recently noted quotes

If the Internet was walking around in public, it would look and act a lot like Julian Assange. -- bruce sterling

Your thinking is stuck in the maze of twisty little passages that is modern Unix and its version control systems. -- russ cox

A cloud computer is just like a regular computer, except you have to ask permission from the phone company every time you use it. -- cory doctorow

for every unit of concentration, there must follow an equal and opposite unit of relaxation. -- derren brown [tricks of the mind]

I say studies to demonstrate what you already know are the best kind of research! -- stephen colbert [on protectmarriage.com]

the Crime was accidentally picking it up. the Punishment was reading it. -- karthik on crime and punishment

The real problem with open source development is it forces me to suppress my sense of humor. Irony doesn't work through a language barrier. -- rob pike

we find there is a fâçéböök page for @rosannecash but it's a mirage.

derrida, n. A sequence of signs that fails to signify anything beyond itself. -- philosophical lexicon [daniel dennett]

█████ ██ █ ████ everything ███ █████ is█████ ████ ████ fine ████ ███ █ ██████ love. █████ ███████ ███ your █████ ████ government -- bruno decock [on wikileaks]

magical thinking often encounters the law of conservation of energy, and ignores it as a way of self-invalidation. -- ozan yigit

this isn't shopping! this is Thunderdome! -- kid observes costco at xmas time

Between consistency and absurdity, I pick absurdity. -- I_am_Ozma

Give hackers an inch and they'll take you a mile. -- paul graham

guru portraits [repost from plan9 blog]

portraits of some friends from the turn of the millenium
[henry spencer, peter honeyman, norman wilson, david tilbrook]

nikon 801s with fuji reala. nikkor 85mm f/1.8 AF-D.

[note: these images may not be used without my permission.]

forgotten moon [haiku]

caught inside
an autumn puddle
forgotten moon.

[oz/2010. all rights reserved.]

never were [haiku]

autumn nightfall -
he sees things
that never were.

[oz/2010. all rights reserved.]

rand on jobs

came across this interesting bit of remembrance from rand's conversations with students:

For example, Steve Jobs of NeXT is a very tough client. If he does not like something, you hand it to him and he says, "that stinks." There is no discussion. On the other hand, I was lucky enough, I suppose, when I did the logo for him. After he saw the presentation of it, he got up - we were all at his house, sitting on the floor, you know, Hollywood style, with the fireplace going, hot as hell outside. He got up and looked at me and said, "Can I hug you." Now that is overcoming a conflict between the client and the designer"

a zen koan [repost]

the apprentice clodpool, in a rebellious mood, approached wen and spake thusly:

master, what is the difference between a humanistic, monastic system of belief in which wisdom is sought by means of an apparently nonsensical system of questions and answers, and a lot of mystic gibberish made up on the spur of the moment?

wen considered this for some time and at last said: 'a fish!'

and clodpool went away, satisfied.

[terry pratchett, thief of time]

rooster's turn [haiku]

cicada chorus
suddenly quiet -
rooster's turn.

[oz/2010. all rights reserved.]

pie and poetry

farm house pie (multi-layer leek pie) comes with a poem on the box, written in chinese and english:

preparing me chicken and rice, old friend,
you entertain me at your farm.
we watch the green trees that circle your village
and the pale blue of outlying mountains.
we open your window over garden and field,
to talk mulberry and hemp with our cups in our hands.
... wait till the mountain holiday
I am coming again in chrysanthemum time.

an amazing line from a very old SF novel

I found this amazing line seconds into skimming a very very old book. given how old this novel is, I am moved by the author's sight into the future. can you guess who the author is, and what novel this is from? if you can identify it without googling it, consider yourself extremely well read in science fiction. a hint: the book's future date is year 2000. [if you google, may get one hit: from google's scan of the original. I hid the name of the character to make guessing the source a bit harder]

"It appears to me, Miss xxxxx," I said, "that if we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements."

[of course he could not have predicted the copyright mess we found ourselves in. this was written before music cartels existed.]

recently noted quotes

let the beauty we love be what we do
there are hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground -- rumi

The message that precedes all others -- in art as well as life --
is simple: pay attention -- Harlan Ellison [slippage]

the challenge of iconic places is shooting them with fresh eyes,
and ideally with a fresh opinion. -- david duchemin

creativity needs a constant flow of possibility, and negativity
stops that flow with No instead of Yes. -- david duchemin

organization pays dividends. unless you're organized, you'll
waste time looking for pictures. -- steve mccurry

for me the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and
spontaneity ... henri cartier-bresson

most creativity is a transition from one context into another
where things are more surprising. -- alan kay

smugness and self-satisfaction have no place in an artist's life.
-- walt stanchfield [drawn to life]

21st century problem solving requires anticipation + resilience +
discourse + art. -- david brin

creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. art is knowing
which ones to keep. -- scott adams

a photograph is a secret about a secret. the more it tells you,
the less you know. -- Diane Arbus

move your feet. it's called perspective. -- thom hogan [things
you should do but don't]

shortcuts in art lead to cliche and propaganda. -- david duchemin

creativity is one of those things you replenish by the very act
of using it, giving it away. -- david duchemin

we all try to avoid cliche shot, but the cliche comes in not what
you shoot but how you shoot it - david duchemin

the ability to concentrate flows naturally from the ability to
choose something interesting. -- david mamet

probably the most important tool in creativity is the use of an
analogy. -- richard w. hamming

stay dissatisfied with your work. but also appreciate the advances
you make. do it quietly, though. -- chris floyd

if you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. --
paul graham [how to do what you love]

some people take pictures, i find them. -- jane bown [unknown
bown]

in essence, art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between the
pieces, not in the pieces themselves. -- bayles & orland

we are rhythmic creatures who move in patterns and feel most comfortable with those who move in synchrony with ourselves. -- b. hood

pixel peeping: LR 3 b2 and C1 pro 5

I have been playing with and testing four photography workflow tools. each one has something I like and dislike. the thing I dislike about lightroom is all the hype. It is a good tool, but not the best for everything. so now, lightroom 3 (in beta) has a new rendering engine. wonderful. it really needed one. I have been looking at that engine, and i would say adobe has more work to do. these are basic tiff extracts from capture 1 pro (first image) and lightroom 3 (b2)(second image), with no changes to images. basically: import raw, export tiff. look at the detail at both, and tell me if the difference you see is the result of sharpening or differently capable de-mosaic algorithm. I am reasonably certain it is the latter, because no amount of tinkering with lightroom sharpening tools will match the capture 1 pro image.

really. all because of the chain. you see, the faint impression you get from capture 1 pro rendering is that something with a unique structure. lightroom gives you something indistinct: a rope, or wire, or chain, whatever. the correct answer is that it is a chain with long straight pieces and loops[*], as it faintly appears to be with capture 1 pro.

is this important? i think so. beyer interpolation is a way of guessing what you don't know. better guessers produce image data that is more realistic. everything else in your digital darkroom follows from that.

[* you are thinking: you already knew this. answer: i did not. after looking at the capture 1 pro rendering and thinking "how odd" I went back and examined nearly a dozen images of the suleymanie mosque ceiling with good details of the chains that hold the giant light fixture. now I know what they look like.]

luhn validation code in go

this is the fast luhn validation code in go that uses the pre-calculated numeric transformation table, and a toggle-free left-to-right scan i came up with. details are found here. [again, i excluded the isdigit check]

var ltab = [10]int { 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 }

func luhn(s string) bool {
    n := len(s)
    if n < 2 {
        return false /* less than minimum */
    }

    /*
     * if the length is odd, add the value of the
     * first digit and skip
     */
    sum := 0
    i := 0

    if n & 1 == 1 {
        sum = int(s[i]) - int('0')
        i++
    }

    for i < n {
        sum += ltab[int(s[i]) - int('0')]
        sum += int(s[i+1]) - int('0')
        i += 2
    }

    return (sum % 10) == 0
}