The Akashic Field Chronicle

For anyone still reading this blog. No, seriously, I’ve been trying to post so bad, and I always run out of time. If only there was more than 24 hours in a day. Then, I guess I’ll have more time to procrastinate and still fail to blog. LOL.

Anyways, just some quick updates:

Summer

The school year is officially over. Yeah! My first school year ever (3 quarters to be exact). Oh, wait, what?! Summer’s only for undergrads and liberal arts majors?! Darn. Sad but true. I guess ‘the research’ never sleeps. Moving on then.

Moving Out

Lots of changes going on here, especially in the housing front. People moving, sublets being subleased, graduating and going elsewhere, getting jobs (what’s that?!). I am no exception of course. My contract at Weyburn Terrace ends at June 30th and I already have a new place around Santa Monica, thanks to my friend Allan Kelley.

• Pros:
  • Close to the beach!
  • Close to 3rd St. Promenade!
  • Close to a lot of other cool stuff!
  • A good deal cheaper
  • Weyburn just has this feeling of being part of the school. I feel like I’m always in school (sort of like a dorm)
  • Great people to share the house with.
• Cons:
  • Not so close to UCLA. I have to take a bus, and they are far apart and stops roughly every 2 blocks.
  • I have to say goodbye to the insanely fast UCLA residential internet access. Goodbye!
  • I really enjoy biking to school. If I still want to do that, I have to figure out how not to sweat

Overall a great blessing if I may say so.

Goodbye Weyburn! I will not miss your prohibitively steep roads.

WordPress 3.0

Speaking of updates, this blog has been updated. Woohoo. WordPress 3.0 is here. I haven’t really explored that much. So far, the only thing I’ve noticed is a slightly different color scheme. I’m sure a more thorough exploration will reveal what great new features these awesome developers have in store for us.

P.S. Oussama, another member of our lab just started a blog, which kinda reminded me that I also had one, which has recently fallen into neglect, thus prompting me to do this update post. Thanks and I’ll be watching your blog (ok, not really, but I’ll subscribe to your feed and in effect be watching your blog, only in a more efficient manner).

Computer mice that is… (I’m afraid I’m spending too much time in the lab )

ergonomics or fashion?

microsoft or apple?

The answer might be obvious now, but just a while ago, a lot of people thought they knew better. Interesting they way people’s ideas about design evolve.

Disclaimer: mice used without explicit consent… Uber cool looking mice property of Przemysław Pawełczak (whose name, apparently, is non-ASCII compliant LOL). Ugly looking Microsoft mouse on loan to me via CORES lab.

Click here to read other Pick-of-the-Week (POW) entries

About a month ago, I decided to purchase a digital point-and-shoot to replace my old and battered Sony CyberShot. I got the SD940 IS from Canon and I simply love it. Here are a few reasons I think people should consider this tiny marvel, on this week’s POW.

The Canon SD940 IS - don't let the size deceive you.

What I’m looking for

Of course, everyone has different reasons for buying a camera, so I want to make clear what I was personally looking for when I bought this one. My primary criteria are size and price. Size is definitely the #1 factor. I’m not looking to buy a DSLR because I wan’t something I can bring along everywhere I go. Much like a cellphone camera (but better quality). With regards to price, well, I’m kinda broke . Ok, not really broke, but as a graduate student, I barely make a living, so I need something that’s easy on the pocket.

The Camera

I actually bought this exact same camera for a friend back at home last Christmas, so I got to use it for a while without buying it first (woohoo). In the short span of time that I was using it I was really impressed by how great the photos looked (samples below). So when it came time for me to replace my old camera I went straight to this one with barely a thought.

Things I like

• It’s really small - fits-in-your-pocket-small, but not small enough to be difficult to operate. Just my size. But I’d warn people with slightly bigger hands that this might not be the camera for you.
• Relatively cheap - head on over to Amazon to see the price (doesn’t make sense for me to put it in here because of the way technology prices are).
• It takes great photos - samples below
• It takes decent 720p video clips – ok, you probably won’t be making your next movie using this camera but for less serious stuff with good lighting and not that much zooming, it’s good enough. Better than I expected. Unfortunately, I don’t have video samples right now that are for public consumption. Will add one later.
• Not bad in low light – of course it isn’t great as well (not a lot of point-and-shoots are) but with a good stable surface, you can definitely capture great shots (even better if you have some sort of tripod). But then again, there’s a reason why it’s called an ultracompact. You simply can’t have everything.

Samples

For other photos, head over to my blog’s photo gallery. FYI, the gallery is actually just an interface to my Flickr account. So if you’re on Flickr: add me! Also, if you want a Flickr gallery on your wordpress blog: here’s an old post where I talk about it.

Will try and add a video made using this camera in the future.

Click here to read other Pick-of-the-Week (POW) entries

Lookie what I got in the mail:

Free Ubuntu 10.04 CD

I’ve been running 10.04 since it launched a couple of weeks ago, so this is mostly just for people who want to borrow an Ubuntu CD. I mean, it’s slightly better in terms of advocacy to give someone this nice looking CD than a CD-R marked with a Sharpie .

If you want one delivered at no charge, head on to shipit.ubuntu.com. It takes a while to arrive so you can just download the ISO if you want to check out this impressive, well polished Linux distribution.

Crowdsourcing is a God-send for large-scale projects (example, web translations). But before it can effectively work, there has to be an actual crowd. Take Wikipedia for example: there are so many eyes on Wikipedia that its crowdsourcing model actually works.

But without that crowd, we just get annoying results like the following:

Facebook account security settings (in English)

The same settings in the Filipino language

Roughly, the boldface sentence translates to:

Hello Mom! How are you doing? We hope you’re doing great.

Yes? or No?

I guess the Filipino translation of Facebook will never have an actual crowd, seeing as most Pinoys on the web actually prefer English. If you speak Filipino, and use Facebook in Filipino. Please participate in the translation process, it’s really really easy to get started.