Saturday, 20 July 2002

toyList.add("Nikon Coolpix 5700"); Is it sharp or not? I've started posting images from my Nikon Coolpix 5700. I've now shot about 500 images. When everything goes well, the camera is awesome. It does take some getting used to the focus and manual settings, though. I'm still learning about the camera and probably will be for years. But, right out of the box you can see that it makes pretty darn nice and clear images. All of the images posted so far are unretouched images straight off of the camera. I think in the few hundred images I've posted so far you'll see a good range of different types of subjects. You'll also see that I used flash a lot (I bought a new Nikon SB-50DX flash that is pretty nice). [Robert Scoble: Scobleizer Weblog] Another toy to add to the must have toy list. I wonder, once I pay off my debt, whether I will process my must have toy list in a fifo or lifo manner... 11:27:07 PM

Jython + SWT = Rapid UI coding eclipse. I need to build some UIs. I've done swing stuff in the past and found them to look and perform less than idea. Indeed one of the reasons I reall like eclipse is that it doesn't actually use Swing under the covers so it performs very nicely. I find I often end up spending huge amounts of effort to produce a fairly a mediocre looking UI. [james strachan's musings] Fun game of the week - developing SWT user interfaces from Jython. Wheeeeee. 7:28:33 PM

Interesting stuff Personas and scenarios. Donna Maurer has written a very practical blog entry on using personas and scenarios. [Column Two] Personas and scenarios make for a very interesting way to develop an understanding of the requirements of the users of the system. Lots of fun to do. 7:27:13 PM

Xulux XUL. A new project called Xulux (pronounced zoolooks is underway to explore these XUL ideas. There's not much to see yet but there's a xulux-interest mail list if anyone fancies joining in the fun... [james strachan's musings] I have subscribed, because I am interested, but I find my mail box is almost toxic these days. Email is, unfortunately, dying. Maybe we should do some blog-based collaboration thingey as well? 6:22:32 PM

Luxor whine XUL tutorial. Does this seem a realistic approach to anyone? If you're interested in learning more, there's an interesting XUL tutorial together with slides discussing rich UI interfaces and there's the Luxor project too which has some useful information on it. [james strachan's musings] My only bitch with Luxor is that it is GPL, instead of LGPL or Apache. Other than that, it looks massivly cute. 6:20:22 PM

Printing a Telly Roll Up for the Floppy Television. The only funny thing will be whether, by the time this comes out, I am still watching telly. 6:16:58 PM

Personal relationships to make the world go round, again Building Business Relationships via the Blog. If you read only one post today, make it this one. [Blunt Force Trauma] Another reason that the world is going to keep moving forward - Blogs and Business Relationships. Big business is really a reaction to the lack of being able to find business opportunities without the leverage of a big companies marketing budget. Blogs, and the personal interaction, is going to disintermediate the whole market. The reduction in friction in the market will be quite startling. And the BigCo's will go out in a big way. Which is a good thing, I think. 6:14:22 PM

Only sane reaction to airport security Search Me, Part Two. It seems that a 62-year-old airline passenger, infuriated by security requests to manipulate his belt buckle (to prove that it was not a weapon, I suppose), rather over-complied. He unbuckled the fastener in question and dropped his pants, no doubt in a sincere effort to facilitate searchability. Whoever you are, I will help you with your bail. Yes, I agree that he overreacted. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who sympathizes with him. Honorable citizens are now on the receiving end of the sort of purposeful and mindless aggravation one tends to associate with borders between banana republics. Soon the job descriptions will read "Security Engineer, no experience necessary. Must look good in mirrored sunglasses and have own epaulets." [Claudia McCue's Radio Weblog] hehehehahahaha 6:06:22 PM

Fluid Dynamics saves the day Is this the next killer Photoshop plug-in?. Oh, this is TOO easy. If this becomes a commercial product, retouchers are either gonna love this or, if they charge by the hour, go broke overnight. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020715/navyart.html?ct=7627.18866652907 [Claudia McCue's Radio Weblog] I'm sure I remember something about this being done somewhere before, except that time it was used to generate a high quality still from moving video. In that instance it tendered to drop out moving objects. I can see a couple of interesting things that could be done with this technique - like allowing an AI to figure out which collections of pixels represent a single object. Anyways... 6:05:24 PM

Another reason to categorise my knowledge sharing How to Publish a Category to a Different ftp Server. Dave's note on ftp [Claudia McCue's Radio Weblog] This is going to become usefulk once I get around to organising categories. Have some for internal stuff only. Would be grand if I could get radio to use scp instead of ftp tho. 6:02:47 PM

The future is now. Almost I can't seem to get through to this article on the Singapore Times.  If someone else can, could you clip it and send it to me.  I want to save it to my weblog for a K-Logs post.  Thanks.  Note:  Excellent example of a K-Log in action.  Problem solved within minutes.  Thanks Steven!!  I have reposted the article (It's KS and not KM) here for future reference. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] Hmmmm. Take home quote: All of these changes will require us to shift away from the command and control structure of today to a more networked business model. This will require culture change in how work is done. We will be moving to more just-in-time learning and team collaboration as a way of doing business across time and space. The real question is whether the leaders of today will have the courage to make these fundamental changes in the way work is done. Those that do will re-define the time equation of work and will be the leaders of the future. 5:57:29 PM

Im washed out Photo: My pregnant wife at 17 weeks. [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson] I love the colour in that photo. Shows that I am getting sick of grey cityscapes in winter. :) 5:54:48 PM

More flash fun Switchback.. Ubergeek.tv: Switchback. [Hack the Planet] Heh. When I get around to setting up categories, I am going to need one just for flash I suspect. ;) 5:53:14 PM

Tanking share market is the least of our concerns The crash of 2002. Griffin can imagine, he said, a Japanese-style pullback from risk in the U.S., in which investors give up, banks refuse to lend and the economy languishes. He can imagine other countries, accustomed to the United States' role as the world's economic locomotive, not taking up the standard. He can imagine a crisis of capitalism of a 1930's order. CNN/Money Pretty damn depressing. [Blogging Roller] To claim that the entirety of Japan's problem is based on the fact that the share market tanked is a long call. I feel that the majority of Japan's problem is that they have a long history of a tightly controlled heirarchy, where change can only come from the top. Thus when the large companies, which are really just corporitisations of the old family/clan structure of feudal Japan, can't move because they are mired in problems of lack of structural reform, then there is no way for Japanese culture to fix the problem. America, on the other hand, believes in reform from the bottom in the form of small companies doing new things. That's where the internet boom came from. So realistically, for the world to fall apart, due to a tanking US sharemarket, really says that all the innovative software guys would have to stop innovating because they aren't getting paid anymore. I for one laugh at this idea. Even if I am unemployed, expecting me to stop coding is insane. Look at Apache. Look at Linux. Look at hundreds of other OSS projects. Innovation and change will continue. 5:45:59 PM

WiFi trains WiFi and Mass Transit. The big question is whether this would be a service offered to promote commuting or as a revenue source.  I know plenty of people who would pay $10/month to have Internet access while they ride the train.[Windley's Enterprise Computing Weblog] I'd pay the dosh in a heartbeat. I'm loving working on the train. On second thoughts, having internet access on the train would probably mean the train ride would consist of blogging. Maybe I shouldn't wish for access on the train. :) 5:36:19 PM

StickWarz Star Wars Spoof. A ver nicely done flash animation [/0] Heh. 5:33:10 PM

A decent future goal Rendezvous Developer Stuart Cheshire Interviewed [Slashdot] I'm am so glad Rendezvous is going to be an IETF standard compliant thingey, once said IETF standard is finalized. I was fearing a Windows style de facto undocumented standard. Which would have sucked big time. My hope is that in the future — distant future perhaps — your computer will only need one wired communication technology. It will provide power on the connector like USB and FireWire, so it can power small peripheral devices. It will use IP packets like Ethernet, so it provides your wide-area communications for things like email and Web browsing, but it will also use Zeroconf IP so that connecting local devices is as easy as USB or FireWire is today. People ask me if I'm seriously suggesting that your keyboard and mouse should use the same connector as your Internet connection, and I am. There's no fundamental reason why a 10Mb/s Ethernet chip costs more than a USB chip. The problem is not cost, it is lack of power on the Ethernet connector, and (until now) lack of autoconfiguration to make it work. I would much rather have a computer with a row of identical universal IP communications ports, where I can connect anything I want to any port, instead of today's situation where the computer has a row of different sockets, each dedicated to its own specialized function. Hear, hear. 5:30:46 PM

4wd that smells of fish'n'chips Drive a Greasecar - DIY Biodiesel [Slashdot] Hey maybe this way, I could afford to run a 4wd. Yay! :) 5:28:20 PM

NekoHTML HTML parsing support added. There's a new HTML library for Jelly which can parse any HTML as if it were XML. This can help... [jelly] Sweeeeeeet. Based on the joy that is NekoHTML. Way sexy. Wish I had this two weeks ago, instead of fluxing with Swing's HTML parser. 5:27:20 PM

Proof I need to get out more, too Proof I need to get out more.. From IRC [Carlton] CVS is a drug. You start off just trying it in doses, then suddenly you find your entire life is in CVS. [Carlton] And it's pushy. It keeps asking you to commit. [Carlton] "But I'm not ready! Can't I just checkout some other projects? We can still update!" Coming soon: The "Charles Needs a Life" fund. [The Desktop Fishbowl] Then when you finally do get around to committing, you find out someone committed before you, and now you are full of conflicts. (Charles, maybe we should do a join't venture on that "Get a life" campaign) 4:20:36 PM

© Copyright 2002 Brett Morgan.

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