Friday 25 July 2014

Great post on the exposure triangle

Perhaps the best I have seen in a while.


Very easy to get the hang of it once you get the interactions between aperture, shutter speed and ISO.


Combining that with the way light behaves is deadly. Seems very intuitive but most people make it sound very non-intuitive. Not so with this post here

Thursday 24 July 2014

Canvas Fingerprinting

This sure is a scary way to track what ones upto in the online world.


"When you visit a website that employs Canvas Fingerprinting, as the new sneaky system is known, the site sends your web browser a request to generate a hidden image consisting of some text. Because individual computers have operating system versions, browsers, fonts, graphics adapters, etc. that vary from one to another, there are slight variations between the way text appears in an image on one computer from the way it does on the next. The images of text, are, therefore, like computers’ fingerprints; by analyzing them and tracking what type of image a particular computer generates, different websites utilizing the same tracking system can track a user from site to site – even if he or she is using Incognito Mode, strict browser privacy settings, or an anti-tracking tool."


Still not sure if its the 1*1 pixilation thingie that the email marketing companies use for tracking. However, their tracking is still cookie based, from what I am given to understand.


Real scary. And the very fact that there might be more methods makes one pause.


Mmh, more here

Thursday 17 July 2014

Quote

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function


-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Tuesday 15 July 2014

Touching letter

The letter, from head Rachel Tomlinson along with another member of staff, told children: "The people who create these tests and score them do not know each of you – the way your teachers do, the way I hope to, and certainly not the way your families do. They do not know that many of you speak two languages. They do not know that you can play a musical instrument or that you can dance or paint a picture. They do not know that your friends count on you to be there for them or that your laughter can brighten the dreariest day."


More here


Yeah, we need more teachers like these.

Thursday 3 July 2014

High altitude

Interesting study that postulates that Tibetan Sherpas perhaps got their genes from Denisovans.


As modern humans migrated out of Africa, they had to adapt to many new environments. One noteworthy adaptation was of Tibetans adjusting to the thin air of the Tibetan plateau, which at about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) in altitude has oxygen levels just 60 percent that of air at sea level. For instance, when at high altitudes, women who come from low altitudes usually have problems with childbirth, such as preeclampsia, which is potentially dangerous high blood pressure during pregnancy


More here

Tuesday 1 July 2014

Hinglish

Guffaw times from BBC.


We are like this onlee!


"I was travelling on a train out of Delhi once and a young girl dropped her ice cream on the carriage floor. Her mother turned round and reminded her of what she evidently thought was an appropriate English word: "Say 'shit!' Say 'shit'!" she said strictly. You won't hear that on the 08:15 to Paddington."


More here

thought for tot

As a solid rock is not shaken by a strong gale, so wise persons remain unaffected by praise or censure.
— Buddha