Posts by Dave 126

>Above all when you get your kit don't be afraid to experiment with it; go out there and take pictures to find out what the camera will do, what limitations or quirks it has, and to refine your techniques before you need them in anger.

Agreed. A lot of learning comes from the desire to mitigate the shortcomings of an imperfect camera.

An aid to learning is having the camera with you often.

I started with a 3MP phone camera - horribly noisy, low resolution... but it made me think about just what is was in the shot that I was trying to capture - what it was that had an emotional impact or interest, and trying to accentuate it in Photoshop. I wasn't going for realism, or print-quality.

I then used a cheap Samsung compact camera whilst travelling - but it did have manual controls, enough to get a feeling for shutter and aperture.

Then a Lumix LX-5, a 'premium compact' whose competitors are the Canon S95 and Sony RX100 and the like. Small enough for a jacket pocket, I carried it often, and played with it a lot. I could get away with low-light photography - parties, street scenes etc - if I was careful in my settings. I learnt more about which compromises to make for a particular situation. Bokeh was possible, but only at the widest zoom... filling the frame with someone's face without zooming would make their nose look too big.

Currently I have an LX-7. It builds upon the LX-5, and offers an aperature of f1.4 - albeit married to a relatively small sensor - bigger than most compacts, but smaller than a m4/3rds or DSLR. Portraits benefit, because I can zoom a little, yet still soften the background.

Play, play, play. The more you use it, the quicker you learn. If a compact camera means you carry it more often, so be it. You will learn its shortcomings, and if you decide to more money on a pricier, bigger camera, you will have a better idea of what you want from it.

Re: Is it really worth it IN THIS CASE, though?

>this is a rich man putting good men at risk in order to develop a sham space experience for other rich men (and women). Is he saying that it's worth killing off a few pilots for this?

A fair question. One assumes that these pilots asked it of themselves, as intelligent adults. The answer they, as individuals, arrived at is evident.

Though wages for commercial airline pilots in the US can be relatively low, I suspect these men had a more advanced skill set, one that would have allowed them a choice of employment to support them and their families. In this respect they differ from a disadvantaged young person who enlists the army for a foreign war because they perceive their employment options as limited.

There have been men and women who have signed up for this sort of risky activity, and have had their trust abused by the management of a contracting firm- see: Feynman, O-rings. There is no suggestion at this stage that this is this case in this sad incident -it is not in Virgin Galactic's business interests to cut corners.

EDIT: The management of the O-ring contractors was leant on by NASA management.

Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accidenthttp://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1ch5.htm

Re: How to Sanity Test the over-hyped BS claims made by 3D Printer vendors

I guess 3D printing has evolved product design more subtly in the last few years, since the it has allowed smaller players to develop products. However, it should be taken into consideration with:

-Cheaper, more affordable and more mature CAD software and workstations.

-3D printing aiding the development of prototypes

- 3D printing reducing the cost of tooling for product manufacture

-Crowdrunding for start-ups.

-Cheaper SoCs, and near off-the-shelf electronic components.

Re: @BasicChimpTheory

Thank you chr0m4t1c

Re: Forced automation is going to create a bubble no matter what

Well, to zoom out a little.... if robots built the roofs over our heads and farmed all our food, what really would be the need of human labour?

Psychologically, we get restless if we have nothing to do. We invent past-times like sport that mirror the activities that we once had to do to survive. We enjoy working with other people, and exercising our bodies and brains.

The advent of industrialisation didn't mean that the workers could merely work half days... it meant the the mill owners got richer - or rather they stayed as rich, since they were competing with other producers to produce goods at a lower cost to the consumers.

The Amish seem a happy enough bunch... they don't work too hard in building a barn because the whole community turns up to lend a hand, and it becomes a social event. Everybody works, but nobody works too much.

In Brave New World, no new sport was allowed to be invented unless it used more resources than existing sports.

Re: Pasties

Sidewalk, pavement

soccer, football

elevator, lift

chips, crisps,

fries, chips

pasties, nipple tassels

trash, rubbish

1st floor, ground floor

etc, etc

Re: Bigger bums??

Agreed.

A lardy arse deforms more than a toned or boney arse - it would spread aroudn the phone to make contact with the seat - so less of a chubby user's weight would be bourne by their phone than would the phone of a skinny person. The chubby person's phone would also be subject to a more uniform load.

If you're willing to forego a fingerprint sensor AC, the Samsung S5 Active will fit your requirements:

http://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s5_active-review-1093.php

Waterproof, removable battery, sdcard slot, other crazy Samsung stuff such as a heart rate monitor, barometer, ir sensor, eyeball tracking, kitchen sink etc

Re: Brighter screen, smaller battery?

>The iPads seem to get more fragile looking. The original iPad was a good solid device, when the contractors replaced the gas main in my road they visited each home and recorded some test details using an iPad. I doubt the current one would last a day.

Well, people who use the iPads in rougher environments have a range of cases to choose from- including some pretty rugged 3rd party designs. People who rarely remove their iPads from a plushly carpeted lounge may choose to keep their iPads unprotected.

It's up to the user.

Re: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Yowsers... references to the prehistory of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Sounds like Iain M. Bank's 'Outside Context Problem' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbors were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

Re: Why 400 days for men and 300 days for women?

>So it is not a population control issue. Long lived species eventually have to have a menopause or risk introducing so many flaky genes into the population, that the entire species suffers. Short lived mammals don't need menopause.

Exactly, but long life is not a given.

Natural Selection will only select for long life if it aids the survival chances of the descendents or family members of that individual. One can then assume that young whales benefit from having their grandmothers around, be it for protection and/or education.

Re: Cultism

>It was a fscking hobbyist thing!

So were the first bicycles - playthings of the wealthy. Over time though, they allowed almost anyone to travel over a greater distance.

Unlike Clang and LLVM, the Swift-specific parts of the compiler toolchain are not open source. Apple has the resources and influence to ensure the success of Swift even if it is the only company using it at scale (cf. Objective-C). Nevertheless, powerful factions within the company are undoubtedly in favor of making Swift an open source project. The push to release Yosemite and iOS 8 has likely taken precedence so far, but I expect this issue to be revisited.

- http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/23/#shape-of-the-future

Re: Women are smaller, and thus consume less

No logic escaped the author - she was drawing upon the conclusions of existing research. Why did you assume she wasn't? Other factors in women's favour include research into psychological suitability to be being cooped up with their peers for months on end.

Re: Five Hundred and Forty Nine???

The Z3 Compact can be had for under £400, a fair saving on its RSP. No doubt the big Z3 can be had for less than its RSP too.

Re: FORWARD 20; LEFT 90; BEEP

The hardware to make a 'Turtle' is incredibly cheap these days. When I look at some Chinese websites that sell quadcopters, motors, sensors and the like, I keep thinking 'Now is a great time to be

an eight year old boy'.

I can't comment about 8yo girls, because I've never been one.

Re: I totally agree with mandatory voting....

Compulsory voting:

Candidate Bloggs stands as prospective MP for the Don't Vote It Only Encourages Them Party.

Candidate Bloggs gets all the votes of those who don't want to vote.

Bloggs becomes MP.

The point is that the introduction of compulsory voting would change the selection of candidates you could vote for - so saying the current crop of prospective MPs are all useless is not a water-tight argument against compulsory voting. There may well be valid arguments against, but that isn't one of them.

>So the tablet has half the storage of the phone? Why?

Tablets, unlike phones, tend to live within range of a local network and media servers etc

One survey suggested that 3/4s of iPads rarely leave the owner's house. It seems reasonable to apply this finding to other tablets of a similar size, and surmise that the tablet can call upon media over the local network.

Re: Dead ducks

My old man got hold of an amateur English translation of an old French cookbook. One recipe is priceless:

After skinning and eviscerating your badger, place it in a fast flowing stream for forty-eight hours to degrease it...

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, 'badger hams' were eaten until fairly recently on the banks of the river Severn. I cannot comment on how much cider one needs to have drunk beforehand.

Re: Like them

Suspension adds weight, true, but it allows for lighter wheel rims to be used, saving rotational mass. When tyres deform to absorb shocks, they increase their rolling resistance. The suspension will also help the mountings for the heavy battery last longer.

Re: Hypocrite!

>I would've loved to have seen what Jonny Ive came up with if he only 'applied' Dieter's principles without seeing any of his work.

Ive was first known for the Bondi Blue iMac. It doesn't superficially resemble any of Rams' work, though it follows Rams' principles.

The iMac was a product of its time. 3D solid-modelling CAD and Simulation software matured so that more 'organic' forms, such as the iMac's case, could be modelled and manufactured. Without these CAD tools, the iMac's development time woud have been much longer.

Ive's first product to resemble a Ram's object was the iPod. The constraints were the two major internal components - the HDD and required battery. The back of it resembles a cigarette case, and the front is largely defined by the user interface, i.e the screen and wheel.

Anyway, Rams wasn't the only 'form engineer' of the 1950s... check out this Zeiss Jena Werra MK1 camera:

http://leavemehere.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/werra/