September 16th, 2008Drill Here, Drill Now???

Yes, more offshore drilling in US waters will add to our domestic oil production in a few years.  Here’s how much:

Oil Production in the next 20 years.

UPDATE: May 11, 2010

Well, does the latest spill convince you of the high cost of offshore drilling???

September 13th, 2008Ubiquity: A New Firefox Extension

Ubiquity is a new idea by Mozilla labs.  It’s goal is to be “The command line for Web 2.0″, connecting various web services together in your browser.  It’s at a very primitive stage right now (version 0.1) and certainly not ready for Joe Average User, but it’s already generating some buzz. Check out the video and try it out yourself.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

(Thanks, Dave, for the suggestion.)

September 12th, 2008A MicroBlog for Your Company

The winner of this year’s TechCrunch50 (50 best tech startups) is Yammer. As the title states, this is a microblog (like Twitter or FriendFeed) just for your company employees.  Yammer provides an easy to use tool to encourage your employees to share information in an informal, yet easy to search way.  Over time, the information can become a knowledge base for your company.

September 10th, 2008Need a File Hosting Service?


The Consumerist has a deal for you from File Savr. Check out the article and give File Savr a try.

September 8th, 2008America’s Immigrant Problem

September 7th, 2008Site of the Week – TWIP

This Week In Photography

As an amateur photographer, I’m always looking for sources of good information on my craft. I’ve found many, and I intend to dedicate a page of this site to them. The one best source of information for me has been the website and podcast of Scott Bourne et. al. “This Week In Photography“.  The site itself is a simple WordPress blog, but Scott posts regularly about all things photographic.  The hour-long podcast each week covers news, listener questions, tips & tricks, and usually includes an interview with a well-known photographer or industry insider.  For example, their interview with Tom Hogarty of Adobe convinced me to store all my photos in DNG format.

Grace

Grace

Recently, Scott switched over from Canon to Nikon.  He sold all of his Canon gear through his website via Google checkout and I was lucky enough to obtain one of his items – an off-camera cord for my flash (Canon 480 EX).  I’ve been experimenting with holding my camera with my right hand, and the flash one- to two feet away in my left hand.  To the right is a photo of my favorite model using this technique.  No Photoshop here, just an auto-tone with Lightroom.

September 7th, 2008Mad Magazine

Spy vs. Spy

As a pre-teen (and even into teenage years), I enjoyed reading Mad Magazine.  It sometimes still gives me a chuckle. I guess an occasional sophomoric chuckle is one of my guilty pleasures (along with South Park, Ren & Stimpy, etc.)  What I always enjoyed, and still do, is the Spy vs. Spy feature.  Something about ironic endings…

A friend of my daughter just reported that her boss said that he wasn’t going to vote for Obama because his middle name is Hussein, and he (the boss) doesn’t vote for Muslims.

Come on people!  It really doesn’t hurt that much to use your brain every now and then.

Skeptoid

What is a skeptic?  Ask Brian Dunning.  He is one – and proud of it.  According to Brian, a skeptic is someone who applies critical thinking skills to claims that may or may not be true.  Skepticism is not just the art of debunking a bogus claim, but a process of examining any claim to find out if it is based on actual, verifiable evidence.

Brian’s site, skeptoid.com, hosts a weekly podcast that has become my favorite. In concise, 10-minute chunks, Brian takes a thoughtful (yes, skeptical) look at a number of popular and frequently controversial topics.  Recent podcasts titles: “Should Tibet be Free?”  “Genetically Modified Organisms: Jeopardy or Jackpot?”  “Should You Take Your Vitamins?”  Brian has produced 114 podcasts to date, which translates to roughly 19 hours of skeptical listening pleasure.  Is he ever wrong?  Yes, and Skeptoid #101 was even devoted to the errors in his previous 100 podcasts.

For those who don’t enjoy podcasts, Brian has made a 40-minute video explaining the process of skepticism and critical thinking.  He has also written a book that includes material from the first 100 episodes of Skeptoid.

Agree with him or not — and I sometimes do not — Brian does encourage you to think for yourself. In my opinion, that encouragement alone is worth 10 minutes a week.

Just use Alt-RightShift-Del.  No battery removal needed!

Warning! Rebooting your BB takes longer than rebooting your PC!


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