This rings true as I sit here at greenwich on this sunny afternoon.
Solar Powered Beauty
Cloud Neigh
If I was to ask you to upload all your documents, pictures and goodies from you desktop to the internets your reaction is more than likely be ... 'go chew on a gum tree bark'. Well folks hate to tell you that this but the future of computing is about to take off to the cloud.
The winds of change aren't just blowing but hurling things all over the place and then some. People are slowly getting used to, and in many cases addicted to, life of the net.
Cloud computing
A concept that's been around for longer than I'd like to admit my ignorance to it, claims that the processing power should live in the cloud, another word for the internets, as a result of which people share the processing power allowing for a bigger and meaner processor to churn the binary than just little piddly things we call desktop processors.
One of the oldest and well known example of cloud computing application is, or should I say was before the re-branding ... Hotmail. The email voo-doers ran a server that managed all your e-mail, plus spam and those days had some real spam, with you accessing it all through a web browser.
What people take for granted is the fact that in order to receive emails you need a dedicated machine, listening for that ring tone and picking up all your messages while you are out (your computer being switched off), a lot like an answering machine. This function is performed by an email server (no relation to me) brought to existence for the sole purpose of listening for your emails. Technically speaking there is no requirement for google, yahoo or microsoft to provide free email management, but they do because their business model makes money through adverts.
Pros
If you have not yet deduced the pros let me give you some hints:
a) you will never have to upgrade your computer again, U'll just need a machine with a fast net connection and a browser, all applications will be processed remotely on a server with you interfacing with the results through the browser.
b) you will be able to access your computer from anywhere ... so every computerhas a 'memory' of your computer.
c) never have to worry about backups or data loss as many of these server farms are based in a range of locations.
Cons
The most obvious one I hear you scream is ... Security ... And I totally understand. But consider this, how safe is your data on your machine and are you, average Joe/Jane, better at fighting off Trojans than a team of geeks who's idea of Friday night is some good only OOP (object oriented programming).
The other thing to consider before you fully write the cloud off is that most of your sensitive data already lives online in a form of an email of sorts.
The only true limitation at the moment is the reliability of net access ... You do not want to be caught in the headlights with your pants down and without a connection. That said, with multiple mediums allowing online access these days (mobiles, hotspots, etc) its only a matter of time before we put our faith into the net ... like we did for electricity back in the day when we made a leap of faith from a largely mechanical to electiral based world.
The winds of change aren't just blowing but hurling things all over the place and then some. People are slowly getting used to, and in many cases addicted to, life of the net.
Forces at work
There are two forces of at work here Push, pushing us up to the cloud from our desktop, and Pull, lifting us uo into the cloud. Google(pull), Adobe (pull) and Microsoft (push) are just a few of the names behind these forces.
> Google is pulling us up in the cloud with offers of its services like google mail, docs, picasa ...
> Adobe AIR; is a very clever initiative, allowing developers to create 
desktop applications that brings the online experience to you desktop, leveraging some of the local machine's processing power to enhance the web experience ... A step towards the cloud.
> Microsoft Silverlight (push); this a move by Microsoft to push information from the desktop to the cloud, similar in nature to AIR. Another initiative by Microsoft is its Live MESH project that let you synchronize several machines to each other so for instance allowing your home machine to replicate the assets on your office machine, this is a oversimplified view of MESH.
There are many other pulling forces about with the likes of getdropbox and amazon offering online storage as ways of backup, enticing you to get used to putting you data online.
If you think about it, these titans, namely google, microsoft .. Are laying down the ground work to ensure their place on the network for the future .. probably when the machines rule the world. This is especially essential for Microsoft because the direction things are heading, operating systems are soon to be a thing of the past, time when tyrants ruled the world, which just happen to be their core product.
Our involvement with the development of the cloud is reminiscent of a forg in a boiling pot. If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water it'll jump out but if you put the frog in the water before firing up the stove it will merrily sit there in its own stew as it slowly gets cooked.
The water is about to reach boiling point, are you ready.
Formatting - it's a suck
Sound of Smells
Allow me to elaborate;
a) Does one sound older or smarter if their breath smells like coffee?
b) does alcohol breath sounds like you are having fun, or you are a fun person to hang out with?
The answer is yes .. generally speaking .. but depends on the experiences you have had with those smells and the association of your neural network.
Its a safe generalization that coffee makes you sound smart because most hard-core coffee consumers tend to be white collar office workers with higher than average intelligence (excluding outliers that come with all data sets). Therefore majority of the public has associated coffee smell to intelligence, vis-sa-vi drinking coffee makes you sound smart.
Next questions: do colors have a smell ? I for one hate the smell of blue.
When getting lost is not an option but a choice
In the past few weeks I have been tolling the deep crevices of the internets, looking for tips and tricks on sorting out tailoring google maps to my specs. Listed here are some useful links I found on my 'travels'.
Latitude;
Google Latitude is the back bone to my location app. Its a service that rinsed in the background on your mobile, updating your current location per the phone gps.
Warning: if you use this make sure that you have unlimited data plan.
There are two main problems with latitude:
a) it does not remember where you have been, only showing the real time location; and
b) there is no manual over ride on the frequency with which the location is updated ... google give a blurb about power management on mobile devices as an excuse for the absence of this feature.
Another useful Link:
javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));Copy-paste this in you browser when you are at google maps and it will give to the latitude and longitude of the location at the center of the screen. A useful tip of getting the lat/lon position is to right click on the map and select 'center map' option.
Tech;
The google API for those interested can be found here and there are plenty of good examples flying around in their documentation.
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/
Once you get a hang of it, its a little bit addictive ... I am so hooked !!
Brighton Day Trip - Gatwick interrupted
There is a movie reference in this post ... Can anyone guess the name?
Brighton Day Trip - The verdict !
The second expresses how I felt when the realisation of no-sand beach dawned on me ... that's right I felt like a broken-burntout-cheated- and many other adjectives that I can't care to spell right now ...
Can't say it was a fun day .. But it sure was funny !!
Time to pack it up.
my disappointment form the beaches of Brighton ... I mean com
Brighton Day Trip - Piniada Promises
Piniada Promises ... completely empty !!
Brighton Day Trip - 'oh bhain !!!'
Hahahahah ... Had to get him to pose with one so I can remember the reaction better
Brighton Day Trip - The 2.5 mile stare
Brighton Day Trip - The adventure continues
Its funny how much of 'girly men' we have become ... highlighted by mo-bro's rush to get his shoes on ... Hahahahah
It's only fair that I mention that I wasn't far behind ...
Brighton Day Trip - Maybe its time to call it a day
I'm sure we can digest on the train journey back !!
Brighton Day Trip - Plan B is a go !
Brighton Day Trip - What was Plan A is no more
Its pays to come to Brighton with a Plan B ... It pays even more just to stay at home !!
Brighton Day Trip - Gull on Gull action
Just imagine how good it would've been with sand ... Sand makes everything better until you have to get in a car and drive home !!
Brighton Day Trip - I miss my D400
Time to refuel ... cadet Abs is on the case ... Lets see what he returns with !!
Brighton Day Trip - Where did all the sand go?
there is no sand ... Hahahahah
No sand ... And there are people sitting here in their winter coats, if its too cold for the 'beach' I am sure there are alternatives ... And why the .hell do people have their winter coats with them ...
Hahahahah ... I need to get my head around this no sand ... I mean ... Come on ... NO SAND !!
Brighton Day Trip - Seated Comfy-ly
Just thought of the word 'comfy-ly' so thought I'd log ... It has potential to catch on ...
Brighton Day Trip -A Day at the Beach
It has one hour to get his (is that what you would consider the sun to be, or is it feminine ... Which is probably where the 'hot' phrase comes from ..... Actually I'm sure that's not it ... I'll keep that for another post, for another train, for another commute) ... So where was I, that's right ... HE, the sun, has 1 hr to sort his act and come out to play ... He better not disappoint !
Stag & Dagger - collateral damage
Wonder if he had a fan-cracking day like mr mushtaq ... He was a happy man on the dance floor .. Living the life of a cheap thriller ... He has much to learn ...
Stag & Dagger - Warning: flying elbows about
Maybe something should be done about that ... Hmmm
Stag & Dagger - unknown band
These guys were pretty good ... Need to find out who they are ... watch this space
Stag & Dagger - Tara Busch; a noise defunker
..:: AUDIO FILE ::..
Interesting or annoying ... you can call it whatever, I found it to be the latter ... have a listen maybe it's your cup of tea ?
Interesting or annoying ... you can call it whatever, I found it to be the latter ... have a listen maybe it's your cup of tea ?
Stag & Dagger - 'Babay key batchey'
Stag & Dagger - no cigar
Stag & Dagger - every good night ...
Stag & Dagger - the start of the night
Criss-Cross
I wish it was there ... Then it won't be here to annoy me ...
Betford Srt & Chandos Plce junc.
Nicol @ Apple Store
Donkey box @ Luna Lounge
Massive delays on the DLR
Photo 101 – Basics (Part II) Aperture
Aperture is the opening that allows light through to the sensor or film in your camera body. The cool folks in the biz also refer to it as f-stop.
What is it ?
A diaphragm, much like an iris of the eye, controls the size of the opening to the sensor. The diaphragm is not to be confused with the shutter. In the context of your eye the aperture is your iris and your eyelid is the shutter. You use the iris to control how much light you let into your eye per unit of time and the shutter to control when and for how long that light is allowed to reach your retina.
In the world of cameras, the lens aperture is specified as an f-number, technically defined as the ratio of the focal length to the effective aperture diameter. Simply rearranging this equation we get aperture diameter defined as a ratio of focal length to the f-number, f/2, f/1.4, f/4 etc. Ok, here comes the tricky bit so stick with it, when we want a large aperture diameter (wide aperture) the math tells us that this will happen when the f-number, the denominator, is the smallest therefore f/2 is a wider opening than f/4. Since ‘focal length (f)’ is what I can best describe as a run-time variable that changes from picture to picture some clever chap long ago decided to forgo the ‘f’ in camera convention for aperture description. So in your camera you use the f-number to adjust your aperture.
Figure showing the aperture, focal length and f-number association
Wow .. too much huh .. lets take stock. Aperture is defined as focal length/(f-number), but convention says that you ignore the ‘focal length’ … so aperture is defined by just the f-number, the denominator. To get a large opening of the ‘iris’ the denominator has to be as small as possible at a given focal length. If you have followed me through the mine field then you would say ‘Ah huh’ when I tell you that the smaller the f-number the wider the aperture.
How it’s used ?
Once you realize that aperture is like the iris of your eye, knowing how and when to use aperture to your benefit is easy.
Let’s say I am at a Broadway show, ‘Wicked’, and I want to take a picture of those dancing witches on stage. Thinking back to the Basics Part I, we know for a given exposure (EV) setting camera decides for you what aperture, shutter speed and ISO to use. Ignoring ISO for the moment; the camera will set an aperture-shutter speed combination to collect the required exposure (light) to take the picture. The best thing in this situation would be to manually set the aperture as wide as possible and let the camera do the legwork in selecting the appropriate shutter speed.
With the aperture at its widest you collect the most light per unit of time allowing the camera to have the fastest shutter speed meet the EV setting. Why does that matter you ask? … well think about it, if you are shooting an action sequence and have a long shutter speed the image is going to be blurred. This is one of the most common problem people face when taking pictures without a flash, they get a collection of blurred images. Manually setting the aperture is one of the ways to address this issue.
This shows how the shutter speed increases for higher f-number Wide aperture also gives you a narrow depth of field but that is a can of worms for another day. See the grass image above to get an idea of aperture and depth of field relationship.
Another pleasant side effect of using large aperture, depending on who you talk to, is vignetting. When you have the aperture wide open the bulk of the light funneling thorough the lens hits the centre of the sensor and gradually falls off to extremities of the aperture opening.
An example of vignetting, see how the eye is guided to the helecopter
How to work the aperture ?
Shooting in Aperture priority mode is how you tell the camera that I will pick the aperture and you can pick the rest of the bits like shutter speed etc.I personally tend to shoot predominantly in Aperture Priority mode (AV) telling the camera what aperture to use for a given EV and let the hardware pick the best shutter speed.
Hopeful this blurb gave you an insight into the basics of aperture and made you more confident to through around words like f-stop and aperture.
In summary:
“The smaller the number f-number the wider the aperture”
Flight Control App
I started playing at around midnight .. It is now almost 4, my neck is killing me, head pounding ... and i still want to continue. It's a good thing the battery is about to die on me ... That said i got a high score of 103 ... Wooo hooo
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