Sunday, November 26, 2006

Small Linux computer

courtesy of http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/mini.html, this homemade computer, runs Linux, has flash memory for a hard disk, no fans, completely silent.

How to "get" that good picture

Well, we are coming to that time of year that amateur photographers (such as me) dread... How to take a group picture without someone in the group blinking!

Earlier this year I had listened to this article's summary on the ABC Science Show. Dr. Piers Barnes was explaining how many shots of the group you'd have to take in order to have captured one without someone in the group blinking during the shutter exposure.

Piers then figured out how many shots I'd need to be 99% certain of getting a good one. He found that photographing thirty people in bad light would need about thirty shots. Once there's around fifty people, even in good light, you can kiss your hopes of an unspoilt photo goodbye.

Piers also came up with a rule of thumb for calculating the number of photos to take for groups of less than 20: divide the number of people by three if there's good light and two if the light's bad.


Having just come back from the photography studio for our family holiday "photo shoot" I can attest that for our group (4 people) these probability calculations hold up.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Wozniak info

you may not be aware of this, but for about 6 months, He has had a new book out - info on Amazon

also some stories at SFGATE

An engineer's life...

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Example of a Stupid ATP class of a pilot

A friend pointed out this post, the interesting stuff happens a ways into this video, but the overall point is that this pilot made a number of mistakes all resulting the loss of a business class jet.

link

Friday, November 03, 2006

Humor (mature rating required)

Humor from Michael and Evo , although they admit they are not sure where it came from, asking their fan to self-identify.

click here for tequila warning