Looks like I maybe spoke a little too soon about digital camera technology being up to my wannabe-art-snob standards.
Apparently wanting actual TTL (through the lens not some inaccurate viewfiender or LCD shit) along with the ability to manually tweak (and admittedly, thereby fuck up) everything is just not realistic in most consumer products. And what is this 5-10 second shot-to-shot recycle time bullshit?
It looks like Olympus is the only comapny that makes consumer cameras with recycle times short enough to "feel" like using a real camera. They also seem to be the only company that understands that an LCD displayed updated every 10 seconds is no substitue for a TTL viewfinder. The Olympus 2500L appeals to me - but at $1300 I think it's out of my price range for the time being. They're older 620L is more affordable, but I'm not sure if 1.4 megapixels is enough resolution. And why the hell do these use serial and not USB connections? Do you think I'm going to be connecting these cameras to my Epson Equity II 286 and thus need serial port connectivity? Seriously... serial is dead. Or at least it should be.
12/22/1999 01:44:04 AM | +
I was quite impressed with the thorough digital camera reviews at Imaging Resource.
12/21/1999 11:16:12 PM | +
I need a hobby, as if that isn't already abundantly clear after reading this page...
I'm considering the idea of digital photography. The technology (I think) has advanced to the point where one can take decent photographs, not just lame ass pics.
I tried using the Active Buyer's Guide. I think the buying assistant idea is a good one, but I had a few problems with the site -
So Active Buyers Guide, like almost everything in life is high concept, low execution. Interface issues aside, customer and professional reviews and ratings really need to be integrated for this to be really useful.
12/21/1999 11:14:52 PM | +
I was watching ZDTV at 4am because there was nothing good on Cartoon Network and watched Internet Tonight. Get it, like Entertainment Tonight but about the Internet, already you have a high concept just waiting for exceptional execution. It's kind of like reading Yahoo Internet Life magazine - you have to ask yourself why? Anyway, Internet Tonight has this problem that their links are usually at least two weeks behind the times or just dumb, and their commentary leaves something to desire. It's like a shitty weblog where the author keeps rambling on about useless shit like he's some kind of reporter or writer and not just some dopey collector of links.
It's funny when suck links to itself in self mockery, and since I'm nothing if not a pale imitation of already recycled content I've read... But in this day of a billion blogs watching a half hour TV show to learn about what's "hip" and "cool" on the net just seems rather inefficient. Plus they "show" you the site while they "report" on it, which to me kind of ruins the fun.
There was one thing I kind of liked. They had a segment on The Shower Project. The sub-head "The Shower Project puts one man, 100 women and one shower stall on the Web." is basically wrong and misleading - it's one gay man, 100 women, and lots of different shower stalls because he felt just one would be boring. His motivation is quite noble though - piss off straight men by proving he can shower with one hundred different women and put pictures of it all on the web.
12/21/1999 08:11:11 PM | +
Personally, I could give a rats ass about the whole etoy - eToys domain name dispute.
Maybe eToys sucks. Maybe they are evil. But as a shitty overpriviliged white guy, I tend to side with the evil, oppressive big businesss. Anything else would be hypocrisy on my part. Boo hoo, a bunch of "subversive" and "controversial" Euro-trash lost their domain name. Yeah, big loss there. I was just thinking there aren't enough shitty European "art" sites on the web.
(I'm pretty sure that the "web activists" behind the protest sites probably made their fortunes designing shitty websites for companies much worse than etoys, but who am I to judge or point out the hypocrisy of others. Or do real research for that matter, I'm just a shitty blogger, not a real reporter.) eToys isn't stupid though. They know damned well that any business they lose from angry, web geeks that care about the petty U.S. First Amendment and other things that get in the way of big money is inconsequential compared to the business they were losing when some AOL-using soccer mom went to etoy.com by mistake, saw some "subversive" art, and then just went back to the safety and overpriced bullshit that is amazon.com. eToys stock price may have taken a dive because of this, but that's probably because moron day traders pay too much attention to stupid articles in salon. I mean, here eToys is, finally making a good business decision, and the stock takes a dive all due to a completely baseless public perception that the company is doing something "bad" and the stock might drop because of it. Now there's the real tragedy. Internet stocks should only be affected by baseless public perceptions that the stock price will rise despite what analysts say about "overvalued tech stocks."
So what have we learned today as big business wins again? Trademark law is for big, bad-ass companies to protect their names, and if a few freaky European art sites have their domain names snatched away in the process, so be it. Score another one for the rich, oppressive white man! I can't wait until I get to be that oppressive white guy!
The only sensible "protest" idea is for all the techies to quit etoys. But I don't see that happening.
12/19/1999 03:37:32 PM | +
I think just linking to other blogs is lame, but since I think my blog is lame anyway, I'd like to point out that now that I'm using blogger, I'm in good company, such as
begbie.com - rod.log, onfocus, evhead, TBTF log, and eatonweb
12/17/1999 08:38:28 PM | +
Now that the quarter is over, it's time to sit back and look at what I've learned from my classes. Luckily, everything I learned can be summed up in easy to swallow bullet lists. not that you care or are even reading this...
- CS108 - Object Oriented Systems Design
-
- C++ lame - Java nifty
- dead trees lame - online docs nifty
- hypercard lame - bunnyworld the same
- four person, three week group projects can more easily be done by two competent people in one week
- Phil 60 - Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science
-
- Logical Postivists well intentioned morons - Popper hypocritical, dogmatic moron
- Kuhn genuis - Feyerabend insane
- van Fraassen best philosopher of science ever
- realism is dumb - anti-realism dumber - arguing about it dumbest
- Social analysis of science is mental masturbation
- CS109 - Introduction to Comptuer Science
-
- when they say "intro to cs," they mean "intro to mostly boring cs theory"
- propositional logic boring, predicate logic even more boring
- combinatorics - same as when i did it in grade school
- trees kinda nifty - graphs almost nifty
- deterministic finite automata too predictable - non-deterministic finite automata equivalent (insert sound of me laughing at my own bad joke)
- Turing Complete - sounds impressive until they tell you it was one of Fortan's big selling points
- CS200 - Computer Science Undergraduate Colloquim
-
- There's a lot of fascinating research that goes on in the Stanford cs department
- Undergraduate research could change my academic life
- But I'd rather sleep
- Terry Winograd and John McCarthy are really smart
12/16/1999 08:43:07 PM | +
Has The Industry Standard really become as shitty as I think it has? Or is it just the redesign that makes me think so? And why isn't there easy access to Carl Steadman's columns? Isn't that the only reason people go there? Why the hell am I asking questions in my weblog? yes, i know i'm not funny
12/16/1999 08:30:22 PM | +
Rogers Cadenhead's referer_log is no more.
"I'm pulling up the stakes and folding Referer_Log so I can finish a long-overdue Cruel Site of the Day redesign and write a new ICQ book for Macmillan. The world needs another quirky, general-interest weblog like the open source community needs Eric $. Raymond."Rogers has the distinction of being the only person to ever email me about my weblog, which he did after I linked to refererlog when it opened.
Seriously, though, how hard is it to spell "referrer" properly.
Yeah, I know my weblog is pointless too. I'd stop mine but it takes up just enough time to keep me from doing anything useful with my life, but not too much time now that I use the skank-a-riffic blogger.
12/16/1999 08:25:52 PM | +
gettingit's weekly Internet for Assholes column is kind of neat. I think my goal should be to turn blueblog into "Internet for schmucks."
12/16/1999 06:08:23 PM | +
The Baffler - The Journal That Blunts the Cutting Edge. (no, not www.baffler.com, that's one of carl's finer sites)
Yeah yeah, there's excerpts of baffler artices on the site, but note that the Dusty Groove actually sells back issues and swag. I ordered the back issues I didn't own, but I further commodified my dissent by ordering a t-shirt.
A baffler t-shirt. How hilarious is that. (a more cultured individual might say how "ironic" but i'm not cultured and it's not really ironic) I can add it to my collection of t-shirts nobody "gets"
12/15/1999 10:56:16 PM | +
Since I'm on winter break and have nothing to do, I'm starting to think maybe I should try to find summer employment.
But I'm a computer science major at Stanford. Shouldn't high tech companies be scouting and fighting over me? I mean, actively seeking summer employment would be an admission of weakness. The companies need me, I don't need them. Yup.
The point is - I'm all about selling out. So if you or anybody you know is looking to hire a smart-ass techie this summer, please point them to my stylish and informative resume. Or don't.
12/15/1999 10:13:42 PM | +
I finally found the portal of evil. It's the Justice League of fucked up humor sites - old man murray, seanbaby, fat chicks in party hats, and the ridiculously large archive of zany video game quotes band together to... i don't know, whatever it is those with weird senses of humor do.
they're daily links section took me to a site that offended even me. i understand erotic anime, hentai, and the like. hell, i even understand disney porn. (and by understand i think we all know i mean have a large archive i've been meticulously keeping since 1994) but i really just don't get the allure of seeing an anime babe getting her nose "violated." i don't care if she is a sailor scout.
12/15/1999 10:05:03 PM | +
I laughed my ass off the first time i visted the fuck everything zine from Spite Magazines's links page (Spite has the dubious distinction of being the only publication with any sort of readership to have published something written by me.) I particularly like fuck everything's rating the women of lillith fair - We Fucked Them All So You Don't Have To. Anyway, memepool linked to them yesterday, and they have some newer content up, like the foto funnies. I love angry punks.
12/15/1999 08:52:34 PM | +
I love cartoons, and think web based cartoons are nifty. I've been reading dotcomix for a while. The old virtual bill stuff is funny, and it was new to me since i never watched the mtv version. And you know when Tom Tomorrow gets his strip, This Modern World, involved in something, it has to be cool. (i mean besides salon.com)
shockwave.com is making a foray into this realm as well. signing the South Park creators to do animated shorts. I still love South Park. I saw The Spirit of Christmas in a 50mb quicktime movie the summer before the show started, and have been a dedicated fan ever since. Like anything that is cool and goes mainstream, the instinct to abandon it and say "yeah, it was cool back in the day but now it sucks" is definitely there. But that's just as bad as liking something because everyone else likes it, right? Who cares if mallternateens are all wearing cartman shirts, south park is still funny. sometimes at least.
Mainly i'm just happy about this because i have a large investment in Macromedia, and hopefully this will allow them to turn shockwave.com into something marketable instead of a haven for web "designers" who have Flash 4 and way too much time on their hands. this should hopefully make more money for me and the rest of the greedy shareholders. what can i say, it's all about the benjamins. (The rock remix, not the original.)
12/15/1999 08:41:38 PM | +
This is being posted using blogger. Like you care. So far it seems to be pretty freaking nifty though. Maybe I'll update more than once a month now, not that anyone other than me will notice.
If you're a fellow blogger reading this, thanks for visiting and please feel free to check out the archive which should hopefully be working by the time you read this.
12/15/1999 08:23:20 PM | +
copyright 1999-2000 adam mathes