Archive for May, 2006

The last laugh

Wednesday, May 31st, 2006

Well, Ryan has already blogged it, so I guess the cat’s out of the bag: I’ve left Engadget. More info on where I’m going next in a bit. But to quash those inevitable conspiracy theories: I am not going to any of Engadget’s competitors. In fact, I’d argue that there aren’t really any serious competitors [...]

The curse of shutter lag

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

Good article in The Wall Street Journal about digicam shutter lag:

Most digital cameras still don’t provide what every film camera does—the ability to time a shot by pressing the button at the moment the baby smiles, the cat pounces or the Little Leaguer hits the ball. ... Camera makers didn’t want to take the snap [...]

Cloaking device on!

Friday, May 26th, 2006

Forget the Liquify filter! For this Engadget post about the potential for development of cloaking devices, I created what has to be my finest Photoshop illustration ever. It was a lot of work, but I have to admit that it was well worth the effort!

Middle-aged Maggie

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006

More nostalgia. Back in the day, “Love & Rockets” was the only comic book series I read religiously. Jaime Hernandez’s series of stories about LA punks Maggie, Hopey and their pals were the graphical equivalent of “Repo Man”—stories that blurred the line between the quotidian exploits of the characters and weird sci fi subplots (in [...]

The poor man’s secondary display

Thursday, May 18th, 2006

I’ve always wanted to have multiple displays on my desktop—if only to have a second window to keep things like a media player and widgets open. But a solution like this is, alas, out of my reach. However, I recently decided to turn my “poor man’s UMPC” into a “poor man’s secondary display,” using Maxivista, [...]

You need pop!

Wednesday, May 17th, 2006

One of the great things about subscription music services is that they provide an easy opportunity to pick up digital copies of all of those discs I couldn’t afford to buy when I was a teenager. I can now stock up on the collected works of groups like the Damned, Eater and the Jam, to [...]

Do you “own” music you download from iTunes?

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006

I was pleased to see this Reuters item, which questions the commonly held assumption that you “own” music you purchase via the iTunes Music Store. The ownership assumption is, of course, one of the main points of differentiation that iTMS supporters often cite when comparing their favored vendor to those offering a subscription model. However, [...]

Otaku in bloom

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006

The annual Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden always attracts a diverse crowd of Japanese expats, Japanophiles, horticulture geeks, camera freaks, families with kids, Brooklyn hipsters, Hasids and blue-haired old ladies. This year, I noticed a new contingent joining the mix: otaku. You couldn’t miss them: they were the kids in game and [...]