Steven Rubio's Online Life

which is better?

This post is inspired by a set of posts on a friend’s blog, about the art and documentary value of photography. It’s easier for me to post my thoughts here, where I have a bit more room for the photos in the post.

The following two photos are, as you can see, mostly “the same.” Neither is the exact original as taken … the original dimensions were 2048 x 1536, while these have been reduced to a width of around 800 pixels so they will fit better on this web page. Other than that, no changes were made to the first of the two photos below … this is how it looked as it came out of the digital camera. The second photo was modified. Like the first, the width was modified for this web page (I should note that the width modifications in both cases are done by the software that posts to the blog … they are uploaded in their larger size, but presented to you in the more manageable smaller size). The second photo was cropped to 1680 x 1050 prior to uploading, which is the size of my monitor. This changes the aspect ratio … it’s “shorter” than the original, making it roughly like a widescreen TV while the original is more like old-school TVs. The cropping was done by removing a tiny bit from the bottom of the original, and a much larger selection of the blue sky at the top. I also performed some other adjustments … it’s been a long time since I took this picture and I don’t remember exactly what I did, but based on what I see here, it appears I lightened it and sharpened it. This makes the photo look slightly “unreal” … when people see it in its full 1680 x 1050 size, they usually comment on how it looks a bit like an artist’s rendition of an architectural model, rather than like an actual street with buildings.

One more thing. While the second photo was cropped to create a different aspect ratio, the original photo was taken with that aspect ratio in mind. I wanted the picture to be 1.6:1 to match my monitor, but my camera doesn’t have that exact setting. So I take the photos big enough to allow me to crop down, and plan this when taking the photo … so the expanse of blue sky at the top of the original is there in large part to give me space to crop. That is to say, my intentions were never to have a bunch of blue sky at the top of the photo … I was planning ahead, knowing the limitations of my tools.

I should also add that I’m not a very good photographer, and this photo is a lucky accident as much as anything. Maybe one out of 500 of my pictures are this good.

So, which of these two photos is “better”?

inane thoughts while game six plays in the background

I know this isn’t a new concept, but what is it about being online that makes it easier to contact people we don’t really know? I have always been the star-struck type, and in the olden days, that meant on those rare moments when I had a brush with fame, I stammered and peed my pants. But online, I have no such fears. I don’t just jabber away at the rich and famous … I assume they get enough of that, and they have no reason to hear from me. But if it’s something that’s semi-significant (to me, at least) and I have at least a slight suspicion the recipient will actually see my missive and maybe even respond, I’ll toss off an email or a tweet or a comment on a web site.

And so it was that I got an email from MySpace today … talk about a place I’ve forgotten about, I read something recently that said the MySpace/Facebook split is all about class, and the argument made sense, but I could never stand how MySpace pages looked, so I rarely visit there. Anyway, I get the email, and it reminds me that a few of the “stars” I’ve followed over there had some new stuff on their page. I checked one of them out … she’s been a musician for about 40 years now, usually as a backup artist, she’s a lot more famous than I am but really not so famous at all, but still, normally I’d be star-struck. But this is the Internet, so I sent her a private MySpace message telling her an anecdote that involved me, her, my wife and a few of her workmates, and a famous singer.

I don’t have any better understanding of why I sent that message than I do of why I’m writing about it here. I guess I still love brushes with fame.

google wave invites

I have some more. If you are really interested, let me know. Don’t bother asking if I don’t know you, and don’t bother asking if you don’t really care. I haven’t figured out much about Wave yet, but one thing is obvious from the start: it’s a collaborative tool, so it works best when you have lots of friends and colleagues using it. Three of the first eight invites I sent to people who asked for them are still unused, which means thus far they are wasted. I’m trying to make sure that doesn’t happen with this next batch.

windows 7 update

I can’t do these every few hours … I should at least wait until I have something new to tell. But here’s what the first 14 hours have been like.

I decided to take the plunge, and being lazy, I opted for the Download+Disc option. Not sure why I bothered with the disc, but I was feeling paranoid. I had the idea of checking at 9:00 PM, since that would be midnight on the East Coast, and sure enough, Win 7 was available for download. (Slight tangent: as I was typing that last sentence, my wallpaper changed … looks like there’s a slideshow option.)

It was 2.5 gig or something like that, but by 10:00 I had it. My only real prep was to delete all unused software from the hard drive a couple of days ago … didn’t really worry about data and media files, since I store those on a separate drive anyway. The install quit fairly quickly, telling me to uninstall a couple of incompatible programs (one was iTunes …. hahahahahaha!). I stayed up until just past 2:00, but even then it was only 2/3 of the way through the final steps, so I went to bed. Woke up early in the morning, checked to see the progress, saw that it was done, posted a quickie to the blog, and went back to bed.

Got back up around 8:30 and have been playing ever since. (I haven’t been quite as diligent as I might have otherwise, since in the when-it-rains-it-pours category, Comcast finally got around to giving us those extra 60 or so HD channels, so I’m playing with that as well … yes, Katie, that means I’ll finally contact Comcast about the new outlet). It’s way too soon to say anything, but …

Was upgrading from Vista … didn’t do a clean install. Gave my favorite software a run to make sure it worked (Football Manager, Windows Live Writer, Google Chrome, Zune). Only real problem so far was with sound, but this wasn’t new to Win7 … I’ve had problems with driver updates on my sound card for some time, and finally just gave up and went back to an older driver, but the new one got reinstalled in the Win7 upgrade, so I had no sound. I was worried, since I had used the restore function in Vista to get me back to drivers that worked, and I have no idea how Win7 does that. I found something that listed all driver versions on my hard drive, though, and had Win7 reinstall an older one, and now my sound is back.

I haven’t tried my printer yet, but then, I hardly ever use it so it can wait. The initial changes seem cosmetic … I can’t say much about whether or not it runs “better.” For now, suffice to say that it seems to be working fine, and that’s good enough until I have time to fiddle with it a bit. This may indeed be the first version of Windows to surpass Mac OS, but I have no idea so far.

voila! windows 7

My first post using Windows 7. Let's hope it's not my last.

google wave, one week in

I’m not sure it’s time for an update. Google Wave has potential, a lot of potential. But it is a collaborative tool, so you need to have people with whom you can collaborate. And since it’s a limited beta, you aren’t likely to get too many friends/colleagues on board just yet.

I have ten Wave contacts so far. One isn’t a real person, but is a kind of bot that allows you to place Wikipedia links in a wave. Four people got Wave on their own and showed up in my list of Wave contacts because they were already in my Gmail contacts … of those, one isn’t really a friend but just someone who runs a website I frequent. Add to that the five people I invited, and I have something resembling continuous collaborations with eight people, several of who haven’t gotten beyond “hey, this is cool!” Which isn’t our fault, we’re just getting our feet wet.

The more the merrier never made more sense, so it would be nice to get more invites to send out, but as far as I can tell, I was lucky to get my initial eight. It doesn’t help that three of those eight haven’t signed in yet … understandable, our lives are full enough as it is, and this is still in limited beta so the usefulness is thus far unclear, but those are three invites I can’t get back to give to others. And without people to work with, there isn’t much point to Wave … it’s not a solo act.

It will get better as Google works more people into the project. I imagine a year from now, we won’t be concerned with a lack of collaborators. Right now, though, Google Wave gets an Incomplete grade.

go ahead, tell me i’m stupid (windows edition)

I’m thinking of installing Windows 7 on my Vista machine. That’s not what makes me stupid, although it’s earlier than I usually make such decisions. In the past, we’ve updated operating systems when we got a new computer (we seem to get one every three years or so, and our current computer will turn 3 next July) … I don’t recall ever upgrading a machine we already owned (not counting service packs, of course). Also, I am not a Vista-hater … I like it fine … so it’s not that I have to upgrade, just that I’m convinced that I’ll prefer 7. That was true for Vista, as well, but in that case, as always, I waited for a new machine with Vista pre-installed. This time, I think I’ll take the plunge.

Why am I stupid? Because I’m thinking of doing an in-place upgrade instead of a clean install. I am aware of the reasons to avoid this … even the people I most trust, who are saying the in-place process works better from Vista to 7 than any other has in the past, still recommend a clean install. But a clean install is a pain in the ass, and I’m not convinced (yet, this time) that the benefits are large enough to deal with that pain.

So … if I disappear from the online world on the 22nd, you’ll know why.

milton berle’s penis update

For no reason in particular, I posted the following on Twitter a few minutes ago:

#miltonberle'spenis (hey, it brings traffic to my blog, maybe it will increase my followers on Twitter)

Almost immediately, someone new added me to their followers list: a guy from New Zealand who offers search engine management skills.

what is google wave, in 2 minutes and 15 seconds

google wave

My invite has arrived.