Mad Dog Palin
Choice words from the rollingstone.com article:
"Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV ? and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
Ouch.
There’s so much more to see
I don’t believe this is how the world should be
Just wanted to share.
After a few months since we got this 35mm vibrating adapter (with achromat) from Worley, JBQ and I tested it tonight. I am concerned about the extreme vignetting that I am getting. I can’t zoom in any more towards the ground glass because the HV20 wouldn’t focus that close, so I am not happy about that part. If you have any tips, I am all ears. I am wondering if I need a different ground glass.
I don’t disagree with the judge ruling that Apple might have violated the anti-monopoly provisions of the antitrust laws for its agreements with AT&T. However, when the judge says that Apple has violated federal and California criminal computer fraud and abuse statutes by releasing version 1.1.1 of its iPhone operating software when Apple knew that doing so would damage or destroy some iPhones that had been ‘unlocked’ to enable use of a carrier other than AT&T, this is not fair.
I own an unlocked iPhone. And while I would be pissed if my phone was to get bricked if I was to upgrade the firmware, the truth is, I have an unsupported phone. I would deserve the pain associated with that upgrade. The risk should be mine, not Apple’s.
And the bigger problem is, it’s difficult to be 100% backwards compatible in a 1.x release of any product. After the original release, it will take 1-2 more years to stabilize a big project in a way that nothing else is going to get broken again. The judge must understand this. That’s how software works. Apple should only get fined if they broke the compatibility on purpose, in order to take revenge on the unlockers. But how do you even prove that in a court of law without the engineers coming forward?
Lots of fanfare for iTunes’ Genius thingie. Unfortunately, it does not satisfy me (what does, right?). I just don’t think it works for me. It is actually consistent, it almost gives me the same songs for two different (but similar) songs of the same artist. So I know that their algorithm works for the way it was designed for. My problem is that the algorithm itself doesn’t do what I need.
I like listening to songs like “Ranting of Eva”’s “Bright Side“. Now, the interesting thing is that the “Red Letter Agent” band actually does have the exact same style of music. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the same person who wrote songs for the two bands (note: the members of the two bands actually are good friends and they usually gig together). “The Coral Sea” also have songs (e.g. “In This Moment’s Time”) that the guitar sounds exactly the same. So if in my ears these bands are actually sounding the same, why isn’t Genius putting these together in my local Genius results?
I am sure that part of the algorithm makes sense, it’s just that it’s not as intelligent or as broad as I need it to be. I am looking for a very specific sound, and Genius doesn’t give it to me. At least not when it comes to guitar sound and arrangement identification patterns.
I also asked Brian, guitarist of the “Drist“, what he thinks about these songs and he agreed that all these songs have a similar style with a “slightly dirty” guitar sound (as he put it).
So I know I am not crazy.
Update: IM chat with my husband:
JBQ: teaches you right for listening to alternative rock music.
JBQ: If you listened to pop music, it’d work much better (since all pop music sounds the same): it’d just return a random pop song.
eugenia: 
JBQ: Seriously, all the rants I’ve heard about the genius playlist is that it doesn’t work as soon as you go in the alternative/indie genre (which is *exactly* where you want it to work).
eugenia: ic
JBQ: It doesn’t matter that it can solve the easy cases, I want it to solve the hard ones.
eugenia:: yup
JBQ: I want it to give me whatever band you made me listen to* the other day when I say “I want something that sounds like Evanescence”.
* That was The Luminous Sky’s new album. While these guys play electronic rock, the singing patterns and style of the lead vocalist are the same as with the singer of Evanescence. Listen to their songs “Devoted” and “Falling for you”.
I’m a barbie girl, in a barbie world… Life in plastic, it’s fantastic!
That pretty much sums up my view on Palin’s performance in the debate this night. I watched the entire debate (just as I did with the first presidential debate), and I must say, it was rather interesting. To us Europeans, both Palin (that’s [...]
I put together 10 color grading presets tonight, 9 of them somewhat emulating the Magic Bullet looks, and 1 emulating the Kodak 3383 film look. The presets work with Vegas Platinum and Pro, but not with the plain version of Movie Studio. Here’s how:
1. Download this zip file. Unzip the “presets” folder in it on your C: folder. It must be unzipped on the root folder of your C: drive, or the included .vf sample projects won’t load.
2. Download the Preset Manager directly from Sony. Install it. This is a nice official utility that unfortunately doesn’t come with Vegas by default.
3. Browse C:presets and double click the eugenia-part1.sfpreset file to open with the Preset Manager. Click the little + sign on the left of the “eugenia-part1.sfpreset” word, and then select the “FX Chain” word that appears directly underneath it. Then, click the “edit” menu, and “Copy to system”.
4. Now, open a Vegas project (either my sample .vf projects, or any of your own projects), and try to apply a plugin to an event in the timeline (by clicking the blue + symbol on the right side of any timeline event). From the long list appearing, click “Filter Packages” on the tree list on the left, and the new presets will be now visible. You can choose any of them to load, and start playing around.
I watched a bit of the vice presidential debate tonight, and I can say, oh boy, how shallow Palin is. I urge anyone to actually listen carefully to the questions asked. She almost never gave any real answer. She was talking about empty things that had nothing to do with the question. She was almost off topic.
Her final closing statement felt that she was singing for her church choir. She could remember the script word for word. It felt so fake.
The only thing that Palin did right, with Biden and Obama failing to do, was to look at the cameras while replying to the questions, instead of the person asking the question. I guess, Biden and Obama are more respectful and sincere, but this can cost them.
California is the second state after Massachusetts that allows marriages between same-sex people. It’s a step forward towards a free-er society. However, some old stylers want to put this law away with “proposition 8“.
I have one thing to say to these people: prejudice.
You see, sure, there are the religious nutjob asshats who don’t want to allow gay marriage because they believe that God will send fire to burn them all if they allow the law to pass. Fair enough. We can’t mess with God’s will, now, can we? 
However, California, which consists of many artists and techies, is NOT as overly religious as the Bible Belt states are. So why are there people in this state that are against gay people? And the reason for that, is prejudice.
The media, 99% of the times, has portrayed gay people negatively. When there is a gay plot in a movie or show, the gay person is usually the “easy” one, living an “unholy” life. People believe that all gay people are sluts. That’s the real crux of the issue. Not God. Not personal opinions on marriage. Not even that gay people “chose” to be gay. Sure, there are a lot of people who still put God, marriage opinions and choice as their reasons for hating gay people, but I truly believe that the main reason behind these excuses is that they think that gay people are slutty people, unworthy of marriage. That’s the information the average Joe has been fed by the media.
They don’t even think for one moment that right next door from that “slutty” gay club around the corner, there is a “straight” slutty club, where their 18 year old daughter goes anal in the restrooms with that 35 year old married man she just met. But they only see other people’s sluttiness and not the one inside their own home. What was that? Your daughter doesn’t do that kind of thing? Well, either you don’t know your daughter well, or your daughter is ugly as hell. Either way, if not all daughters are the same, then all gay people are not the same either.
We have many gay friends here in the Bay Area, but at least two of these gay friends have been together with their partners for years. Honestly people, when you see these two couples being together for 15-20 years each, how can you have the nerve to disallow these people from getting married? They deserve it much more than most of us, straight people.
Continuing my impromptu series on good comedy, here’s another one. Steve in Coupling, with his legendary rant about naked women. The backstory here is that in the days leading up to this dinner party, Susan (the blonde across the table), found one of Steve’s lesbian porn videos (”Lesbian Spank Inferno”, here come the search engines!). [...]
Kroc Camen, long time OSNews reader and frequent IM buddy of mine, has an interesting piece examining the use of the <abbr> HTML tag. Kroc is one of those people who is very serious about the presentation and efficiency of his code, a trait I do not share, at least in practice, at least, to the same degree that he does, and it makes us good companions. My focus is typically on clean, fast, scalable code that forsakes beauty in favor of performance. My code, in the form of OSNews, has sustained a simultaneous Digging and Slashdotting, something of which I’m very proud.
But my CSS isn’t going to win any awards, my javascript could be collapsed a lot and made much more efficient, and my HTML often suffers from “div-itis” and “class-itis.” Enter Mr Camen, whose motto, “code is art,” is evident upon initial inspection. Kroc’s code is not only well written, the source itself is actually beautiful. We have collaborated on both CSS and PHP in the past and both are the better for it.
That said, we have strikingly different positions about publshing on the web. Kroc writes his website for himself, and as a result, publishes in HTML 5; his site doesn’t work in IE, his mindset being “if you choose to use a subpar browser, you will have a subpar experience. ” Indeed, his site is a complete mess in IE 7, the fault only of IE and its abysmal CSS support, not the code itself. I, conversely, attempt to code with a much more conservative bend, coding to the masses, at the expense of using several great tricks.
Getting back on track, when it came to discussing the <abbr> tag, both of us found ourselves remarkably on the same page. Although one can get into the nitty-gritty details and find the whole conversation trivial, I think there’s something to be said for using tags properly and getting your information properly parsed. After all, screen readers exist with regularity today, XML is very popular (most commonly in the form of RSS), and search engines spider the majority of popular websites several times times a day if not every hour. Using tags, and using them properly, should be important to content publishers and republishers.
I also agree with Kroc’s point that it’s not your job to educate your reader like an encyclopedia. The <abbr> tag is not so much about education as it is about properly marking up your code.
As the second wave of the browser war heats up - as Tracemonkey, Squirrelfish Extreme, and V8 start really setting themselves apart from IE in even larger ways, coding to standards will become even more important. Understading lesser used tags is elemental in writing the best, most concise code and ranking well in search engines.
A few months ago I sketched The Vision but I left it in B&W mode. Today, while trying the new GIMP 2.6.0 release, I decided to actually use GIMP more extensively and colorize the image. Then, I used the “cartoon” effect and the “canvas” plugin, to make it look like it was on magazine paper. I like GIMP’s interface much more than in the past, I must say. It wasn’t difficult to do what I needed, I like what I see so far.
I am thinking of putting my sketching ability into some good use: do about 30-35 sketches of a story, colorize them with the GIMP, and then incorporate in it some live shots of a rock band. And produce a pretty cool music video. Just an early bird thought.
Update: The feel-good timeframe for Gimp didn’t last too long — as expected. I will revisit it in 2 more years.
They removed the “browse new iPhone/iPod apps” links that used to be in the “categories” box of the AppStore page. And the “what’s new” placeholder does NOT show the newest releases, but rather it’s yet another “recent staff picks” kind of thing. So we have no way to view the truly newest releases, and discover new apps easier. I don’t know what’s going on through Apple’s mind, but they really need to get a clue. These links were the only reason why I would visit the AppStore via iTunes.
The first time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The last time I saw Phish was in Hampton. The best Phish show I saw was in Hampton (11/22/97, best Piper ever!).
It would be awesome to see them in Hampton in 2009.
Yesterday, Facebook released Facebook for iPhone 2.0. I have to say, this is one of the best app updates I can ever recall. I’m incredibly impressed.
First of all, it introduced what appears to be a pretty decent speed boost. Interacting with the app is significantly faster for me on both Wifi and 3G.
Facebook for iPhone 2.0
Secondly, and more importantly, the app is much more robust and complete. Whereas before, the Facebook experience was very limited, the new app is almost a wholesale replacement while on your iPhone. The old version was so limited that you’d have to go to the browser for most operations such as adding a friend, viewing a photo tag, viewing requests, etc. And going to the browser directed you to m.facebook.com, which meant you had to login and go to the full site - a multi-step process to be sure. Also, the iPhone optimized Facebook site, iphone.facebook.com, was woefully underpowered. Both served as great platforms for basic browsing, but severely handicapped when it came to truly using the site.
So it’s that much more of a welcome treat that the new app is a full on competitor. As Apple continues to let me down, Facebook continues to do right by me.