On vacation this week. Not entirely my choice, but it’s nice to have the time off. Of course I planned a bunch of things, and ended up with a week so full that it doesn’t really feel like much of a vacation.
Yesterday started it off. Went out to a friend’s cabin, and turned money into noise,
spending a good chunk of the day shooting at targets. It was a pretty good day, except for a little mishap on the first shot. I’ve now had my first scope-bite, and a very good reminder to switch away from the damned bifocals when looking through a scope. Beyond that, it was a fun day. Got a sore shoulder and a lot of cleaning to do today, though. And a little arc above my eyebrow that probably won’t scar.
- Figured it had to happen eventually, but it still makes me sad. Kodak kills Kodachrome film after 74 years.
- Poking fun at Craiglist ads: Item not as described. [metafilter]
- The geek in me is intrigued by the Hidden Features Of Perl, PHP, Javascript, C, C++ , C#, Java, Ruby, Python, And Others
- The list of 15 Games You Need For Your New iPhone (and 30 more to consider) had one that I really do need. But my taste in games apparently isn’t mainstream. I prefer games that I can pause in the middle and come back to over twitchy, gotta-keep-playing-until-I-finish-this-level stuff.
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| Quadriga |
Things at work have me cranky again. Mostly a couple co-workers who haven’t been getting the bits I need from them done on time, which has led to me falling behind while I wait for them. But I need to remember that it’s just a job. Plus, the Saints start a new home-stand this weekend, so I’ll have baseball.
In other news, the Star Tribune used one of my photos without permission earlier this year. It’s the photo of the Quadriga at the Minnesota State Capitol that appears to the left. Got my lawyer to send them a letter, and they pulled the photo down almost immediately after receiving the letter, but I haven’t heard any reply from them yet. Not only did they strip out my copyright information and publish the photo without my permission, but they misspelled my name when they attributed me. I guess we’ll see what develops there. I think the thing that pisses me off most is that I’m generally pretty easy to work with when someone asks permission to use one of my photos. I generally don’t give them away, but I’ve turned very few people away. But they didn’t even bother to ask first.
And I think that’s about it for this time. I’m trying to be a little better about more frequent updates, but that means I might not have a ton to say sometimes.
- From Mark J. Rebilas: A rare weekend off turns into random remote cameras. The photographer goes on vacation and spends his time taking photos. But hey, some cool ideas for remote setups there.
- Another bad idea floating around Congress: Orphan Works = Finders Keepers? Basically, if the owner of a photo can’t be identified, people are free to use it. Ugh! So what happens if someone strips the copyright information from one of your photos and then publishes it on the web with faulty attribution (as the Star Tribune did to me)? As I understand the proposed law, at that point, anyone in the world would be able to steal the photo. [sportsshooter]
- There’s More from the NYT on NSA’s Domestic Spying on your email. Not surprising, really. And while it’s nice that Congress is noticing, I don’t really expect anything good to come of the current discussions. [metafilter]
Blogging’s been slow lately. And it’s not just me. There’s a bunch of the blogs I read that seem to have gone into “summer mode” too. So I guess the only solution for it is to get off (or on, I guess) my lazy butt and do some typing. I’d post a photo, but I haven’t been doing much of that lately, either.
In part, it’s been slow because I’ve had plenty of other things to keep me busy. There are the Saints, there’s yard work, and there’s catching up with the stuff I had planned to do inside the house over the winter. But a lot of it has just falled onto the long-term list. Doesn’t mean it won’t get done—just means I’m not going to worry if I don’t get to it right away. And it hasn’t really turned into full-fledged summer yet. Heck, it was just a week ago that I was griping about having to turn on the furnace again (yesterday I fired up the air conditioners). But the summer mood seems to have struck.
Thanks to the folks who responded to my Dear Lazyweb request last time. I’m working on sorting through the information, so there will probably be a more complete post about it one of these days. Just not today.
- The Blender Defender is a pretty darned cool home-protection setup. Probably most useful only if you have a cat, in which case you deserve what happens to you, but the idea could be modified… [metafilter]
- This Makita Ad appeals to the geek in me in so many different ways. Very Cool. [nack]
- The United Countries of Baseball is a fun map, put together by MLB. [metafilter]
- I don’t often point to YouTubery around here, but this Dance Off had me laughing. [sportsshooter]
- Notes about bookstores: The Seven Types of Customer is pretty funny, and the followup is worth reading, too. The articles are part of a larger set on bookstores. [metafilter]
- So I happened to be awake at the right time, and have a fairly unique name. Turns out now it’s pretty easy to find me on Facebook.
- Layers Magazine asks Why does HDR bring out the best/worst in you as a Photographer? It’s just another technique, but people who set out trying to “make HDRs” often don’t go looking for something worth taking a picture of in the first place. [nack]
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| Genuine Bell |
I’ve been fighting with technology lately, it seems. My GPS suddenly stopped working a couple weekends ago. I wrote a bunch of code yesterday, then trimmed it back to two lines of new code, and somehow managed to crash in those two lines taken straight from some example code. And yesterday evening, I got a phone call from someone, and heard the corded phone in the basement ringing, but neither of my cordless phones rang or would pick up (and didn’t leave a message). So I figured it was time to plug in the beauty shown there on the right.
But hey, in general things are going okay. The Saints are back for a home stand this weekend. The weather’s mostly been pleasant (though we could sure use some rain). The summer’s shaping up to be okay, as far as I can tell. Now if I could just figure out how to get my GPS fixed… It’s under warranty, but I don’t have the original packaging and bought it from amazon - then again, it’s been discontinued and is now selling for less than half what I paid for it last July, so it’ll probably just be easier to buy a new one.
- If you’re looking for a phone similar to the one I got, use this search of Telephones items on eBay.com from umsi4678. I’m very pleased with my refurbished phone, and while there are other sellers of such things, I was happy with the guy who sold me mine.
- In the “not pleased” column: the phones I’m throwing away were the General Electric 28213EE2 DECT 6.0 phones. Utter crap in my environment, as near as I can tell. At least twice a week the handsets would lose the base station. Half the time trying to answer the phone would get a high-pitched squeal in your ear, and the other half of the time you’d get dead air while the wired phone continued ringing.
- Speaking of GPS, Dear Lazyweb, what’s the best software to turn a gps track into a map? I don’t want some interactive gee-whiz map, I just want a static jpeg showing the route overlaid on a map. Gotta be something out there, right? Use the feedback form if you know of a solution, please.
- Ouch. When the Russians are calling America a communist country, that’s gotta sting. American capitalism gone with a whimper [vinnie]