a flash mob until today). About 50 people just showed up at Pike Place Market and started at the edge of a building in the sky. We stood there for about 30 minutes, then just walked away. If anyone asked what we were doing, we just said "shhhhhhhhhh" and went back to staring.
Today I can go anywhere in North America that has either GSM or CDMA coverage and get flat-rate, unmetered data access. If I'm on GSM it costs me $20 a month (T-Mobile). If I'm on CDMA it costs me between $50 and $80 depending on the company.
CDMA and GSM coverage is *vastly* more prevalent than WiFi hotspots. WiFi deployment is unlikely to even come close to cellular deployment in the forseeable future (especially in North America) because of the huge deployment costs involved.
Regarding speed, GPRS is slow right now, but the CDMA equivalent is plenty fast enough for reading email, chatting by IM, and downloading web pages. While the Slashdot crowd may want to download MP3s 24/7, the reality is that most folks just need e-mail and web access.
My wife just got a new Dell computer for digital image work and whatnot. We found a refurbished 21" Nokia monitor at overstock.com for around $200, and shipping was only $2.95. The screen is beautiful, crisp, and just what she was looking for.
Note: Windows Update does not collect any form of personally identifiable information from your computer. Read our privacy statement.
Windows Update Privacy Statement (Last Updated 10/15/2002)
Windows Update is committed to protecting your privacy. To provide you with the appropriate list of updates, Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. None of this configuration information can be used to identify you. This information includes:
Operating-system version number
Internet Explorer version number
Version numbers of other software for which
Windows Update provides updates
Plug and Play ID numbers of hardware devices
Region and Language setting
The configuration information collected is used only to determine the appropriate updates and to generate aggregate statistics. Windows Update does not collect your name, address, e-mail address, or any other form of personally identifiable information.
Windows Update also collects the Product ID and Product Key to confirm that you are running a validly licensed copy of Windows. A validly licensed copy of Windows ensures that you will receive on-going updates from Windows Update. The Product ID and Product Key are not retained beyond the end of the Windows Update session.
To provide you with the best possible service, Windows Update also tracks and records how many unique machines visit its site and whether the download and installation of specific updates succeeded or failed. In order to do this, the Windows operating system generates a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) that is stored on your computer to uniquely identify it. The GUID does not contain any personally identifiable information and cannot be used to identify you. Windows Update records the GUID of the computer that attempted the download, the ID of the item that you attempted to download and install, and the configuration information listed above.
Actually, that's not very far off of what happens if you have the latest version of Outlook's security updates. You get a dialog up warning you that another application is trying to access your sent items/address book and you can grant permission for a specific length of time, or deny the request.
No clippy though:(
Re:Freecell Solitaire...
on
Awari Solved
·
· Score: 1
The developer that wrote the code actually knew at the time the original version was written that not all games were winnable (hence the magic -1 and -2 games). The help file line was added as a gag.
Slashdot Mirror
Very well said, Steve. A couple of other tips:
1) Get a crate and use it! By using a crate you shrink the size of the "den" immensely.
2) It'll be rough on you, but your young puppy should not be played with unless he's first gone to the bathroom outside. Take your puppy from the crate directly outside to do his business. If he does, treat, praise, and play. If he doesn't, back into the create for another 10-15 minutes then try again.
As others have mentioned, an enzymatic cleaner is a must. You will have accidents, and cleaning them up thorougly will prevent another accident in the same spot.
It's also helpful to train them to go on command. You'll look like an idiot doing this, but when you've got your puppy outside and they're getting ready to go say "Potty!" (or whatever word you want) and praise profusely. Before you know it you'll say "Potty" and they'll unleash whatever's inside.
Neil
It's almost enough to make me give up my Canon. Almost, except for all those pesky Canon lenses I have... :)
i d=7-6459-7204-7205.
"External GPS units that adhere to the NMEA 0183 specification are supported (the new MC-35 adapter cable, which connects to the 10-pin remote port on the camera and provides both an RS-232 serial port and 10-pin remote port, is required); latitude, longitude and altitude can be stored in a photo's metadata. The D2X's date and time can also be set automatically when a GPS unit is connected"
Full walkthrough of the new features in the D2x at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?c
Neil
The altitude information is available from the Forerunner unit so it'd be easy to add it too. That's all the information you get from the XML stream though (lat, long, alt). It doesn't give you direction, and the Forerunner unit used doesn't support things like barometric pressure.
Neil
I wrote an app that tags my images based on GPS coordinates from my Garmin Forerunner. If you look in the EXIF spec you'll find that there are tags for latitude, longitude, and altitude (all of which the Forerunner gives you).
.NET flavour.
If you're using GDI+ on a Windows machine you can add the tags into your image pretty easily using either native code or your favourite
Neil
If you're fortunate enough to live in the Pacific Northwest chances are your local cable company carries a CBC affiliate from Vancouver, Canada. The CBC olympic coverage is MUCH better than on NBC: they actually show atheletes from other countries, and some of the lesser known sports.
I'd actually add a fourth, which is kind of your first but a very specific instance: merging traffic. Ramp metering helps somewhat, but not enough. The wedge of slow traffic caused by people braking to let a car in, and then that car promptly trying to weave over to the "fast lane" causes enormous problems on my commute.
Once you pass the four on-ramps where the bulk of the traffic comes from it is smooth sailing to work, regardless of traffic volume.
I have a friend who has "CHECK ID" on the back of his card. I watched in a store once where the clerk actually held the credit card up against the signature my friend signed on the slip, compared the "ASK FOR ID" to the signature on the slip, then accepted the sale no questions asked.
Go figure.
Neil
Not one that I notice, but apparently there's enough of a difference between a film and digital SLR to give Sports Illustrated photographers trouble:
You can read the whole article at http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?ci d=7-6453-6821.
The problem with focusing solely on pixel count has been very eloquently explained by Michael over at www.luminous-landscape.com in three separate editorials.
He's been reviewing the current crop of 8MP digital cameras and writing about their usability and ability to be a tool for digital photographers. This has resulted in a ton of heat from brand afficionados as he often knocks a camera for its usability issues, even though the image quality when viewed at 100% on a screen might be better than another camera. There's much more to making a good camera than just pixel count!.
There was an article in the Seattle PI today about Seattle's plans to do this exact same change:
The article also talks about how Portland made the same switchover, and the successes they had:
Neil
For people in digital camera circles this is likely old news, but my latest hack was last night. I removed the 4GB Microdrive that came in my MuVo2 (total was $198 including taxes and shipping), formatted it appropriately, and shoved it into my 10D. Now I've got room for 588 RAW images on a single card.
The other half of the hack was to get my old 1GB microdrive working in the MuVo. It required a reformat of the drive, and a re-flash of the firmware to get the magic files back on the drive.
Earlier this year I was doing a lot of travel, both with a laptop and a bunch of PDA-type devices, and desperately needed to replace my crappy old laptop bag. I shopped around ebags and decided to get the High Sierra A.T. Gear case. It's discontinued now, but ebags still has some left, as well as the newer models. Note that the link is to one with wheels. Mine is without.
I like it because it's got a removable inside second bag for the laptop that I can use to carry it around inside work, and then just use the bigger bag when I need to schlep stuff home or on a trip. The little pockets on the front are perfect for carrying all my PDA stuff. I thought the backpack straps would be useless, but I've used them several times in airport and they're quite handy. The only downside is the shoulder strap can be a bit tiring on the shoulder when the bag is full, but I've never found a laptop bag that isn't.
If I were to do it again I'd get the version with wheels. And the funky orange version. The blue I have is nice, but it's a bit tame :)
Argh. I just typed in a whole post and lost it. *sigh*. Here goes again...
:) Also, don't expect the entire image to be tack sharp f/4.5! I'm not saying you don't know this stuff, but lots of people have made the jump to the 10D and complained about poor images when in reality it was one of the above two issues.
:) Before you know it you'll need a camera bag, a tripod, a big CF/microdrive, a copy of Photoshop, extra batteries (www.sterlingtek.com will save you a ton; I have two, they rock), and on and on and on. It's an expensive hobby, but it's a lot of fun!
I have the Canon 10D, the older sibling to the new Digital Rebel. I love it. I won't rehash what others have already posted and had modded up, but here are some additional thoughts.
The Digital rebel doesn't have any of the items that concern you. As with any other SLR you can do manual focus, manual aperature, manual shutter speed, or let the camera do it. You can add an external flash, and you can swap lenses. I switched from a old Canon film SLR, and love my new digital world.
Here are some other random thoughts:
1) Remember that the digital Rebel really is an SLR, so you'll need to be a bit more knowledgable about things like shutter speed, camera shake, and depth of field. Don't blame the camera when you take a shot at 1/20 and it's all blurry from camera shake
2) Just the camera won't be enough
3) You'll want more than one lens before you know it. Check out the Lens form at www.dpreview.com to find some good suggestions for inexpensive starter lenses to build your collection. Of course, if you have a wad of cash, by all means get the L glass *grin*.
4) Costco is a great place to print out your lovely digital pictures. They'll do 12x18" prints for $2.99. What a steal! 4x6" prints are only $0.19. The quality is incredible, too. The best part is all Costco printers are profiled by www.drycreekphoto.com, so if you have good colour calibration for your monitor you can ensure your prints will look like what you want before printing.
In short, yes, now is a good time to buy. Get the Rebel, and enjoy!
Neil
Buy.com has it for $89.77 with free shipping. If you set up an account at fatwallet.com and order through their referral link you can also get 2% cash back.
Well, you could always try reading page 4 of the article where they give the benchmark results. Actually, that's pretty much the meat of the article. Or, if you're too lazy to read page 4 and look at the pretty charts, you could just read the conclusion:
Actually, I've used film cameras for years (my 10D is actually a replacement for my old Elan IIe), and definitely do have a grasp of the items you mention. And while I'm not an expert at Photoshop, I've used it for about as long. My point is simply that the original post said "there's nothing left to improve in Photoshop". I simply pointed out one area that could be improved to make Photoshop more immediately useful to a wider group of digital photographers.
Courtesy of Digital Photography Review. They go into all the new features that apply to digital photography, and have samples of how they work with real-world photos.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/adobephotoshopcs/
Sorry, but have you actually tried to use Photoshop 7.0 to process images from a digital SLR like the Canon 10D? I have, and I can tell you I'm eagerly awaiting Photoshop 8.0.
Adobe has no built-in support for RAW image processing, you have to buy their $99 add-in, and even that doesn't support the Canon 10D without gross hacks. With Photoshop 8.0 this should now be included and cleaned up.
Photoshop 7.0 still only has rudimentary support for 16-bit editing. Try going and applying the vast majority of the filters when working with a 16-bit image. Sorry, out of luck, need to drop back to 8-bit.
Want to resize your picture to a specific inch dimension and resolution so you can print out your digital print at your favourite Costco or on your home printer? Sure, it's possible, but it's not exactly obvious how to do it.
Photoshop 7.0 went a long way to helping web designers use Photoshop for web content. Hopefully Photoshop 8.0 will go just as far to make it a valuable tool for digital photographers.
I participated in one of these about a year ago before (I didn't realise it was called a flash mob until today). About 50 people just showed up at Pike Place Market and started at the edge of a building in the sky. We stood there for about 30 minutes, then just walked away. If anyone asked what we were doing, we just said "shhhhhhhhhh" and went back to staring.
Goofy, but fun in an odd way. Go figure.
Today I can go anywhere in North America that has either GSM or CDMA coverage and get flat-rate, unmetered data access. If I'm on GSM it costs me $20 a month (T-Mobile). If I'm on CDMA it costs me between $50 and $80 depending on the company.
CDMA and GSM coverage is *vastly* more prevalent than WiFi hotspots. WiFi deployment is unlikely to even come close to cellular deployment in the forseeable future (especially in North America) because of the huge deployment costs involved.
Regarding speed, GPRS is slow right now, but the CDMA equivalent is plenty fast enough for reading email, chatting by IM, and downloading web pages. While the Slashdot crowd may want to download MP3s 24/7, the reality is that most folks just need e-mail and web access.
My wife just got a new Dell computer for digital image work and whatnot. We found a refurbished 21" Nokia monitor at overstock.com for around $200, and shipping was only $2.95. The screen is beautiful, crisp, and just what she was looking for.
Note: Windows Update does not collect any form of personally identifiable information from your computer. Read our privacy statement.
Windows Update Privacy Statement (Last Updated 10/15/2002) Windows Update is committed to protecting your privacy. To provide you with the appropriate list of updates, Windows Update must collect a certain amount of configuration information from your computer. None of this configuration information can be used to identify you. This information includes:
The configuration information collected is used only to determine the appropriate updates and to generate aggregate statistics. Windows Update does not collect your name, address, e-mail address, or any other form of personally identifiable information.
Windows Update also collects the Product ID and Product Key to confirm that you are running a validly licensed copy of Windows. A validly licensed copy of Windows ensures that you will receive on-going updates from Windows Update. The Product ID and Product Key are not retained beyond the end of the Windows Update session.
To provide you with the best possible service, Windows Update also tracks and records how many unique machines visit its site and whether the download and installation of specific updates succeeded or failed. In order to do this, the Windows operating system generates a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) that is stored on your computer to uniquely identify it. The GUID does not contain any personally identifiable information and cannot be used to identify you. Windows Update records the GUID of the computer that attempted the download, the ID of the item that you attempted to download and install, and the configuration information listed above.
Actually, that's not very far off of what happens if you have the latest version of Outlook's security updates. You get a dialog up warning you that another application is trying to access your sent items/address book and you can grant permission for a specific length of time, or deny the request.
:(
No clippy though
The developer that wrote the code actually knew at the time the original version was written that not all games were winnable (hence the magic -1 and -2 games). The help file line was added as a gag.