Photo assignment to Colombia. Great! But 10KG max luggage = deal killer for a underwater photographer. Hope they resolve it… #
A single woman is poisoning this entire coffee shop with her perfume. It is actually giving me a headache. Must escape!! #
Congratulations to @cindypon for finishing a draft of her second novel! I have yet to read the first one, but it is sitting on my table. :) in reply to cindypon#
“Multitasking muddles the brain, even when the computer is off.” Hrm. I multitasked even when reading this article. http://bit.ly/moWW5#
I went in to see a doctor two weeks ago for a weird growth under the skin near my elbow. The general practitioner said, “It seems like you might have hit your elbow on something and chipped off a small bone fragment. Your body is building something around it. I could probably remove it, but I’d feel better if you had a dermatologist take care of it.” He walked me down the hall to a dermatologist’s office, all the while asking me about behind-the-scenes stuff in Whale Wars (he was a fan, and saw a Sea Shepherd patch on the vest I was wearing). After an hour of waiting around, a dermatologist finally saw me, examined my elbow, and said, “Yeah… that’s near a joint. I’m going to refer you to an orthopedic surgeon.” 3 minutes of face time. Done.
I just got a bill for $225 from the dermatologist’s office. Haven’t received a bill yet from the GP, but I expect to get one any day. Why didn’t the GP refer me directly to an orthopedic surgeon? I think I just got scammed.
Augmented Reality is coming. The new Yelp app on iPhone already has it as a hidden feature.
If the Yelp app doesn’t excite you, check this one out: NY Subway map. It’s probably one of the more compelling consumer AR apps out there at the moment, but research previews from universities show that a lot more is coming. This is either really exciting or really scary, depending on who you are. :)
My web host’s backup server died recently, and I needed to hack something together to keep my websites backed up. I’ll probably end up using [BackupMoxie][moxie] by my friends at [CrowdFavorite][cf] for [Wetpixel][wp], but it isn’t appropriate for my personal websites because it’s expensive. Also, the database and files at my personal websites don’t change as much as they do on Wetpixel.
I ended up hacking together a solution to automatically backup the databases to a Mac Mini here at my home using mysqldump, Transmit, AppleScript, and a cron job. (read more »)
@alexkingorg don’t do it! Think about actually being to make phone calls. Connectivity and network access trump good hardware. in reply to alexkingorg#
Shepard Fairey recently did a portrait of Paul Watson, which will be available as a fine-art piece and screen-printed photo.1 It will be on display at the Sea No Evil Art Show 2009 on Saturday, August 29, 2009 in Riverside, CA.
Shepard’s portrait of Paul was done using one of my photographic portraits of Paul as a model.
Portrait of Paul Watson, by Eric Cheng
I took the photo on January 6, 2009, while on campaign with Sea Shepherd in the Southern Ocean. The Japanese whaling spotter vessel, the Kyoshin Maru No. 2, is in the background.
Sea Shepherd asked permission to provide Fairey with the photo, and I agreed. ↩
I just reinstalled PGP Whole Disk Encryption (WDE) on my MacBook Pro 17″ running Mac OS 10.5.8. I’m not using it to encrypt my entire drive, but I used to use it to encrypt entire backup volumes so the data on them cannot be used if the drive itself is stolen (when traveling, mostly).
I’m embarrassed to be a FileVault user, but I don’t see any other way to have certain parts of my disk remain fast, while keeping other parts encrypted (and slow). (read more »)
I’d like to state first that I use and rely on Paypal for many different kinds of transactions. Used between people I know (who have existing, stable accounts) and through eBay, it has been a convenient and consistently-useful tool.
However, I just sold two cameras and a Blackberry using Craigslist, and the experience was a bad one. For every solid lead, I received at least ten emails from scammers who wanted me to mail the phone / cameras overseas, often including large sums of additional payment for shipping. All of them offered to pay via Paypal. (read more »)
Animal Planet film team on the bow of the Steve Irwin. Photo: Adam Lau
My co-photographer Adam Lau has an article out at Sports Shooter about our trip to Antarctica to document Sea Shepherd’s anti-whaling campaign. It captures what we went through very well, and there’s even a photo of me in the mix. Worth the read. Congrats, Adam!
Also, here’s a link to the discussion thread at SportsShooter. I think someone should ask Adam for a tutorial on SuperClamp usage. ;)
I checked Google Analytics today to try to figure out why echeng.com’s traffic skyrocketed 350% on July 20. It turns out that the extra traffic was all from Brazilians! (read more »)
I really enjoyed hanging out at the G2 Gallery (Venice Beach, Los Angeles) last Friday at the H2O reception, which ran from 6:30-9pm. H2O is a print exhibition of underwater photography that is running from now until September 20, 2009.
My friends Don Kehoe, Matt Segal, Adam Lau, and Bill and Nanette van Antwerp came to see the show, as did new friends Sue Chen, President and Board Chair of Reef Check, Steven Werner and Debra Levine of Werner Publishing, photographers Carl Richards and J.J. L’Heureux, James Lau and his wife, and many others.
Special thanks to the G2 Gallery owners, Daniel and Susan Gottleib, as well as Jolene Hanson, the two Sarahs, and the rest of the staff, who were the most welcoming hosts I could imagine! The show looks great, and I am proud and grateful to have my prints included. (read more »)
Off in search of some Perseids! Not looking good, with Bay Area cloud cover. #
Moonrise over a mountain = breathtaking! And, Pam the chicken, scared of a deer. :) #
Sold Canon 1D Mark III and Canon 1Ds Mark III bodies. That was easy! #
@jauderho Smaller, cheaper, has video. UW housing a lot smaller, too. Lose sync speed, weather seal, focus track, focus speed, vert grip… in reply to jauderho#
@gilesshaxted 5D2 movies: change live view button to Stills + Movie. Hit live view button, then SET to start/stop recording. in reply to gilesshaxted#
Pam’s iPhone just dropped a call… while she was on the phone with the (an?) iPhone product manager at Apple. HAHAHAHAAHA! #
I’m a big fan of the iPhone game by TapJoy, TapDefense. It’s the only game I play these days, and I use it to pass the time when I’m waiting for something else to happen. TapDefense is a fantastic iPhone implementation of a variation of Tower Defense. It’s free, and the ads are really unobtrusive, which always impressed me.
However, the creators updated TapDefense recently with a new version (2.2), advertising the inclusion of 2 new tower types. Excited, I updated the app. Upon running the new version, I discovered that the new towers were unlock-able features. To unlock a tower, you must install an iPhone app (one is free; the rest cost money) or complete one of many free “offers” via web browser. I installed the free iPhone app and tried to complete two of the offers. The offers are terrible, and the creators of TapDefense should be embarrassed for associating themselves with overt data harvesting services. Page after page of advertising are presented to you until, after 20 pages or more, you finally simply close the application out of frustration. The offers try to extract your name, address, email address, mobile phone provider, mobile phone number, birth city, birthday, and more — enough to try to perpetrate identity theft, if they really wanted to do so. I felt dirty and cheated for even having seen the so-called “offer.”
I don’t mind being shown a few inconspicuous ads when I’m using a free app, but this is ridiculous. TapDefense fans like me are obviously going to be interested in content updates; in my case, I would rather have paid $0.99 than to come out feeling cheated after having their “offers” try to harvest my personal data. There is no option to simply pay for the updated app; instead, you have to buy a third app or attempt to complete one of those terrible offers.
I left a message on their Facebook fan page wall, but it was deleted within 30 seconds.
It feels strange to voice feedback about free software, but these guys are going to lose a lot of fans if they continue to try to extract personal information from their players.
I spent two hours today helping a friend learn how to set up his brand-new Seacam underwater housing for the Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR. At the end, I took a timelapse video of him assembling and disassembling the housing.
Video created from stills taken with a Canon 5D Mark II — one every 2 seconds, played back at 30fps.
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