merrick33's comments

merrick33 | 5 years ago | on: Linux Journal Is Back

Credit to this group. I've had a SourceForge address in place for 20yrs or so that forwards to my main email and it kept working through after their acquisition in 2016 of Sourceforge.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Video on DSLRs: why I don't care

I have a Canon 7d that takes beautiful video. I spent a fair amount of time learning to make beautiful videos with it, and I also spent a fair amount of money buying low light lenses, filters (vari nd filter), and still need to buy audio (zoom h4n), steadycam (zacuto) and follow focus gear. The thing is, I intend to make a documentary so I do want it to be as good as I can possibly make it so I will end up spending an additional $1k-2k on top of the camera body depending on the gear I end up going with.

Having said that, the target market for a cheap Canon DSLR (parents) with the stock lens and nothing more than a tripod should be very happy with the flexibility of carrying one camera for stills and video, and the results they get on video should be very close to a a similarly priced camcorder.

Here is an example of why. I was at a ballet recital on Saturday and a father was filming his daughter with a $900 Canon T2i camera on a tripod and his video will likely look better than on a comparable Canon camcorder because the light was not changing, his subject was at the same focal distance and his camera was mounted on a tripod. That eliminates almost all of the manual control variables that require more equipment except for one - audio. A $99 audio device can fix that if it matters to you.

On the flip side, the DSLR gives you full manual controls and the ability to shoot in low light with possibly a cheap $100 Canon 50mm f/1.8.

Here are two videos shot with DSLR's that can show you the range of these DSLR's:

Alexandra (1 camera body, lens, and monopod) http://vimeo.com/6854556

Salton Sea (1 camera body, lots of lenses and fancy equipment) http://vimeo.com/10314280

Video DSLR's will replace camcorders eventually. In the meantime they can be useful in that they take both stills and video, and etter yet they are the best thing that happened to independent film makers.

UPDATE: Another comments points to a post on Philip Bloom's site about which DSLR to purchase. Philips site is full of very helpful information, the Salton Sea video linked to above is his.

http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/06/whichdslr/

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Happiness is earning $60,000/year

I don't believe you watched the TED talk by Daniel Kahneman embedded in the blog post.

Daniel Kahneman mentions the 60k stat after his discussion and says "for Americans".

That should lead you to the conclusion that the number would likely be different if you did the gallup survey in a different country.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Another Mahalo Resignation

Did your Mahalo investors get a share of thisweekin?

I read a little bit about how Odeo handled it with twitter handled it, just wondering how you did.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Django powered flickr photo voting site

I just noticed the attribution is missing on the photo page, but present on the homepage. If you were only going to do one, it seems the one that would benefit the photographer them most is on the photo page - because likely that will be the one that is indexed and possibly found on your site later - thus the link would help them.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Django powered flickr photo voting site

The design is clean, I like the concept. I didn't see attribution for each photo, did I miss it? I wouldn't feel comfortable visiting the site everyday if you don't give credit to the photographer.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: The Demography of Napping

Interesting to see the backwards bending supply curve of labor in effect. The poor nap, the middle class do not, and the rich do.

merrick33 | 16 years ago | on: Ask HN: Alternative to Authorize.net?

We switched to braintree from paypal at the beginning of the year - they are the most responsive payment provider I have ever dealt with. Our customer service that answers non technical questions also helped me troubleshoot some api issues I was having.

merrick33 | 17 years ago | on: Poll: Which cloud host do you use?

Well, it's not just hosting though. Typical hosting you cannot just boot down and then boot up a server with 8x the ram or disk space. That's just one thing.
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