Disqus - Latest Comments for burbridge

Re: Time waits for no one

Austin Burbridge — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 22:16:22 -0000

Thanks, Dave! for the iPhone goodness

Re: Scripting News: Embracing the 1 percent

Austin Burbridge — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:17:48 -0000

http://www.berkeleydailypla...

Here's a bit of historical context, courtesy of the Berkeley Daily Planet:

… [Jack Weinberg] says he made the statement primarily to get rid of a reporter who was bothering him. … "I was being interviewed by a newspaper reporter and he kept asking me who was 'really' behind the actions of students, implying that we were being directed behind the scenes by the Communists or some other sinister group," Weinberg recalled. "I told him we had a saying in the movement that we don't trust anybody over 30. It was a way of telling the guy to back off, that nobody was pulling our strings." A columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle highlighted the quote and other newspapers across the country picked it up. "It went from journalist to journalist, then leaders in the movement started using it because they saw the extent it shook up the older generation," Weinberg said. …

Re: Scripting News: Excellence in coffee

Austin Burbridge — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:53:48 -0000

Usually, I make a cup of coffee; but some mornings, a great cup of coffee makes me!

Re: Scripting News: Mr Cooper in Tahrir Square during the revolution

Austin Burbridge — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 14:52:06 -0000

I grew up in Houston, Texas, where Dan Rather had started his career in TV as a local reporter for KHOU-TV.

In 1959, when Hurricane Carla swept into nearby Galveston, Rather went there, and delivered his reports standing on the seawall, with the storm in the background. The national TV network, CBS, picked up his reports and featured them on its "CBS Evening News" program.

This turned Rather into a nationally known reporter. It made his career: He got a job working for the network, and the rest is history.

As a result, since then, every TV news reporter who covers a storm repeats Rather's setup. Fifty years later, I doubt that many of them know that they are paying a broadcast-TV "homage" to Dan Rather -- but that is what it is!

Re: Scripting News: We'd probably survive a 500-character limit

Austin Burbridge — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 18:36:45 -0000

It's funny -- Tumblr lets people go on and on -- but they don't. Everybody I follow on Tumblr keeps it short and to the point, and the other things they post -- pictures, video, etc., -- are selected to be topical. (I had thought Tumblr was a blog thing, but the sharing and following elements have turned it into a Twitter-like experience with longer text, and pictures.)

However -- Google Buzz is a different story -- it lets participants go on and on -- and they do! I can no longer bear to open up the Buzz "folder" in my Gmail. It's just a cataract of rubbish. It's a nightmare version of Twitter -- awful!
It makes me wish Buzz had an arbitrary cut off.
I don't have a good idea as to why Buzz is such a wretched experience because -- on paper -- it sounds like it supplies the things Twitter doesn't have. … any ideas?

I don't think it necessariy boils down to a question of the culture of the group, but rather, some way that the user experience is structured, to encourage and abet concision, or not. But that's just a guess. …

Re: Test page. (Scripting News)

Austin Burbridge — Sun, 30 May 2010 22:49:41 -0000

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Re: He has a million followers (Scripting News)

Austin Burbridge — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:10:33 -0000

Back in the twentieth century, when I was in college, “my paper” was the New York Times.

Since the late 1990s, “my paper” has been Scripting News. Blogs are personal, so one wouldn’t say “my blog”; but it is the thing I read first, and with a degree of trust — in its contents and its leadership — I might hitherto have accorded the Times.

A generation ago, I might have had a “hometown newspaper” that I would have trusted, not merely to appeal to my prejudices by confirming my received ideas (for that is what radio and TV do), but also to lead (something that newspapers did through much of the last century).

There was a time when newspapers — and the columnists they employed — made it their business to provide thoughtful and prospective opinion for citizens. (“Citizenship” used to be participation, not a status.) But newspapers have abandoned that leadership. (Radio and its child, TV — as creatures of advertising — never actually aspired to leadership of opinion).

Whether Scripting News “gets it right” or “gets it wrong”; or whether or not it covers subjects in which I am interested — those are not the reasons why I choose it as my “priority read.”

It is that Dave gets there first. He doesn’t follow received opinion, he leads with his own opinion. And — mirabile dictu! — when he’s wrong he says so. Whether right (or whether wrong), he provokes thoughtful consideration of subjects which — according the “media” — hardly exist, but which frequently turn out to be most significant: Scripting News is a “canary in a coal mine,” or an early warning system.

Dave also has another, sterling virtue — not much admired anymore but all the more admirable for that — he does not gossip. In today’s news and media environment, that is rare indeed.

In the early- and mid-twentieth century, one might have looked to a trusted newspaper columnist (in politics, Walter Lippmann; in film, Andrew Sarris). Now one turns to some bloggers — Dave Winer among them.

Re: Health care in a nutshell (Scripting News)

Austin Burbridge — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:14:48 -0000

This is a great explanation of the situation: Easy to grasp, and practical. And succinct. Why can't more of the writing about this subject be like this!

Re: Où sont les encres d’antan ? | Where are the inks of yesteryear?

Austin Burbridge — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:27:57 -0000

Enfantin mais un bonheur néanmoins :)

Re: FILES-US-POLITICS-INAUGURATION-REAGAN

Austin Burbridge — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 05:18:47 -0000

You're welcome, Nick.

However, the physics -- and depth of focus -- of images formed on areas smaller than 35mm film (36mm by 24mm) are different.

The 8mm x 11mm frames of the fabled Minox subminiature camera has -- for all practical purposes -- unlimited depth of field at its fixed aperture of ƒ/3.5.

Indeed this is a common problem with modern compact digital cameras -- the digital sensor is so small that images formed thereon have practically unlimited depth of field.

It is sometimes necessary to introduce fake, digital, shallow "depth of field" effects in post-processing with software such as Adobe Photoshop, by blurring the foreground and background.

This lack of shallow depth of field is one of the ways that some digital images can be distingushed from similar film images -- the film images have some "depth cues" (blurry background, blurry foreground) which some digital images lack. Instead there is an unnatural "flatness" where everything is in focus.

By the way, some lenses are prized for the quality of the out-of-focus areas (blur) produced at wide apertures (shallow depth of field). The word for it is "bokeh". This is one of the qualities for which lenses made by Leica, a German company, are celebrated.

Re: FILES-US-POLITICS-INAUGURATION-REAGAN

Austin Burbridge — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 03:39:55 -0000

Not correct. In fact this image is typical of those taken through a lens with a long focal length, e. g., a telephoto lens.

The photo was likely taken from a considerable distance, with a long (or telephoto) lens, at a relatively wide aperture.

Long lenses -- such as telephoto lenses -- usually have relatively poor light-gathering capacity. Ordinarily their apertures are dilated as wide as possible, say ƒ/4 or ƒ/5.6 --which produces images with shallow depth of field.

However, it could have been taken through a wide-angle lens, at a relatively wide aperture, since the main factor is aperture size, not focal length.

For images made on 35mm film (or larger), the depth of field is more about of the size of the aperture of a lens, less about its focal length.

The smaller the aperture, the deeper the apparent range of focus; the greater the aperture, the shallower the apparent range of focus. ƒ/1 is a wide aperture; ƒ/16 is a small aperture.

A picture taken with a 35mm camera, through a lens whose aperture is opened up to ƒ/1, would have practically no depth of field (the Leica Noctilux lens is an example). The same lens, whose aperture has been closed down to ƒ/16, will produce a picture with a substantially greater depth of field.

To use a long focal length lens show a deep field of focus, a scene would have to be extraordinarily bright for the lens to gather enough light to make an image with a small aperture such as ƒ/16. Most scenes are not so bright: the apertures of long focal length lenses are dilated to admit enough light, which results in shallow depth of focus.

Re: Online advertising is now dead (Scripting News)

Austin Burbridge — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:37:45 -0000

Dave, You are right!

Your remark is specially germaine because it breaks with received wisdom -- so beloved by sellers of advertising -- that "There Is No Alternative" ("TINA")*. When the truth is that -- for most businesses -- advertising is a last resort.

Good businesspersons know this. Online or offline, it is a more sustainable business model to reach customers via the many other, more effective, ways which are available. Instead of carrying advertising, far better to engage with customers on their own terms.

*Slogan used by Margaret Thatcher to silence critics of deregulation/globalization. TINA is no answer; rather, a way to avoid answering.