Archive for February, 2006
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28 Feb 2006
A round-up of the pinhole camera links that I used (and others that I just found interesting) while building mine:
- Pinhole Calculator, possibly invaluable for an experienced pinholer, but also a good reference for a newbie.
- Pinhole Spy, the source of the original directions for the 110 camera. I modified the shutter and had to slightly enlarge the entire thing.
- Estimating exposure for those without a light meter.
- A garbage can pinhole camera, the biggest example I’ve seen.
- The SPAMera uses 120 film and is surprisingly advanced.
- Dirkon, a notoriously complex paper pinhole camera.
- Matchbox pinhole, the directions that inspired my project.
- Chris’ photos taken with a matchbox pinhole camera.
Discuss -
23 Feb 2006
Well, it’s done. Last night, at 8:30pm, M’s ranked list of residencies was locked. It’s all in the hands of the algorithm, now. I’ve been asked not to publish her entire list, but last time I mentioned this, I fairly accurately represented the top of the list. She got personalized “thanks for applying here” letters from at least a couple of the programs that she says generally indicates that she’s ranked highly, which is good.
Only three weeks until Match Day!
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22 Feb 2006
There’s a company called DNA11 that makes up big, nice looking, (expensive) pieces of art based on your own genome. I was perusing MetaFilter last week when I came across a question about finding a place that would do the same procedure, cheap, and just give a digital scan or a standard print that could be blown up. I liked the idea.
When I saw that one of the answers was offering to do it, I sent him an email post-haste. A few days later, he sends me (and several other Mefites) how to participate, along with a layman’s introduction to polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis.
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20 Feb 2006
The biggest disadvantage to building your own desktop is that when things go wrong, you actually have to figure out what it is. A couple weeks ago, in the middle of a game, my desktop shut itself off. It would no longer get so far as POSTing, and sometimes the power supply wouldn’t do anything when I hit the power button. After some fiddling, I determined that it was most likely the motherboard, and since I had a three-year warranty, I sent it back to MSI for repairs.
When a different motherboard (of the same model) came back, it still wasn’t working. This narrowed it down to the (cheap) power supply or the (less cheap) processor. I randomly came across a great rebate deal on a 350W power supply at CompUSA, so I ran there and purchased it. I was lucky, and that did it. It only cost me ten dollars in the end, and my computer now seems quieter, too.
I only wish it hadn’t taken a month.
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15 Feb 2006
Every time the Powerball Lottery breaks two-hundred million or so, people at work start talking about it and emailing appeals for joining a lotto pool. After I got sick of shaking my head at these people, I realized that it could possibly be worth it to buy a ticket. Since the ticket price stays the same even as the jackpot grows, there’s got to be a tipping point, beyond which the payoff from the average ticket is greater than one dollar. But what is that point? Should I be queuing up at the gas station right now? Or should I wait until it hits ten digits?
Powerball tells you that the odds of getting the grand prize are 1 in 146,107,962. This gives us a good starting point. In a universe without taxes, annuties or interest, a rational person wouldn’t want to purchase a ticket until the jackpot was $146 million. But we don’t live in that universe, nor do I believe we’ll be travelling to it to play the lottery.
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13 Feb 2006
This is a really strange development that requires some pondering and discussion. An expansion for Half-Life 2 has been in development for a while (previously named Aftermath). Reportedly, it follows Alyx (and, some reports say, Gordon) escaping from the devastation immediately following the end of Half-Life 2.
But last week, things got weird. Valve renamed Aftermath to Half-Life 2: Episode One. Doug Lombardi is being terse at the moment, but this appears to indicate intent to release regular episodic content. In general, this is a good thing, but I have a number of concerns.
The first concern is with naming. What is the “original” Half-Life 2, chopped liver? Episode Zero? Does anyone remember the naming scheme of the series that started with Dark Forces? First, there was Dark Forces. Then, there was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight. Then there was Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. Then, well, they decided to stick with Jedi Knight, which I think was a good idea. I predict that it won’t be long until there are sub-subtitles (Half-Life 2: Episode Three: Return of the Snarks) or they abandon the episode number altogether. (As a side note, for the nerd subculture, the “Episode Foo” scheme invokes too much Star Wars Prequelism to be anything but unsettling.)
But the bigger problem I see is Valve’s rampant perfectionism, and thus their inability to deliver a game on time since, well, the first Half-Life. Sure, this is inarguably a Good Thing™ when it comes to game quality. But when you make a promise to release regular content (especially if you charge per-”episode”), you need to do it. And that means cutting corners. It’s taken them a year and a half to release Aftermath. How long will Episode Two take?