Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Bricked!

What if the iPhone "brick" tragedy extended to other parts of our lives? Brought to you by Revision3.

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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Dancing Matt

If this doesn't make you smile... well, I don't know what, but it made me smile!

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Sunday, July 06, 2008

I'm all for being social, BUT...

OK, so I've been using FriendFeed.com for a little while (I'm phlyersphan), and I love the concept. It aggregates ALL of the services I post to into one easy feed that people can subscribe to via RSS (things like Flickr, Twitter, Google Reader, etc).

HOWEVER...

I've subscribed to some high-traffic people's feeds, and HOLY COW... this "Friend of a Friend" feature feeds me SO much stuff that I just end up deleting it all without reading it! (Robert Scoble's friends are the biggest culprit! I think he lives online!)

If I were only subscribing to small-potatoes people (aka people I know), I might like the friend-of-a-friend thing as a way to find new people to subscribe to. When you subscribe to really frequent posters or celebrity types, though, the traffic is just overwhelming for my poor little RSS-feed-saturated brain.

At any rate, Kevin Rose has finally posted the question I've been meaning to ask for weeks:

How do you disable messages from Friends of Friends in your subscription feed?

Hallalujah, we have an answer!

1. Go to FriendFeed and view your friends' feeds.

2. Scroll down until you find a post from a Friend of a Friend.

3. Click the "hide" link under that message.

4. You'll see a new link - click "See options for hiding other items like this"

5. Two more options to choose from: Pick one - "Hide all stuff from friends-of-friends" or "Hide all stuff from (whoever)'s friends-of-friends"

There you have it!

My FriendFeed is finally readable! I feel fine in that I can still discover new people to follow by reading their comments on my friends' posts.




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Saturday, July 05, 2008

Fireworks!

Happy 4th of July, everybody!

The fireworks were fan-friggin-tastic this year! As usual, we went to the New Lenox, IL display, and they never fail to put on a great show. It was a full half hour long, and not a bit of it was cheapo-filler-crap. I love their show.

I shot on a tripod with a cable release, and used ISO100 and f/11 for the entire show. Most of the time, I used a 2 or 3 second exposure. I made a few shots with a 6 second exposure, when they were firing off multiples in sequence, and those turned out pretty cool too.

Here are a few of my favorite blasts:

4th_of_july_fireworks-20080704-43

4th_of_july_fireworks-20080704-32

4th_of_july_fireworks-20080704-17

4th_of_july_fireworks-20080704-16
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Thursday, July 03, 2008

A Letter to HP

I've just dropped the following letter into the outgoing mail (postal mail, that is):

July 3, 2008
Customer Service
Hewlett-Packard Company
3000 Hanover Street
Palo Alto, CA 94304-1185

To Whom This May Concern,

I am writing regarding a recent experience I had with your technical support representatives (Ticket #801330xxxx). On June 28, 2008, I purchased the HP Photosmart Pro B8850 printer and several packages of Advanced HP photo paper. I ordered these items online via CircuitCity.com. The items were delivered in June 30, 2008.

I unpacked the printer and began setup. When I plugged the printer into the wall outlet, the printer received no power. After troubleshooting via telephone with one of your support representatives, it was determined that the AC power adapter was likely faulty. Your representative shipped a new AC adapter to me. It arrived on July 2, 2008.

The new AC adapter did not solve the problem. I called technical support again, and after troubleshooting, the representative determined that there was likely a problem with the printer itself. While I was disappointed, I understand that this happens. Hardware fails. It’s the way of the world, when it comes to computers.

What I was most disappointed in, though, was the solution offered by your representative. She offered to replace my brand new printer with a refurbished one. I explained that this printer was brand new out-of-the-box and was dead on arrival. I paid for a new printer. I expect replacement with a new printer. I could understand a refurbished replacement if I’d owned the printer for some time and it needed repair, but this printer was not used. The support representative agreed with me, but that she could not guarantee that the replacement would be new, and that she had no other options to offer me.

I find your policy of replacing brand new, defective items with used, refurbished ones to be completely unfair. I spent $549 on your product in good faith that it would work when I brought it home. When a brand new item is defective, I expect a brand new replacement - not just from HP, but from any company.

I am a photographer and a professor, and despite the advice of many of my colleagues to purchase an Epson (the reigning king in the professional photo printing arena), I decided to give HP a shot. The B8850 might be a fantastic printer. I did not get the opportunity to find out. Based on this experience, HP is not the kind of company I want to do business with.

As a result of my disappointment in your company’s policies, I have returned the HP printer and papers to Circuit City and instead purchased the Epson Stylus R1900 and Epson papers, and will recommend to my colleagues and students that they do the same.  

Sincerely,

Shelly Hokanson
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