Having cared for a young monkey who was not wearing a diapers, I can tell you it is very messy, especially when they are sitting on your shoulder. Messy but worth the scrubbing for the experience.
It depends on the training of the TSA agents. Do any of them read their web site and learn to tell which batteries have lithium capacity limits and the difference between lithium metal and Li-ion, do they just ignore this since it is not about terrorism, or do they selectively enforce this based on TSA interpretation of the DOT rules (the scary possibility). This could be nothing, and I think this is a strong possibility, but nothing and the TSA rarely seems as simple as it should be.
I hoped some might know more, perhaps new information at a security check point, or report back after the 1st.
Well, I used to hear frogs, those very frogs, as I made made of those recordings. Many of them made in wetlands that surrounded the house were I lived. I really miss that.
I'd sell this one of a seagull-shaped UFO for much less. Actually, I wish I would have had the presence of mind to position the shot to do some forced perspective with the bird over the opera house because it then would have looked like a giant seagull flying over Sydney.
Wow, that's a hard one. I always thought when a player pegs out the round is over, but there is nothing about this in the rules of the ACC (American Cribbage Congress), but you could ask at the cribbage forum
My problem with the macbook is the weight, it is only .4 pounds (200 grams) less than a macbook pro. I would like a smaller book, but I wanted it in the sub-five pound range under 4.5 would have sold me. Another issue is that the video is pretty weak (64MB from internal ram, compared to a 256 MB ATI X1600 - even if the ATI is underclocked). I would have lived with it the weak video if Apple had made it lighter. On the plus side, battery life is claimed to be 6 hours+ with wireless off (which is probably closer to 5 in anything but a computer manufacturer testing lab), better for plane trips and there would be less threat of screen damage if the person ahead of you reclines the seat because of the smaller screen.
I think it will suit many people well, and who knows, maybe I'll buy one for home use, but I just ordered my new MB Pro for work. And, I was able to sell maxing out the hard drive and RAM by saying I will not need a mac and a windows machine because it is two machines in one.
I am allergic to my first wedding ring (insert your own joke....) and would get blisters under the band. We guess it was the nickel content. I did not wear a ring for 10 years. I now have a platinum band. No blisters, but I worry about losing it. I sometimes wear it, sometimes not. I am still not quite used to it.
If your primary need is to have a place to put low resolution photos to embed in blogs, ebay, etc., then maybe it is. With my flickr account, I dump 4MB photos from my 20D, they are converted in to 5 additional image sizes each with a unique URL. There is a requirement that users linking-out photos acknowledge flickr with a link back; those terms suit me as I want people to look at my pictures. There are no limits on the size of my account, nor on how much outbound traffic they generate.
With photobucket, there seems to be no way to add a description to a picture, nor anyway for others to comment on my pictures, and it has outbound transfer limits and caps file size. Pay $25 to store one gig of photos of no more than 1MB each? For me. that is limiting. And, given the original question about full resolution images, I bet T AL Z might as well.
The other interesting thing about flickr, is if there is something you want to do, they give you APIs to extend the tool. Find a tool limiting? Write your own, or find someone else who has.
As I see it, photobucket and flickr have some features and goals in common, but there are big differences, too. To call one better is to compare apples and pears (they are related, but different).
I have a flickr pro account, while I could be wrong, but there is nothing preventing a free membership or a non-member from getting any of my full res images. As a free-member there are size limits (according to the FAQ), but I can't remember. Overall, I have been pretty happy with the service, and I like the community.
If you would like to see if you can get full res images here is my URL.
I checked by looking at my account when I was logged out and I could see them and get them. I can put limits on who can see, and download pictures, but I don't. The thing I like about flickr is what while there is a upload transfer cap (3GB pro). There are no download transfer limits.
Thanks for that link of WHO refuting the report of blonde extinction. I have a couple more links that discuss this. One is an abstract from the author of the study that much of this based on
Science Direct Link to Evolution and Human Behavior
And here is an interesting discussion of the same article/topic
Blonde evolution discussion at Gene Expression
Sorry for the digression...Now back to all the blonde jokes.
The writer is an idiot. To quote the article, "The increase in competition for males led to rapid change as women struggled to evolve the most alluring qualities." I doubt the author said anything like this. There is no struggle to evolve a characteristic, you are born with all you will ever have. It sounds like the women concentrated really hard and blond hairs just started popping out. If anything, men are responsible for the evolution of blonde hair, not the women. If the author is correctly representing the work (which is a big if), men were the selective force. Males were preferentially selecting females with different hair colors, so this led to an increased proportion of people with that trait in the population.
But, I am glad to see that WHO has solved enough to the world's health problems to commission studies of when blondes will go extinct. Actually to be fair, it is likely that this was a study of the persistence of rare, recessive traits in human populations (a good thing to understand), and it just another example of how poorly researched and written this piece is.
Yes, this is very interesting. The closest thing we have to this in the US is the National Science Digital Library, but that is primarily science, tech, engineering and math materials. There was the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse which was axed recently by the Bush administration Department of Education. You can still get to the tax payer funded collection, but now you have to pay for it.
For me the most interesting library is the EEVL library. I'm sure whoever came up with that name is still laughing. Be sure to check out the Working with EEVL page so you can link to EEVL or get an EEVL RSS feed.
Here is the site of the people who actually made it.
http://www.edheads.org/activities/knee/
It's an interesting group. It would be nice it were better acknowledged by the site that is taking it and using it to sell ads.
I have used both canon and nikon dSLRs from several points in the range from consumer to pro. I have a preference for nikon bodies and canon lens. I like the features of the Nikon bodies, and the price/performance ratio of canon lens. I just bought a canon 20D, so for me it came down to lenses, and it having a 8MP resolution in my price range. I will claim that this is close to equivalent to most films (better than some, not as good as others).
I would recommend you go to a camera shop and hold them in your hands, try them with a couple lens. How it fits in your hand is important. I found the Rebel XT (EOS 350D) a bit to small for my hands and cramped with a larger lens, the digital Rebel (EOS 300D) is larger. The 20D works for me, and 5 FPS is sweet when shooting animals in motion. The D70 and the new D200 are pretty nice, too.
When it comes to lenses, remember all but a few of the dSLRs have a multiplier compared to 35mm cameras. With Nikon, it is 1.5X and 1.6 for for the digital rebels, for some it is as high as 2X. That means a 28mm lens is equivalent to a 42-45mm lens, so to get a real wide angle look in the 10-18 mm range. It also means that my 70-300 lens is about 110 to 420 mm which works for me since most of pictures are of wild animals.
When choosing lenses think about the pictures you want to take. Everyone will tell you you need a wide angle lens, I rarely use mine, I like to be up close, but that is me. If any one tries to sell you lens without asking you what kinds of pictures you wish to take, walk away. I use my above mentioned telephoto zoom almost all the time. My next most used lens is my macro lens. If you go nikon the kit lens is pretty good, I would avoid the canon kit lens, there are better lens to be had. Also, look at sigma and tamron lens, they offer lenses that compare well to nikon and canon consumer grade lens, and some of their best compete with the pro glass from canon and nikon.
As to your technical questions. Most dSLRs have decent image processors, the advantage of dSLRs is their ability to shoot raw, which are preprocessed data from the sensor, so you can make some adjustments to images after they are taken. I think canon and nikon have decent image processors. EV is a unit of light as controlled by the aperture, the shutter speed, and the sensitivity of the sensor/film. An EV of 0 is the amount of light that gives the correct exposure at the combination of a 1 second exposure with a f/1 aperture (good luck finding one of those) at ISO 100. A $10,000 camera is generally better. It should be more robust, dependable, the shutter/mirror can handle more exposures, it is more accurate at timing and at measuring light, it likely has a better and larger sensor, and many other things. Like many things it is not a linear scale, a $10,000 camera is not necessarily 10 times better than $1000 camera. Give a pro a digital rebel and they will get great shots. Give my grandmother a 1Ds mark II and they will look like pictures from her point-and-shoot camera.
Try lurking in dpreview. There are great reviews of cameras and forums that have some very knowledgeable people. Just avoid the religious wars: canon vs. nikon, vs. everything else.
Taking a good course is also a great suggestion. We have good courses at our local community college. Our local pro-photography shop also offers some shorter workshops.
Be sure that it is not your water killing machines. Even with descaling, it can be hard to keep a machine going it you have really hard water. You might need to install a reverse osmosis filter for the water you use in machine.
It might a bit overkill, but you could use VNC (freeware) to control the windows machine from the Mac http://www.redstonesoftware.com/support.html#vnc. You need to set the PC up to be controlled and the mac to do the controlling, but it is pretty straight forward.
The airport express/airtunes solution is more elegant, but costs the price of the airport express.
One of the witness has an interesting title:
Minister of State for Education cum Co-Chairman of the Singapore-Shandong Business Council (SSBC), Mr Chan Soo Sen.
Fantastic, I would be the next person compelled to buy this.
posted by alumroot 14 years ago
In "Monkey see, monkey do."
Having cared for a young monkey who was not wearing a diapers, I can tell you it is very messy, especially when they are sitting on your shoulder. Messy but worth the scrubbing for the experience.
posted by alumroot 16 years ago
In "Traveling with lithium batteries"
It depends on the training of the TSA agents. Do any of them read their web site and learn to tell which batteries have lithium capacity limits and the difference between lithium metal and Li-ion, do they just ignore this since it is not about terrorism, or do they selectively enforce this based on TSA interpretation of the DOT rules (the scary possibility). This could be nothing, and I think this is a strong possibility, but nothing and the TSA rarely seems as simple as it should be. I hoped some might know more, perhaps new information at a security check point, or report back after the 1st.
posted by alumroot 16 years ago
In "Chirp Chirp"
Well, I used to hear frogs, those very frogs, as I made made of those recordings. Many of them made in wetlands that surrounded the house were I lived. I really miss that.
posted by alumroot 16 years ago
In "UFO Evidence"
I'd sell this one of a seagull-shaped UFO for much less. Actually, I wish I would have had the presence of mind to position the shot to do some forced perspective with the bird over the opera house because it then would have looked like a giant seagull flying over Sydney.
posted by alumroot 17 years ago
In "skunked?"
Wow, that's a hard one. I always thought when a player pegs out the round is over, but there is nothing about this in the rules of the ACC (American Cribbage Congress), but you could ask at the cribbage forum
posted by alumroot 17 years ago
In "The new MacBook is out."
My problem with the macbook is the weight, it is only .4 pounds (200 grams) less than a macbook pro. I would like a smaller book, but I wanted it in the sub-five pound range under 4.5 would have sold me. Another issue is that the video is pretty weak (64MB from internal ram, compared to a 256 MB ATI X1600 - even if the ATI is underclocked). I would have lived with it the weak video if Apple had made it lighter. On the plus side, battery life is claimed to be 6 hours+ with wireless off (which is probably closer to 5 in anything but a computer manufacturer testing lab), better for plane trips and there would be less threat of screen damage if the person ahead of you reclines the seat because of the smaller screen. I think it will suit many people well, and who knows, maybe I'll buy one for home use, but I just ordered my new MB Pro for work. And, I was able to sell maxing out the hard drive and RAM by saying I will not need a mac and a windows machine because it is two machines in one.
posted by alumroot 17 years ago
In "<b>Curious, George</b>-Nasty Food, International."
Cheese Whiz - How can any food named whiz be good. Its motto is "cheesy and darn proud of it"
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Anonymous, George: Why Won't He Wear The Ring?"
I am allergic to my first wedding ring (insert your own joke....) and would get blisters under the band. We guess it was the nickel content. I did not wear a ring for 10 years. I now have a platinum band. No blisters, but I worry about losing it. I sometimes wear it, sometimes not. I am still not quite used to it.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Curious George: photo gallery on a website"
If your primary need is to have a place to put low resolution photos to embed in blogs, ebay, etc., then maybe it is. With my flickr account, I dump 4MB photos from my 20D, they are converted in to 5 additional image sizes each with a unique URL. There is a requirement that users linking-out photos acknowledge flickr with a link back; those terms suit me as I want people to look at my pictures. There are no limits on the size of my account, nor on how much outbound traffic they generate. With photobucket, there seems to be no way to add a description to a picture, nor anyway for others to comment on my pictures, and it has outbound transfer limits and caps file size. Pay $25 to store one gig of photos of no more than 1MB each? For me. that is limiting. And, given the original question about full resolution images, I bet T AL Z might as well. The other interesting thing about flickr, is if there is something you want to do, they give you APIs to extend the tool. Find a tool limiting? Write your own, or find someone else who has. As I see it, photobucket and flickr have some features and goals in common, but there are big differences, too. To call one better is to compare apples and pears (they are related, but different).
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
I have a flickr pro account, while I could be wrong, but there is nothing preventing a free membership or a non-member from getting any of my full res images. As a free-member there are size limits (according to the FAQ), but I can't remember. Overall, I have been pretty happy with the service, and I like the community. If you would like to see if you can get full res images here is my URL. I checked by looking at my account when I was logged out and I could see them and get them. I can put limits on who can see, and download pictures, but I don't. The thing I like about flickr is what while there is a upload transfer cap (3GB pro). There are no download transfer limits.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "European females"
Thanks for that link of WHO refuting the report of blonde extinction. I have a couple more links that discuss this. One is an abstract from the author of the study that much of this based on Science Direct Link to Evolution and Human Behavior And here is an interesting discussion of the same article/topic Blonde evolution discussion at Gene Expression Sorry for the digression...Now back to all the blonde jokes.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
The writer is an idiot. To quote the article, "The increase in competition for males led to rapid change as women struggled to evolve the most alluring qualities." I doubt the author said anything like this. There is no struggle to evolve a characteristic, you are born with all you will ever have. It sounds like the women concentrated really hard and blond hairs just started popping out. If anything, men are responsible for the evolution of blonde hair, not the women. If the author is correctly representing the work (which is a big if), men were the selective force. Males were preferentially selecting females with different hair colors, so this led to an increased proportion of people with that trait in the population. But, I am glad to see that WHO has solved enough to the world's health problems to commission studies of when blondes will go extinct. Actually to be fair, it is likely that this was a study of the persistence of rare, recessive traits in human populations (a good thing to understand), and it just another example of how poorly researched and written this piece is.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Resource Discovery Network"
Yes, this is very interesting. The closest thing we have to this in the US is the National Science Digital Library, but that is primarily science, tech, engineering and math materials. There was the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse which was axed recently by the Bush administration Department of Education. You can still get to the tax payer funded collection, but now you have to pay for it. For me the most interesting library is the EEVL library. I'm sure whoever came up with that name is still laughing. Be sure to check out the Working with EEVL page so you can link to EEVL or get an EEVL RSS feed.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Perform a long and disgusting virtual knee replacement operation "
Here is the site of the people who actually made it. http://www.edheads.org/activities/knee/ It's an interesting group. It would be nice it were better acknowledged by the site that is taking it and using it to sell ads.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Curious, George: First digital SLR"
I have used both canon and nikon dSLRs from several points in the range from consumer to pro. I have a preference for nikon bodies and canon lens. I like the features of the Nikon bodies, and the price/performance ratio of canon lens. I just bought a canon 20D, so for me it came down to lenses, and it having a 8MP resolution in my price range. I will claim that this is close to equivalent to most films (better than some, not as good as others). I would recommend you go to a camera shop and hold them in your hands, try them with a couple lens. How it fits in your hand is important. I found the Rebel XT (EOS 350D) a bit to small for my hands and cramped with a larger lens, the digital Rebel (EOS 300D) is larger. The 20D works for me, and 5 FPS is sweet when shooting animals in motion. The D70 and the new D200 are pretty nice, too. When it comes to lenses, remember all but a few of the dSLRs have a multiplier compared to 35mm cameras. With Nikon, it is 1.5X and 1.6 for for the digital rebels, for some it is as high as 2X. That means a 28mm lens is equivalent to a 42-45mm lens, so to get a real wide angle look in the 10-18 mm range. It also means that my 70-300 lens is about 110 to 420 mm which works for me since most of pictures are of wild animals. When choosing lenses think about the pictures you want to take. Everyone will tell you you need a wide angle lens, I rarely use mine, I like to be up close, but that is me. If any one tries to sell you lens without asking you what kinds of pictures you wish to take, walk away. I use my above mentioned telephoto zoom almost all the time. My next most used lens is my macro lens. If you go nikon the kit lens is pretty good, I would avoid the canon kit lens, there are better lens to be had. Also, look at sigma and tamron lens, they offer lenses that compare well to nikon and canon consumer grade lens, and some of their best compete with the pro glass from canon and nikon. As to your technical questions. Most dSLRs have decent image processors, the advantage of dSLRs is their ability to shoot raw, which are preprocessed data from the sensor, so you can make some adjustments to images after they are taken. I think canon and nikon have decent image processors. EV is a unit of light as controlled by the aperture, the shutter speed, and the sensitivity of the sensor/film. An EV of 0 is the amount of light that gives the correct exposure at the combination of a 1 second exposure with a f/1 aperture (good luck finding one of those) at ISO 100. A $10,000 camera is generally better. It should be more robust, dependable, the shutter/mirror can handle more exposures, it is more accurate at timing and at measuring light, it likely has a better and larger sensor, and many other things. Like many things it is not a linear scale, a $10,000 camera is not necessarily 10 times better than $1000 camera. Give a pro a digital rebel and they will get great shots. Give my grandmother a 1Ds mark II and they will look like pictures from her point-and-shoot camera. Try lurking in dpreview. There are great reviews of cameras and forums that have some very knowledgeable people. Just avoid the religious wars: canon vs. nikon, vs. everything else. Taking a good course is also a great suggestion. We have good courses at our local community college. Our local pro-photography shop also offers some shorter workshops.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Curious George: Espresso machines favored by monkeys."
Be sure that it is not your water killing machines. Even with descaling, it can be hard to keep a machine going it you have really hard water. You might need to install a reverse osmosis filter for the water you use in machine.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Curious George: mp3 mayhem"
It might a bit overkill, but you could use VNC (freeware) to control the windows machine from the Mac http://www.redstonesoftware.com/support.html#vnc. You need to set the PC up to be controlled and the mac to do the controlling, but it is pretty straight forward.
The airport express/airtunes solution is more elegant, but costs the price of the airport express.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "Aussie Galah "
Sheila
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
In "What's a little bull semen to boost bilateral ties? "
One of the witness has an interesting title: Minister of State for Education cum Co-Chairman of the Singapore-Shandong Business Council (SSBC), Mr Chan Soo Sen.
posted by alumroot 18 years ago
(limited to the most recent 20 comments)