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The following is a list of all entries tagged with Technology:
Noise, Cancelled.
Filed in Uncategorized, 7 November 2008, 23:03Ahhh, the beautiful sounds of a soft bossa nova to help lull you quietly to a restful doze, João Gilberto lazily singing and strumming on his guitar. The subtleties of the picking of the strings, the quiet noises the audience makes, all add to make the recording full of life and very relaxing.
The really amazing part, however, is that I’m listening to this on an aeroplane. The volume is at normal levels, and the background noises are subdued enough not to interfere. A few weeks ago, I thought myself crazy for spending what I did on yet another pair of headphones. Today, as I settle into almost 24 hours of air travel, I wonder why I haven’t done this sooner.
So, to anyone who may be in a situation where noise would do better to not be heard, I strongly urge you to consider a pair of quality, noise cancelling headphones. I highly doubt you’ll regret it.
Also, having 3 seats to stretch out across doesn’t hurt either. 
Are Photographers Really a Threat?
Bruce Schneier, the remarkably sane security specialist who coined the term ‘security theatre’, writes about how photographers are so strongly connected to terrorism in an article at The Guardian.
Personal experience has shown that, at least from the photographer’s point of view, he’s dead right.
Lyndon Lens
Here’s a fantastic tidbit about, amongst other things, a very fast f/0.7 lens that was used on Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. It’s the fastest lens I know about, interesting for motion picture and photography aspects, both of which I find utterly fascinating. And of course, it’s about the genius of Stanley Kubrick, so how can you go wrong?
It’s of particular note to me, because I just acquired a fast lens myself, a Sigma 30mm f/1.4, my first foray into large aperture lenses. I’m loving it, and have been keeping it on my camera most of the time lately.
From Coudal Partners via Daring Fireball
Less electrons
Filed in Uncategorized, 22 April 2008, 1:43Today, my monitor died. Well, one of my many monitors died, but it seems the most significant because it was my main monitor, a lumbering behemoth and part-time bed for my cat.
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As a person who spends (too) much of his day trapped behind a monitor, I tend to want to have the largest amount of real estate available to me. It was with this in mind, and after years of using dual monitors at various workplaces that I decided to take the plunge and get this 21” used beauty. It was cheap, as all good technology hopefully is as well as rarely is. I bought it on eBay and hauled it across provincial borders, and even managed to mark up my desk trying to lift it up.
Now I have a hole on my desk. Given that I’m moving soon, I’m not too sad to see that much space cleared up. Even if I wasn’t moving, at an almost perfect 53cm cubed and a back breaking 32 kg, it’d clear up some major desk space. I’ll probably pay 10 times what I paid for it and get an LCD with a few extra inches in my new home, but part of me will miss the misfiring guns, the plethora of inputs of which only one is useful to me, and the 4 minute waits for it to warm up before the image appeared.
Nostalgia is a weird beast, attaching us to something that has so many drawbacks, making us feel a loss when all signs point to an improvement.
\* sigh *
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