I finally found some time to spend a couple of hours with my new Canon Kiss X2 camera this Sunday, taking pictures of just nature, learning how to handle the camera and what to expect by applying different shooting settings. I think I just might have found a new hobby :)
I received one hillarious (though I was thinking WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?? at the time I actually looked at it) piece of HTML coding today, from some "web designer" my company works with (not for long anymore hopefully)
We asked that guy to code 9 pages for us, a pretty simple pages, not Yahoo portal or anything, mind you. Here, have a look what kind of CSS I have received!
Now, have a look at line number and scroll position. This monster has over 7000 lines!! For 9 pages!! And it weights 132K!!
And! It took almost a week to get these pages coded. Well yeah it definintely takes time to produce that amount of junk :)
..and survived today!
I was pulling out headphones from my backpack while waiting for the train today, and suddenly dropped my iPod down on the concrete of the platform. I had a split-second thinking if I should look down or not (I heard a plenty of stories that Touches and iPhones have exactly zero limit of being dropped and still working after that) - however, my Touch was as good as new, no problems at all, when I took it from the ground and turned on! Not even a single scratch (though this is not a surprize as I am using the most excellent InvisibleShield protection). Actually, on second thought, it might be the InvisibleShield which actually saved my iTouch… Or I am just a lucky guy :)
Phew :)
My first SLR got delivered today!
I got myself a new Canon Kiss X2 (or 450D if you live in Europe). Well actually I had Kiss X2 already, but I handed the previous one to my father who wanted it so much (sure I got some money back, but it was partially a present, too).
So today, actually my second Kiss X2 got delivered. Though the first one was the standard one lense kit version (18-55mm), I decided to pay a little bit more money for the double lens kit version, so now I have 2 lenses - 18-55mm and 55-250mm in my posession :)
This thing screams! Well sure its my first SLR ever, and anything will probably scream comparing to my older Ixys 900IS compact. But I really like the build and the quality, and the controls, and features of my new camera.
And it is such a satisfaction to just hold it in my hands and make shots accompanied but the real shutter sound, now the pre-recorded one :)
I'm learning basics of semi-pro shooting (mostly learning videos), so hopefully sooner than later I'll be able to make some really nice shots (I suck at composition shots currently :)
So, back to the viewfinder!
I recently faced a problem when I didn't want Rails' timestamp "magic" columns to be updated during update of records in database. I have a site where recently updated pages are displayed on front page, and I use updated_at timestamp to identify the most recently updated ones. However, the system also has a feature to reorder pages, where only the 'position' attribute is updated, and not the actual page content. The reorder operation can't be counted as a real update. However, any saves or update_attribute operations on a model fire up the magic columns update.
However, there's a simple way to permanently turn this feature off. Here's how I implemented it:
ActiveRecord::Base.record_timestamps = false #temporarily turn off magic column updates
@page.update_attribute(:position, pos)
ActiveRecord::Base.record_timestamps = true #turning updates back on
Good news, everyone (yeah, I'm in the middle of Futurama right now) - WebKit is at 100% on Acid3 test!
You can get the latest nightly build here and try it yourself!
This is great news, since WebKit is used not only on Macs, Windows, but is also the HTML rendering engine on millions of iPhones and iPod Touches (sure, since they use Safari as the web browser), as well as a web browse for Nokia S60 and last, but definitely not the least, it is the HTML rendering engine in Adobe's Air AND Google's Adnroid mobile platform.
I just wish my Sharp 920sh had a usable web browser…
It's been several years already since Apple have added ability to order prints directly from iPhoto application, but hm.. I just don't need to print anything in any decent quality, usually. However, our family friends had a wedding and we have decided to give them a personalized calendar as a little after-wedding present.
So, we (my wife, actually) fired up iPhoto, and created a little calendar for a year.
Press the Buy Calendar button, and we had a little package delivered to our doors in exactly 8 days.
It actually took that long because we're in Japan, and the order was printed and shipped from the USA.
A standard hanging wall calendar. There's only one variation, actually - at least if you order from Japan.
The quality of both prints and paper are very nice.
And yeah, of course we have a little printed proof of Apple ego on the back ;)
Overall, I'm pretty satifsied with the calendar, though there are a couple of places where fonts went crazy (small calendars in empty calendar cells, not all of them, just a couple). That's because I guess Apple doesn't actually expect for months names to be written in Russian ;) Japanese stuff printed out just fine, as well as most of Russian letters, and of course English letters are the most perfect.
This will make a great gift, with very few time spent on it, and relatively cheap (around $30 USD including shipping) . I will definitely have this service on my gift radar in the future.
Excuse me for a completely non-technical post :) I'll come up with something soon I think.
Mr. Arthur C. Clarke, one of my favourite sci-fi authors, passed away at age 90.
A world without Heinlein, and now Clarke. Well.. it sucks….
Rest in peace. And thanks for all the great books.
Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 is out. You can get it here.
It doesn't pass Acid 2 test (even though Microsoft kept telling us it does), and scores the lowest among any modern browsers score at Acid 3 (17/100)
Not that everything is sad here. IE8 finally got itself a Firebug-like DOM debugging tool, which is actually pretty nice (doesn't come close to Firebug in usability, but at least one can actually debug layout problems with it)
