Saturday, August 3, 2002

YES! I Think This is My Camera. Just posted! Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro Review It's a tough call, cuz it takes a lot for me to break with Nikon and my mechanical FM2s. I've been watching the pro-sumer lines for a while, waiting to see which camera will make me jump to digital, rather than scanning slides and negs (which would of course require Nikon CoolScan, which I don't have yet either ). Most of the time just setting the pixels as high as they can go on whatever flatbed scanner I can get my hands on and batting cleanup in Photoshop. So what's wrong with the Nikon D-series? Nothing, as far as I can tell, except price and the fact that Nikon still hasn't completely "gotten" digital. Not Nikon or any other top camera maker's fault. I have just been waiting for the technology to evolve to the point that I wouldn't want to shoot my potential Pulitzers on film first. They aren't competing against other cameras. They are competing against film technology. And I am always too much of an early adopter, but never quite bleeding edge early adopter. Makes me want to kick myself sometimes. Like getting my iPod a month before the new models were announced and the price of the one I'd just bought dropped $100. Shit. That hurt. Always shopping for bargains, which means I always break down and get the newest computer line, like within six months of the announcement of the new latest and greatest. Still, I don't want to be in the position of buying version 1.0 of anything. So I buy version 1.1 and a month later version 2.0 comes out. Life sucks. So it is strategy that drives me to Fuji. Lower cost, that superior Super CCD sensor that is better than the ones on the Nikons, that sort of blows my mind. Blows my mind enough to settle for the cheesy plastic-molded Nikon N80/F80 body that I'd NEVER be caught dead buying in a film camera. Sure, I could get a digital camera with a Pro body from Nikon, if I wanted to part with at least $3,000, and if I did, my luck is Nikon would finally make the next step technology advance within six months of my buying it. That advance IS coming. You can tell these are still transitional digital cameras. So I thinks, buy a bit cheaper, still get great components, and wait out Nikon some more. What do you think? Miasma Just posted! Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro Review. Just posted! Our full review of Fujifilm's FinePix S2 Pro digital SLR. The S2 Pro is the much awaited successor to the acclaimed if slightly understated S1 Pro. The S2 Pro is based around Nikon's F80 (N80) film... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)] [...] After processing the S2 Pro outputs a huge 12 megapixel image. If this is too large (and a 4.5 MB per JPEG it may well be) you can select a 6 megapixel output size. Because of the Honeycomb like layout of the SuperCCD this 6 megapixel image is created by first processing the 6 megapixel input pixels to a 12 megapixel image and then downsampling this image to 6 megapixels. 10:29:51 PM    Comment [] Distributed Computing, XML, and Self-Organizing Systems Are the Way To Go A primer on distributed computing. Say you've got a big computation task to perform. Perhaps you have found a way to cure cancer, or you want to look for aliens. All you need is a few super computers to work out some calculations, but you've only got the one PC on your desk. What to do? A popular solution is the "distributed computing" model, where the task is split up into smaller chunks and performed by the many computers owned by the general public. This guide shows you how. [kuro5hin.org] 10:13:03 PM    Comment [] Note To Self: Check Into myRadio myOnlineLife. Wow - while I was on vacation, I missed the release of myRadio. "This Tool extends the Radio Userland aggregator from rss to any networked data (xml, html, soap, personalized services, etc), and any layout. It is exceedingly simple for developers to add functionality to the framework. The GUI (screenshot) is reminiscent of My Yahoo! and other server based personalization tools. The goal of this project is to very quickly bring all the functionality of server based personalization to the client, then use the client based architecture to develop way beyond!" That's one giant leap.... If you've installed this tool, can you please let me know how it's working for you? My mind is exploding with the idea of how to set up this type of digital dashboard for each member of our staff at SLS. Of course, masukomi is correct that we need authentication built into aggregators for the next logical steps in this process. Imagine if database vendors RSS-ified their databases so that you could offer authenticated monitoring to your patrons. For example, what if my library subscribes to NewsIllinois (a database available to millions of Illinois residents, thanks to subsidized funding from the Illinois State Library) and I want to monitor it for items about libraries. If I could enter my library card number into my aggregator and the database sent out RSS notifications, summaries of new items could appear in my aggregator automatically. I could click on the link to view the full text because the link would already have the authentication embedded in it. Just think what this type of functionality could provide for lawyers, doctors, journalists, and other specialists. All flowing through the library's resources! [The Shifted Librarian] 9:50:26 PM    Comment [] A Collection of Stupid Linking Policies. LOL! You Can't Beat it! "Don't Link to Us!" [Daypop Top 40] 9:46:56 PM    Comment [] Attack of the Blobs! 21. CNN.com - Mystery street blobs spark concern - August 2, 2002 (5.1 points). Strange but true.. [( blogdex : recent )] [from http://www.cnn.com} While sidewalks everywhere have splotches, the concentration in the Camden neighborhood is high -- dozens in most sections of concrete.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CAMDEN, New Jersey (AP) -- There's something strange underfoot in Camden. Black blobs polka-dotting the streets and sidewalks of the Waterfront South area have some residents fearful for their health and worried the blobs might signal the end of their neighborhood. The Department of Environmental Protection doesn't know what it is. Neither does the Camden County Health Department. When lifelong resident Bonnie Sanders gives a tour of the neighborhood, an area more depressed than most in one of the country's poorest cities, she just points down. The spots morph over a few days, Sanders explained. The fresh ones look like small oil spills -- most of them round, most of them about 6 inches across. Though they look like liquid, they don't feel like it. 9:14:46 PM    Comment [] Creative Commons Metadata Specifications: VERY Interesting! Editors' Newswire for 2 August, 2002. Newswire stories, including: Initial draft of Creative Commons Metadata specification. [xmlhack] 9:08:58 PM    Comment [] Old Media Fears Interactivity, Or Not? MSNBC adopts blogs, but this raises questions. News.Com: "For a mainstream Web site such as MSNBC, blogs offer a stepped-up level of editorial control over the often raucous ramblings from readers in online discussion boards. The site closed the popular boards last December because of the high cost of monitoring discussions that often turned into obscene flame wars." [Scripting News] I have a hard time grasping this story though. I work on the message boards for Lycos.com, and I have suggested that the Lycos Communities adopt Weblogs as an addition to the suite of community resources that Lycos has, along with boards, chat, clubs and picture galleries. Obviously, this hasn't happened yet. What I cannot see is how MSNBC thinks that Weblogs will be less raucous and require less moderation than message boards. If anything, MSNBC will have more work on its hands with Weblogs, unless these are going to be tightly controlled blogs that somehow don't allow users to be opinionated... [Mac Net Journal] 9:04:22 PM    Comment [] MSNBC Has Blogs, but CNN.com Gets More Traffic a Month MSNBC Embraces Blogs. Creatures From the Web Lagoon: The Blogs "MSNBC.com, consistently ranked among the top news destinations on the Web, is about to invest a chunk of important virtual real estate into the blog concept. MSNBC.com has killed its discussion boards, with their 18 million posts per month, and instead plans to establish by the end of August what it will call "Weblog Central," a portal of regularly updated lists of blogs from throughout the Web, arranged by subject. It will include links to MSNBC.com's own blogs as well." [National Journal] Wow - portal of regularly updated blogs arranged by subject. I sure hope they brought in some librarians and information architects to help build it. [The Shifted Librarian] 8:09:07 PM    Comment []

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