heh, that must have been a nice long pause :)
- Carlos Urrutia
Along the same lines, make sure the other person doesn't have you on speaker if you have a habit of starting a call with a tongue-in-cheek "What are you wearing?" (And don't ask me how I know this.)
- John Craft
I used to answer the phone "Dominoes" expecting family to be calling. one time it was a wrong number. later that day Dominoes called me and asked - Is this Dominoes?
- Mike Nencetti
You HAVE TO DO THIS on the next tekzilla mybe the whole show. ;)
- Fee501st
from iPhone
Author Clyde Edgerton was fond of answering the phone "Clyde's Veterinary and Taxidermy Service - either way you get your cat back!"
- John Craft
My favorite is Steve Martin's character from L.A. Story: "Hello, this is Harris. I'm in right now, so you can talk to me personally. Please start talking at the sound of the beep."
- Fleagle
My husband does this all the time! He's awesome at doing voiceovers and tends to get my friends all the time - he does this hilarious old lady. it's so funny.
- Nathalie, Dreamer of FF
We all got really drunk and at 3:00am my friend answered the phone "a hoy hoy" (simpsons.) The next line was - "Yes officer, he's my brother." You can add it to the list of ways to not answer the phone.
- echostreamer
"Step aside, Android 2.0 -- Android 2.0.1 has arrived. Verizon is rolling out its first update to the Motorola Droid phone this week, and many users are starting to receive the package today. Android 2.0.1 is a relatively minor update, but it brings a handful of performance and aesthetical changes that pack some extra punch into the Droid experience."
- LANjackal
from Bookmarklet
Can I first have 1.6? Or 2.0? Come on Rogers! Update my Magic!
- Zachary TG
Watch the skies: The week ahead is shaping up as a great one for watching the skies. Here are four highlights that will open your eyes - http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive...
Is formatting of the text critical, beyond spacing and line breaks? Are there critical embedded media elements? If not, plain text always wins.
- LogEx
Doesn't Google docs support docx files as well?
- Brian Sullivan
.doc is a standard...95% of the electronic document world uses it. Get off my lawn. The world doesn't work the way you want it to work. You must work the way the world works. .doc FTW.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
"WAAAAA... Your not using the service I recommend this week..WAAAA"
- CW™
Microsoft thinks EVERYTHING it poops out is a "standard". sorry, not biting.
- Joe Silence is not dead
I want to know what kind of information about a wedding had to be represented in a word doc that couldn't have just been put into the message, presumably email, that contained the word doc. Are you one of those people who write your message into word, then save it and attach it to an email with the text "see this attachment for my message to you"?
- Andy Bakun
from Android
As a tech person you HAVE to be flexible and be able to handle all sorts of formats.
- CW™
Microsoft's largest monopoly is in the Office space, not the OS. You can look it up, my numbers aren't far off.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
indeed, most modern email programs let you save the body (and headers, if you want) as some kind of formatted or unformatted text file, whether RTF or DOC or TXT or whatever. no excuse for an attachment.
- Joe Silence is not dead
You guys might as well start complaining about the use of Comic Sans as a font while you are at it...Like I said...the world doesn't work how you want it to work. Complaining about it, won't change it. I think from now on I will send all my correspondence to Robert inside a Word attachment ;)
- Alex Scoble
from IM
maybe you can explain why then that supposed standard, .doc, isn't supported by the others, it even keep changing on each version of m$-office!!!
- ovigia
Why are you taking it out on him when it's the folks here who are fussing at you? hee. Feel free to communicate with me any way you wish. I got nothing but time! ;-)
- pea
Alex is right. #1 feature request from family and friends when they ask me about which computer to buy is 'It has to run Word'. Short tail vs very long tail issue.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
"You must work the way the world works" - spoken like a true conservative Luddite, uninterested in improving the world. TXT >> RTF > HTML > ODF > PDF >> Word
- LogEx
Johnny, having an interest in using Word does not at all equate to actually sending people attachments they don't want, in a format they don't want.
- LogEx
PDF is in no way shape or form better than .doc. Nor is HTML. And I'm neither a conservative nor a luddite, but pissing in the wind just gets you drenched in piss.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
And now I want to do all my friendfeed posts in .doc format
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I am sorry, but if you sent me a .doc it would be in the trash bin and I'd be complaining too. There is nothing wrong with plain text (or html if you need formatting). It's pretty much universal and can be read on any device, any OS. Maybe back in 2002 I might have felt differently, but spending a substantial amount of time using a device incapable of displaying a .doc from the latest...
more...
- April Russo (app103)
Really? Cause in the real world a document = a word document. This goes to Alex's point that the majority of people still use word and the .doc format. All the other suggestions mentioned here are not in the mind of the normal user.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
.rtf has the same formating techniques and is supported everywhere. Opens in Word, and pretty much any other word processing program. Was made by Microsoft as well, if that's important to you
- Samuel L. Jackson
To Joe's point. That is true that a lot of people can barely use te computer... But they know how to use Word.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Email is the only universal interpersonal computer communication protocol, and plain text is the only universal format for using in an email. Attachments put an unnecessary burden on the recipient.
- LogEx
Alex, be happy I don't have to send you email on a regular basis. I'd be sending you messages in a different format every time, sending you scrambling to find a solution to enable you to read it...just to teach you a lesson.
- April Russo (app103)
Any email sent to me in which the contents are only an attachment will get trashed. If you want to have some pretty formatted thing, put it on a website and email me the link. The worst is getting an email that's a link to a website that has a link to a goddamn Word document. That is email abuse and a waste of my time.
- ǎňňǎ
The people who send me PDFs do not lock them...just sayin'.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
then the people who send you PDFs don't know wtf they're doing with Acrobat.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Who uses Acrobat? I make my PDFs using CutePDF or similar print-to-pdf tools.
- Daniel J. Pritchett
This is an argument about which tire gives the best grip and performance when really, the vast majority of people just get in their car and drive on the tires the car came with.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Johnny, I think it's more like "why are you driving a car? That's environmentally wasteful!" when most people need to drive a car to get around.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
the vast majority of people don't pay much attention to anything except their own personal pleasure and desires.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Joe, which is why Word is the dominant format... Like Internet Explorer... And Outlook Express... We care (and know) about different formats, the real world has things to do
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
you mean the real world is too lazy and stupid to try anything that isn't forced on them.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Yes, your elitist thinking is so going to win you friends at dinner parties. :)
- Alex Scoble
from IM
half the execs i have worked under in the IT and publishing world could barely use a computer and none could use Word or Excel. they had people for that.
- Joe Silence is not dead
I am not saying you can't use Word. Keep in mind that it is capable of easily saving in formats other than .doc.
- April Russo (app103)
I do everything in Pages because I'm a filthy Mac user. If I need to send out something that requires formatting, it goes out in PDF. If you can't deal with PDF, or if you whine about it, I probably don't want to deal with you either.
- Akiva Moskovitz
Alex, was was his suggested format for the wedding information you sent him?
- CW™
Joe, cause electricity was 10 times better. It's not just enough to be slightly better. We are talking about changing the collective consiousness of a world just coming to gripes with computers.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Where did I call anyone a name?
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Whenever I hear someone talk about not using a Microsoft product just because it's Microsoft, it makes me want to evangelize the hell out of Microsoft products and get everyone I know to use them. Sometimes spite is just damned fun.
- Akiva Moskovitz
So it's you don't like Word, that's cool. Doesn't change the point.
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
Very rarely have I ever had problems with Excel
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Personally, I'd stick the guest list in a .tdo file too. Of course as a Mac user you might have a hard time with that.
- April Russo (app103)
then you're either living a charmed life or don't really use it that extensively, Alex.
- Joe Silence is not dead
Joe. In my job I produce lots of formatted documents such as proformas, msds sheets and shipping documents. I send some as PDF but the majority is as the raw .doc file when working with others on them. Can't copy and paste that into the body of an email
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
I use it every day for work, Joe. And you underestimate my skills at working with computers.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
@Johnny: that's a different matter. i'd use RTF in that situation. but i would go with DOC if the recipient needed it.
- Joe Silence is not dead
"too early for popcorn"? now there's a statement that could be debated! too early for the smell but not the taste. :D
- pea
@Joe - Smaller file? I just ran a test, saving a .doc file in .rtf, .odt and .docx formats. The original .doc was 126kb, the .rtf version is 291kb, the .docx is 42kb and the .odt is 32kb. How is 291kb smaller than 126, 42 or 32kb?
- Curtiss Grymala
Because of the exchange rate between Microsoft-produced and non-Microsoft-produced kilobytes?
- Akiva Moskovitz
@Curtiss, how big is the file in plain text?
- LogEx
What software did you use to run your test? Word? Try Wordpad. Much less useless junk added to the .rtf.
- April Russo (app103)
plaintext for text, html for rich content? it is a standard and tons of people can read it. though there is no reason to use only 1 file type
- Mike Chelen
HTML is horrible for editing text
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Not with a decent HTML editor. And Word can export your document as HTML.
- April Russo (app103)
The file in plain text is 36kb. I used Word to convert it to RTF, as it's not possible to readably open a .doc file in Wordpad.
- Curtiss Grymala
.odt and.docx are compressed, as far as I know
- Curtiss Grymala
Run your own test. I just ran another test and got similar results. I generated 50 paragraphs of dummy text on lipsum.com and pasted it into Wordpad first. I saved it as RTF and TXT. Then, I opened the RTF in Word and saved it as .doc, .docx and .odt
- Curtiss Grymala
Ah, OK, compression makes sense, though I still argue that compression and formatting should be avoided unles they are critical to the content. I save 140 characters of text in UTF-8 with no BOM and the file is 140 bytes. I can email that text, SMS it, Tweet it, IM it, read it in any browser, etc.
- LogEx
I'm certainly not saying Word is the be-all, end-all, but it does work well and it is fairly universal. If someone doesn't have Word, they can easily open a Word doc in Word Viewer (free), OpenOffice or even in GoogleDocs if they so choose. Word simply works, and it works well. With GoogleDocs, whenever I change the formatting on one thing, it always ends up screwing up the formatting on something else. IMHO, even GoogleDocs can't match the comments and tracked changes features in Word.
- Curtiss Grymala
Sorry, but unless you save it in a much older Word format, all of the above are not options on my pda.
- April Russo (app103)
Could have been worse. You could have saved it in an old WordPerfect format.
- Steven Perez
One of my co-workers still insists on WordPerfect. It's a total pain to deal with.
- Kendra <3 Three Lions
And there is another reason not to use .doc. 20 years from now you may not be able to open it.
- April Russo (app103)
Logan - I'd be willing to bet that, if April's PDA can't open a Word 97-2003 document, it probably can't open an ODT file, either.
- Curtiss Grymala
April - We have no idea what file formats will still exist or be usable in 20 years. That's an odd reason not to use a particular format, especially one as well-supported as Word
- Curtiss Grymala
When I was working at the law firm in Palo Alto (in 2005), there was one court in San Diego (I believe) that required all legal documents be sent in Word Perfect format
- Alex Scoble
from IM
almost 150 comments and still nobody has said it........'Word Up!'
- Morgan Haley
Alex - at least they didn't insist on WordStar format
- Curtiss Grymala
Ahh, WordStar...that brings back fond memories...first word processor app I ever used.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
Mine, too, Alex. We used WordStar first, then moved up to WordPerfect when we got Windows 3.
- Curtiss Grymala
Alex, most of the world prays to a sky daddy. ...doesn't make it right. :)
- Edward Zwart
Curtis: It's something to think about when saving documents, especially for archivists, if you think there could even be a remote possibility that it may be important enough that you'd want to open it at some point in the distant future. My guess is that plain text would still be usable at that time. The historians of the future are going to have a hell of a time with our digital stuff. Not like carvings on stone or print on paper.
- April Russo (app103)
No, but when most of the world prays to a sky daddy, you are probably better off not making fun of said daddy unless you want to be run out of town or worse.
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I don't believe you can quantify your statement "most of the world still works in Word."
- Glen Mistletoe
I believe that I already did, Glen
- Alex Scoble
from IM
If you really want your words to last, try nickel plates with high-resolution analog ion-beam engraving [http://www.norsam.com/hdroset...] and hope that future generations will be able to read the language you wrote it in.
- LogEx
I wish I still had a copy of Office 2000. I'd send you a .doc that would make you tear your hair out trying to view the message.
- April Russo (app103)
Heh, too bad you don't, because I'd take that challenge too
- Alex Scoble
from IM
I have a rather old application that only runs on Windows XP or older, that integrates with Office 2000, that allowed me to attach sticky notes to Office documents, viewable only by people that also have the same version of the same discontinued application installed, along with Office 2000. It works with no other version of Office.
- April Russo (app103)
Maybe I haven't said this often enough, Alex, but I think I love you. My Wednesday has just taken a turn for the better after reading this thread :D
- WorldofHiglet
If Robert uses Gmail, he could just open the Word attachment directly in GoogleDocs.
- Jandy, ConcertMaven of FF
Wow, this was a long (and hilarious) thread. I honestly can't believe that anyone is taking the stance (and apparently believing it) that .doc isn't the standard word processing format for most of the electronic document world. Fight the good fight, Alex.
- Chieze Okoye
Yes, but that would require him to do extra work, Jandy. He can't even be bothered to use friendfeed anymore. ;)
- Alex Scoble
From what I understand Robert lives on his phone now, and if he can't open it on his phone it pretty much is useless to him.
- April Russo (app103)
I just knew that it would eventually come to this! Families torn apart by a difference in document file format conventions!
- Mark Jepsen
He lives on his phone? Is that like being sent off to the phantom zone like General Zod?
- Alex Scoble
Wait a second, Droid doesn't have a Word Doc viewer?
- Chieze Okoye
I know I've said this before, Alex, but sometimes your brother's uber-nerdiness slays me.
- Steven Perez
from IM
Chieze - If that's the case, that would be the bigger news out of this thread. That would be absolutely insane
- Curtiss Grymala
I've toyed with the idea of using Open Doc and then converting for clients, but am always worried about the hassles of formatting, footnotes, etc. Plus, I think only Word has Grammar check (hate it but need it). Anyway, my recent contracts with a publisher specify "IBM compatible" documents. I think they mean .doc. So I comply and don't piss in the wind. I'm happy to have Alex make me feel less ashamed of that fact.
- Mark Horne
I thought he was still on the iPhone.
- Alex Scoble
iPhone has a doc viewer built in, so if he's complaining about not being able to open it, he must not still be using the iPhone
- Curtiss Grymala
Unless he's trying to edit the document. In which case, he can't easily do that on the iPhone
- Curtiss Grymala
Someone once sent me a comprehensive shoot-out style software review of just about every wallpaper changer application for windows that exists, knowing full well the review was going to be published on a web page in HTML format...as one of the most complex excel documents I have ever seen. After 3-4 people collaborating on how the hell I could open and view this properly to extract ALL...
more...
- April Russo (app103)
Jealous of the easy media management of iTunes, but don't use an iPod/iPhone? Then this is the app for you! </tv announcer voice> Seriously, though. doubleTwist is a great app for managing your music, photos and music and syncing them between your desktop (Mac or Windows) and your Android phone. It also converts videos and music files to compatible formats when syncing to your device (I haven't tested this). Also has Amazon MP3 store integration for easy browsing and purchase of unencumbered audio files. Highly recommended.
- Jason Huebel
from Bookmarklet
On my Android device, I just copy files onto the SD card. Why do I need this?
- sjjh
Well, it includes Amazon MP3 Store support. It also includes support for moving Photos and Videos back and forth between your Droid and PC/Mac. Never underestimate having a nice, centralized drag-and-drop interface for managing your files. That's part of what makes iTunes so popular-- ease of use. YOU may not need it, but the average user will. Personally, I think Verizon should be...
more...
- Jason Huebel
Hmm. When I plug an HTC Magic or Tattoo into a USB port (without removing the card) on my PC, the device is recognised as a disk drive. I then have a drag & drop interface from Windows Explorer. I agree that some apps should be included though. For example, how about File Explorer on the device? The first app I install is always OI File Manager
- sjjh
I use Banshee and it fits my needs, but would be nice to have an "all-in-one" package like this on linux
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
from IM
@sjjh, there's no predefined directory structure on the Droid, though. So you could put music pretty much anywhere on the SD card. WE understand that, but the average user is going to wonder where to put their music, videos and pictures. doubleTwist takes that uncertainty out of the equation. That's important to adoption by less technically-savvy people.
- Jason Huebel
@slayerboy, Banshee looks REALLY nice. It supports more than doubleTwist does (for instance, podcasts).
- Jason Huebel
Hmmm, does it support photos? Doesn't appear to.
- Jason Huebel
nope no photos yet.....although Banshee is really frustrating me on ubuntu 9.10....it's a resource hog
- Ⓐ ☠ slayerboy ☠ Ⓐ
from IM
Meh, most media managers are resource hogs, though. All the cover art, special widgets, etc make it so. I don't really worry about memory usage anymore. Now if it's eating up unnecessary CPU time, that's different. I hadn't heard of Banshee until your mention of it. I'm a long-time KDE user, so I tend to stick to Qt-based apps (don't really have anything against GTK/Gnome, mind you).
- Jason Huebel
Just tried that VMware chrome OS image, it is a SUSE Linux distribution with GNOME, GDM is customized with Google Chrome logo, and also Google Chrome browser, that's it for now :S.
- Orlando Pozo
Arg! I can confirm, it's a fake (the live cd) :(
- Brandon
Let's see Brandon, I am anxious to test this thing :)
- Orlando Pozo
The build is also pretty broken. It is missing a bunch of the Google packages like google-gflags. I am almost done with a build - we'll see :)
- Bret Taylor
I built it earlier, check it out at: http://gdgt.com/google... And we just released a VirtualBox and Bootable USB image (not mentioned in that TC article).
- Jon Ursenbach
I did that, but I was heading vertical, school had a vaulted ceiling and I went running, stepped on a chair right were it dropped, on impact both shoes fell off, one hit a guy in the face.
- Jimminy
wonder if that kid had aspirations of being a stunt guy... "dignity, always with dignity" ;)
- alphaxion
If I weren't afraid of going right through the wall, I'd probably still try that. I know I would have done that (and did similar things quite often) when I was much younger.
- Curtiss Grymala
This is still superb this morning after. :-)
- Kol Tregaskes
Defining the line between brave and stupid?
- Eoghann Irving
If I did that, first the wall would collapse, and then the floor. (So, you see, it's not that I *couldn't*... I just choose not to, for the protection of others.)
- Mark Jepsen
You're right. I don't have the guts...and I'm proud of that.
- Tammy Marshall
Twitter web client, Brizzly, allows users to explain Twitter's trending topics. Here's some of my favorite "New Moon" explanations from today.
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
Moon Zappa has a new LP out titled "New Moon". The subject matter strays from her traditional vocal stylings and ventures into stories about overly zealous teenage girls that weep for homosexual actors that are unattainable. In stores now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
'80 child star Soleil Moon Frye is starring in a remake of Punky Brewster, this time in a post-apocalyptic future world. Punk Brewster: Murderville is set to arrive in select theaters November 20th.
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
Stop removing our explanations. We insist that the adults are allowed to express their contempt for the new Hannah Montana movie.
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
There was a new moon on November 16. It is everyone's favorite phase of the moon.
- Internet's Tad
from fftogo
There was a new moon on November 16. It is Miley Cyrus' favorite phase of the moon. Another new moon will occur on December 16th, much to Miley's delight.
- Internet's Tad
"A forest park in southern Scotland has been named one of the world's best places for stargazing. Galloway Forest Park has become the first Dark Sky Park in the UK, and the fourth around the globe. The award, presented by the International Dark Sky Association (IDA), recognises the quality of the night sky in the area, where light pollution is minimal."
- RAPatton
from Bookmarklet
"Today we're dramatically lowering our prices to make extra storage even more affordable. You can now buy 20 GB for only $5 a year — that's twice as much storage for a quarter of the old price, and enough space for more than 10,000 full resolution pictures taken with a five megapixel camera" <--sweet!
- metalerik
from Bookmarklet
that seems like a good price, yet how many people use anything beyond the free plan?
- Mike Chelen
@mikechelen that is a lot of photos and email but I bet it will come soon for many of us. Would be cool if we could finally store music and other files. It will be interesting to watch.
- metalerik
It really challenges us to consider how this communication model might play out for Extension... opportunities. Right now with restructuring going on across the county, I keep thinking of communications with County Councils. Could be cool, if we could incorporate an assessment tool into Wave.
- Floyd Davenport
Wave doesn't change anything unless average people actually adopt it. All the use cases here are technical or geek in nature.
- Jason Huebel
I'm average and I use it. Might even be below average.
- Kevin Gamble
BTW, how did you get that photo to show up here when you link from the view?
- Jason Hill
I think these are yours too, Jason --->- http://bit.ly/3k8OMX love your shots and Iwate looks such an awesome place to be. And this is posted from my google reader which has a plugin to send stuff directly to FF.
- vijay
Ahh! Thanks for the info. I'll use that way...:D
- Jason Hill
Thanks for all your wonderful comments vijay. I'm going through the older ones now...:)
- Jason Hill
ah please don't thank me! I should be the one thanking you for opening my eyes to Iwate when I was focused only on Kyoto. Keep the cool shots coming :D
- vijay
I will! My goal was always to get people interested in Iwate. So I'll keep on trying...:D
- Jason Hill
In order: Calisto, Europa, Jupiter, Io, Ganymede and to the southeast IOT Cap - HIP105515. This is a composite of two pictures taken one after another at 560mm and at two different exposures placed on a black background and cropped. Some resolutions may see this edit. No other post processing was done to any of these incredible celestial bodies. Pictures taken 10/25/09 @ 7:54pmEST
- Carlos Ayala
Very nice. I've been trying to just get Jupiter and the moon these past few weeks.
- Admiral Anika
Sweet! It looks really clear. What did you set the white balance at? I know this is converted black and white and all, just wondering what kind of color info the lens/sensor were able to register for Jupiter.
- Adrian
@Anika they should be in your southern sky for most of your night and a wide angle will get them both together in the frame. the only problem is capturing any detail in both at the same time is virtually impossible.
- Carlos Ayala
If I didn't live on the other side of the continent (and had half the money) I'd go in halves on a GEM. Keeping the camera on Jupiter at that kind of magnification with a crappy tripod is a bear.
- Adrian
Oh, I can see them randomly. That's not the problem. It's actually shooting them where they're not blogs of white. I was going to do what you did and stitch together two photos, but the moon pics I've taken have been unusuable.
- Admiral Anika
@Adrian WB is almost always on Auto for these shots. If i am doing long exposures of starscapes in polluted skies i may do Tungsten. and I never convert to B&W. The shot of Jupiter is straight on shot @ 0.8 Seconds F8.0 ISO 1600. The Moon was shot @ 1/30 ISO 100. Both @ 560mm on a tripod.
- Carlos Ayala
@Anika you have to keep in mind that what you see of the Moon is sunlight. Always shoot it at ISO100, as though you were shooting in daylight. The actual speed will vary between 1/30 - 1/200, as an example. The shutter speed is dependent on position in the sky and type of moon, for the most part.
- Carlos Ayala
@Anika to stitch them, all i did was open both of them in photoshop and place them side by side in a new file. Since i wanted an accurate representation of position in the sky i moved the Moon to where it is in relation to Jupiter. This created a gap. The gap was easily fixed by making the background black. So, 3 layers: black background, the Moon and Jupiter and its neighbors.
- Carlos Ayala
So I shouldn't be getting color data on Jupiter at this magnification? I'm probably seeing chromatic aberration from the lens. You saw my photos... the colors on Jupiter and it's glow would switch up depending on how I had the white balance set. Strange, I guess I should look this up.
- Adrian
the only way to get any color data at this this magnification is if you track it using a GEM while taking many many many exposures at different lengths and later stacking the frames. If i had to guess, what you (and I) are picking up is actually reflected sunlight.
- Carlos Ayala
Crazy! The rovers on Mars shoot like that too. They have filters for the various color wavelengths and they piece the color photos together from these. I want a mount... and filters. :D
- Adrian
Oh it's not just color wavelengths they go for it's chemical wavelengths. They can identify chemistry on visible objects with the technique.
- Adrian
as for the canon's you can either purchase a modified camera for astrophotography, have your current canon permanently modified, add a filter above the sensor yourself or just wing it like i do. these filters cut out the wavelengths that produce the chromatic aberrations you mentioned and high pressure sodium and mercury light pollution. a GEM and a 800mm telescope with t-adapter is on my Christmas list for sure.
- Carlos Ayala
Dude, I have an Oly OM-1MD! In the 70's it was *the* astro-photography camera. ;) It was one of the main reasons I got it. It has mirror lock-up for vibration-free images. Since I don't have a long lens for it, I'm thinking I should just get a telescope with a mount, and an adapter for the camera. But for now it's just a dream.
- Adrian
haha yeah man i know the camera, i forgot you had that beast. awesome. unfortunately we are really limited as to what we can realistically photograph without a GEM. we are basically limited to the Moon. all deep sky objects require a GEM at the very least and a decent (fast) lens or telescope. look at this way my 560mm shot is effectively 896mm on my crop (if i have the math right) and thats the best i can do with what i have.
- Carlos Ayala
An early birthday present: The Gmail Javascript compiler was just open-sourced! http://code.google.com/closure... (it compiles JS into smaller, faster JS)
Unfortunately it looks like the internationalization features may be missing. I wonder why those were removed? (or if I'm just not seeing it)
- Paul Buchheit
@Paul the Closure project has three components: compiler, library, and template language. Looks like the Closure/library might be competing with jQuery.
- Shakeel Mahate
I think jQuery does a lot of stuff that might confuse the compiler, e.g. iterating over an array of string function names and creating new function wrappers (look at the way the parent/child/next/prev/etc functions get installed) The Closure library is also full of type annotations that help the compiler make better optimization choices, so you're likely to get a better compiled outcome using Closure than jQuery + fixes + compiler
- Ray Cromwell
@paul -- I know you've been wanting this opensourced for a long time. sorry it took such a long time. Nick Santos and the jscompiler team has finally done it! Cheers!
- Jing Lim
Congratulations to the team (and @Paul & Jing) -- I know everyone's been waiting a long time for this. For anyone considering whether to use jQuery vs Closure, consider that they're meant for largely different purposes. jQuery's good for enhancing static web pages; Closure's much better at building large apps. And as Ray points out above, Closure the library is going to get much better results from Closure the compiler than an arbitrary js library would, because of all the type annotations.
- Joel Webber
Paul Buchheit has been at the top of my best of pages all month. Rock on, Paul.
- Donald C. Lindsay
Hey HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL !!! Cool present!! <insert CAKE> :D
- Susan Beebe
That writeup is trolling for traffic IMHO. Nit picking 50 lines out of 200+ thousand (written for readability, which get compiled and optimized), providing no benchmarks for claims, and spending half the time bashing Java, it just seems to be struggling to find something wrong with Closure.
- Ray Cromwell
Sachin: he seems to be commenting on Closure the JS library, not Closure the JS compiler (that Paul's post was about). And he may be a douchebag, but I haven't seen anything I disagree with.
- Gabe
@Sachin: I hate to be too harsh, but that post is pretty much garbage. From what I can tell he's pretty much managed to enumerate some of the worst things about Javascript -- nitpicking the code for referencing "undefined" directly without declaring it as an uninitialized local? That's insane. Following this advice is mostly a recipe for an unreadable mess. Also, look in the comments for several refutations of the idea that some of these are even optimizations.
- Joel Webber
Joel, you're just not man enough to handle a language where 'top' is an implicitly reserved keyword, and 'undefined' which should be, isn't. But it could be worse, 'null' could be something you could override. :)
- Ray Cromwell
I seem to be constantly struggling with Text and HTML formatting and editing issues :(( Be it Gmail, Blogger or Google Docs. After all these fancy technological advances why can't I get a kick-ass editor...
Unfortunately that is right... it kicks your ass... still ranting randomly in the vain hope that maybe in a year or so some of this will be fixed.
- Bindu Reddy
As far as I can tell, the rich text editors used by so many sites are at their heart using a browser feature. So it might be worth trying out several browsers to see if there's any variation.
- Amit Patel
"When I was a kid, I was obsessed with glow-in-the-dark doodads—so much so that I had glow-in-the-dark stars puttied to my bedroom ceiling and walls. Had my Christmas gifts been wrapped in this glow-in-the-dark wrapping paper, I would have certainly carefully unwrapped them instead of tearing into them as was my holiday habit. This paper ($4.46 per roll) will undoubtedly have kids oohing and awing at the packaging almost as much as at what’s inside."
- Michelle Martinez
from Bookmarklet
Depending on how long the roll is, it might be less expensive to buy plain paper and use a glow-in-the-dark pen (or pain) to draw your own designs on the paper.
- Rochelle
(I wouldn't touch Farmville, and FB games in general with a virtual ten foot pole. Disclosure: I did do a few games of Scrabulous back in the day - but everyone has skeletons in their closet, right :)
- Micah Wittman
Darnit stop distracting me. I'm gonna miss harvesting my crops. Hey, do you want to be my neighbor? Can you send me a coconut tree as a gift?
- Jason Huebel
from Android
Hi, my name is Jason and I'm a recovering Farmville-aholic.
- Jason Huebel
from Android
holy..! that's too much. @Jason, you make me want to play Farmville!. I've seen stray cows and even ducks on my home feed, but what about actually selling animals to the industry? (I dunno, it could be interesting)
- 'Like' robot (frɐnc)
"Since the launch of Google Latitude earlier this year, we've been getting a lot of feature requests. One of the most popular ideas was for Latitude to keep track of location history, allowing you (but not your friends) to see where you've been at any point in time. Another popular idea was to notify you when you're near your Latitude friends so you can easily meet up or grab lunch. Today, we're happy to introduce both Google Location History and Google Location Alerts (beta) to let you do even more with Latitude."
- Holger Eilhard
from Bookmarklet
Go (http://golang.org/) looks pretty cool. I love channels and interfaces. It captures a lot of the things I wanted to see in a modern programming language.
Interesting that "goroutines" are implemented with heap-allocated stack segments. Does that mean continuations are a possibility? You could use them to implement a kind of exceptions.
- Gabe
"You almost certainly missed it - and luckily it missed you - but an asteroid has come within 8,700 miles of hitting the Earth. Astronomers spotted the object only 15 hours before its closest approach to our planet last Friday. Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away. Even had it been on collision course with us, the 23ft wide asteroid - known as 2009 VA - is unlikely to have made much of an impact because it would probably have all but burnt up in the atmosphere. It was picked up by the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona, then identified by the Minor Planet Centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a near Earth object and plotted by experts at Nasa."
- RAPatton
from Bookmarklet
I hope that when fiery explosive death finally does come from the skies, it'll be just like that, with little-to-no warning. Otherwise the agony of waiting without being able to do anything about it would be absolutely excruciating.
- Victor Ganata
I was always curious as to all this pontificating after a meteor goes by. It's not as if we have the technology to prevent a collision. These idiots won't even widen the Space budget much less get a team together to take one out ala armageddon. So what's the point?
- Aaron Kendrick
If it is a big explosion, Victor, I'd rather have warning so that people can be evacuated and one country doesn't retaliate against another because they think it was a first strike
- RAPatton
I'm thinking of a dinosaur-killing extinction level event, though. We don't have the technology to do anything about that, so it would suck to have to watch civilization tear itself to shreds before The End. As for smaller impacts, I do wonder, practically speaking, how precise we can gauge where it would hit.
- Victor Ganata