rare-pattern

I’ve been watching The Godfather on Blu-ray, and have been rather disappointed just how muddy the image is. Credit where credit’s due: the rich high-contrast nature of Gordon Willis’ astounding cinematography is well captured for the most part. The shadows are as black as they were in the theatre. You can really appreciate the control of light, especially as characters emerge from darkness and disappear back into it. But the high definition image resolution just isn’t there....

The introduction of apps have changed the iPhone into more than a phone with a touchscreen. The online world changed for me this year. I discovered the handheld — or rather what the handheld promises to be. I had a Palm 700p before. It was a good phone. Qwerty keyboard. Great reception. Worked just about anywhere. But after more than 2 years with the Palm, I just had to try the iPhone, the multitouch interface, the motion sensor....

Labor Day weekend was simply gorgeous in Boulder. Lots of sun, not too hot, blue skies. It was a perfect weekend for getting to know my new Rans Stratus XP. The long wheelbase required an extra-long bicycle mount, one designed for tandem bicycles. Earlier in the week, I picked up a Thule rack and a RockyMounts R4 rack that could handle the 65" wheelbase of my Rans. The bike fit perfectly....

Is the future really free? It seems we’ve entered an age where there’s a land-grab happening for personal data and attention time. Look at all the web start-ups backed by venture capital. They aren’t investing out of philanthropy. There’s value there. YouTube is “free” but Google paid over a billion dollars for it. Why? Here’s a hint: It’s not about the Tube. Chris Anderson’s Wired article was quite bold in its proclamations:...

This morning I was going through a working group’s internal documents about best practices, procedures, etc. for coordinating communications between all of the group’s members, who are scattered worldwide. At one point, on the topic of email netiquette, there was a recommendation to follow the rules of a rather emphatic post, “How to correctly quote e-mails and news posts,” which is “[p]artly written by Tom Sommer.” I think it was the “correctly” part that got me going here on this blog post....