Categories
Photography

Religious wars…no, not RSS

You thought that we techs could be fanatic about our likes and dislikes, loves and hates, you should see photographers and their cameras.

The Online Photographer reports on the responses to his review Leica M8:

Well, naturally I’ve gotten raked over the coals in many of the Leica forums this morning, for insufficient worship… of the M8. I’m getting called names, insulted, denigrated, accused of name dropping and bias and of having no qualifications, and of course everything I wrote was outrageously wrong in nine kinds of ways—one guy called my report “piffle” and another jumped in and listed the several specific kinds of piffle it was. (To another it was “tripe.” Well, which is it, piffle or tripe? I’m afraid that’s something they’re going to have to work out amongst themselves.)

I sometimes wish I had started out with a different camera. I like my Nikon, but I’ve never felt particularly passionate about my equipment. I wonder if that’s what’s needed to do good photography–you have to feel passionate about your equipment?

My main fixation as regards my camera is stress with having to clean the camera’s innards and really hoping not to drop my telephoto. Both of these are directly related to my ability to afford replacements. If someone were to tell me that what I’m using is shite, I’d probably nod agreeably, and then go back to stressing about cleaning the sensor.

This is worrisome…I must not have the true soul of a photographer.

Read the Online Photographer’s Leica M8 reviews: part 1 and part 2.

Categories
Technology

MIX

It’s difficult to miss what’s happening with MIX, there’s so much discussion about the announcements and technologies released.

Danny Ayers was able to discuss what he was shown on his recent trip to Microsoft: Astoria, a RESTful interface to data services through the web. The data can be returned as XML, JSON, or a subset of RDF/XML, which is a little surprising. I’ve not had much chance to look around–I hit ADO.NET and bounced back. I’ll have more on this later.

The second one was all things Silverlight. You would think that Microsoft invented, well, Flash. Mary Jo Foley covered the new Silverlight Streaming and quotes Ray Ozzie saying it …will let you post your media to the Microsoft storage service in the cloud. Posting to Microsoft’s centralized server is not ‘posting to the cloud’, from a distributed point of view.

I was more interested in the new Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) and the cross-platform CLR, but I’m still trying to find the real bits from the marketing. Sure a lot of marketing folks at MIX. Why in all that is holy, was Michael Arrington interviewing Ray Ozzie? You need to sell to the developers Microsoft–you don’t need VC money. Sucking up to the wrong crowd. Oh, there we go.

Between MS and Adobe, Rich Internet Application developers (that’s ‘Ajax’ for you not in the know, do try to keep up with the changing terminology, or be marked as passè) will be inundated with a barrage of new tools in the next year. Competition is good for the developers…as long as you can survive the corporate love.

Categories
Stuff

Let’s get down and creepy

Via Vestal Design a new YouTube video that stresses Think before you post:

The moral of this Public Service Announcement is clear: everyone on the Internet is a pedophile, especially the local ticket-taker…In reality, this ad is much more about fame than about privacy. Assuming this girl has become some sort of Internet sensation, then these scenes represent the dark side of being a modest celebrity unprepared for fame.

I’ve long been an advocate of teaching ‘safe internet’ in school, where kids would learn not to click that link, open that image file, play that dubious online game, or post pictures of themselves online seminude, complete with address and phone number. But scaring the shit out of kids doesn’t strike me as an effective teaching tool. The scarier you make the environment, the more intrigued the kid.

 

Now, I know you’re all dying to know: today, mine are peach.

Categories
Social Media

Sex and DIGG

Melinda Casino points to this longish, well documented essay, Why are there so few women on Digg by Academic Pointillism. The author is a Digg subscriber who wonders at the lack of women participating in the site.

One of the possible reasons given for the lack of women is that many of the stories are male centric. I checked today, and found about half the stories interesting and only one really being male centric. The one I found most interesting is the site with the babies swimming and not because I’m into the maternal thing, but because I found the photography to be really excellent (the site has since been taken down–see below). There was also a fun Google images game that reminds me of a Flickr game that Scott Reynen created.

Other reasons the author gives have to do with sexism, racism, and homophobia in the comments, as well as objectification of women. She has a couple of suggestions, one of which–get more women involved in the development of the site and how it’s architected–I can get behind completely. By women, I mean women in technology–not marketing, not human resources.

What was said about Digg could be same about Slashdot, as well as the sites like Techmeme, Tailrank, and Megite: it’s rare for a female voice to be heard in any of these environments.

I can agree with some of the author’s opinions, but not all. Objectification of women is an issue, but I think the idea that women can’t go online and express a strong opinion without getting sexual and violent threats has been badly overplayed lately. Is it a problem? Yes, but not as pervasive as others. I think women’s biggest problem is we’re not heard, or when we are, not always given equal respect. There’s few things that will discourage a person more than feeling like we’re not heard, and I include getting dismissive and demeaning responses in the ‘not being heard’ category.

Then there is the question: are women as interested? I find sites like Digg and Slashdot to be occasionally interesting, I tip into Metafilter from time to time, I rarely read mailing lists, and only read the tech sheets once a day to see what the artificially inflated stories are. I just have better uses of my time. Now, I don’t know if I’m representative of women (or older techs) or not–all I can do is give anecdotal data.

Regardless, it’s a thoughtful, well researched, and objectively detailed writing and I’ll do my little bit to try and get this on to the tech sheets.

Update

The Academic Pointillism post has been dugg.

Categories
Culture

Nigerian sight and sound

Dare Obasanjo posted music videos and photos from his recent trip home to Nigeria.

The music is both English and Yoruba, the language of the Yoruba people, and one of the languages spoken in Nigeria. English is the official language. Dare referred to the music as Nigerian hip-hop and R&B. The first video definitely has a hip-hop feel, including some objectification of women. Most of the music he linked, though, seemed more R&B and without the angry edge I’ve come to associate with hip-hop.

The photos are from his Dad’s birthday celebrations. I’d sure love a description of the outfits–the native ones are exquisite. It looked like in some of the photos that the material used in several outfits was the same, so I wondered if there were specific associations with the fabrics and style of outfits.

Dare is well known and respected in tech circles, but what might not be as well known is that he’s the son of Olusegun Obasanjo. Nigeria is in for some challenging times in the near future, and it’s good to see Dare back home.