recently noted quotes

"be nice. it's the smart play." -- capt. gregson ["elementary"]

"sometimes the only real difference between crazy people and artists is that artists write down what they imagine seeing." -- scott adams

"To be sure, not all moments are equally fleeting. Some moments last longer than others. And certain events do reoccur more than once and even recur repeatedly. Sometimes you do get more than one chance. Sometimes you don’t. It helps to know how long a window of opportunity you have and if you’ll get another chance." -- john paul caponigro

"trying to prove formally what is seen intuitively and to see intuitively what is proved formally is an invigorating mental exercise." -- g. polya 

"strike while the iron is vulnerable" -- the crazy ones 

there are some rivers you don't 
ever want to step into 
more than once, 
even if it was possible.

"the inhabitants refer to themselves optimistically as Homo sapiens , meaning 'wise man' in an appropriately dead language. Their activities seldom fit that description, but there are occasional glorious exceptions. They should really be called Pan narrans , the storytelling ape, because nothing appeals to them more than a rollicking good yarn." -- terry pratchett, ian stewart & jack cohen ["the science of discworld iv: judgement day"]

"Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies." -- roger ebert

"we share our lives with the people we have failed to be." -- adam phillips

"I believe in patterns and sequences, and this sequence does not end well unless something disrupts the pattern." -- bones

"there is no such thing as philosophy-free science." -- dan dennett

"religion is to misogyny as disease is to misery - not the sole cause, but a significant contributor" -- pz myers

"I can't unclench when there is turbulence. you know I'm an atheist." -- jerry [woody allen, "to Rome with love"]

"It's easy to mistake familiarity and the feeling of having something at your fingertips with true comprehension." -- tania lombrozo

general: "what do you think this star means?" hawkeye: "you are tinkerbell?" [mash pilot episode] 

"indeed, the sign that something does matter to us is that we lose our steadiness." -- adam phillips

one unspoken thing about a surveillance state is that it's compelled by its nature to bite off the hand that feeds it.

trust is no longer an issue. it is a lost attribute.

"some of the most powerful patterns in life are subtle." -- scott adams

"I'm confused as to why a poorly designed web site means affordable health care is a bad idea." -- chuck Lorre [431] 

much reflection

autumn days pull 
much reflection - 
a flight of swallows. 

[Oct 21, 2013 - shortly after this haiku was written, i received a call to inform me that my good friend, teacher and mentor, peter roosen-runge had died. so much more to reflect on now]

in canada day...

as I watch
flag and the leaf
in the July wind
dances a little
jig

[1/07/13 - oz]

unlock and keep or lock and lose

today, rogers decided to decline my request to unlock an iphone I have in my account. Their reason: their "policy" states that IMEI number should be associated with an account for 90 days. But that is a laughable comic book policy that has nothing whatsoever to do with the service you are already paying for that phone. When you bought your used phone, did you remember to register its IMEI number with your carrier? Wait, your carrier already knows all about that phone, doesn't it. So what does this "policy" really mean?

Here are the relevant passages from the recent CRTC decision.

"164. The Commission therefore considers that WSPs should make an unlocking service available to customers who have been subscribed to their services for 90 days, at a rate specified in the contract and Critical Information Summary.

165. The Commission also considers that unsubsidized devices, which are fully paid for, should be unlocked immediately upon request, given that the risk of subscription fraud is not relevant in these circumstances." 

What part of these passages rogers failed to comprehend?

I told the apologetic customer retention specialist that this will cost rogers. I know he understood. I doubt rogers does.

[update: after I escalated the issue to the management, with the intention to write letter to the office of the president, and CRTC, unlock request was granted. the damage is done: the phone flew overseas without unlock.]

on practice

practice can make
the wrong thing
you practiced
perfectly
wrong.

[oz/2013]

important books of twenty-twelve

Here are some of the most interesting and important books from this year. they may or may not be the "best" of the year, but by my lights, they are better "pickings" for your brain than found elsewhere. i can do quote-mining and tell you how singularly brilliant and seminal these are, but never mind. in all seriousness: quality varies from good to excellent to brilliant. some books, like harlan ellison's bugf#ck seem to have too little in them. [how anyone can come up with a tiny volume of ellison quotes is a puzzle] some, like neal stephenson's some remarks seem to have too much. [he stumbles through leibniz's monadology with literacy and grace. really.]

so here is the first batch. ben goldacre's bad pharma is not officially out in canada until the new year, but came out in england months ago. what causes the delay in publication? not sure, maybe editing required. fitzpatrick & collins-sussman's team geek and coleman's coding freedom are two exceptional books on software development. martin's there are two errors in the title of this book is now the third edition of a rich and entertaining book on philosophical puzzles and paradoxes. plotnik's elements of expression is in its second edition of expressiveness.

second batch is more essential non-fiction and fiction. i did not have enough room to pile all the good books in various genres i read. nate silver's the signal and the noise is getting some mixed reviews from specialists, and i feel it is deserved: it delivers some noise with its signal. mooney's republican brain is a disturbing read. that book in the middle? katz's information design - possibly the smartest book i have seen on the topic since tufte's four volumes, which it displaces quite neatly. [surely "brainpickings" could have had enough clue to pick this for one of its top ten "best" lists] two other books in this group really stand out: macintyre's double cross and taleb's antifragile - deep and rewarding books by two exceptional authors.

this last batch is an art batch, but more about photography. i have other good to exceptional books in this category but i thought they deserve a separate blog entry some other time. rocky nook has been publishing some important books on photography, and no surprise that four books on that table are theirs. tone poems are astonishing, as expected. last but not least, stillman's looking at ansel adams is an essential read for a photographer. 

enjoy.

seven principles of explanatory coherence

paul thagard have been working on a set of principles and computational models of explanatory coherence since late eighties. recently he applied these principles to belief revision about global warming. It helps explain the increasing adoption of the hypothesis that global warming is caused by human activities.

• Principle 1. Symmetry. Explanatory coherence is a symmetric relation, unlike, say, conditional probability. That is, two propositions p and q cohere with each other equally.
• Principle 2. Explanation. (a) A hypothesis coheres with what it explains, which can either be evidence or another hypothesis; (b) hypotheses that together explain some other proposition cohere with each other; and (c) the more hypotheses it takes to explain something, the lower the degree of coherence.
• Principle 3. Analogy. Similar hypotheses that explain similar pieces of evidence cohere.
• Principle 4. Data priority. Propositions that describe the results of observations have a degree of acceptability on their own.
• Principle 5. Contradiction. Contradictory propositions are incoherent with each other.
• Principle 6. Competition. If P and Q both explain a proposition, and if P and Q are not explanatorily connected, then P and Q are incoherent with each other. (P and Q are explanatorily connected if one explains the other or if together they explain something.)
• Principle 7. Acceptance. The acceptability of a proposition in a system of propositions depends on its coherence with them.

Reading: Paul Thagard and Scott Findlay, "Changing Minds About Climate Change: Belief Revision, Coherence, and Emotion"
2011.

unexpectedly, priorities shift

things change. i just terminated three small (free/ad-free) ios projects. they will now be re-implemented on android for my nexus 7 and phones.

/Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools
Start time: Sat 25 Aug 2012 22:47:27 EDT
Analyzing devtools package: 'com.apple.pkg.ApplicationLoaderLeo'...
Analyzing devtools package: 'com.apple.pkg.DashcodeLeo'...
Analyzing devtools package: 'com.apple.pkg.DevDocumentationLeo'...
Analyzing devtools package: 'com.apple.pkg.DevSamplesLeo'...
...
Removing devtools files...
Removing generated files...
Removing Xcode Caches...
Removing Xcode Documentation...
Removing empty devtools directories...
Finish time: Sat 25 Aug 2012 22:47:58 EDT

recently noted quotes

"jargon marks the place where thinking has been. it becomes a kind of macro, to use a computer term, a way of storing a complicated sequence of thinking operations under a unique name." -- marjorie garber ["academic instincts"]

"simplicity overrules logic." -- terry o'reilly ["under the influence"]

"the warrior and the artist live with the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day." -- steven pressfield ["war of art"]

"Will it really take wall-sized prints that you can put your nose against and not see pixels to make you happy?" -- thom hogan

"Python and Ruby programmers come to Go because they don't have to surrender much expressiveness, but gain performance and get to play with concurrency." -- rob pike

i'm mad about good books,
cannot get my fill ... -- bobby mcferrin ["how about you"]

"paying attention, for long periods of time, is a form of performance athleticism.  like running a marathon, it requires practice and training to get the most out of it." -- clay a johnson ["finding focus"]

"I hope we will never see the day when photo shops sell little schema grills to clamp onto our viewfinders; and the Golden Rule will never be found etched on our ground glass" -- henri cartier-bresson "the decisive moment"

"The prepared mind sooner or later finds something important and does it." -- richard w. hamming 

"The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children." - dietrich bonhoeffer [quote found in steve mccurry's blog]

abelson's laws:

1. chance is lumpy
2. overconfidence abhors uncertainty
3. never flout a convention just once
4. don't talk greek if you don't know the english translation.
5. if you have nothing to say, don't say anything.
6. there is no free hunch.
7. you can't see the dust if you don't move the couch.
8. criticism is the mother of methodology.

-- robert p. abelson ["statistics as principled argument"]

"high dynamic range is no substitute for high creative range." -- oz 

"Shadows are perhaps, the areas in which we dream." -- bruce percy ["personal exposures"]

"gorpah good guide! me guided young foreigner with little white dog before! me can show many yetis! only 500 rupees, blistering barnacles!" -- gorpah [spirou & fantasio "running scared"]

harder to see

what is in plain sight

is often harder to see

for the mind is busy

with a forest of possibilities

but not a tree.

[oz/12]

abelson's laws

abelson's laws as found in "statistics as principled argument" by robert p. abelson

1. chance is lumpy
2. overconfidence abhors uncertainty
3. never flout a convention just once
4. don't talk greek if you don't know the english translation.
5. if you have nothing to say, don't say anything.
6. there is no free hunch.
7. you can't see the dust if you don't move the couch.
8. criticism is the mother of methodology.

what's in a name: creative labels and images

in the cellulose acetate and silver halide days of the past, i started out with manual "nikonography". I guess it could have been "canonography" but bayonet mount ruined it. In my heart I really wanted to do some quiet "leicagraphy" for that very special feel and look, but could not afford it. i also admired those who lugged rosewood and cherry frame cameras for their "fieldography" and "viewography" - someone once said that "the best camera is the one you can lift, with both hands, while keeping a low center of gravity to avoid back injury" - too funny. anyway, all in the past. i like the modern days of photon capture and beating to submission without chemicals. we are finally free to explore our collectively wired individuality with "iphoneography" which often resembles images made-believe with a plastic lens found in a light-leaky toy camera (maybe not all in the past) at many megapixels of quality color noise. i hear that some creative types have a blanket term for all this fascinating image wrangling - "photography" (as in light writing) but i doubt that will catch on.

scam: "first of all you must know ..."

most recent scam email i received in response to an inquiry about something on craigslist:

Hello

The item is available and it is like in the ad.First of all you must know that 70% from this sale will go the Save The Children Foundation where I'm working.I am a volunteer at them in UK and I want to continue this transaction through a 3rd part Clickaparcel delivery...I am in England and I have talked with the people from Clickaparcel already.The item is at them ready for delivery and I paid for the taxes and fees already.I worked with them in the past and everything was fine.I posted in your area also because I want to sell it fast(we need money).If you are interested please let me know for I can tell you the details.

Thank you

recommended books for the holidays

a picture is worth a blog entry of words, so here is the picture of a pile of books i recommend for this month. all of these would make excellent christmas/new year gifts.

good books to read

recently noted quotes

once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. -- carl sagan ["the demon-haunted world"]

there is no way an ideology can escape the human conflict between egoism and altruism. -- martin gardner

dear luck: my mind very well prepared. what's keeping you? -- anon

science is useful. at some point, someone discovered that the Earth is round. -- jean-marc fournier [quebec justice minister]

verbal distinctions should be valued, since they stand for mental -- intellectual -- distinctions. -- jorge luis borges

nasa finds it difficult to manage things well. -- henry spencer

pretty much everything on the web uses those two things: C and UNIX -- rob pike

say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder. -- naomi klein

Honor Steve Jobs: resolve to do something insanely great. -- peter norvig 

plato is not your go-to guy for kindness though, I have to tell you. -- i_am_ozma

but seriously, they’re trying to use a water pistol to stop a charging rhino. -- paul krugman [on fed]

except for the TV show "the big bang theory", popular culture gets science wrong. we all know that. -- rob pike

never attribute to design what you can easily explain as witless hacking.

in politics, ignorance is the gift that keeps giving. bliss is what happens after many doses.

jpeg. just say "no". which as everyone knows is the lossy compressed version of "NNOOOOoooooo...."

ceci n'est pas xkcd

kid and I are big fans of xkcd. looking at the strip, and thinking about the stick figures kids typically draw, i just had to cartoon this...

time travel notes: langford's complete critical assembly

[reblogged from my old blog at sun microsystems]

lately i have been enjoying david langford's witty and sharp white dwarf SF reviews between 1983-91, collected in the complete critical assembly [cosmos books, 2002]. it is a reader's time travel: nearly every review mentions SF books i still have on my shelves or in my overflow boxes. first piece, march 83 review includes asimov's foundation's edge and heinlein's friday both of which i had read that year. [never wanted to re-read them since]

Robert Heinlein's Friday was also enthusiastically greeted, largely because it came as such a relief after his unreadably awful The Number of the Beast.

i could not agree more. NOTB is beyond awful, and it has a special place in my memory because it is the only book that i have ever thrown in the garbage, a place rarely so well deserved. even going back to pulp through recycling is too good for this.
june 83 review includes stanislaw lem's more tales of pirx the pilot which i have re-read a couple of times since. lem is a genius, and i wish some of his other writing would show up in english. [for example, his 2003 dilemmas has yet to be translated. peter swirski had mentioned that there was interest in translating summa but i do not know if there is a translation underway.] july 83 review includes amazing randi's the truth about uri geller, flim-flam, and this line:

Even if inclined towards the loony, i mean the uncritical viewpoint, you should consult these books for the devil's advocate arguments. They are important. In a world where an ounce of sensationalism sells better than a ton of rationality any day, they are very important.

two decades later, we are in a lot worse situation, but at least flim-flam is still in print.
jan 84 review includes lem's masterpiece his master's voice, and douglas adams and john lloyd's the meaning of liff. i have been meaning to go back to HMV, and liff of course have been re-released.

massachusetts: those items or particles which people are searching for when they look into their hankies after blowing their noses.

may 84 review includes the robots of dawn, a good but not great followup to asimov's great caves of steel and the naked sun. [i treasure my original pbk copies of these two now because of the cover art as well]

A considerable improvement on the terminally flatulent foundation's edge, it recaptures the feel of those two robotic puzzles which most critics regard as asimov's best books.

feb 84 review mentions herbert and ransom's the lazarus effect as enjoyable, good average SF, neither unputdownable nor unpickupable. langford says jesus incident [previous book] is fairly awful. i do not know. the first book was destination: void which i liked enough to read twice in one year, and i did pick up the late sequels. for whatever reason [awfulness sense?], i could never get into jesus incident so both books in sequence remain unread to this day, in one of the back rows of my double-packed sf shelves. sigh. this reminds me: some of herbert's non-dune sf, eg. saratoga barrier, dosadi experiment etc. have been re-released by TOR. [never mind links. i would visit my local sf bookstore for these, eg. Incomparable bakka in toronto.]
july 84 review has gardner's wheels, life and other mathematical amusements and dewdney's planiverse. i think i had a copy of the first one and second one was always in the list of books i would pick up if i ever find it remaindered. [i also keep waiting for a definitive gardner encyclopedia of all his sciam columns. i have his wonderful colossal book of mathematics and his lesser known but very thoughtful the whys af a philosophical scrivener - thanks henry]
aug 84 review mentions deadeye dick, my introduction to kurt vonnegut, even though usual starting points seem to be sirens of titan, cat's cradle or bluebeard. after the shooting incident (hence deadeye) i just could not put it down.

kurt vonnegut's deadeye dick makes it as near-sf by including the neutron-bombing of a US city, but is chiefly a straight tragicomedy of power, responsibility and the awful things we do to each other.

[i absolutely detest those "V" cover designs of dell's reissued vonnegut trade pbks. literary giants should not be handed off to unimaginative amateurs. an undergrad can program a robot to design better.] sep 84 reviews pohl's heechee rendezvous which i think is still (after all these years) in one of my to be read someday boxes. of course pohl's gateway and beyond the blue event horizon were favorites, so i am not sure why i never got around to reading the last book in the trilogy. langford also reviews james p. hogan's voyage from yesteryear which i read at least a couple of times.

background is presented in stodgy lectures, most readers will skip the one on physics occupying most of chapter 24. solid and quite worthy stuff, but practically devoid of characterization.

oct 84 reviews get into some of the best sf reading for me in those days: benford's across the sea of suns, [the sequel to in the ocean of night] and his against infinity. benford is one of my scientist/writer heroes; i think by now i have everything he has ever published, including the recent reissues of the galactic center series in preparation for another (last?) book in that series. [i first came across benford through his collaboration with brin in the heart of the comet and picked up all his other books]

gregory benford's across the sea of suns is a fat, impressive demonstration that one can do ultra-'hard' sf with every rivet placed just so, and still write well.

indeed, every benford book is just such a demonstration.
[to be continued]

meme of four [revised edition]

four jobs you've had in your life: cartographic draftsman [northway survey company], cartoonist/graphics designer, systems administrator, programmer

four movies you could watch over and over: galaxy quest, tampopo, incredibles, ladies man [brilliant work by lewis in front and behind the camera. lewis/buddy lester hat sequence leaves me in stitches every time]

four places you've lived: ankara, bursa, istanbul, toronto

four tv shows you love(d) to watch: house, firefly, chef! [lenny henry], big bang theory

four places you've been on vacation: mexico, new brunswick, bodrum, northern cape.

four websites you visit daily: dpreview, cbcnews, bythom, ars technica.

four of your favorite foods: tom yum soup, eggs [in any form], russian salad, circassian chicken [i am amazed that food network has a recipe]

four places you'd rather be: provance, tuscany, barcelona, montreal

wile e. coyote and road runner rules

from chuck jones's eloquent and funny "chuck amuck: the life and times of an animated cartoonist":

rule 1: the road runner cannot harm the coyote except by going "beep-beep!"

rule 2: no outside force can harm the coyote - only his ineptitude or the failure of the acme products.

rule 3: the coyote could stop anytime - if he were not a fanatic. (repeat: "a fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim" -- george santayana)

rule 4: no dialogue ever, except "beep-beep!"

rule 5: the road runner must stay on the road - otherwise, logically, he would not be called road runner.

rule 6: all action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters - the southwest american desert.

rule 7: all materials, tools weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the acme corporation.

rule 8: whenever possible, make gravity the coyote's greatest enemy.

rule 9: the coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

a photographer's notes to self

• make images every day. there is no such thing as *best light* or *best weather* or *best mood* for photography. no excuses.
• take it slowly. it takes a while to start seeing things differently.
• stay in one place, and keep making images, until you are really ready to move. which is often later than you think.
• remember your tripod. amongst other things, it helps you slow down and pay attention.
• stop editing on the spot. allow for lucky accidents to get past that tiny display and impatience.
• don't peek. pretend you have no time for a pause to look at the last image. perhaps you will miss an amazing event if you keep checking the histogram. look at the light, tones, focus and expose carefully instead of taking your eyes off your subject every five seconds.
• revisit places. this afternoon, different light, different wind, different mood, different emotions and head space,  different eyes, different images.
• enjoy constraints. see that 50mm f/1.8 lens sitting on the shelf? use it [and nothing else] for a whole week, and zoom with your feet instead of the lens.

basho's crow haiku: 16 translations

Here are the 16 translations of basho's famous crow haiku i found in my library. earlier translations attempt to keep the 17 syllable form in english while others have fewer syllables. [many authors now agree that english haiku needs only about ten to twelve syllables to have nearly the same duration and rhythm as a japanese haiku, which is based on onji sound units]

kareeda | ni | karasu | no | tomarikeri | aki | no | kure
bare-branch | on | crow | 's | is-perched | autumn | 's | evening

On a bare branch
A crow is perched -
Autumn evening.
         Makoto Ueda [1]

On a withered bough
A crow alone is perching;
Autumn evening now.
         Kenneth Yasuda [2]

On a withered branch
a crow has settled...
autumn nightfall.
         Harold G. Henderson [3]

on a dead branch
the crow settles -
autumn evening
         Bruce Ross [4]

On the dead limb
squats a crow -
autumn night.
         Lucien Stryk [5]

On a withered branch
A crow is perched,
In the autumn evening.
         R. H. Blyth [6]

on a bare branch
a crow has alighted...
autumn nightfall.
         Makoto Ueda [7]

on a bare branch
a crow lands
autumn dusk
         Jane Reichhold [8]

A crow
has settled on a bare branch -
autumn evening.
         Robert Hass [9]

on dead branches crows remain
perched at autumn's end
         Hiroaki Sato [10]

on a barren branch
a raven has perched -
autumn dusk
         William J. Higginson [11]

a solitary
crow on a bare branch -
autumn evening
         Sam Hamill [12]

on a leafless branch
a crow comes to nest -
autumn nightfall
         Haruo Shirane [13]

on a withered branch
a crow has settled -
autumn evening.
         David Landis Barnhill [14]

on a leafless branch
a crow -
autumn dusk.
         Takafumi Saito and William R. Nelson [15]

on a withered branch
a crow is perched
an autumn evening.
         Robert Aitken [16]

Books:

[1] Ueda, Makoto
Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary
Stanford University Press, 1995.

[2] Yasuda, Kenneth
Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature and History
Tuttle Publishing, 2002.

[3] Henderson, Harold G.
An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems and Poets
From Basho to Shiki
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958.

[4] Ross, Bruce (ed).
Haiku Moment: An Anthology of Contemporary North American Haiku
Charles E. Tuttle Company, Vermont, 1993.

[5] Stryk, Lucien
On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho
University of Hawaii Press, 1986.

[6] Blyth, Reginald Horace,
Haiku
Hokuseido Press, 1997.

[7] Ueda, Makoto
Matsuo Basho
Kodansha America, 1983.

[8] Reichhold, Jane
Writing and Enjoying Haiku: A Hands on Guide
Kodansha International, 2003.

[9] Hass, Robert
The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson & Issa
Ecco press, 1994.

[10] Sato, Hiroaki
[...]

[11] Higginson, William J. with Penny Harter
The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share and Teach Haiku
McGraw-Hill, 1985.

[12] Hamill, Sam
The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa and Other Poets
Shambhala Publications, 1995.

[13] Shirane, Haruo
Traces of Dreams: Landscape, Cultural Memory and the Poetry of Basho
Stanford University Press, 1998.

[14] Barnhill, David Landis
Basho's Haiku: Selected Poems of Matsuo Basho
State University of New York Press, 2004.

[15] Saito, Takafumi and Nelson, William R.
1020 haiku in translation: the heart of basho, buson and issa
Booksurge press, 2006.

[16] Aitken, Robert
the river of heaven: the haiku of basho, buson, issa and shiki
Counterpoint, 2010.

data

thom hogan puts it beautifully.

Data is a great and powerful thing. Collect the right data and interpret it well, and you can make very intelligent decisions. Collect the right data and interpret it incorrectly and you can make very dumb decisions. Collect the wrong data, well, you were just dumb to start with.

recently noted quotes

every ten years, collective wisdom degrades by half. -- nassim nicholas taleb's corollary to moore's law

the question to be asked at the end of each day is, "how long will you delay to be wise?" -- the good book [a.c. grayling]

Who’s to say that the tone-mapped creations of today will not be the bell-bottom jeans of tomorrow? -- guy tal

i'm sorry, but we can't send a search-and-rescue team into plato's cave. -- xkcd

a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. – Saul Bellow

light is the best disinfectant. -- Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice

my personal thing is, I don't want to step in the same river more than twice.-- sting

context determines appropriate tone, reader. no use fighting it. -- bill stott [write to the point]

in the realm of belief we are all hostages to fortune. -- michael philips [undercover philosopher]

remember: think different. that's why your macbook has the same hoary old architecture in ye old generic wintel box ... -- tenfourfox

human intuition is useless both in predicting randomness and in recognizing it. -- james gleick

[in front of a deer head] I'm confused. are we investigating a murder or preparing lunch for the palin family? -- mr nigel-murray [bones]

asked the kid where his protractor is. "how do you draw a circle? by hand?" he says "there is an authenticity to a hand drawn circle"

[kid helping me to meditate] let your thoughts blow away like the summer wind. [he includes the wind sound]

if aliens were ever to visit, NOW would be a good time! -- eren yigit

history, disconnected

in another blog, a long time ago, i had written this.

a pleasant surprise: google maps now have detailed aerial photographs of istanbul that include a part of my family history. the 11-storey building at the center of this image, named after my grandfather, is the third structure occupying that spot starting with my grandparents' family home. [where there are buildings now, there used to be pine trees, a windmill, and enough green space for sheep to graze in...]

the space of these structures aside, only two things have survived: a grape wine my grandfather had planted now covers a little gazebo [cannot be seen at this angle] next to the parking area at the back. the fig tree he planted in front somehow re-grew after it was chopped down during the last construction.

in a few days, this part of our history will be disconnected for me and my brother. there is sadness, but the realist in me reminds me that this is the price to pay when building a new life in another country.

on photography and geometry

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. -- Henri Cartier-Bresson [found on steve mccurry's blog entry]

quote of the day

we cannot afford as a polity to create classes of privileged speakers and press agencies, and underclasses of networked information producers whose products we take into the public sphere when convenient, but whom we treat as susceptible to suppression when their publications become less palatable. -- yochai benkler [forthcoming a free irresponsible Press: wikileaks and the battle over the soul of the networked fourth estate]

a random sample of napster, 2001.

a decade ago this month, i was sampling napster library content.

not what you are thinking. only the symbolic content.

this was a project for a research organization studying music trends among peer-to-peer file sharers. original napster had an interesting feature: it allowed users to view the entire library of someone who shared content. the rest is easy: i wrote a napster client to sample shared libraries. this client ramped into random sampling like this:

start with a set of seed search words
randomly pick from many responders [which changed rapidly]
get their entire library, save aside
use random picks from these libraries to seed a new search
repeat.

I sampled napster for four days, at its peak, and obtained 2647 unique libraries. [i dropped a very small number of duplicates]

here is the entire library data, unmodified, except all usernames were blanked out. you are welcome to do whatever you want with it, so long as you let me know of your research and analysis results, and give due credit.

enjoy.

ps: if you like to get this data with revision control: hg clone https://bitbucket.org/plan9/napdata

re-zoning [haiku]

winter sunset -
a hawk lands
on rezoning sign.

[oz/2010. all rights reserved.]

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
}

autumn cleaning [haiku]

yellow leaves
on discarded chair -
autumn cleaning.

[oz/2009. all rights reserved.]

more notes coming soon.

i have been tweeting a lot lately, and not keeping my online notebooks as up to date as i would like. [my paper notebooks doing just fine] on the other hand, there are a number of ongoing notes, everything from photography to my carefully considered strong atheism, to software engineering (or lack thereof) not to mention bits of poetry that need to be finished and posted. i hope to get back to my blog late august. at least that is the best laid plan...

craigslist: ken-rockwell-obssessed husband

someone found this in craigslist. very funny. [ken rockwell. i do read some of his reviews, but rarely buy only on his recommendation. sometimes he is way over the top, and sloppy.]

    Ken Rockwell-Obsessed Husband (North York)
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [...]

    One gently-used caucasian male. 36 years-old. Slightly defective.
    Remembers the names of Ken Rockwell's kids but not our own. Constantly
    buying high-end photo gear then selling it on craigslist the second
    Canon or Nikon releases something new. Complains endlessly about
    lowballers, tire-kickers and pixel peepers. Sold car to buy a Leica body
    and now wants to mortage house to buy lenses, all at Ken Rockwell's
    insistence. Maybe you can reprogram him. I have no time because I have
    to cart our kids around on the TTC and work two jobs while while he
    fiddles with film and DSLR to achieve super-saturated highlights.

    Reasonable offers accepted: Food, clothing, 1992 Subaru Justy. Offers of
    photo equipment will promptly be deleted! Lowball kickers are welcome! A
    swift one in the nuts will do him some good.

       * Location: North York
       * it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other
         commercial interests

    PostingID: 1239135682

paypal scam via craigslist

Subject: mint lowepro computrekker plus AW - $175 (toronto)
From: annemary
Date: May 21, 2009 12:28:08 PM EDT

Thanks for the post...I am really interested in buying this item but I am not in state for now I'm in Germany for a conference meeting...Am buying this item for my company agent located west africa....I will add $100.00 USD for the shipping cost...Making $275.00 USD... I will make the payment through my PayPal account cos is very secure and easy to receive money.....Kindly send me your PayPal email so that i can send the payment... Hope i will read from u again here soon..

this is a blatant scam of course. i did not ask for $100 for shipping, because i am not planning to ship it. the paypal payment is not very secure; credit card payments can be reversed. see paypal chargeback faq.

reflection [haiku]

wet tulips -
looking in a drop
for reflection.

[oz/2009. all rights reserved.]

frozen [haiku]

spring thaw -
in a rushing stream
frozen heart.

[oz/2009. all rights reserved.]
sometimes, what froze during the dark, cold days of winter cannot be thawed.

birch and starling [haiku]

dying birch -
one starling on a branch
now two.

[oz/2008. all rights reserved.]

recent notes, tweets and quotes

eren says [and clearly he has been watching too much kids tv and superhero cartoons]

let's face it... in the future, world may be ruled by birdbrains...

overheard in a bday party:

what manners? this is maple pie!

tweet #2858933749: we should be able to tweet straight into wikipedia so that some gems of our tweet-ergo-sum [or maybe sum-ergo-tweet] can be preserved....

"land of the goodebump and the white knuckle" no, not wallstreet... not the average north american bedroom... just mazda's imaginary world.

anonymous on ruby/rails:

it sucks mightily!

toronto star frontpage reads: "politicians chase naked truth" [leaving aside the comic mental image, which two words don't go together?]

I think I overheard someone say "we require spontaneity" ... uhh.

we arm ourselves with ideologies. -- wendy kaminer

thought of the day: familiarity invites carelessness. (familiarity breeds things too but i think this is more important)

flustered dad [me] in need of a paper towel: please bring me a ... a... child: what? an elephant?

adobe "air" ... hmm one thing to learn from car companies: choosing less dumb names.

I wonder what CNN would be like tweeting. repeating the same sniplets of "news" endlessly. or change the word order to keep it "fresh".

situation room: wow it is as dull as I remember it from the bush days. evidently, an increase in the IQ of the administration has had no positive effect on CNN talkies.

need some grounding... phew the C compiler still works! ran out to find a bookstore... where is russell? ooo... house and philosophy!

retweeting redux:. if you like tom u probably will like geoff. here Is a 15-day trial subscription...

thought of the day: if a choice is too easy, it probably isn't real. [some hard choices are not real either.]

correct math considered harmful: you are the 9,672,535,834th visitor to see this lucky banner. congratulations, you won!

plato in tech age: commentators should be required to spend a year hacking and living in the technology they want to comment on...

i wish there was an icon or some onomatopoeia that would accurately reflect a deep sigh, tightened lips, and exasperation. siiighooghummm?

shirky's coverage of linux, from what I have skimmed, is depressingly unoriginal. sigh I will have to read here comes everybody" more fully...

wow the kid can actually explain how fast lucky luke has to be to draw his revolver faster than his shadow!

have picma micron 05mm with archival ink, will travel...

thought of the day

if history repeats, by definition we did not learn from it, and each iteration costs more. [oz/0309]

recent notes, quotes and tweets

AIG... is the sound of brain matter squished underfoot...

when there is nothing to do, it's a waste of electricity to keep the mind running. -- Andre Kukla [mental traps]

I would like originality and repeat scores on my tweets. maybe numbering, indexing and concordance as well. (pat. pend)

grrrr bad enough we had to live with stupid watered-down "sci-fi" for years. now syfy? is that the sound u get when ectoplasmic goo drips?

quoth graydon hoare:

facebook users are insane. it's a web page. full of people's vague mutterings and crude party photos. get a grip.

new journalism: i wish it would be called something else, like journalism-the-next-generation (jtng)...

thought of the day: sun bleaches anything it touches, including thoughts.

so cool to find a quote i had noted from a broderick essay come back to me via my email sig line someone responded to four (!) years later:

bloat is the enemy of promise. sadly, like super-sized servings of greasy junk food, bloat sells. -- damien broderick

deleted ambiance app from my iphone. latest edition requires signup/login for sounds to put you to sleep and you have to pay for the priviledge. just what I need: another login in yet another opportunistic web service. not sure if sleeping is the expected result or the existing condition.

what would world be like without omelettes?

facebook vs twitter: re-structuring vs structuring... closed to open vs open to well... open. perennial battle of world-building. alas, twitter has a foundation made of balsa wood, bale wire and duct tape, so we'll see how easy it is to build a structure on.

thought for the morning... heraclitus was wrong: u can bathe in the same river twice. you just have to swim damned fast to catch it again.

thought of the day: when all else fails, pay attention!

nothing like an old-fashioned shave: meditation under cold steel.

readings on photography for early spring, part one

portraiture... one of the finest books on portraiture is now out of print, alas. i have studied every image in it countless times since 2000... just great portraits with short notes on the process of making the images, composition, positioning the sitter etc.

jane bown, faces

closeup... this one is a photographer scientist's exploration of extraordinary things around her, from microscopic to larger. just amazing and eye-opening work, with short, sometimes lyrical introductions to out-of-this world [yet of this world] images.

felice frankel and george whitesides, on the surface of things: images of the extraordinary in science

light... for a long time i searched for a really good book on photographing lighting that covered everything, from product to portrait. this book happens to be an indispensable reference. a lot of text, a lot of technical detail, but i think well worth the effort if one is interested in best uses of light.

fil hunter, steven biver, paul fuqua, light - science & magic: an introduction to photographic lighting

composition and design ... this one is one of the better books on the topic. covers everything from gestalt perception, dynamic tension, to graphic and photographic design elements to process. i especially like the case studies, various images made and their issues, leading to the one image that has all the right ingredients.

michael freeman, the photographer's eye: composition and design for better digital photos

law of indecision

i recently discovered this:

oz's law of indecision: when enough indecision accumulates, it collapses into a dwarf decision.

[march 2009]

recently noted quotes

must... have... sushi! - eren yigit [age 10]

ufs must die. -- casper dik

will true love conquer all? not in my show! -- joker

when in doubt, eat broccoli -- liz pearson and mairlyn smith [ultimate foods]

the wonderful thing about science is that it doesn't ask for your faith, it just asks for your eyes. -- xkcd [what about the brain?]

recently deleted iphone apps

two pieces of "free" ad-supported software deleted from my iphone: movies (flixter), and i.tv. thank you for playing. currently undecided on the movies replacement, not an important app. i.tv was quite easy to replace: napkin studio's what's on is a [says so from the start] ad-free tv guide. it has a somewhat strange initial setup sequence, but once configured, quite nice and smooth. thanks guys.

all i want

first noted quote of the new year... john shaw, from the intro to his photoshop cs3 ebook [review]:

All I want to do is make a good image. I don’t want to make a composite picture by taking a tree from one photo, a wolf from another, those humpback whales from a third, and putting all these parts into a shot of the Grand Canyon.

perl

As I progressed through the project -- as my shell surpassed 1,000 lines and made its way towards 10,000 -- I was learning of a painful truth about Perl that many others had discovered before me: that it is an undesigned dung heap of a language entirely inappropriate for software in-the-large. -- bryan cantrill

[on a related note, see perl as voodoo. thanks ivo.]

storm [haiku]

snow storm -
unblinking, she holds
my gaze.

[oz/2008. all rights reserved.]

idiotic comment of the month

mr harper, on his potential departure from power:

the opposition is attempting to impose this deal without your say, without your consent, and without your vote.

those of us who have lived in countries that produce minority and coalition governments with great regularity should either find a nearby wall to relieve the strain on our heads, or laugh uproariously in disbelief. it is not clear what part of the recent election results mr harper does not understand: his minority part, the opposition having received the majority of the votes, or that coalitions can and should be formed when a governing party is too arrogant and/or too stupid to do its job properly.

toronto sun and canadian democracy

today's toronto sun headline screams: no! no! no! this must not be allowed to happen. [those who studied media are excused for thinking that this is a headline from a newspaper in chilean dictatorship years, and the newspaper is el mercurio] toronto sun should stuff it. this is exactly what is allowed to happen in canadian democracy, where majority of canadians have elected people who can and should use their position to bring change when needed, including a re-structure of governance. goodbye to mister harper, whose arrogance and weak¹ intellect is the cause of unnecessary turmoil. to quote david mamet [bambi vs godzilla]

the unfortunate and inevitable concomitant of "bring it on" is "how do you like it now?"

¹an intellect which has ideology as its primary source of nourishment is weak by definition.

today's dropped iphone app: WeatherEye

nice looking app. in its info page, in all caps, it claims it is FREE. nowhere in its info page does it mention that it is ad-supported. nowhere does it mention that it will want to know your sex and birthdate for better ad placement. yet another bit of cybercrud that wasted my bandwidth, and is now deleted from my iphone.

my eyeballs are very expensive. ask permission before trying to capture them, or go to hell.

gas pump [haiku]

autumn dawn -
old gas pump
serving dewdrops.

[oz/2008. all rights reserved.]

recently noted quotes

we see what we know until we know who we are, then we see what we feel. -- ernst haas.

there is no unconditional love. there is unconditional need. -- gregory house

It's not house-trained. It probably won't work. Don't try and use this release for anything useful. We have made every effort to ensure that all bits in this package are either 0 or 1. However, these bits may not be in the correct order and proportion. -- mdma readme

Anyone found laughing at the code will be shot at dawn. -- mdma readme

there is a technical term for this: it is called being really really stupid. -- fred whiteside [no, he really is not talking about republican politics and strategies.]

if they respond to spam, sarah palin may look reasonable. -- anon

Before citing any statistic, you should have a clear understanding of what that figure is measuring, who calculated it, and how. -- timothy b. lee [piracy statistics and the importance of journalistic skepticism]

Books are souvenirs that hold ideas. Ideas are free. If no one knows about your idea, you fail. If your idea doesn’t spread, you fail. If your idea spreads but no one wants to own the souvenir edition, you fail. -- seth godin [10 questions for seth godin]

inertia is apparently more powerful than creative intelligence. -- anon

autumn buried [haiku]

autumn buried -
color of leaves
in afternoon snow.

[oz/2008. all rights reserved]

atwood on harper

from a letter by margaret atwood on arts, creativity, and stephen harper:

Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily. Of course, you can always get some tame artists to design the uniforms and flags and the documentary about you, and so forth - the only kind of art you might need - but individual voices must be silenced, because there shall be only One Voice: Our Master's Voice. Maybe that's why Mr. Harper began by shutting down funding for our artists abroad. He didn't like the competition for media space.

quote of the day

republicans at one time heard to have said:

We do not support government bailouts of private institutions. Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained prosperity and opportunity for all.

[found in david brin's blog]

recently noted quotes

true intelligence is incompatible with the fascist impulse. -- spider robinson

it is never the size, it is always the technology! -- eren yigit [10yrs old]

passwords come from down deep. -- jack reacher

please fasten your seatbelts: we are about to encounter contradictions. the subject is love, and things may get bumpy. -- laura kipnis [against love]

We'd also like to take an opportunity to remind you that one query is sufficient and multiple queries regarding the same issue make the Magic Donkey cry. -- flickr help mail

No humans were involved in the creation of this email. -- flickr help mail [good to see that flicker was able to employ enough many typing monkeys to eventually generate this fascinating email. alas the same email did not contain any important lines from shakespeare.]

almost dying changes nothing. dying changes everything -- house

dad is like a rubik's cube. you have to twist and turn him to figure him out. -- eren yigit

only two things you ignore: things that aren't important and things you wish weren't important and wishing never works. -- private investigator [house]

time for a change

just as i was celebrating the release of nikon d700, and saving money, canon comes up with 5D mark II, and blows me away. twice d700, and costs less.
shopping cart:

• Canon 5d mk II
• Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro
• Canon EF 70-200mm f4.0L IS USM
• Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM
• Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM

update: i specified 16-35 strictly for uses on architecture and interior, thinking it may have less distortion than 17-40 f/4. looking at some of the reviews, i am not so sure anymore. the price difference is huge, i don't care for speed, and 17-40 distortion is not much worse than 16-35.

quote of the day

from A C Grayling's guardian column road to nowhere:

Secularists say, "believe whatever nonsense you want, but keep it to yourself and act responsibly". The Brian-sandalistas say, "believe what we want you to believe and act as we say". The psychopaths among them say, "believe what we want you to believe and act as we say or we will kill you".

brian-sandalista: see life of brian

recently noted quotes

morning is a portal to misery and school! -- eren yigit

my memory is great but seems to be very short these days. -- emily calkin

excuse me, I've just got to go and unclench my teeth. -- prose [tom duff]

gamma is not a relative on your mother's side -- thom hogan

it is always easier to create deviations from normal color than it is to create normal color from deviated colors. -- thom hogan

you know when you run out of questions, you don't just run out of answers, you run out of hope. -- thirteen [house, m.d.]

i could not find any red tape. -- anonymous sensei [jccc taikai, 2008]

the meat is the whole deal. are you getting the picture? -- terry bisson

when faith stands trial, its appeals must go to the court of reason --austin dacey [secular conscience]

it is the special beauty of faith, that, like the fabled phoenix, it draws its life from the flames that destroy it. It flies as it dies. -- thomas m. disch [the word of god]

pulse

three images from a recent photo project.all images copyright ozan s. yigit.
see also: silentrunning photostream

shards [haiku]

evening train -
shards of sunset
cut my sleep.

[oz/2008]

tv shows and reality: a quote

abby: i am good mcgee, but i cannot work miracles. this is impossible. i told you once, i told you a thousand times -
mcgee: there is no substitute for quality source imagery, i know.

[finally a show that does not try to screw with the information theory, insult the audience, and try to extract 10mp worth of information from a crude 1mp cell-phone image... CSI fantasy shows should get a clue, and go back to something resembling science. oh wait, narrative brain damage is irreversible...]

leica M8 in iraq

a working photographer has to read michael kamber's detailed field review of leica m8. if that does not deliver the swift, smarting kick leica needs, i do not know what will.

I have found the Leica M8 to be unreliable, poorly designed, and to deliver substandard results in most of the situations in which I have used it. I can’t think of any camera--or for that matter any electronic device I have recently used--that so thoroughly fails to live up to its potential and its heritage.

[some of us have spotted a few of the design issues without having to make a living out of it, or paying the outrageous sums of money required, thank goodness...]

a zen poem

the moon's the same old moon,
the flowers exactly as they were,
yet i've become the thingness
of all the things i see!

bunan (1602-72)

[found in zen poetry: let the spring breeze enter edited and translated by lucien stryk and takashi ikemoto]

recently noted quotes

yeah, don't give me any ideas. i am getting too farfetched! -- eren yigit [age 10]

there is no pause button on reality. -- eren yigit [a remarkable observation that gives difficulty to many religious fanatics and republicans]

i love the word "smear"... -- laura calder [french food at home]

The life of a contrarian is inherently frustrating. Whenever you point out the flaws in a particular dogmatic position, there is a tediously-predictable, reflex reaction that you must be a dogmatist, for the opposite extreme. -- david brin [Airline deterioration, the new elite, levees and clkimate deniers]

Thought, without the data on which to structure that thought, leads nowhere. -- victor stanger [has science found god?]

I bought it because I'm a sucker for finishing a series. DON'T DO IT. Put the mouse down and walk away. Do NOT check that box. -- from a review of stross's "clan corporate" at amazon [we get reviews]

[...] but I trust my family jewels only to Linux. -- donald knuth [interview with knuth]

hating bit fields in c structs. dat shit nevah werkz -- peter honeyman [tweet]

finding a needle in a haystack isn't hard when every straw is computerized. -- dexter

We need to kick the bishops out of the House of Lords, ban the Police and judiciary from taking donations from religious organizations, and get religion out of politics by any means necessary. -- charlie stross [when is a cult not a cult?]

i do not even know what a square looks like. i operate from a circle. -- dolores pitcher

fear is a frighteningly effective sales pitch. -- arianna huffington [right is wrong]

twee ... splat

this morning's fun task: feeding twitterrific to appzapper.

i have all but given up on twitter; a relatively interesting idea badly let down by inexperience and hyped-up, quick-and-neat frameworks that let you do well in boring situations, sell a rack-full of poorly written books, but cannot scale to the real world. talking about books: here is another possibly useful book idea that should be titled (you guessed it) twitterrible...

[related reading: release it!: design and deploy production-ready software]