Month: April 2008

Nuclear Power: Bring It On

I was on my friend Vincent’s blog and he linked to a post on another blog that I found quite interesting and worth passing along. The topic? Nuclear power, and the blog post author has a cheeky exchange with himself about the “evils” of nuclear power. Turns out that from 1970 to 1992 there were 32 total deaths related to nuclear power. Deaths related to coal? 6400. Hydroelectric? 4000. Natural gas? 1200 deaths. Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? Nuclear power has a perception problem, and changing people’s perceptions about something is a long and difficult task. Someone has to start doing it though, because nuclear power is the future of electricity generation. Yeah, solar and wind power are nice and all, but they can’t scale properly because they need space (wind) and have high distributed costs (solar panels on every house would be expensive). I’m no environmental expert, but when I look at rising food costs that (apparently) are partially due to farmers selling their crops to be used in bio-fuel, I see a big red flag: it makes no sense to save money on fuel but pay more for food. As a planet we need to rely even more on electricity, and we need to use nuclear power to generate that electricity cheaply and cleanly. Read the article for lots of great reasons why.

One Of The Craziest Tattoos I’ve Ever Seen

I’ve always found tattoos fascinating, and now that I have one I guess I’m part of the minority of people in the world that have been permanently marked with ink. This guy has a tattoo so crazy it’s in a class by itself…

I found these images here.

Album Art Lovers of the World, Unite!

Emails like this make all the work on my album art project (completed with lots of help from Ashley) worthwhile:

“I just stumbled upon your album page this morning, and I felt compelled to tell you how awesome you are. I have an obsession with album art too, and when I put my iPod on Cover Flowand something is missing, I die a little inside. I have been searching the internet for months [for] a couple [of] fairly random album covers (Big Shiny Tunes 7 and Now 4) and finding them both at the same time, in supreme quality, was the best the [thing] that happened to me all week. Uploading all those covers must have been a killer project, but because of it my iTunes library is nearer to perfection. Thank you, oh random internet stranger, for helping me on my quest to a
flawless Cover Flow.”

And that reminds me, I have to update it – I haven’t uploaded new images in almost a year now and I’ve added quite a few more CDs to my collection since then. I loves the music!

This Is Not Art

There are a lot of silly groups on Facebook, and I tend to ignore most of the ones that I get invited to, but this one caught my attention because it seemed so insane I thought it was a hoax:

“In 2007, the ‘artist’ Guillermo Vargas Habacuc, took a dog from the street, tied him to a rope in an art gallery and began starving him to death. For several days, the ‘artist’ and the visitors of the exhibition watched, emotionless, the shameful ‘masterpiece’ based on the dog’s agony, until eventually he died. Does THIS sound like art to you? But this is not all… the prestigious Visual Arts Biennial of Central America decided that the ‘installation’ WAS actually art, so Guillermo Vargas Habacuc has been invited to repeat his cruel action for the Biennial of 2008.”

I fully admit to not being a “modern art” guy, and not understanding or “appreciating” much of what I see in the realm of modern art. So long as my tax dollars aren’t being used to fund it, and the art doesn’t abuse the rights of others, artists can do pretty much whatever they want in my book. But this is so completely over the line it’s ridiculous. I wanted it to be a hoax, but it seems that it’s not. I’m not one of those hyper-PETA types that thinks animals are more important than people, but I am one of those dog-owner types that gets very, very angry when he sees people being cruel to dogs. If this “artist” Habacuc wants to explore the themes of starvation and suffering, he should chain himself up and tell people not to feed him. Doing this to any living being against its will is cruelty, nothing less.

How can we stop this from happening again? There are two online petitions: one in English, one in Spanish (I think), and if you take a minute to check out this Facebook group, there’s a well-written email that you can put your name to and send to the Centro Nacional de la Cultura, the gallery that has invited him to repeat this process again – although according to Snopes it seems he might not do any “art” involving a dog.

NCIX Charging Credit Cards Without Shipping Products

Does anyone know what the laws are in Canada surrounding charging a customer’s credit card when you don’t actually have the product to sell them? Back at the beginning of March I ordered a Trendnet KVM switch from NCIX. They had the product I wanted listed, so I placed my order and they charged my credit card. A few weeks passed, and I emailed them to find out where my product was – and I was informed that the product was on order. I was a bit perturbed because there was no indication that the product would take 2+ weeks to arrive, but I needed that one specific product so I waited. It was just today, nearly six weeks later, that I decided to contact them again, and this is what I was told:

“We had been on backorder for this item, and we had yet to receive any stock since you placed your order. However, after checking with our suppliers, it appears that this item has been unexpectedly discontinued. Unfortunately, this means we will be unable to get this item in for your order. At this point you have the option to either change your order to another item, or have the item cancelled for a full refund. Please contact us back to let us know how you wish to proceed with this order.”

Products get discontinued – that’s no NCIX’s fault. But why on earth would they charge my credit card if they weren’t buying the product from the supplier? There was no indication that this was a special order – the kind where you pay in advance and they order the product in – so it seems ethically dubious for them to take $50 or so from me, hold on to it for six weeks, then inform me that the product actually can’t be ordered.

I think I’ll be avoiding NCIX for a while… 🙁

Spammer Using This Domain for Email Spam

One of the most irritating thing that can happen to you as a domain owner is when a spammer decides to use your domain as the reply-to email address. When this happens, if you have your domain email configured as I do to capture email at every address @ the domain.com, you get hundreds of bounce-backs flying at you. The worst part about this? There’s absolutely no way to stop them – the design of email is fundamentally flawed in that it allows anyone to put an email server online and send email without having to authenticate who they are and if they have permission to send email. Worse still, if people flag the spam they received as spam, it hurts my chances of being able to send legitimate email from jasondunn.com. Someone really needs to fix email – it can’t continue like this for another 10 years.

So if you happened to have received a piece of spam from the jasondunn.com domain, I can assure you it wasn’t I that sent it.

Why You Can’t Trust Your DNS Records To The Planet

Decoder ring: I’m “Customer” and the technicians are from The Planet, the company that hosts my Web sites.

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
You have been connected to David G.
David G: Thank you for contacting The Planet Customer ServiceTeam! How may I assist you today? Would you be interested in seeing the weekly promotions that we are having?
Customer: Hi there…
Customer: My site, www.zunethoughts.com, isn’t loading – it seems like a DNS issue
Customer: The other sites on my server are loading fine
David G: Can you verify your username and last 4 of your password please?
Customer: I was wondering if you might have any ideas?
Customer: sure….
Customer: username: **************
Customer: password: ****
David G: Let me transfer you to our Support Team. They will be able to point you in the right direction for a solution. One moment please Thank you for choosing The Planet!
David G has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the Technical Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to Michael W.
Michael W: Hello, how may I assist you?
Customer: Are you able to see what I said earlier in this chat?
Michael W: Yes, one moment please.
Michael W: There was a problem with many of the DNS zones in our name servers. This caused some domain records not to resolve. I ahve republished your zone which should be ready some time after 6AM CST. I do apologize for any issues this may have caused. Continue reading Why You Can’t Trust Your DNS Records To The Planet

Not Enough Hours in the Day

There just aren’t enough hours in the day! I want so badly to get the rest of my Japan photos edited, but I just haven’t had the time. Or more accurately, I’ve technically had the time but have filled it with other things – like preparing to leave for Seattle tomorrow, working on my review of the Orb Audio speakers (here’s a hint: THEY KICK COMPLETE AND TOTAL ASS), and certainly wasting some time here and there (my brain can only take so much!). I’m off to the MVP Summit, which lasts Monday through Thursday – it seems like it’s getting longer every year. I’m hanging out in Seattle until Friday night to get in some meetings with Microsoft and HTC on Friday…although as per usual, I’m leaving it a bit late to fill my calendar. 😉

Looks Like I Picked The Right DSLR

Since picking up the Nikon D300 a few months back, I’ve been constantly amazed at how well it functions, and how superb the images look – specifically ISO performance. I’m generally not the type of person that needs my choices validated by another person, but when it comes to DSLRs I still have much to learn. I was also initially on the fence about whether or not the D300 would be worth it because the D200 was an extremely impressive camera. In fact, more than one person told me that I should keep shooting with my D200…so I was pleased to see Phil Askey from dpreview.com come to this conclusion about the D300:

“My biggest problem writing this conclusion has been picking out the D300’s weak points. The usefulness of Live View would certainly be improved with an articulating LCD monitor (although I’m sure Nikon would argue that this could compromise the integrity of the body), auto white-balance is poor in artificial light (although this isn’t anything unique to the D300) and there’s still no true mirror lock-up feature. But really, these few niggles are really the only things we could pick out as criticism. There is price, but sometimes the best products demand a premium and the D300 is no exception. Nikon’s biggest problem now will be bettering the D300; it raises the bar to a new high, and represents the state of the art despite strong competition from the likes of Canon, Sony and Olympus. There’s simply no better semi-professional digital SLR on the market.”

I’m post this here on my personal blog rather than Digital Home Thoughts because I don’t want to upset those Canon people. 😉

Green-Screen Scanning Makes For Easier Object Extraction

[The following is re-published from Digital Home Thoughts – if you’re going to link to this, please link there instead – thank you!]

I’m working on my first book project – one where I’m creating a vacation scrapbook on 13″ x 11″ pages inside FotoFusion and will export the JPEGs then get them printed up as full-bleed pages in a Blurb hardcover book. This is my first attempt at this type of a project, but I have high hopes it will turn out really nicely.

One challenge I had was trying to scan the little pieces of paper we brought back that weren’t perfectly rectangular, or things I wanted to layer over each other – plane tickets, train tickets, etc. When I scanned them, it was typically off-white on off-white (the background of my scanner). Even using Photoshop Elements’ Magic Extractor, I was unable to properly extract the objects – I tried tweaking the settings, tried masking it myself with the magic wand, etc. Nothing worked because the background colour of my scanner lid was just too close to the colour of my objects. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish the visual design I wanted. Continue reading Green-Screen Scanning Makes For Easier Object Extraction