What I think about things
Fast, Cheap or Good
Pick any two of the above.
I keep the above on my office wall at all times. I wish I could find a proper attribution for it, a quick Google search reveals that this is a fairly widely known designer’s creed but I’m not able to nail down who originally coined it.
But I love the sentiments represented.
I got this letter a couple of days ago based on a comment I made in flickr :
Hello Marc,
My girlfriend found this message you had on a photo message board about
you having your head shaved. I am curious to know, as you said you had
your head shaved, what was it like? I am about to leave for a five week work
project and always wanted to peel off all my long shaggy hair to a total shaved
bald head look (of course then use sunscreen while outside)….but what is
it like to be totally shaved bald…or was your’se just super clipped buzzed or’
actual razor smooth bald like what I want to do next week? And how did you
best get a perfect headshave without cuts, nicks, and razor burn? Couple
friends said to just get a super buzz bootcamp cut, but if I am going to take
all my hair off for this summer, I want to go totally shaved bald. So any tips,
experiences and other info you have from when you did it, that would be great.
Nervous to loose the long hair for shaven scalp, but can’t wait too..!!
[Name withheld as I don’t know if he wants me to publish it]
PS–how long did you actually keep the cool look….and ever would do it again?
To which I responded:
Hi [Name removed],
I just posted some pictures on my flickr site so you can see what I ended up doing (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc-bourassa/sets/72157605978167162/). Back in 2003 I had direct access to the Usenet newsgroups and was able to glean a lot of helpful information regarding how to go about shaving one’s head.
My motivation for shaving my head came from the appearance of a thinning patch (that ol’ “male pattern baldness” I suppose) at the back of my head. I wasn’t sure how fast it would spread so I wanted to see what my options would be. Since I am not so clueless as to think that a comb-over fools anyone I figured I’d like to see if the bald look would suit me.
Most surprising to me were the number of products out there dedicated to helping maintain a shaved head, everything from special bladed shavers to recommended products (pretty much all of which I forget now).
For myself, I ended up picking up a Norelco electric shaver. I already had some electric hair clippers that I used for the initial cropping.
I actually had a bit of fun with it before cutting all my hair off. I took the opportunity to see what a bunch of different cuts might look like on the way to baldness. I shaved it very close on the sides and left it long on top, then I went for a Mohawk of varying lengths. Basically I played with it for probably an hour or so (with my wife rolling her eyes at appropriate intervals) before I clipped ALL the hair off and then took out the Norelco and brought it skin-close.
I never did use a razor on my entire head. The most I ever did was up the sides (where I could see fairly well) and up the back, just extending where I was used to shaving my neck for my normal hair style after a couple of weeks.
From the pictures you can see that I was about as close as you can get to “Chrome Dome” without that final razor step. Also, having dark, thick hair makes it much harder for one’s “dome” to remain “chrome”. I had a perpetual 5 O’clock shadow. I did shave it pretty much every day (I almost always shirk shaving on weekends). But with electric shavers, once the hair gets past a certain length it’s a real pain to get the shaver to properly shave it back to the skin.
I had a pretty active childhood (read “whacked my head and gotten stitches a few times”), that plus a formidable number of crowns (which my barber was always complaining about) and a couple of moles made my head look a lot less like, say, Patrick Stewart of ST:TNG fame or Yul Brynner and a lot more like one of Frankenstein’s lesser successes 🙂 but I would consider doing it again. I just haven’t had the inspiration to do so recently.
Notes:
It was very cool feeling the air on my scalp, if you’re the type of person who gets cold from drafts then I imagine this could be disconcerting. It didn’t bother me at all though.
I also found folks treated me very differently in retail situations. I’m not a particularly menacing looking guy normally, but the shaved head causes folks to have expectations. Of course, once I open my mouth their reaction changed again as I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy. But the more deferential initial attitude from strangers was something I would have liked to retain after growing my hair back! 🙂
Time saved not washing your hair is almost exactly equaled by the time spent shaving your head.
I shaved my head in late October so I didn’t really encounter the realities of needing sunblock on my exposed dome.
Your hair wicks a LOT of oil from your head, and sweat too which you will find the first time you work out after shaving. Sweat that you could just run back through your hair while running just pours down some other part of your head. Maybe it was just me, but I kept a towel nearby when I used the stationary bike just to keep the sweat out of my eyes. I still can’t bring myself to wear a sweatband…
It’s a complete myth that your hair will grow back thicker, it only seems that way for the first little while ’cause it’s so short (which makes it seem stiff). Once it’s grown in it’ll be the hair you were used to whether you liked it or not.
My hair grows pretty quickly so it really only took a couple of months before it was back to a “short normal”. You can always grow it towards the Buzz cut if you don’t like the bald look, how long it takes is up to your head. For me that would be about 3-4 weeks.
That’s about all I can think of to offer you for your project. I *love* change so I definitely say you should go through with it.
Good Luck, and take some pictures, even if only for yourself. You won’t regret them!
Marc
In trying to transfer my pictures from my camera to my computer and then, for some images, to flickr there are several challenges.
First, I want my pictures to remain organized in some fashion so that I can work with them at the file/folder level and still easily figure out what pictures belong where.
For example, all my photographs are in a folder called “Photo Album”. Under this there are folders representing each year (2001, 2002, etc.) and under these are the actual image folders with dates. I want my pictures consolidated somewhat so I actually use the date the pictures were downloaded (or the date of the last picture taken) to group them together (i.e. 20080615 – Marc’s Birthday Party). This has worked very well for me for the past decade.
Second, I access my pictures using several different kinds of software, some more sophisticated than others, and I want the images to be in the correct orientation in all of them. Pictures taken in a portrait mode need to show up as portrait and those taken landscape need to show up as landscape.
In the earlier digital days, before I had a camera that recorded this information in the EXIF orientation tag, it was all manual and I rotated the pictures after I downloaded them manually using IRFANVIEW, Picasa or, more recently, Windows Life Photo Gallery.
Now that I’ve acquired a Nikon D60 that writes out the EXIF orientation tag, I find that some software honors the tag and some doesn’t. Windows Live Photo Gallery for some idiotic reason doesn’t. Screen-Paver, easily my most used application if you consider how many hours a day and how many pictures I view with it, also doesn’t recognize EXIF orientation tags. So the images end up sideways in the forum where I, and others, are most likely to be viewing them.
Third, I tag my pictures. Sometimes I tag with situations, but mostly with the names of people found within them. I have found this invaluable over the years and can quickly find pictures of people that I have across my collection in seconds.
So I’m trying to pick my way through the software available to accomplish the above. Ideally I’d like to use ONE piece of software and use it for everything but each application has great strengths and great flaws. As of this writing I *don’t* have a simple solution but I wanted to lay out the issues and see if any ideas jump out. If anybody happens to read this and gets some ideas for themselves, that’s a bonus. Heck, if anybody can jump in and offer some solutions or software that would address some of the issues, that would be an even better bonus!
Here is what I have available to me at the moment and why:
This is the default image viewing software on any PC that I use.
Pros
Cons
This is my primary organization / labeling / bulk viewing tool on my main PCs
Pros
Cons
iTAG:
I use this software to easily add Title and Caption information to pictures that I want to upload to flickr. The advantage of adding this information via iTAG rather than on flickr or using the flickr Uploader tool is that the information remains a permanent part of the images files for future reference.
I started using it primarily for its ability to initiate/maintain use of IPTC keyword tags where Windows Live Photo Gallery was falling down.
Pros
Cons
I like being able to review all the images and, if necessary, assign them to different sets and assign different levels of access BEFORE initiating my upload.
Pros
Cons
I used this for quite a while before shifting to Windows Live Photo Gallery. I have not used the most recent version (have not used since October 2007)
Pros
Cons
I have been using this as my screensaver for YEARS. Not so much because I believe that my screens will burn in – the new technologies are not so prone to this – but because I absolutely love having my image collection displaying all the time. My main computer is in my kitchen so having my photo album displaying while we have guests over is a great source of conversation. But I love seeing images from old trips or adventures popping up throughout the day when I’m walking past my computer to get a glass of water.
I’ve been using Screen Paver since my Win95 days and have yet to find anything that can rival it in robustness and utility.
The Google Photos screensaver just doesn’t work how I want (can’t select all my folders, can’t pause or go forward or backward through images at will).
The Windows Live Photo Gallery screensaver simply doesn’t work on my machine (can only select a single folder, screen goes black and nothing ever shows up on it).
I’ve tried others through the years and they always crash or are too limited.
Pros
Cons
This is a new product for me. I’ve only had it for a week so far and I have to say I find it very confusing.
My experience with Photoshop years ago (needed it for a small project) was similar. I think I’m going to find the editor useful but the organizer appears to be nearly unusable.
Pros
Cons
Nikon Transfer (sorry no link that I can find to this software):
This came with my Nikon and allows me to import my photos and, optionally, add some information to them.
Pros
Cons
So, in looking at the above, it looks like my strategy is going to be:
One thing we can credit TIVO (and other time-shifting, commercial skipping devices) for is much greater effort on the part of commercial creators to actually make the commercials entertaining and worthwhile.
Of course there have always been great commercials (Thanks VW!) and folks with brilliant vision in that vein, but the hastening of mediocre content by technology is one of the greatest entertainment coups of the 21st century.
The Discovery Channel’s Boom-de-ya ad is expansive, uplifting and the jingle is habit forming. Truly one of the best ads I know!
In my opinion, George Carlin’s peak was a few years before my time. Had I been born about 10 years earlier I think he would have been a far greater influence on me than he was.
But that doesn’t mean I was not aware of and didn’t appreciate what he did… His wry observations and inflammatory wit always made you feel that you were doing something naughty just by listening to him.
I think it was his views on religion that I always looked forward to the most. He was definitely a “no holds barred” kind of person on all topics, but I appreciated it in this sphere especially.
Better than anyone alive now, George knows the truth – RIP
Kind of a dry posting but I just wanted to put up a kudos for Roto Router after they repaired my water main.
Normally our water consumption is about 4-6K gallons a month. Probably even lower since I replaced all of our toilets with low flow (1.6 gallon) models while renovating the master bedroom last year.
I received a bill a couple of months ago where the bill had jumped to 13K gallons – not a disaster but definitely a problem. Looking back over my bills I saw that the water consumption had been gradually increasing even before this telltale leap but a shower here, a bath there, who knows what’s *really* normal.
Anyway the first thing I did was to contact the water folks (Cobb County Water) and ask what they could offer and what my options would be. They said they could send somebody out to verify if the issue is theirs or mine and to inspect the place generally.
Basically they just confirmed that there WAS indeed water flowing even with everything turned off in the home and they left behind some blue tablets to use to check the toilets (useless for my new toilets) to check for leaks there.
Insultingly, a few days later I received a note from the water folks informing me that they’d uncovered a water leak and that I needed to repair it and fax (who the heck uses *fax* anymore?) them the receipt or they’d consider cutting off my water… nice.
One bright spot, a few month ago my neighbor had the same kind of problem but it cost him 40K gallons twice. Once on his first surprise bill, and then again on the next months bill. The time lag between when the meter is read and the bill arriving was the cause of a lot of that excess consumption. I’m rather surprised there isn’t *some* mechanism in place to flag certain consumption patterns so that the owner is notified A.S.A.P. when a probable leak is in process. I’d say a 100% or more increase in your water use, especially during a drought, is probably a good red-flag.
Interestingly all our water meters were replaced not so long ago, I guess the shock of ripping out and replacing a meter doesn’t do 30+ year old pipe much good..
Anyway I had both “Rescue Router” and “Roto Router” out to give me estimates and we determined that the issue was probably the portion of the piping supplying water to the faucets at the side of the house under my driveway. The good news is that shutting off the water to this portion of the piping mostly eliminated the leak and didn’t affect service to the inside of the house, so I did this right away and then considered my options.
Both plumbers gave me similar estimates and were within $100 of each other. Rescue Router offered to match any other price that we got, but it was going to be a bit of a hassle just to get them down to what Roto Router was already offering so I elected to just go ahead with Roto Router.
In the end, I needed to have a ditch witch dig a trench through my front yard, had a couple of nice 90 degree ball valves installed, had my poorly-insulated outside faucet in the front yard replaced with a proper hydrant-style faucet and disconnected the other faucets on the leaking line. The plumber, Mike Olah, did a pretty good job of repairing what landscaping could be repaired once the pipe had been laid. The only real sign of work was where the grass was dug up and that will just take some time.
All that for the tidy sum of $2,8785. It’s OK, I was wondering what I should do with all that petty cash lying around 🙁
I need to make arrangements now, for an additional $150 (very reasonable actually), to have a new faucet installed on the side of the house fed off of the laundry room. Unfortunately, most of the cost there will be in repairing the drywall that needs to be damaged to route the pipes.
You really want to take a look at this video. If you’re already a skeptic, then you will find that it nicely reinforces your thinking in an entertaining fashion.
If you’re of a superstitious bent or if you tend to favor “alternative” practices or subscribe to conspiracy theories, this video probably won’t shake your faith, but it may encourage you to take a closer look at both your beliefs and the source of your beliefs.
In our journey to the 21st century most progress has been wrought through intelligent people carefully examining the world around us. Be one of those people.
Personally, I find the source for the human need to subscribe to religion, “alternative therapies” and conspiracy theories to be neatly summed up at about 30:40 in the video – the desire for easy answers.
Near the end Brian recommends 4 books. I’ve read Carl Sagan’s “Demon Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark” and absolutely love it (get the audio book if you can). I talk about it here. I’ve got a copy of James Randi’s “Flim Flam” by my bed and am looking forward to reading it in the next month or so. I’ve not yet read Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, but based on Twains other works I know I’ll enjoy it and will be picking it up. I’ve heard all of Brian’s “Skeptoid” podcasts and heartily recommend them. The book form is a good outreach for people who are not quite in the 21st century yet and for whom podcasting remains an elusive art. Get a copy for your folks…
For more info on this video head over to Here Be Dragons.
I just received a pleasantly appointed piece of mail that, when I opened it, turned out to be yet another scam.
The brightly colored balloons on the outside of the “tear along perforations to open” card did not disguise the fact that there is no “from” address on the outside.
Opening the card a little slip of paper drops out that is mocked up to look like a US Airways boarding pass.
Tellingly, on the reverse side of this I see that UNI Travel is “NOT A TIME SHARE COMPANY”. Well, thank goodness! I see the disclaimer goes on to indicate that, in spite of their brands being splashed all over the inside of the card, “This promotion is not sponsored by, or affiliated with Spirit Airlines, US Airways or Budget Rental Car, but they are major suppliers” (emphasis mine).
The letter itself offers to fill my birthday (which is coming soon if you want to go to my Amazon wishlist and buy my something 🙂 ) with happiness.
This is such a typical scam that I really hope nobody falls for it, which is one reason why I’m posting it here and lampooning it.
On with the lampooning:
Have marketers given up all pretense at making an honest sale nowadays? I mean it seems that everything I look at, from new cars, to banking products to travel arrangements, requires a thorough understanding of that which each industry considers “Standard and customary practices” (“What? You didn’t realize that all these fees are charged in addition to the price we quoted you? Well, that’s just standard in the industry, you should know that.”).
I have to ask, is a criminal background *required* to enter into marketing or is it simply considered a valuable tendency?
I like the part where “Our records also indicate if you respond within 72 hours you will also receive a complimentary 7 day Rent-A-CAR From Budget”, even though their “boarding pass” tells you Budget has nothing to do with this. Besides, *what records* are they talking about?
These people haven’t even realized that we’re using Eastern Daylight time yet… I hope they’re not doing anything that’s time sensitive.
Oh, and I like the fact that, the only way to find out what conditions and restrictions apply to this offer, I’ve got to call them…
The bewildered consumer (me, for one) is always baffled why something like the purchase of a house, which I am likely to do maybe a few times over the course of my mortal existence and each of these events will be separated by many years, has so many implicit and confusing caveats all of which I need to be on the alert for? I’m *going* to take out this loan, you’re *going* to make a small fortune off of me, I’ve already reconciled myself to this reality in seeking out a mortgage so I can have my house *now* rather than save up for 30 years before buying one. Is it really necessary to try to fleece me for all those other dollars while you have me sitting there, stressed out over one of the biggest purchasing decisions of my life. All you inspire is ill will and a complete lack of loyalty toward you on my part which *will* affect my loan decision the next time around.
Anyway, watch out for this miserable attempt to play on your emotions, it’s mean and it’s evil and it tells me that I won’t be doing business with UNI Travel.
One of the biggest problems in America today appears to be the preponderance of baggage that our legal and social systems are forced to support.
What if every law, social agency, tax and other imposition by our government(s) from the Feds right on down to your local city council, had a mandatory sunset of no more than 10 years? Sure, you can sunset things sooner, but never longer.
When the sunset arrived, either the affected agency, law, tax, whatever would either be allowed to slip away – which would be good in most cases, or it would need to be re-evaluated as if it were a new bill. NO RUBBER STAMPING ALLOWED. By the way – all representative voting needs to be available on the internet in a searchable and collatable format so we can take them to task if they don’t take good care to preserve our interests.
“This would waste a lot of time that could otherwise be spent on fruitful endeavors” might be an argument one could make against this, but looking at the legislation and issues that our representatives, at all levels, devote their time to, I somehow think that the less time they have to come up with new ideas, the better off most of us will be.
Winston Churchill once said “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.” and he was quite right. When there are so many laws, rules and regulations that nobody, not even those in the legal profession can sort through them, then we need to make do with less of them.
Truly important laws will not take much assessment to reinstate for another 10 year term. Useless, obsolete or otherwise non representative laws will naturally fall by the wayside as legislators realize that there are more important issues to address vying for their valuable time.
It seems very few, if any, government programs are created with a defined end date. There are no criteria by which to judge the efficacy or success of these programs and no means of assessing when they have served their purpose (if they ever did) and are now obsolete. Further there is seldom a mechanism for objectively assessing them mid-course against current realities and ensuring that they continue to be effective as times and circumstances change.
You can call me naïve, but if something is so darned important, then it needs to be maintained at the forefront of our political consciousness and adjusted and amended as time goes by. If it is not that important, why are be burdening ourselves with it?
Yes, this can cause a problem as different camps are in power when reevaluation time arrives, but how different is this than having an entrenched law that was established by whatever camp was in power 20, 30 or 50 years ago?
As for abuses due to the democratic process (also, ungraciously, referred to as “Mob Rule”) well, that’s what the various constitutions are there for. If someone tries to pervert the law or extend the reach of a social program in a way damaging to society or to individuals, it needs to be struck down by our newly unburdened legal system.
Imagine having a tax system that you could understand rather than one that grows year after year with arcane and incomprehensible exceptions, inclusions and calculations? Imagine social programs that are relevant and effective or they are actually removed. Imagine laws that are possible to remember, are applicable to today’s day and age and are thoughtfully revisited on a regular basis.
We know that one of the best governments for our economy is one where one party rules the house of representatives while the other rules the senate. Deadlocked as they are in this situation, the reduction of outflow of new legislation frees up the rest of the country to actually get on with growing and becoming more productive. Imagine your representatives actually performing the service of ensuring that your country’s services, strictures and goals actually were knowable and relevant to you and the rest of the populace.
Reading this story just ticked me off. I believe our public institutions have a higher standard of operations that they need to be held to because A) they are usually monopolies, and B) they operate using public funds. That is, you and I pay for their services regardless of whether or not we benefit directly from them.
Mismanagement of these agencies, be they Federal, State, Municipal or Contracted to any level of government is not acceptable. I believe it is criminal for any of them to operate a deficit budget and that spending more than is budgeted or failing to meet their obligations, financial or charter must be dealt with in the same manner as any private enterprise. Managers – especially those equivalent to VP level or above – must be held liable for the failure of their entity to perform. Just as they enjoy the perks, power and prestige of overseeing such important institutions, so must they bear the responsibility when they – or their employees – do a poor job of it.
In the case of deficit budgets or failure to pay, why not dock the management team on a percentage basis equivalent to the overage? i.e. if an agency runs a deficit equivalent to 10% of their budget, then the management team not only needs to rectify that situation for the next year (if they aren’t arrested as this shouldn’t be legal in the first place) but they also lose 10% of their earnings – salary, bonus, equivalence in pension, equivalence in provided automobile, everything.
Having an open spigot of taxpayer funds to continue to backfill poorly managed institutions is a recipe for disaster. And why are the management teams allowed to continue doing such an obviously poor job?
Of course, the above assumes that we have generally agreed upon accounting practices which, ridiculously in 21st century America, we don’t.
I’m sorry, but our Congress, rather than wringing their hands and worrying about so much trivial legislation as they are wont to do these days, needs to get off their sorry behinds and HIRE some advisers to establish such accounting practices, amend the constitution such that the Federal government needs to balance books and follow those practices. Then they need to put before the states the option (I can’t get myself to agree to the feds forcing this upon the states by fiat) to follow suit. State lawmakers, rather than hosting silly “rain vigils” and other feelgood crap can set about cleaning out their own practices. And so on down the line through to the lowest levels of government.
