Something's Brewing

Lightroom 5 Preset: Vintage Rajasthan

Posted on December 9, 2012April 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in General, Lightroom 5 Presets, Photography

Here’s my third free Lightroom 5 Preset, Vintage Rajasthan. My first two are here and here. I developed this one when editing a photo I took outside a temple in Udaipur, India. I was there working on an MIT research project, and got the shot on my way to a market in the early afternoon. The preset adjusts the color balance to add a vintage photo effect, and works well on shots that are vibrant with lots of colors. The original photo was bright and overwhelming, which to me was distracting, taking attention away from the the facial expressions. Here’s the photo with the preset: Here’s a second example: And one final: Here’s the download: Lightroom 5 Preset: Vintage Rajasthan To

When are MIT Students Asleep?

Posted on December 8, 2012December 8, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in General

Via Joost Bonsen, my former MIT Media Lab instructor, here’s an interesting tool that charts a histogram of MIT student sleep patterns. You can filter by course and degree level. Undergrad engineering majors stay up late. Oddly, architecture and planning students seem to get the least sleep. Management students stay up late, but also sleep in — fitting. Click to picture to play with the tool:

Super PAC App: Comment on Non-Profits

Posted on December 5, 2012December 4, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

In response to my previous posts here and here, Dan, co-founder of the Super PAC App, provided some context in the comments on the “non-profit” organizations that sponsored political ads: Definitions are important here. “Non profit organizations” is a catch-call designation for anything that is not a PAC, Super PAC, official campaign, or the national party (RNC or DNC). The disclosure rules for these groups (501c’s) are different and lighter than other organizations (don’t ask me why). The most famous is probably Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (often called Crossroads GPS). So when you think “non profit”, don’t think Make-a-Wish Foundation or Red Cross. Think of people who are choosing to register as non-profits from the menu of organization types–and they’re

Super PAC App: More on Who Lies Most

Posted on December 4, 2012December 3, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

As I previously wrote about here, the Super PAC App has published all of their data so that anybody interested can take a look. Last week I looked into which types of organizations had the highest proportion of ‘Fail’ ratings for the ads they sponsored. It turns out that the clear ‘winner’ — and by ‘winner’ in mean the organization type that was found to ‘Fail’ most often — was non-profit organizations. I provided a few reasons as to why this could be the case. To sum them up, it seems likely that these organizations either (1) were more crude in their argument construction and execution, leaving them open to easy criticism, or (2) they may have simply had less

Lightroom 5 Preset: Bright Eyes

Posted on December 3, 2012April 13, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Lightroom 5 Presets, Photography

I had an encouraging response to my first lightroom preset posting last week, Burlington Northern. So I’ve decided to keep it up, and try to post new presets a couple times a month. Here’s my second posting, Bright Eyes. It’s a landscape effect that works particularly well around sunrise or sunset. It brings out the sky a bit, adds some highlight color, and enhances the sunlight’s reflection on grass and trees. I originally came up with it when editing the below photo of a tree in a field outside a Fidelity Investments office in Smithfield, Rhode Island. I used to work there on occasion, and the tree reminded me of the tree in the Shawshank Redemption, up in Maine where

Naukabout Beer

Posted on December 2, 2012December 2, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Beer

I spent the weekend on the Cape and discovered a new pale ale, Naukabout, from the Naukabout Beer Company. I found it to be a light, refreshing pale ale, with strong, but not overwhelming hop character. It definitely hit the spot. From the website, Naukabout means: (verb) — doing what you love to do when you’re finished doing what you have to do, and (noun) — the places, events, & things that reflect this lifestyle. I’ll drink to that. The brewery’s founders are from the Cape, but production is currently contracted out to Paper City in Holyoke. It’s great to see more and more small regional breweries popping up all over the place. It seems like quite a few are

You Killed My Father, Prepare to Die

Posted on December 1, 2012November 30, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Movies, Television

One of the best realizations I’ve had over the past two weeks was that Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride is Saul Berensen from Homeland. In retrospect, it’s quite obvious: Mandy Patinkin, what a versatile actor. Here are a few of his great moments. Inigo sword fighting: Saul fighting terrorism:

Congratulations to Attorney Spector

Posted on November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in General

The next time you need a lawyer, call this guy:

Heat Maps

Posted on November 27, 2012November 26, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Cartoons

Super PAC App: Who Lies Most?

Posted on November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

I’ve previously written a bit about the Super PAC App, an iPhone app that allows users to rate election cycle ads based on whether or not the claims appear to be accurate. It was co-founded by my friend Dan Siegel, and throughout this past election cycle, the app appears to have been a success. According to a recent email from Dan and the other co-founder, the app resulted in “119,815 user sessions. 50,014 claims explored. 38,351 ad ratings. 122 countries represented.” Pretty impressive. They decided to post all of their code and data online so that researchers and others can dig in and see if there’s anything interesting going on. You can download the code and data here. So I decided