The kinds of things that fascinate me in photography as an art are so well explained by this excellent image from LIFE magazine's public archive:

A nice comedic (but still profound) read by Christopher Hitchens:

"... at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil)."

Certain kinds of photos are simply mind blowing. And I know I will be never capable of shooting, which makes them even more fascinating.

Google responds to privacy concerns.

[via Pharyngula]

What a bit of ingeniousness and a lot of patience can produce: OK Go – This too shall pass.

Exams are over. Lots of corrections, but anyways, things are lighter now. I started improve the contents of the site: a log for things I read and another for movies I saw. All goes very slowly, but ... there is progress! Now to fill all this.

While looking for more details about the HDR technique, I found:

• Cambridge in colour: tutorials, techniques and gallery. I learned here first about local contrast enhancing then discovered digikam has a plugin for it. I like this site very much;
• Photocritic blog. Happens to have interesting articles from time to time;
• HDR Crème a very good many examples of what HDR should not be. Exaggerating the dynamic range flattening of a HDR capture gives ugly cartoonish, flat images for most people, it seems.

We are a civilisation of freeloaders. OK, this is a recurrent theme with me (and even semipermanent), but once in a while I get peeved over the board of my patience. What tickled me this time is a video of a presentation Microsoft did a few days ago at TED, about its new bing maps technology. I don't have anything against the technology or the obvious bloody competition with Google. But just look at the last 5 seconds of the video, to see the audience become lustful and almost perceivedly greedy. We absolutely love our hypertech toys. We despise the creators, we even physically molest them sometimes (think of the invetor of the blue LED), we bask in emotional and superstitious behavior, all the more enhanced by all the tech. But we forget to honestly realize that we are mostly freeloaders. That such near-magic requires efforts, and brains, and high quality education. We completely overlook the potential for even more wonderful (and actually useful) magic that could be created with the help of a thoughtful revival of social collaboration. We still allow wonderful brains to be lost through our awful economic predatory behavior. And all is a-OK as long as we get our freeloading toys.

Interesting concept: risk intelligence. I find it an interesting tool for better self-assessment. Yes, I took the test and its seems I need to take care a bit with my decisions, I tend to be too self confident. One particular aspect that bothered me in the test though was the strong U.S.-centered culture references. I understand and I know that not the encyclopedical aspect is essential in the test, but the unfamiliarity of the topics clearly threw me off-balance (and it is accepted that when we have nothing more to lose, we get more daring).

The origins of the test and the associated project are very interesting too (read the presentation in the About page at the site). Only this age of the Internet would allow two independent individuals to conduct such a large scale operation of scientific flavor out of their personal pockets. Very interesting.

[via Pharyngula]

Terry Pratchett argues for the right to arrange his encounter with death in his own terms. A very moving and logical statement from the author which perhaps most humorously and most profoundly characterized Death in his literary creation.

I fell on this topic while semi-idly browsing this morning. Very interesting topic. For one, I didn't know that fuel cell technology already reached mass production stage (and this is a shame for a chem.eng.). For two, at least on one (non-verified) estimate in the internet, the price for producing energy with fuel cells in home applications is already lower (6 cents/kW) than what I pay to Hydro Québec once I override the ridiculously meager baseline (think of Québec winters) — but not complaining here, our electricity prices are extremely low anyways. But what seems most interesting are a) means of selling electricity back to the grid in underuse periods and b) use in remote locations. Flip side (at least for me and for now), house has to be heated with water or air, not with electricity, for the promised efficiency to appear.

A very interesting development in photography technology seems to promise more focus control in postprocessing. The work by a team at Stanford, presented in this article (PDF), is tagged as light field photography. The text is quite technical, but the presentation of the results is very convincing.

For some time now I was collecting ideas for a little essay I would try about the rapid evolution of social interaction and the effect of this phenomenon on individuals and their social drive. Raymond Tallis published recently in New Humanist a column which illustrates part of what my reflections amount to. A fine read, very well informed and in a delicious literary style.

J'ai ajouté un mécanisme de commentaires.

I had recently a work task that required the creation of a LaTeX style from scratch. Since I'm mostly a user of LaTeX and I never did design before, I naturally turned to the Internet for information. After a few misled initial google searches, I finally found what I looked for, but I was in for a surprise. My virtual instructor into LaTeX class writing turned out to be a 17 year old highschool student, Ankur Dave, who managed also to impress me with his skills and the breadth of his culture (surprising for his age). Little gems like this help illuminate a bit my grim view of humanity's future.

Heh, I guess one must be careful what one wishes for. Celebrity has its quirks and Bill Gates finds this out once more.

I like Mr. Deity. Last episode is exquisite. One has to listen twice in order to capture all the depths of the densified jokes. Excellent.

I discovered Melody Gardot recently (in a jazz CD sales top 10). I became fascinated with her voice. And her story dazzles me. Even her flickr stream procures joy and reflection. A woman of her time, a lesson of life for many.

Carl has a new weblog. His forums were for long a great collection of cool info. Wish to read his blog longer still.

... to everybody. And health, and wealth and happiness. And may your resolutions become fulfilled.

My missing limb is back. And better: D300s! Yeppee!

I sold my D80. I feel as if missing a limb...

Today, the ugly Time deity shoves down on me the answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything: 42!

Sitting here and looking at the bright show put up for the latest book of Richard Dawkins, I have two things springing to mind:

1. what a wonderful thing to see such a well oiled promotion machine pointed at education rather than money! There is hope!
2. why isn't it even more evident for everybody that evolution of the human species (and evolution as a whole) ceased already to be a biological evolution. We are now beyond that. I can't really tell what came next, but most distinct seems to be natural selection of memes.

We live interesting times (and perhaps will for very long).

Photo gallery is again functional. Now ... to add newer photos to it.