Mike Cohen

Links for 2008-09-10 through 2008-09-19

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Links for 2008-09-10 through 2008-09-19:

Posted by Postilicious

Deja Vu

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After the collapse of several investment banks in less than a week, John McCain said: “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” echoing Herbert Hoover, who said on Oct. 25 1929 “The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.”

The day before Hoover made that statement became known as Black Thursday, when the stock market lost 9% of its value in heavy trading, triggering a collapse of the banking system, which resulted in the Great Depression.

But this time it’s nothing, since we’re just a nation of whiners, according to McCain’s former financial advisor. Everything will be just fine if we bury our head in the sand and just ignore what’s happening.

D90 Real World Performance

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Today I went to Lauderdale-by-the-sea, the same place we had the photowalk, with my D90 to compare it with the D40x’s performance in a similar situation. I find that the move from the D40x to the D90 is as big a jump as switching from a point & shoot camera to the D40x.

In general, the D90 gives much sharper detail and better color than the D40x. Although it’s noticeably bigger & heavier than the D40x, I didn’t find it at all uncomfortable to use.

The D90’s battery life is excellent. When I started, my battery was one bar below fully charged. After taking over 600 shots and 4 movies, it was only down two more bars.

You can see the difference in quality very dramatically in this side-by-side comparison.

D90-vs-D40x.jpg

The ocean was fairly rough from the storms and there were a few skim boarders, but they stayed pretty close to shore, so I didn’t catch any spectacular jumps or wipeouts like I did at the photowalk. Besides doing continuous shooting, I also recorded a few D-movies.

You can see the full set of photos I shot today here as well as the D-Movies.

DSC_0073

HDR photos with a D90

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The D90’s exposure bracketing feature is great for HDR imaging. When you turn on bracketing, 2 or 3 consecutive shots will automatically use different exposures. If you use continuous mode, simply press and hold the shutter release to take the 2 or 3 bracketed shots. The resulting shots are exactly what you need to merge into an HDR image. I used the Hydra HDR plugin with Aperture 2.1 for this one.

D90 HDR

I Can Has… an offishul app

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My “offishul” I Can Has Cheezburger app is feature complete. Once I finish testing it I’ll submit it to the App Store.

This app is a complete rewrite from the original LOLCATS. Instead of searching for images on Flickr & Zooomr, which are often mislabeled and incorrectly tagged, it uses the feeds from ICanHasCheezburger, IHasAHotdog, FAIL Blog, and other related sites. I’ve also refined the user interface. It uses a button bar, which can be toggled on & off by tapping the image. You can switch images either by swiping or using the arrows. It has a built-in web view and lets you save pictures in the camera roll. I’m using TouchXML to handle the feeds.

I would like to pull the old LOLCATS app when I release this one, but as far as I can tell, there’s no way to do that. The old app got terrible reviews thanks to some idiot on Flickr who put a LOLCAT tag on a picture of a dead cat, which caused the application to show it. Even with that image gone, all of the reviews still mention it.

The old LOLCATS app was actually a proof of concept for a Flickr slideshow app, which I’ve decided not to develop since there are plenty of similar apps. I really like Exposure and I don’t want to compete with it. I will continue developing some apps for Zooomr, since nobody else supports it.

ICHC.jpg

I'm going to Macworld Expo

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Registration is now open for Macworld Expo 2009. I registered for the user conference, but I’ll probably get media passes for MacMegasite when media registration opens in November. Unless you pay $1600 or more for a platinum pass, you’ll only get to see the keynote in the overflow room, not the main hall, away from the effects of the Reality Distortion Field.