Computer screens don’t look the same. Different manufacturers, types of displays, etc. Printers also don’t print out identically colored things. This is why color management options were created. A means to allow users to fine tune how a computer should interpret color on the display and print out. This information gets trickled down from the OS to individual applications, such as, let’s say Photoshop. At the same time photos can be saved with color management settings, thusly making this whole thing fairly more complex.

What I’m getting to is Firefox, IE and mostly everything else that isn’t Safari, at this point in time doesn’t display many photos at their true color. As an example, if you’re on the Mac load up this photo I have of myself on Flickr in both Firefox 2 and Safari. If your on a PC, load this photo up in whatever browser, and also save locally then open up in something like Photoshop or irfanview. Notice a difference? Firefox and IE default to some whack ass color profile, while Safari and Photoshop are are to display this correctly.

Firefox 3 should offer the option to display things true, but may not be enabled by default. For the moment if you’d like to view photos off of my Flickr stream, try running Safari. I know that sounds stupid, but boy do my photos look better.

Whenever I get a friends request over a social networking site, the first thing I ask is, “Do I actually know this person outside of the context of the internet?” Most of the time the answer will be yes, I met this person while hanging out with so and so, or at some party, or through a mean trick I played an another friend. When that question gets properly satisfied I’ll go ahead and friend this person back. Most of the times it’s from folks that we’ve met in passing in real life, who found me interesting and want to create a stronger connection, which I think is great.

I started doing this over 5 or 6 years ago. Before then my ICQ buddy list was over 300 contacts deep. Most I had some contact with, about something, maybe due to a Team Fortress clan or web design of some sort. But there was no sort of connection, just a passing of sorts. Around 10 to 20 of those 300 I actually got to know in real life, not behind the glowing box.

Since then I elected to do what I described initially. Ask myself if I know this person. And so far it’s worked well. As it turns out for me, people I meet in real life I have a better, longer lasting bond with, then folks online that show up in passing. To sum it up, I use social networks of different flavors to socialize with others I know, not to find those I don’t.

All this brings me to a short communication I had over Facebook in the past week. This chap friended me, and the name nor the user icon of a face drawn out with chalk looked anywhere near familiar…

Me: Do I know you, if not I don’t friend people I don’t know.
Chap: i dont think so. thats kinda sad though…how do you make new friends?
Me: I leave my computer to go outside and live my life.

I don’t know why I found this interacting so interestingly odd. As I sit here, reading his words, I’m only able to think of how sad his perspective on socializing is to me.

I should eat some food then go outside to play.

Just got around to spending some time putting both of these together. Flickr is annoying, I’m rather not pleased with its 10 meg per file upload limit. Nor am I pleased with the fact that Lightroom wont take anything with more then 10,000 pixels. Other then that, these look pretty neat. Both images have a link to the full sized version (which is actually a smaller version of the original that fits within the 10 meg limit), check them out if you want to see some detail. The 2nd one wasn’t meant to be a panaroma, but worked, sort of. I would have cropped it better, except I wanted to keep “THING” in the bottom within frame.

Toyota Scion xA 2006, click on the image for the official posting. Photo credits to Ian Baker.

Did you?

Interesting, that took over 24 hours to post. :(

Not stabbed, more like cut open, drilled into a tooth, cracked it into little shards using brute force, then pulled them all out. The good news is I don’t have to deal with my wisdom teeth anymore, bad news is holy fuck my face hurts. Luckily I’ve been prescribed a bunch of awesome pain killers, as you can observe from the photo above, though it looks like I’ll be mostly consuming foods that can be delivered through a straw for the next few days. Cake food drink, for the win!

Thanks to the situation that my life is I’ve got a ton of free time, of which I’m trying to make the most of. Getting my teeth pulled was one of the things I’ve been meaning to do in the past year or two. Time is a funny thing. Here I am now with nothing set to go to other then parties and enjoying the night life with my friends, yet I still feel like there are so many tasks to complete in my own life that I don’t have the time I thought I would. There are still a number of things I want to take care of before I allow myself to return to the employed life, though time is truly running out.

I’ve been setting aside making a shit ton of journal posts, which is starting to sadden me. Two major ones are my switching to OS X and reflecting on what Burning Man 2007 was for me. Those may come tonight or in the next two days. I made a rather long winded comment on one of Heather’s posts recently about looking for recommendations on a new laptop, so that’ll just be a bunch of formating.

Burning Man is going to require me to get back on top of my photos again and start sending them online. I’ve really been neglecting taking any shots since getting back. There is so much going on around me yet I feel every so slightly less motivated to put the effort into using my camera. I think part of this just has to do with being burnt out (still) from Burning Man, the other half I think is wishing my photos came out a little better then they do. Practice does make perfect, though something Ian noted a while ago was better tools also help an artist.

Other subjects I was hoping to write some things I see as more minor to others, they’d simply be me using my journal for what it’s meant for, heh. I’m enjoying departing from riding a car or taking MUNI places thanks to getting a bike. There’s the joy of working on a machine I am fairly able to full understand, making changes to it, and almost immediately noticing an improvement in performance. I also bought a new MP3, flash based, loaded Rockbox on it, it rocks the box. There are still many more private subjects that I’ll be needing to jot down soon before they disappear from my head, all hopefully before the end of next week. Tie that down with catching up on three weeks worth of a neglected inbox and me being on wacky drugs while my bleeding mouth heals up, I still feel like I’ve got a long ways to go.

Oh well, vicodin time!

What is H

Adds more parking for automobiles in San Francisco, at the expense of removing bus stops, bus lanes and bike lanes. It allows property owners no restrictions against renovating a building to add a parking garage or lot even if it spills out into a marked bike rout. It allows more parking for “low emission vehicles” which by government standards includes Hummers. This prop will also make affordable housing more expensive/valuable as it might be a better profitable idea to a property owner to tear down and build a parking garage (since it would become easier if this passes) then to rent out.

A lot of H is obfuscated. Someone stopped me a long while ago to explain it to me and sign a petition. Their explanation was something like since there’ll be more parking, there’ll be more room for bikers which makes things safe. He was hard pressed to answer where the new parking would come from. SF Bike Coalition lists off that there are 469,489 registered vehicles in San Francisco and about 35,400 are driven in every day. Currently there are 603,000 on-street and off-street parking spaces. That ends up at around 100,000 free space. San Francisco doesn’t need more parking. As of writing this, none of the mayoral candidates support H.

What is A

This is pretty simple, more money for MUNI, more flexibility for unions related to MUNI, more support for MUNI to pipe out less emissions.

Read up about it yourself, see what you think.

Photo by Kit Seeborg.

This is a warning to anyone who’ll be in SF tomorrow. There are rumors of a zombie out break tomorrow around 7:30 PM at the corner of Larkin and Fulton!

My of us are taking precautions to stay far far far away from that area already due to the San Francisco Mayoral debate going on at the same exact time. Hopefully the attack will be subdued before the the debate is completed and the hundreds of attendees leave the building through the single exit pointed directly at Larkin and Fulton. If defeat is unsuccessful, an unknown party has offered to capture as many zombies possible inside a bus, and drive them all to a classified area (in the Mission) for complimentary “embalming fluid” afterwards.

More information and zombie convergence point can be found at eatbrains.