Flickr update

For a while now I’ve been on the fence in regards to the Flickr vs Google Picasa battle.  With both services constantly changing and improving, it’s difficult to make a decision and stick to it.  But I think finally I’ve decided.  Flickr it is.  They’ve caught up with the features that I wanted so much for so long, and just in the last month released two of my “most wanted” – a much improved uploading tool, and quick and easy image editor.

Both of those additions pushed me to finalize the upload of all my pictures to Flickr.  So now, all I had from my digital camera, is there.  And I’ve enjoyed making the pictures better, more attractive with the editor – all it takes is just a few clicks to convert an average picture of which I have thousands into an eye candy.

Flickr has also recently released and improved its Android app, which once again makes me think about my mobile pictures.  I will probably start pushing them into my Flickr stream as well.

And as far as Google Picasa is concerned, I think they’ve spoiled it quite a bit with such a tight integration with Google+.  And their URLs are still ugly, making it pretty much impossible to migrate links from the blog via automatic redirection. Bad Google, bad.  And while I’m sure they will improve, I don’t think I will change over any time soon – the decision process tired me down.

Fedora 18 : Spherical Cow

First, the source:

Thank you to everyone who participated in voting for the Fedora 18
release name. The name for Fedora 18, the follow-up to Beefy Miracle,
is:

      Spherical Cow

Voting period:  Friday 2012-04-20 00:00:00 to Friday 2012-04-27 00:00:00
Number of valid ballots cast:  429

That offset a lot of people, it seems.  But personally I like it.  I think it’s always a good idea not to take yourself too seriously.

Was Titanic for real?

While reading Kottke’s blog about some old Titanic pictures, I came across something really surprising.  Apparently, there are a lot of people who didn’t know or didn’t believe that the Titanic was real.  I guess most of them thought it was just a fictional ship from the movie.

 

London Olympics security craze – surface to air missiles

Yet another story from Slashdot:

I have to admit, when I first read about this I thought it was a hoax, but unfortunately it’s true. The UK government is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential buildings in London for the duration of the London Olympics. From the article: ‘The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics. An east London estate, where 700 people live, has received leaflets saying a “Higher Velocity Missile system” could be placed on a water tower. A spokesman said the MoD had not yet decided whether to deploy ground based air defence systems during the event.

Once again proving to every TV watching idiot that “we are winning the war on terror“.  Congratulations!

Discovery Channel Crashes a Boeing 727 For Science Documentary

Slashdot reports:

A Boeing 727 passenger jet has been deliberately crash-landed. The pilot ejected just minutes before the collision. The plane was packed with scientific experiments, including crash test dummies. Dozens of cameras recorded the crash from inside the aircraft, on the ground, in chase planes and even on the ejecting pilot’s helmet. All of this was done for a feature length documentary to be shown on the Discovery Channel later this year.

First of all, hats of to Discovery.  That’s some serious undertaking!

Secondly, just trying to imagine the meeting where this project has been approved makes me smile.  It must have been either too serious or too fun – either a preparation of the business plan, Gantt charts, discussion of the budgets and milestones; … or a “light bulb” idea in the morning after a huge part, and an after party.