Is Microsoft's Shake-Up Enough? →
It's certainly not obvious that reporting directly to Ballmer is going to provide the leadership that Entertainment and Devices needs. In spite of running one of the largest technology companies in the world, Ballmer isn't a technologist. That may be fine for the day-to-day management of Microsoft as a business, but it's fatal to Microsoft as a breeding ground for top-notch technology that can compete with what's coming out of Cupertino and Mountain View.
Ethics of UC Berkeley's Gene Testing Questioned →
Dr. Mark Schlissel, UC Berkeley's dean of biological sciences and immunology professor, said the genetic testing of the students is completely voluntary.Why all the fuss?
Sorry to hear about the Gore separation. Will Tipper get shared custody of the internet?
— Jian Ghomeshi via Twitter
Safari →
A browser in a browser? Impossible, you say...
ignore the code: Gestures →
In a way, gestural user interfaces are a step back, a throwback to the command line. Gestures are often not obvious and hard to discover; the user interface doesn't tell you what you can do with an object. Instead, you have to remember which gestures you can use, the same way you had to remember the commands you could use in a command line interface.
The updater needs to quit itself to continue? ...
Choose Your Own Lost Answers →
All the mysteries and unanswered questions of LOST, answered by you.
Open Source Video Editing
I love open-source software as much as the next guy, but command-line interfaces?
mencoder -vf rotate=1 -oac copy -ovc lavc input.avi -o rotated.avi -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg:vbitrate=1000is required to rotate a Nikon P80 video shot in portrait to the right orientation and then drop the first and last seconds.
ffmpeg -i rotated.avi -ss 00:00:01 -t 00:00:21 -acodec copy -vcodec copy time.avi
"-vf" gives the rotation video filter, "-oac" specifies to copy the audio codec, "-ovc" specifies the output video container, and "-lavcopts" is required to keep the same video codec and a good quality. FFMPEG's "-ss" specifies the start time, "-t", the duration, and "-acodec" and "-vcodec", the audio and video codecs. Wonderful.
Church Wounds →
I do not believe our findings are an anomaly but rather an accurate diagnosis of a systemic infection ailing much of the Church in the Western World. Since most wounding in life has a relational connection, it makes sense some of the deepest interpersonal wounds occur within the church—a community designed to be centered on relationship. These are familial wounds, friendly-fire, perpetrated by Christians toward Christians. As it breaks God's heart, so it should ours.
I got a few questions about how I managed to take the self-portrait shot, so here's the original. I used several mirrors in my bathroom, a couple of boxes and binders for height, angle, and background, and a nice crop. Not a bad illusion, after all that.