I’ve been riding the same set of K2 Clicker snowboard bindings for 10 years, so was definitely time for a replacement. For one thing, Clickers and most other step-in bindings aren’t even being made anymore; people found they didn’t provide good transfer on control to the board. I didn’t have a problem with that so much as having them jam with snow & ice and the stiffer boots, which finally outweighed the click-in convenience.
iTunes has apparently figured out I’m obsessed with photography; it recommended these two songs today:
The former is a stylish tune that was actually used in a Nip/Tuck promo. I wonder what else it will recommend now?
Code reviews are another software practice it’s tough to buy into until you see the value - which has recently become apparent to me after finding a very effective way of doing them with a number of added benefits.
I discovered this through an unintentional experiment: after having a single person review a new piece of code, we sat the whole team down and a walk through of the same code. Together we exposed many more opportunities for improvement, and started a lot of good discussions on standards, reuse, and code quality. That continued this week, where we found that even that “peer-tested” and “done” code still needed some fixes.
Another benefit was that it gave everyone a chance to see other parts of the system; that kind of cross-training makes a team much more flexible and resilient to turnover and absences. It’s also a nice chance for people to show off work that would otherwise stay in the dark. Overall, though, I think what really impressed me was how much a review by the entire team encouraged conversation and put quality in the spotlight.
Visa racked up the biggest IPO in history yesterday, despite a looming recession and a popped housing market bubble. One stellar piece of analysis explained why they didn’t have to worry: because they make their money at the moment of the sale and leave the banks to worry if the bills will ever be paid.
All money is in fees, for both merchants and cardholders. That includes 1% on any foreign transactions you make, to which many banks now add a few points of their own. On my well-worn Citibank card, it adds up to 3% on everything I charged on recent trips to Belize and Whistler, Canada.
You’d make out much better paying the occasional ATM fee, if you don’t mind carrying around wads of cash. Bankrate.com also provides a table of various bank’s currency conversion costs - I think I’ll be getting a Capital One card before my next trip!
To some, blogging is already passe, giving way to microblogging sites like Twitter or even Facebook’s status line (now with optional “is”!) . For sure, this makes sense given our increasing ADD tendencies, but there’s another way to expose your continuous attention profile: social bookmarking histories.
My bookmarks on del.icio.us are a good indicator of what I’ve been reading and found worthwhile enough to save. It’s also fascinating to watch your friends and co-workers bookmarks via RSS as they wander from one topic to the next, occasionally over to one of yours, and so on. When you know people are watching, your comments section becomes a microblog, highlighting what you thought was important or making a more explicit original comment.
And the beauty of it is that it takes no effort on your part beyond the self-serving act of storing your own bookmarks and thoughts. To me, this is where the real power of social networking resides: leveraging actions that serve the individual to serve the community.
A Digital Photography School poll on focal lengths prompted me to revisit my own, and revealed a few surprises.
First, after all the debate over which zoom lens to buy, I still shoot much more at the classic 50mm than anywhere else:
Even when not using my 50mm prime, this has become a default focal length because it fills the frame so compellingly. Though I should note that on my camera, it’s really closer to an 80mm lens.
Second, I’ve been unconsciously following the photojournalism mantra of “f8 and be there” to a decent extent:
After reading Understanding Exposure, I’ve got a better feeling of when different apertures are useful, so it’s still surprising how truly useful this setting is. After that, it’s all the subject-isolating ones, with 5.6 being as open as either of my zooms have gone.
Finally, several disclaimers. These are only the photos I published online, though I think that’s still a fair representation of what I shot overall. Also, it’s all published photos, not necessarily the most compelling. That judgement lies in the eye of the beholder, who is likely blissfully unaware of all these technical settings.
It was one of those cold, lonely lift rides in Whistler after losing my buddies in a whiteout that I got to thinking about why I snowboard in the first place. Some people have a strong passion or talent for the art of snowboarding itself, and I certainly do get a thrill when I can iron out my troublesome toe-side turns and carve a nice line and a maybe a bit of powder.
What I really like, though, are all the secondary benefits snowboarding brings. Spending time outside when everyone else is huddled inside, traveling to unique places like Telluride, Aspen, Whistler, and Alaska, and finding stories and photo opportunities I never would otherwise. Of course, I’ve met some great people, too - through the King of Prussia Ski Club and through a lot of random lift rides.
I guess that’s the great thing about snowboarding and other sports - that people can come to them for a variety of reasons, and all leave happy at the end of the day.
I’ve been using RoundCube Webmail for the last month or so, and it’s pretty slick for an early release. One feature really bugs me though: it defaults to blocking all images in messages until you click to load them, and doesn’t provide an option to toggle this behavior.
If you have good spam protection on your account already, you can automatically load images by finding the following block of code in program/steps/mail/show.inc and changing it to read:
// check if safe flag is set
$MESSAGE['issafe'] = 1; // override to always display images
// if ($MESSAGE['issafe'] = intval($GET['safe']))
// $SESSION['safemessages'][$MESSAGE['UID']] = true;
// else if ($SESSION['safemessages'][$MESSAGE['UID']])
// $MESSAGE['is_safe'] = 1;
A scant 3 months after it stopped being part of my daily commute, 422 is undergoing construction to add a third westbound lane leaving King of Prussia and crossing the Schuylkill River:
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation PennDOT will begin work this month on a $5.5 million project to reduce onerous congestion on westbound Route 422 during weekday evening rush hours by adding a third westbound lane between the Route 23 Valley Forge Road and Route 363 Trooper Road interchanges. Construction is scheduled to finish in November.
PennDOT District Executive Lester C. Toaso said “Motorists entering westbound Route 422 from Route 23 will be able to use the extra lane to travel directly to the Route 363 exit, thereby not impacting mainline traffic flow, or they can travel over a half-mile west on the new lane before merging into traffic.” Toaso said building this direct-connection lane between the two interchanges was critical because half of the approximately 2,000 vehicles an hour that enter westbound Route 422 from Route 23 on weekday evenings exit the highway at Route 363.
In conjunction with adding the additional lane, modifications will be made at the two interchanges. The westbound Route 422 off-ramp to Route 23 West will be closed permanently and all traffic will use the existing off-ramp to Route 23 East, which will be widened and a traffic signal installed at the end of the ramp for motorists turning left onto Route 23 West. The Route 422 West off-ramp to Route 363 also will be widened to two exit lanes. This upcoming project is the first phase of the River Crossing Complex Program, which consists of several projects to improve travel on Route 422 between the Route 202 and Route 363 interchanges.
The River Crossing Complex Program is quite extensive, as is the linked PDF of the plans. Given the time it’ll take to complete, I don’t think I’ll regret changing my commute for a while!
del.icio.us/mbotos