Bokanovsky's comments

Bokanovsky | 4 years ago | on: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

I always find it fascinating as there's also an aspect of documentation with certain street photography. If you look at stuff from the 1980's and see how much things have changed, the fashion the shops and so on, but also how certain things are still the same.

Certain cameras are marketed with the whole concept of being good for street photography and like to play with the historic aspect. Like most marketing it's aspirational. Will you be able to capture the decisive moment like Henri Cartier-Bresson?

There are various famous street photographers and their books are always popular with enthusiasts.

Bokanovsky | 4 years ago | on: The sticky issue of consent in street photography

As a hobbyist photographer I once went on a street photography course in London. They did cover the ethics and morals of street photography, along with various techniques about what to do if challenged.

UK law is a bit different than US law. From my understanding the US law allows any photography in a public space. While UK law does not allow street photography on private property (although if you're on public property photographing into private property that's OK), plus any photos of places where they'd expect a degree of privacy. So you can't stick your camera over walls etc.

I also checked the laws around photography in the UK and there are general rules around nuisance photography (that wouldn't cover conventional street photography). Additionally I looked at rules around photographing children in the UK, and generally it's not permitted to take photos of other people's children without their parent's / guardians permission.

The photo on the subway in the article wouldn't _technically_ be allowed in the UK, as the tube in London is private property (although everyone takes photos there) and photographing other people's children without permission isn't really allowed.

At the other end of the spectrum, I've also been to events on private property in the UK like Comic Cons. They have a very comprehensive photo policy for both the photographers and the attendees. While photographing at these events I often switch to a kind of "pantomime" mode, where it's very clear that I'm taking a photo and the subject has clearly agreed to be photographed. Other times I point my camera lens downwards when checking the shots and show them to the subject or have the lens cap on. At these events I've spoken to cosplayers who have thanked me for working like this, as they have had trouble with photographers behaving inappropriately.

I've only been challenged twice while doing street photography. Once while on the street photography course where I was taking a photo of a sandwich shop and a guy walked out while I was taking the photo. He politely challenged me and explained he was uncomfortable with me taking his photo. I showed him the photo and explained he wasn't in the shot. The second time I was challenged more aggressively, I was taking a photo of a long street with trams on near a tram station. Someone came up to me almost shouting asking if I took their photo. I explained I was taking a photo of the tram lines, and showed them a few shots. They seemed happier after that and left me to it. In truth when I got home and looked at my photos they were in the shot, but they were just one of many faces in the crowd. This shot was all about the lines of the tram station and how busy it was.

Bokanovsky | 4 years ago | on: Predictors and effects of phubbing behaviour in friendships [pdf]

I remember once as a junior developer meeting up with the head of technology to rely a project update to him. During the meeting his (desk) phone started to ring. He looked down at it and pressed the mute button for the ringer. While commenting that they don't get to jump the queue just because they're phoning him.

At the time I found it reassuring that I had his undivided attention.

Bokanovsky | 4 years ago | on: A man preserving endangered colours

The non-CYMK colours also reminds me of flowers. If you look at photos of flowers, or just look normally, you'll see solid/uniform colour.

But if you look at infrared photos of flowers or "how bees see them", they show the same flowers with landing strips for the bees.

Bokanovsky | 4 years ago | on: Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think

For me I feel disappointed that hydrogen fuel cells never took off. Toyota spent a fortune researching them, making them safe to avoid Hindenburg disaster type imagery. But it never really seems to have caught on. You can add a hydrogen pumping station to an existing petrol station too. Plus you don't need to add a charging station to your house. So there are lots of pluses.

Bokanovsky | 5 years ago | on: Firefox Was Always Enough

I've been using Thunderbird for years probably since it was created. I was going to write a message about wishing they would invest more in Thunderbird and fix a particular bug.

As I was typing this it made me starting looking a bug I've found using it. So then I started Googling around to see if someone else found it. Looking at it, it appears it's been open for 3 years. But in the bug ticket they had steps to fix it. I now know few more menus in Thunderbird that I never considered clicking on. The bug now seem to be resolved and happier.

But then I also wish they would trim it down or at least give me the option to turn stuff off. I don't want an events and task organiser and all this stuff. I just want a mail client. I also wish their spam filter would be more consistent and stuff keeps getting through that I've flagged and is clearly spam as it's the same message I've been receiving for the last couple of months.

Bokanovsky | 5 years ago | on: How to buy gifts that people actually want

What we do is have the idea of a present box. When we're out shopping (well in the days when you could go out shopping). If we saw something that would look like a good gift for person X or person Y we'd buy it and put it in the present box. It might be a book or a certain item of some kind.

Then when it comes to near a birthday or Christmas we'd check what's in the present box to see if we have anything suitable for them. If not we'd then go through the process of buying something. But the present box has saved us countless times as we'd often buy something thoughtful and put it in there in advance.

Bokanovsky | 5 years ago | on: Is TDD Dead? (2014)

Over the years I've worked with many developers who don't write ANY unit tests, relying only on integration tests and this has caused severe bugs that could have easily been caught by unit tests. This has cost the companies they're working for a fair bit of money.

I've called this developers out and they often seem to be anti-unit test or against unit tests as they think it slows them down, when in reality the cost of cleaning up afterwards costs more.

When you start writing code with unit tests in mind, you generally follow best practices, and start to realise if a "unit" is too big and needs to be split up into smaller units. That and mocking I've found that the anti-unit test developers I've worked with commonly aren't keen on mocking stuff out either (but again, that's all anecdotally).

Generally I find Fowler's guidance on the test pyramid is always worth considering.

https://martinfowler.com/articles/practical-test-pyramid.htm...

Bokanovsky | 5 years ago | on: Is TDD Dead? (2014)

I've found what really has helped me with TDD is a continuous test runner. Different platforms have different takes on them, but in my case it's NCrunch.

The fact that it's running the test as I'm typing is incredibility powerful. It helps me keep to a rhythm, as I don't have to stop and get the test runner to run the unit tests.

When I'm refactoring and a test goes red when I'm not expecting it has saved me time, it also helps you question everything, why was this test needed, do we still need it?

That and (with NCrunch at least) the coverage dots. If I'm diving into some code without an test coverage or code with gappy coverage it lets me know I need to be cautious.

Bokanovsky | 6 years ago | on: The Rule of Three (2017)

I've been involved in projects that take it a step further. They realise that two products or code bases are similar enough that they can be duplicated, like the example you've given above. But instead of splitting the code bases, they decide to have one code base, that codegens the code for both projects.

At first code gen this way seems ideal, but the trouble is you'll start to realise one project needs a feature that the other doesn't and or it needs something implemented in a different way. The code gen in question doesn't support feature flags in a straight forward way, and adding extra features comes at a cost greater than just writing code to do it properly. Then you'll have to start maintaining not only the two projects, but a proprietary codegen framework.

Bokanovsky | 6 years ago | on: Firefox 69.0 Released

I'd up vote you more than once if I could.

Originally when Firefox was released it was the antidote to browser forced add ons that were common at the time. I have vague recollections of Netscape Navigator having whole sections of what was essentially ads forced in the browser menu.

I don't like Pocket being built in, as it should be a browser add on. It also sets precedence. It starts the chain of thought - "Well Firefox has Pocket, so lets add backed in thing X too". I wish it wasn't baked it as it goes against the whole of Firefox's original philosophy of being light weight and everything else an add on.

Bokanovsky | 6 years ago | on: The IT Guy vs. the Con Artist

A thousand times this. I wish more podcasts would have transcripts. I much prefer it to listening to podcasts as I can read at my own speed, which would often be quicker than the audio.

Bokanovsky | 6 years ago | on: Hasselblad: A Camera That Went to the Moon and Changed How We See It

I'm a hobbyist photographer. I still shoot film, although not with a Hasselblad. The reason I do it is that I like the aesthetic, different films also have different types of grain. Shooting film also slows me down. Each shot is going to cost me money to process, so I take my time to see a scene unfold and compose my shot. I always carry a digital camera when I'm out and about just in case I see something interesting, but when I shoot film I always take a camera out with the intention of taking an interesting photo.

Also shooting with medium format film, it allows me to get higher resolution than a similar priced digital camera. Digital Medium format cameras exist but are significantly more expensive compared to an old film one.

Certain film cameras in good condition are getting hard to find, so they either hold their price or go up. Sometimes if an influential film camera blogger mentions a particular camera that too can cause the prices to spike as well.

I've often heard a comparison to using film is similar to vinyl records.

Bokanovsky | 6 years ago | on: C. Hoare and Co., a British banking dynasty in business for more than 300 years

This reminds me a story a friend of mine told me. When he was a kid he had a job delivering the local free news paper around his local town in the UK. This was at a time when local free news papers were still a thing.

At Christmas time he had a plan, he knock on the doors of houses on his round and explain that he was their local paper delivery boy and ask for tips.

He did this first on the part of his route with gated mansions in the area. To his dismay all he got was sneered at. He tried again on the council house part of his route and for every house pretty much all occupants were very generous and appreciating of his work.

At the other end I'm aware of some people who are asset rich, but not that cash wealthy. They've inherited a huge house or estate, but only have just enough money to keep things ticking over. Often big estates like that start to go into disrepair for that reason.

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