Author: AMH

Behind the Scenes Tidying

By AMH

This afternoon I did some behind the scenes tidying around Screenshot-ville. I upgraded from Movable Type 3.2 to 3.3 – amazingly, while I backed things up, it went entirely smoothly and I don’t appear to have lost any functionality (let me know if it appears otherwise to you!!!). I had been getting between 100 and 200 spam comments a day, and while they were mostly getting marked as junk, about 50-60 were coming through as either needing moderation or getting posted outright. I was going to try to install a Captcha plugin, but I noticed that all but a half-dozen … Continue reading Behind the Scenes Tidying

Extremity Knitting

By AMH

It just came to my attention that the summer issue of Knitty is out; they’re calling it “the extremities issue”, as it is focusing on gloves and socks and the like. This is very sensible for a summer issue – small projects are way more tolerable in this weather than big sweaters and afghans that lay across your lap. (I, of couse, am quite intelligently spending my summer making a beaded mohair shawl….) Looking at their new pattern offerings, there’s a pretty toe-up sock design, Widdershins that I might try, or maybe the longer, lacy Baudelaire pair. The Sock Monkey … Continue reading Extremity Knitting

Didn’t they do this scene in Real Genius?

By AMH

In one of the more bizarre news articles I’ve seen about robotics lately, a professor’s project to substitute an andriod version of himself in his lectures doesn’t actually seem to be very positive about the project.[via AI in the News] From the start, the andriod is labeled as looking “creepily like him”. Looking at the technology behind the article, there’s no intelligence in the system, as the operator wears motion-capture gear and the android reproduces those behaviors. The professor claims he just wanted to eliminate his commute – I would have thought some good videoconferencing equipment would be easier and … Continue reading Didn’t they do this scene in Real Genius?

Science and Tech Feedback

By AMH

The ACM”s public policy weblog has a nice discussion of Congress’s need for scientific and technical advice, prompted by a hearing on Tuesday on the topic. As in most other domains, the need for advice comes not from a lack of information, but rather from information overload, and specifically highly technical information overload: Congress does not face an information shortage. Each day hundreds of documents are dumped on Congress, many of them dealing with technical issues. One witness said that staffers now receive about 200 e-mails daily from advocacy groups. Numerous groups provide scientific advice to Congress including think tanks, … Continue reading Science and Tech Feedback

Bronze Today

By AMH

Most years I forget to make note until too long after the fact, but today is the eighth anniversary of my first post to Screenshot. I asked a couple of friends what I should do to mark the occasion, and one interesting suggestion was to comment on what weblogs I’m currently reading on a regular basis. It’s an interesting question, because looking back over my years of weblogging (1) I used to read a lot more weblogs than i do now, and (2) I used to maintain a list of favorites, whereas now I keep my bookmarks private. The first … Continue reading Bronze Today

Friday Geek Humor

By AMH

A new favorite is the geeky, surreal, math-and-linguistics-infused webcomic xkcd [via Boing Boing]. The two that made me laugh raucously were Stacy’s Dad and Computational Linguistics (caution, bad language). However, I highly recommend paging through from the beginning. If you don’t have the patience, some of my other favorites are Copyright, Fourier, Self-Reference, Hyphen, Geico, Hobby, Graduation, Pillow Talk, Wright Brothers, and Centrifugal Force.

Dangers of Web 2.0

By AMH

An interesting pair of articles about the privacy implications of Web 2.0 applications came through on Slashdot and Digg respectively last week. The first linked the Louisiana State University in Shreveport’s Career Services reprint of an article about the impact of social network sites on getting hired. It mentions that even people who think they are being careful by restricting access to their on-line content might find it accessed by a potential employer, citing a specific case in which a state agency obtained access to restricted Facebook pages due to provision of the Patriot Act. It also reiterates the necessary … Continue reading Dangers of Web 2.0

Back to Firefox

By AMH

I ran through my planned trial week with Opera, and I’ve decided to go back to Firefox. I definitely think that Opera has fewer memory leaks, which is a plus, and I really like the session manager. However, it never felt right – there were differences switching from IE to Firefox, but Firefox was never irritating. Opera never seemed intuitive about when it opened things in the same window as compared to in a new tab, as compared to some strange sub-window to a tab. I had trouble getting it to put and keep my bookmarks in the order I … Continue reading Back to Firefox

The Look of Your Book

By AMH

This weblogger describes their job, book interior designer, and describes the number of things that it makes perfect sense someone has to do when producing a book, and yet which I never really thought about as part of the process. It’s not just choosing the font, as they note, but layout and material issues that have to balance attractiveness and readability with the financial considerations of publishing the book. For example, they are told how many pages the book will have (based on non-design considerations), and then have to find the best way to put the book into that many … Continue reading The Look of Your Book

Photoshop Tricks

By AMH

I have a basic familiarity with Photoshop, and use it for the little photo editing that I do, but I know there are lots of capabilities to the software that I am not utilizing, so this description of using Photoshop filters to sharpen focus on a photo element was really useful, though I haven’t found a photo with which to try it yet. I like how the article uses terminology like “depth of field”, but doesn’t assume that I know exactly what that is or how to use it in my photography. It’s really a lesson in how to take … Continue reading Photoshop Tricks