Jonathan Hsu, a friend of mine, lays out the facts.  I agree with him so much, that I could not have written it any better myself.  Here it is pasted below, with his permission.

“It’s odd how very little dialog exists about the opposite assumptions of either camp on gun control. My previous personal view, was that we had a perfectly secure society with a well-trained police force that was the pride of the world. The only people who wanted guns were clearly therefore just out to recklessly endanger everyone else. There were two key incorrect assumptions with that view:

1. The police were sufficiently present to protect you.

2. Guns have only one purpose, which is to kill human beings in self defense.
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Mark my words. This year, and next, will be the year of location aware services.

You see, in college, I took a venture capital class. We had a semester to come up with a product/idea/service, and write a business plan for it. My idea was a location-aware, wireless dongle you carried on your keychain based on the gumstix architecture. You walked around, and it would make contact with other dongles that people carried. It would swap information with each other if criteria matched - be it a dating profile, a classified/want ad, a hobby/activity partner search, or even a game. Once you got home, you interface with it using a computer, to read about who you made contact with, who *they* made contact with, and where/when these contacts were made.

The idea was promptly shot down, saying they had already done that in Japan with dating pagers. The problem was, I argued, that people were shy and did not like being put on the spot when the pager awkwardly beeped. Being able to peruse hotties at home was a big boon in today’s anonymous society, and it wasn’t limited to just the dating scene.

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Imagine my shock upon learning that 90% of American drivers do not know how to correctly use their sideview mirrors. Yes, I was one of the 90%. Not anymore, though.

Everyone is familiar with the concept of the blind spot - it’s that area just at the rear of your car’s sides that can’t be seen with either the rear view mirror, or the side view mirrors. Due to this, you are often required to take your eyes off the road, and turn your head to look over your shoulder - just to check that the blind spot is clear. It’s even taught in driver’s education courses.

I never felt safe doing this, as it is dangerous. A friend of mine once rear ended someone as a result of this blind spot, because he was too busy looking over his shoulder to see that the car in front of him had stopped.

This blind spot is a product of improperly adjusted side view mirrors. Here’s how you can fix it. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve known me for a while, you’ve probably noticed that I’m often a fan of the lesser known - a supporter of the underdog, a traveler of the path less taken, an advocate of the alternate. I haven’t used Microsoft Windows at home since 1996, I don’t drive a Honda, I don’t buy into Sony/Klipsch/Monster/Dolby/7.1 surround/ audio shebangs, I think bluray is overrated, I don’t have a Canon/Nikon camera, I am a big fan of electrostatic audio technology, I support Ron Paul, and the list goes on.

So, it might not come as a surprise to some of you that I’ve switched to using the Dvorak keyboard layout. I tried this layout a while back in college, but never stuck with it. Thanks to Nate for inspiring me to take another whack at it.

What is the Dvorak layout, and why is it better than qwerty?

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One of the advantages that Digital Photography holds over Film Photography is, well, Photoshop. A lot of photography purists (or snobs, even ;)), like to denounce Photoshop work as something that isn’t part of the “original” photography process. “Did you do that in Photoshop? Oh, then it’s not real photography, it’s computer manipulation.”

These types forget that when you’re developing film in a darkroom, you’re basically doing the same thing - you’re uniquely exposing different parts of the picture (hdr, anyone?), dodging, burning colors, and basically manipulating the devlopment process to create a picture that looks most pleasing to the eye.

One good example of this is the Orton Effect. As you can see in the picture below this paragraph (click it for a closeup), the picture attains a soft-focused, smooth, and almost painting-like qualities after the Orton Effect is applied. The average person would assume that the “After” picture was shot with a special, soft-focusing lens, and they might be right to do so - after all, one of the old photographers’ tricks was to smear a very thin layer of vaseline on the lens to get that soft tone and focus.

But not so fast, average person! You too, can learn the secret of the Orton Effect. It is not a special lens, nor does it involve any vaseline (unless you want it to.. in which case, I don’t want to know about it). Back in the film days, this was done by taking one picture, then throwing the lens out of focus and taking the same picture again, on the same film. The first shot burns your normal image onto the film, then the second shot adds the out-of-focus “glow” on top. But now that we have digital decadence, any person with a digital camera, photoshop, and some patience can master Orton and make him their proverbial bitch.

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