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Civil rights

50 years doesn't seem so long ago.

Note to art museums: pixilation is bad

On recent trips to art museums, I have noticed a very disturbing trend. Most museums have video projectors that are clearly hooked up to computers. Some are projecting art, others are projecting descriptive videos (usually as a loop). In the case of the projectors with art, some are noticeably older and lower resolution than others, which usually results in more pixilation of the art.

Yes, budgets are tight: they always are. But using old, lower-resolution projectors for art is just plain lame. Buy new projectors. Also, if the art was converted from film to computer, re-convert it using the highest resolution possible. When it was converted the first time, the resolution might have been limited to match the projectors at the time. Re-convert. Don't force your patrons to view crummy reproductions.

Preventing Windows XP and Vista icon rearrangement

This article solved one of my greatest frustrations with updating XP or Vista or VMware. Some updates would cause the resolution of the screen to change and all the icons to be shuffled. Sometimes, just switching between two computers on a KVM would do this. Even after changing the resolution back to the original value, the icons stayed shuffled. Gee, Microsoft, do you really think that I wanted to lose the work I put into arranging my desktop?

Ignore the title of the article: it works just fine for XP as well.

Fujifilm FinePix F50fd

I have been using an old Casio Exilim for a few years and decided that I should have something better, but still in the point-and-shoot form factor. I took three years of photography in high school and was reasonably good at it (well, at least in black-and-white), but have done nothing serious at all since then.

My primary short term goal was a camera with good indoor, non-flash performance. That means being able to set the camera at a high ASA setting without causing too much speckling. a friend pointed me to an article than sings the praises of the Fujifilm FinePix F30. It sounded cool, but I wanted a more recent camera in case I needed repairs. The current successor to the F30 is the F50. The review at Digital Photography Review went on and on about how wonderful the F30 was and wasn't it sad that companies have to keep upping the megapixel count, but copped to the fact that the F50fd's performance is essentially as good as the F30. So, with Amazon $200 richer (I also bought a 2 gig card and a spare battery, each in the $30 range), I have a new camera.

It worked pretty well for its first real assignment. The no-flash option worked kinda OK inside, but isn't really reliable, as one would expect. The flash worked fine. A few of the no-flash pictures, when enhanced with the "Exposure" control in iPhoto, came out looking quite respectable. The camera handles easily, the number of options is high enough to keep me happy (although I would love a "just set it at this speed and this f-stop" option), and it is quick to start up. The manual was quite complete and well-organized, particularly compared to the manual that came with the Olympus my mother bought for herself last year.

The macro capability on the F50 is also surprisingly good for a point-and-shoot. Tim's got his closeups; I've got mine (and more here):

   

All in all, if you're looking for a $200 point-and-shoot, the F50fd seems like a winner.

Grateful Dead Archives going to UCSC

I was lucky enough to be invited to the press announcement of the Grateful Dead Archives being given to UC Santa Cruz. Well, it wasn't really an announcement, given that the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle jumped the gun a day early. But the gathering was a lot of fun anyway.

My photos (snapshots, really) are here. You can probably see the whole conference online sometime in the future at iclips.

A few notes:

• There were a lot of press there even though the story had gotten out the day before. Fortunately, they sounded pretty excited by the idea of the Grateful Dead archives being made accessible.
• My role, which got me an invite to the event, was to acquire some button-down tie-dyes (thanks, Mindy!), and a hand-made tie-dye tie (thanks, Lisa!), for the Chancellor in case he wanted to dress for the occasion. As you can see from the pictures, he didn't. In fact, I was the only one in the room in a tie-dye. On the other hand, people there appreciated "the Deadheads" giving the tie-dyes to him. Update: the AP photographer got a much better picture than I did, and the photog from the Santa Cruz Sentinel got another good one.
• UCSC has a goal of raising $2 million to fund the archives. This will cover a full-time archivist in perpetuity, as well as housing the archives, putting on special events, making them easy to get at, and so on.
• There were multiple, partially conflicting, stories about how individuals will be able to contribute their own relics to the archives. It sounded like UCSC would accept some of them at some point in the future, but wants to get their arms around the current gift first.
• It's not clear how much individual band members will be contributing on their own. For example, a press person asked Bobby if he still had those short-shorts he wore on summer tour so often and if he would contribute them to the Archives, but Bobby sounded hesitant to part with them. This will probably evolve over time.
• The Archives will be a living, growing beast being cared for by UCSC for both academic research and general appreciation.
• When I lived in Berkeley, I was walking distance from two wonderful Dead venues (the Greek and the BCT); now I will live walking distance (with a bit of huffing and puffing) from the Dead Archives.

My good friend "linksys"

I got a screw in one of my tires, so I went to the local tire place. It will take them about 30-45 minutes to fix. I asked if they had a waiting room that I could work in, and they repair person said "sure, it even has wireless". The only non-locked wireless in the area is, as you have probably guessed, "linksys". I wonder if equating the company name with "open insecure access point" is actually good marketing for Linksys, or their corporate parent Cisco.

Juno

We missed it in the theaters, but saw it on DVD the other night. It is a great, great movie, with excellent characters, good acting, and wonderful lyrics in the soundtrack. If every sassy, self-directed, sarcastic, impetuous 16-year-old girl was this ethical, the world would be a better place.

Relying on Wikipedia definitions

Both Flickr and Wikipedia are poster children for the malleability of Web 2.0 content. Yet, one falls for the other. An otherwise excellent anti-phishing page at Flickr points to the Wikipedia definition of phishing, and repeats the definition... incorrectly. Well, it was probably correct at the time that the Flickr person wrote it while forgetting that definitions at Wikipedia change at the drop of a hat.

Learning about curling

Two folks whom I like seem to enjoy curling (the sport, not their hair). What the world could really use is a DVD that has two or three rounds of curling with a running commentary track by a fan. To avoid copyright issues, it should be a non-televised match by good teams. The commentary would be along the lines of "he did this because of that rule" or "she's doing this because of that common strategy". That would be sufficient to let the viewer know in about an hour whether or not they want to get into curling.

In Pilgrim terms, this is basically "learning about a sport for morons" instead of the way most DVDs and sports sites teach it, which would be "learning about a sport for assholes".

On buying things that I think I will use and then don't really

Guilty, as charged.