Flickr now has photo stats! Yet another way to waste time on my favourite photo site!
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This can usually be found on Twitter.
So I've been up late listening to the special 'Big Link Up' edition of BBC World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service, who celebrate 75 years of broadcasting today (December 19th) - happy birthday, BBC World Service! - and also have a spiffy new website; nice and clean, although I don't know if the interactivity is worth it. I'm wondering whether to recommend that they - or atleast, WHYS - go through the (supposed?) pain of setting up Slash, just so we can get threads and conversations and so on just like this (heh, you thought I wouldn't mention Perl's birthday two days ago? 'e don't know me very well, do he?)
So, umm, yeah. On that note there's somebody birthday I "forgot", except I didn't really forget and it's a long story so yeah. Feel free to complain in person, or wait a while, and it'll all be made up and all. I smashed a bottle today - glass! Glass! The horror. Had to sweep it up and all. Did I mention we don't have a dustpan? Nasty.
Am supposed to be in tomorrow, or rather, I can skip (it's Bakri Id/Hari Raya Haji) but would prefer not to. But obviously I'm not going in in the morning. Had a pretty decent game of Civ4: I started my last game again, but quit it because I'd made some stupid strategic mistakes earlier (mainly: attacked too early). So I started over. Now, my Civ's in much better shape, I think; it's hard to tell, because if either of two huge empires who are currently very friendly towards me suddenly decide to take me down, I've had it. A lot of my money's in the ground, and I can't really finance a war. It really is very Roman, though: hodge-podge of foreign colonies captured from someone else, ruled by one or two purpose-built Roman cities, while the "homelands" are vast open spaces, beautiful cities, Rome herself (3 wonders, I think!) in one corner but very much the centre of it all. And now, as 1400 AD creeps up, I have given up my dictatorship to be King of the Romans! Now, if only I can fill up the uneven areas of my emp... err, kingdom, reform my economy (I'm back up to 40% research taxation, and have lots of ignored techs to work on!) and develop my countryside (particularly in the "colonies" ... I'd prefer to leave the homelands pristine and clear for the enjoyment of true Roman citizens), and avoid not getting swallowed up for fifty years or so, then I could consider declaring war on the Aztecs and finishing them off, giving me - I hope! - a land advantage over the Americans and Germans. Unless they make it to other land masses, I guess. And I better be careful not to let me guard down: both the American and Germans probably feel entitled to my Russian conquests, and to say nothing of the Roman homelands ... let's see, let's see. Lots to think about!
I've spent large portions of last week finding new photographers I like, and especially new favourite photos. I hope I didn't creep anybody up by sneaking up on family photos from the Everybody's Photo list! I'm going to stop for a while, 'cos I'm scared Flickr will think I'm creepy, but hopefully will start again soon in a while. There are so many undiscovered gems lying around (and discovered gems I haven't discovered alsos). And yes, Flickr Stats is just as addictive as I thought it would be.
That might actually be all for once. Several links and other detritus remain unposted, but, hey - do I look like I care? They're time will come, and my Mac has space enough for a large inbox, should it come to that.
Then, friends, 'til break of day - I'll away, I'll away! Goodnight, all.
Labels: bbc world service, birthday, civilization iv, flickr, late night, photos, radio, world have your say
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Flickr now has photo stats! Yet another way to waste time on my favourite photo site!
This post was posted by Unknown at 12:37 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
So many things, so little time!
Saturday was nice, atleast in the sense that it was relaxing (slept until 2pm), laid back (did very little but watch TV and play computer games afterwards), and interesting (until we went to Clementi to get food, ate some very nice donoughts, and after getting back helped a small group of kids destroy a pool table maybe), and even more so a good way to start Sunday (saw an "Alexander" documentary until 3am, and played tons of The Sims 2 before and during that).
Only major change to report: thanks to all the fuss (and with a little help from a friend, also known as one of the few browsers which almost-effortlessly handles the strain of selecting 5,216 photographs in Flickr's Organizr), I've decided to go back to a full "All Rights Reserved" copyright license for all my Flickr photographs. While I fully agree that the photographer only licensed the use of his photo for any purpose (with attribution), assuming the user follows all other legal rules (including use of underage photographs, of women not wearing burqas f'instance, and - oh yeah - model release), I've got photos of friends and relatives up there, as well as random people off the street (not necessarily creepy voyeuristic photography, though: these guys not only walked into my frame, but were very aware I was photographing them), and I'd hate for any of them to be caught in this situation because of my beliefs viz-a-viz copyleft and all that jazz.
Hopefully, I'll move nice and non-controversial photos back onto CC-Attribution sometime, but seeing the vast numbers of untagged, barely titled photos I have, I wouldn't bed on it.
Haha, bet on it, not bed on it. I suppose this is a sign I should be heading to bed. Just barely enough time for a quick shower before hitting the sack maybe?
Labels: fun, licensing, photos, today
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I'd repost 'em on my Flickr or somewhere, but I can't honestly think of anywhere where these photos would be safe. So while I'll just link to them for now, rest assured they're going to stored on my hard disk immediately and on other media ... eventually. Really unbelievably awesome photos seriously. Wow. Unbelievable.
If I could name 'em, I'd call 'em Exploration and Outside The Frame, which is probably why I don't get to name stuff. Ah well, ah eh. Wonder what's next.
This post was posted by Unknown at 2:42 am | 0 comments | Post a Comment
So, here we are!
My new job is turning out very nicely thus far. They're a great bunch of people to work for, work is interesting and (so far) relatively stress free. Mostly, right now, I love getting to learn and study and work on C# on somebody else's money; next week, what I learn will (hopefully) net dividends are Work begins! It's nice being productive again.
Speaking of productivity, my Flickr account is feeling incredibly happy, having being refresh by some, then a few, and finally a lot of photos. Check them out! I'm also going through my London/Greenwich/Windsor/Bath/Leicester/Birmingham photos, trying to atleast title all of 'em. Once that's done, I'll think about doing all the others. Total photograph counts have now surpassed 5,000. I'm so impressed with myself.
Oh, and selfadolation has now hit a new high: my Google Desktop at work now rotates through my photos. I'd do my contacts' photos, but then I'd be tempted to click-in and comment; this way, the urges are kept at a low ebb.
I'm still desperately searching for a hobby; my teach-myself-to-play-piano plan has received unexpected encouragement, and there's some new and interesting meetup.com groups appearing - which I can go to again, now that I have set working hours again! Luckily, tonight was not a complete waste like yesterday: Lord of War was on TV tonight, and as that's one of my favourite movies, it gave me something enjoyable to do; but it's fast approaching my bedtime, and the "not-doing-something-involved-and-fulfilling" thing is getting on my nerves.
Grumble mumble sigh sigh.
Labels: grumble, job, photography, photos, today
This post was posted by Unknown at 10:21 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
There have been some amazing photos on Astronomy Picture of the Day lately. Most astounding: this relatively indescript photo of Gliese 581, a star harbouring the most earth-like planet found outside the solar system. And in between, some joker decided to re-run the blue marble photograph. I don't suppose that photo ever gets old.
And then today's was this amazing photo of a possible dark matter ring, taken by the redoubtable Hubble Telescope. Look at that! Galaxies! I mean, wow.
In other news, I'd completely forgotten about the family website until my Dad reminded me, so now there's a post on everywhere we went in London up now. Took a while to get all those links working, mind. I need to add in the 'family' photos to the bar on top of the website, too, and maybe a couple new posts about ... well, anything, I guess.
Mr. Munroe has an amazing map of online communities on xkcd now. I love how it's a subtle manipulation of the Asian east coast! Singapore is right by the Bay of Angst, just sound of Xanga, while India is entirely covered by Classmates.com. Speaking of which, have you heard about Mr. Munroe's recent run-in with the MIT folks. Obviously, as per his request, he is being pelted by the algorithm from Jersey. While the effect the algorithm might have on normal people, it's effect on fictionals are well-established: the algorithm is believed responsible for the death of "Ask Jeeves" from the Internet several yoinks ago.
IndieHIG is a project designed to come up with an independent set of human interface guidelines. Interesting.
Yet another in the long line of redshirt jokes. Nicely done.
And, to round things off, this brilliantly cute comic about adulthood from the recently mentioned Mr. Munroe, him of the algorithm.
Labels: apod, family, links, more links, photos, randall munroe
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So, holiday over. Well - this one. Kerela trip looms in less than a month. Like, zomg.
Holiday was fantastic - I was vaguely considering writing one huge blog entry on the whole thing (or a series of smaller blog posts, one per day), and I guess I might, but right now, I just can't be bothered. But, you know, someday. Maybe. 700+ photos are up already, and that's only for the first four days of the holidays! The rest are coming, never fear, though it might take a while. I've got photos all over the place.
There's good things, bad things, and worse things:
Except more soon.
Labels: holiday, home, photos, return
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is that it's hard to stay pissy for very long.
I went to Bukit Batok yesterday and took a photo of the tower there. It took a while to get it right, which is probably why I'm so proud of it (actually, that last one came out not-so-bad too; hmmm).
My favourite songs right now are Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana and Blow Up The Pokies by The Whitlams.
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Just finished uploading a whole bunch of photos to my Flickr account. As usual, Flickr "friends" see more photos than the rest of y'all. I'm also busy trying to use the new Collections feature on Flickr - essentially, what used to be sets should now become collections, and entirely new sets are going to be culled out of my photographs. Dunno what it'll all look like when the dust settles, but it should be fun!
As an aside, I really like how much better I've gotten at taking photographs - and, in retrospect, how good some of my earlier photos were. Hopefully, this exercise will help dredge out the oldies, so they won't have to hide in obscurity no' mo'.
It's way too late, and I'm kinda hungry, and have gone from being moderately sleepy to not sleepy at all, so, umm, yeah. Tomorrow will likely be a pain in the rear end. Still, lesse.
Labels: flickr, photography, photos, sleep
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My Flickr account has now has 6,000 views! I'm so proud.
Today was weird. Woke up, out of a weird dream, fell asleep again, had another weird dream, which I also woke up out of. Then I took a bath, got dressed, said "f*ck it", got undressed, went back to sleep, had a weird dream, which I also woke up out of. Waking out of a dream is disorienting, and doing this three times in a row is kinda scary. Also, it's raining like a maniac. Wonder how much work I'll get done tonight.
There are multiple good things on the horizon; might be a while before any of them pan out, though. Lesse.
Also: this is very not good. I thought Google could have played it a little better in China - if they'd left a notice on that pages had been removed from the search, I'd feel better about it - but this is just nuts. Isn't this exactly what court requests are for? I would have no problems against Google providing the information on a court request, but to provide it for free? If I was still using Orkut, I'd be really worried about what information I was putting out there - unless I couldn't really figure that out in the first place, what with Orkut having such a horrible interface. But that's another issue entirely.
Labels: dreams, flickr, photos, privacy, sleep
This post was posted by Unknown at 4:38 pm | 0 comments | Post a Comment
"A beach house," he said, "doesn't even have to be on the beach. Though the best ones are. We all like to congregate," he went on, "at boundary conditions". "Really?" said Arthur. "Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where body meets mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other."
