Month: July 2011

Horseshoe Lake

Posted on by in Photography

I recently made the move to a Nikon D7000. I’d been on the fence for a while, but didn’t think twice about upgrading after a friend offered to buy my D90. I took it out for the first time this morning, and went on a short hike at Horseshoe Lake along Skyline Ridge. So far, I love it. It’s actually quite similar to the D90, with minor (but noticeable) improvements to the matrix focusing, image processing, and menu layout. It also has improved processing at high ISOs, which significantly reduces noise, and a new dynamic ISO feature. Here are a few highlights from this morning:

Some Reads

Posted on by in Links

1. Evolutionary experiments in altruism 2. Ewe’re smart (sorry) 3. Ezra Klein: Why does anyone trust the CBO 4. MIT Sloan Professor predicts Red Sox record

Some Thoughts on Debt

Posted on by in Current Events, Economics

The debt debacle has obviously been well covered in the news and on the blogosphere. James Fallows puts the impact of policies into perspective: The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That’s why we call them “shocks.” Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it (“deficits don’t matter” etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position. He also includes “the chart that

Continue reading

Back It Up Back It Up Back It Up

Posted on by in General

I have terrible backup habits. Most of my important documents are synced using dropbox. But for the past few years, my photography strategy has been to back everything up every few months on an external hard drive, then put it in my desk drawer. If I were ever robbed, or if my house were to burn down, I’m pretty much screwed. Being on the other coast for the Summer, I’ve recently been more aware of the fact that I could easily lose quite a bit if something happens to my computer (my backup drive is still in Boston). So I decided to try backing up everything online. I gave the Backblaze free trial a shot and hated it. I didn’t like the

Continue reading

The New Standard?

Posted on by in Current Events, Technology

Could Twitter become irrelevant? Ezra wouldn’t lose any sleep: Farhad Manjoo thinks that Twitter should allow 280-character tweets rather than 140-character tweets. I think everyone should just move to Google+. The 140-character limit is Twitter’s most obvious feature, and so it’s understandably assumed to be a major part of its success. And maybe it has been. But I think it’s at least as likely that Twitter improved on Facebook by realizing that the circle of people you want to follow and the circle of people who want to follow you are not necessarily the same but has been hindered by the 140-character limit, which makes most tweets uninteresting and renders it impossible to have real conversations. I was optimistic about Google+ from the

Continue reading