May 15th, 2009, 3 Comments »
While living in Morocco last year, we made a trip to the Sahara Desert. The last town before the desert was a scruffy little outpost called M’Hamid. Because we’re self-employed, we needed to check our email. Happily, even M’Hamid had a (small, grungy) internet cafe:
Farflung travelers know that, wherever you are on the globe, there always seems to be an internet cafe nearby. I remember admiring one cafe owner in the small South African town of Hermanus. His lazy life of surfing and occasional tech support for young, hot Australians looked pretty appealing.
I got to wondering about where some of the most distant and remote internet cafes around the globe. Off I go to the Flickr.
To begin, here’s one from the other side of the Sahara, from Siwa Oasis in Egypt (photo by Jeff Werner):
A worrying backup power suppy in Manali, India (photo by alles-schlumpf):
A diversified business in Johannesburg, South Africa (photo by Esther Dyson–yes, that Esther Dyson):
There are more after the jump.
Read more…
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November 28th, 2008, 5 Comments »
A reader named Miranda (who, sadly, recently lost her camera on a trip) sent along a link to the terrific blog Found Cameras and Orphaned Photos. The concept, as you might imagine, is pretty simple: people who find cameras or memory cards email photos to the blog, and the photos get posted. If you’ve lost your camera (or if you recognize anybody in the photos), you can contact the finder through the blog to get your photos back.
I might have done the implementation differently (enabling people to search a database by location, date lost, etc), but it’s a good start. The site will become more invaluable once photo-matching and recognition technology becomes more available.
5 Comments »
November 14th, 2008, 8 Comments »
Insert phallic joke here. I was at Blenz last night, and spotted these measures of cup size:
Didn’t Blenz used to eschew crazy Starbucks-esque sizing? What’s with ’supremo’?
Incidentally, this post shows off the new site design’s ‘light box’ functionality. If you click the above photo, you should see a kind of pop-up thingie that shows you a bigger version (speaking of the tyranny of size). I hope it’ll be handy for instances when I want to share a big image. The cup lids aren’t example a great example, but you get the idea.
UPDATE: At least, that’s what it should do. The light box thingie doesn’t seem to be working at the moment–I’ll trouble shoot as time permits.
UPDATE #2: Yeah, that works for me now, too. Don’t know what’s up with that.
8 Comments »
July 14th, 2008, 1 Comment »
Monique is a keynote speaker down at Portus 2008, a Harry Potter convention down in Dallas. I’ve been enjoying her photos, which provide yet another view into the dorky but lovable world of intense fandom. Here are two favourites. I love that He Who Must Not Ever, Ever Be Named is on a call:
1 Comment »
July 2nd, 2008, 2 Comments »
Irish blogger Damien Mulley devised a generous and clever means of increasing the visibility of Irish tech companies:
The premise is that everyone talks up a company (if they think it deserves to be) on a particular date. Every second Tuesday at it happens. Everyone tech and non tech alike are encouraged to talk about the company so that hopefully a tipping point is reached and a potential investor or journalist or partner hears/reads about the company.
Happily, the first candidate for this bloggy bake sale is our client, PutPlace. The response has been mighty, mighty impressive. For all you Catholics, Eirepreneur suggests that a better name might be ‘Shove Tuesday’.
I was thinking that we ought to do this for Vancouver (or British Columbia) startups. Maybe Techvibes or Bootup Labs could sort that out?
In related news, we’re running a photo contest for PutPlace. All you have to do is photograph yourself making a silly face, submit it to our contest, and you could win an annual subscription to PutPlace for 100 GB of data + $200 USD Amazon gift certificate. Go forth and panic for the camera.
2 Comments »
July 1st, 2008, 1 Comment »
We were briefly in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t get much of a chance for sightseeing, though we did take an enjoyable architectural boat tour on the Chicago River. That’s where we took these fifteen odd photos. They’re unremarkable. This is probably the best one:
1 Comment »
June 6th, 2008, 19 Comments »
If you’re a regular Flickr user with Creative Commons-licensed photos, you’ve probably received a request from NowPublic to use one of your photos. I think this is a great application of the crowd-sourcing model, and they’ve got it 90% correct. I sent a feature request to NowPublic on the subject, and thought I’d share it here:
I’ve received a couple of recent requests to integrate Flickr photos into news stories. I’m happy to receive and approve them. However, your current setup obliges me to create a NowPublic account and subsequently log in every time I want to approve a photo (I’m not comfortable uniformly approving all future requests. That’s a pain point I could do without.
Philosophically, I think the question is ‘who’s doing whom a favour?’ The login implies that NP is doing me a favour by publishing my photo. I feel the opposite, that I’m doing NP a favour by permitting you to use my photo. If we work from my assumption, then it behooves NP to make the act of approval as effortless as possible.
Do you think I got this right? Or am I just whinging, and should be grateful for being asked to share my photos? And should that be ‘whom’ or ‘who’? I never committed the associated grammar rule to memory.
I’ve recognized that, personally, I feel quite differently about my photos on Flickr than I do about, say, this blog. While I strive to improve my work on this site, I feel much more ambivalent about my Flickr photos.
Flickr is really just a handy place to put and reference my photos. While I used to obsess about the visitor stats for this site, I almost never check the number of views that my photos have. It’s strictly a question of personal taste, but it’s probably that apathy that’s motivating this feature request.
19 Comments »
March 4th, 2008, 3 Comments »
We’re back in Essaouira after, all told, about 1000 km of driving in and out of the desert. I’m catching up on email and such, but I wanted to post to say that we’d survived, and to point to our 88 photos from the trip (here’s a slideshow, if you prefer).
In honour of my Aunt Lynn, who only ever wants to see one’s best three vacation photos, here’s five. Click for larger versions:
Photographically speaking, this trip kicked my ass. Looking at the photos, I recognize how much more care I need to take, how much more practice I need, and how I could really use some instruction on technique. When we get back to Victoria, I’m going to look around for a good 200-level photography course.
3 Comments »
January 30th, 2008, No Comments »
It’s a busy day, so I’m fobbing you off with a couple of photos from our Essaouira photos. Yes, there are quite a few gulls at the port:
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January 6th, 2008, No Comments »
Yesterday afternoon we hired a guide and meandered through Djemaa el Fna, Marrakesh’s extraordinary, sprawling souk. Wikipedia says it’s the busiest marketplace in all of Africa, and I believe it. I’d need a week to write a satisfactory description of the place, which overpowers the senses at every turn. Instead, here are a few photos we took, both before and after dark. These are three of my favourites:
Our ultimate destination, Essaouira, apparently has a nice, smaller-scale version of Marrakesh’s market. We can take the next couple of months to explore that at our own speed.
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