10/19/12 - Reddit, and what it appears to be...
Reddit - just what is it?  From what I've heard, it's supposed to be a news site where people post links to anything newsworthy.  From what I've also heard, it seems to be the seamy underbelly (pardon the bad cliche) of the internet.   Let's take a look at the two conflicting sides of a popular entity.

On the plus side, Reddit values free speech and freedom from censorship.  It hosts message threads that would not survive elsewhere.  It is self-policing and vigilant.  It provides exposure to news and entertainment which might otherwise be buried in the vast wasteland of the internet.

On the minus side, it is home to trolls, perverts, stalkers, and hypocrites.  People ban users and links when they don't do things "their way."  Questionable content is posted under the banner of "free speech."  Users threaten others with IRL retribution with impunity.  Creepy content is upvoted when it draws complaints.

Reddit is now forced into a turning point.  What does it WANT to be?  Does it want to maintain its integrity, or sink to the depths of 4chan or Anonymous?  It's up to the moderators who run it - that is, if they still have any control or ethics.  Doing nothing will continue to ruin their reputation, especially since one of their main problem users has been publically outed.  Ironically, the same "popularity" mechanism which promotes vile Reddit content  is now working against them as their outed user and MODERATOR plasters his sordid reputation all over the real news media.

Thinking about signing up for Reddit to check this out?  My advice:  Reddon't.

5/20/12 - Cameras, then and now.
Here's what I wrote back then about digital photography:

11/18/06 - All I want for Chanukah is...a digital camcorder that uses a 160 Gb hard drive, has a 32x zoom lens, shoots 10 megapixel 30fps video, and comes with editing software on DVD-ROM that lets you cut/paste groups of frames to make a movie or still album.  Maybe by Chanukah 2016?  Oh yeah, and it has to have an animation mode, with a selectable number of frames per button press.  Is that too much to ask?  I'm sure George Lucas already has one, so it's not impossible, right? All we have now is a camcorder that shoots VGA stills, a digital camcorder with 3x zoom, megapixel cameras that shoot VGA video in crappy Quicktime format, and other such sporks.  Do I want a no-zoom digital camcorder that doubles as an MP3 player?  Hell no.  Give us something useful.

Here is what we have now :  128Gb SD XC cards, a camera that has 42x zoom, 2 megapixel (1080i) video, the ability to make stills from video on-camera, and some will actually do stinowll frames.  Just try to get all that in a single camera, however, and you'll still come up short.  Panasonic has a "flip animation" mode, Nikon has a 42x wide zoom to 1000mm equivalent, many cameras shoot 1080i video, a few even use SDXC cards - but not all in one.

What brings me back to this?  Two months ago, I got a Kodak Z990 MAX camera with a 32Gb SDHC class 10 card, 30x zoom, HD 30fps video, frame-to-still, but no still-to-frame.  That's OK, since I haven't had time for animation since I was 13 - but I still miss it anyway.  Many others have played with the toys and dipped in the clay since I  made Action Jackson fly into space over two decades before Buzz Lightyear earned his wings - and even that camera didn't have a single frame mode - but there's always retirement.  Trivial Doodles Animation may rise again...and until then, I can still take pictures that don't exceed the range of optical image stabilization with no tripod.  But dang it, it still just HAS to be overcast on the day of an eclipse...
 
 

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