Kevin sent me this:

Live From Congress: The Skull Fucking Bill Of 2007

Technorati Tags: skull fucking

I’ve had my F50fd for 2 weeks now, I am going to keep it, it’s just a walk-around camera for me and the quality is good enough, especially with a little bit of post-processing. Thought I’d share a few things about this digicam:

• One of the main reasons I went with the Fujifilm F50fd was the supposedly great noise control in high ISO sensitivity. This turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I’ve seen outputs from the F30 and F31 and the 12MP F50fd is actually worse at ISO 1600 and above. It does go up to ISO 6400 but the quality is shit. At ISO 1600 it is usable, especially with some noise reduction in post-processing and black and white conversion. (Keep in mind that I am used to the high ISO performance of my 20D so I don’t think I can be pleased with any digicam.)
• It is 12MP, but unless you shoot at ISO100 with plenty of light, the full size pics look pretty bad. The outputs are great for web-use sizes though, so if you get this to take pics for forums (like waywt pics) or blog posts, it is great. There is even a blog-optimized setting for pics so you won’t even have to process them or downsize them.
• It has no orientation sensor, I find it a bit odd for a top-of-the-line digicam. The images don’t have EXIF tags for auto-rotation.
• LCD image preview has no histograms, like, NONE… I don’t think it has highlight overexposure warning either.
• The UI is extremely easy to use, I still haven’t opened the manual. It is very easy to adjust EVs, change ISO or flash settings while shooting. I like the UI a lot more than that of Canon or Sony digicams, no more moving dip switches for image reviews! I wish it had an easy way to go straight to 100% review, the Canon SD630 actually has that and it is pretty useful.
• Build quality is on the cheap side, but it is cheap at only $260 shipped from Amazon.
• the tripod mount is in the middle so that makes it possible to use lightweight cheapo pocket tripods (again waywt pics optimized!).
• the numeric part of the filenames always resets zero if you delete all your photos from the memory card, this is kindda annoying IMO.
• it now takes SD cards, I think before they only accepted xD.
• face detection (fd) is very useful when you ask people to take pictures for you, it works very well, it can find faces even at an angle.

I’ve posted some photos from the F50fd here, you can also find them in my Flickr stream, check the Photo Properties part on the photo page, it should show which camera I used.

Buy it here:

Technorati Tags: f50fd, fuji, fujifilm

Ask The VC – Why Are Venture Capitalists So Hard To Deal With?:

One of the questions that we get most often is “why are VCs such jerks?” or some sort of derivation thereof. Specifically, people complain about:

– VCs not returning calls / being unresponsive

– VCs not understanding how good of an investment my company is

– VCs stringing along entrepreneurs when they know they aren’t going to fund a deal

– VCs being “know it all board members”

– VCs being unapproachable in general

I won’t try to defend all VCs. In fact, I’ve seen all of this behavior from other VCs and I don’t condone it in any way. How does one avoid these behaviors? The key is picking good VCs to work with, but also to be self aware of your particular situation. I’ll try to address the particular complaints above by illustrating some situations that I’ve seen and also try to give you some insight into what might be rattling around in your VC’s head.

I especially like this one:

Issue 4: VCs being “know it all board members”

Why is this happening to me? This situation is rarely one-sided – it’s usually the fault of both VC and entrepreneur, but it’s usually between the following polar extremes:

1. The VC is a complete idiot, doesn’t pay attention to the company at all, only shows up for the board meetings and then sits there and espouses “wisdom for all to hear.”

2. The Entrepreneur always thinks he/she is correct and that “no one could possibly know more about my company than me” and completely ignores the VC who has experience across many different companies.

vid of Fee-Fee and his toy with the F50fd…

Poster of recommended and forbidden words for Chinese store clerks – Boing Boing:

I didn’t know him when I was at Carnegie Mellon, but I remember the Alice Project, I worked at the Interactive Lab for a little bit as a student researcher and I think we either shared a lab or they were very close by, but I could be wrong.

CMU professor gives his last lesson on life:

“If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you,” said Dr. Pausch, a 46-year-old computer science professor who has incurable pancreatic cancer.

It’s not that he’s in denial about the fact that he only has months to live, he told the 400 listeners packed into McConomy Auditorium on the campus, and the hundreds more listening to a live Web cast.

…

“What we’re not going to talk about today,” he continued, “is cancer, because I’ve spent a lot of time talking about that … and we’re not going to talk about things that are even more important, like my wife and [three preschool] kids, because I’m good, but I’m not good enough to talk about that without tearing up.”

…

In his 10 years at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Pausch helped found the Entertainment Technology Center, which one video game executive yesterday called the premier institution in the world for training students in video game and other interactive technology.

…

“I got the news from my GP,” he wrote, “who said ‘There’s a mass on your pancreas, and it’s not fair.’

“As I later told him, it’s unfortunate, and it’s unlucky, but it’s not unfair. As I always tell my 5-year-old, it’s not ‘unfair’ when you don’t get what you want. We all run the risk of getting hit by the cancer dart.”

…

“I find that I am completely positive,” he wrote. “The only times I cry are when I think about the kids — and it’s not so much the ‘Gee, I’ll miss seeing their first bicycle ride’ type of stuff as it is a sense of unfulfilled duty — that I will not be there to help raise them, and that I have left a very heavy burden for my wife.”

…

“I hope my wife is able to remarry down the line. And I hope they will remember me as a man who loved them, and did everything he could for them.”

I haven’t run much since June, got a personal trainer but training hella crazy twice a week is still not enough to offset the amount of alcohol and bad food I consume. So instead of hitting the bars I went running the past 2 days, sync’ed my runs, and got this at Nike+’s site, yay!

btw, the 3rd gen Nano got a nicer Nike+ interface, I like it!

Technorati Tags: ipod, nano, nike+, running

LOL

Online couple cheated with each other | The Daily Telegraph:

A married couple who didn’t realise they were chatting each other up on the internet are divorcing.
Sana Klaric and husband Adnan, who used the names “Sweetie” and “Prince of Joy” in an online chatroom, spent hours telling each other about their marriage troubles, Metro.co.uk reported.

The truth emerged when the two turned up for a date. Now the pair, from Zenica in central Bosnia, are divorcing after accusing each other of being unfaithful.

“I was suddenly in love. It was amazing. We seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriage. How right that turned out to be,” Sana, 27, said.

Adnan, 32, said: “I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years”.

WAKE UUUUPP I´M HUNGRY

Originally uploaded by The Fluffy Ones.

not my pic, but thought I’d blog it here, bunny yawning pic ftw!

sorry if you’ve seen this 41221232343 times already…