I met with Michael Topolovac today, who recently embarked upon a new project that requires a lot of research into social media and networking. During the meeting, Mike pointed me to Disqus, a commenting system that can easily be plugged into a variety of websites. Upon doing some more research, I decided that I wanted to use Disqus or a similar commenting system here on echeng.com.
I read up on both Disqus and Intense Debate and chose Disqus (for no real reason).
Installation was pretty simple, but the first export (which is called “import” in all of the documentation) of Wordpress comments to Disqus failed (generic error — “try again!” they said). The second export seemed to work, but I noticed that I lost the 1 comment still in moderation on the Wordpress side. Too bad.
Because Disqus keeps Wordpress comments and its own comments in sync, I should — in theory — be able to swap Disqus out for another commenting engine in the future. I’ve read that syncing breaks when users edit their comments or when moderators delete comments, but those issues will hopefully be ironed out as the product develops.
Hanging out with Paul Ng and Lena Goh in Singapore for a night. #
@sterlingz Trying Postbox. No unified inbox! I'll see if smart folders will do as a work-around; otherwise, it is a deal-killer. in reply to sterlingz#
@sterlingz Postbox import ended up with few hundred msgs without subject or recipient. Any problems with your import? in reply to sterlingz#
@sterlingz it was easy to spot. They have no date, so they all show up as latest msgs when sorted decreasing by date. in reply to sterlingz#
I've never found a Mac OS multi-clipboard manager that I've continued to use in the long run. Anyone have any suggestions? #
@ggoodale I'm a Quicksilver user, but maybe I should try Launchbar. I've heard great things about it. in reply to ggoodale#
@sterlingz Trying LaunchBar now. I don't use many of the advanced features of Quicksilver, so I suspect I will prefer LaunchBar. in reply to sterlingz#
I read a lot, and much of what I read lives on the web. However, I rarely actually read documents on the web, preferring to read them offline during time away from the computer (e.g. when I’m waiting in line for something).
Instapaper and Read It Later are two services that reduce the queuing of articles for offline reading to single click actions. I happen to use Read It Later because of flexibility in apps (Instapaper focuses on iPhone), but they are both fantastic. Both offer free versions of their iPhone apps1 and paid $4.99 Pro versions that support things like HTML caching (as opposed to text-only reading). I find the pro versions to be worth every penny of their cost.
Here’s a 1-minute demonstration of me pulling an entry from my journal into Read It Later:
I’ve not found a good way to use Read It Later on my Kindle (Instapaper is supposed to have decent Kindle support), but this isn’t such a big issue because I find the iPod Touch to be more than suitable for reading articles offline. Also, the device is always with me. Instapaper also supports list sharing, which is something that might convince me to switch over, but I suspect that in practice, I’d rather just read the things that my friends tweet about because the act of explicit sharing doubles as a filter for good content.
Other apps I use also support Read It Later, including Firefox (via add-on), Google Reader and NewsRack (iPhone), Tweetie 2 (iPhone), and mobile Safari. This covers most of the applications I use to read online content, so anything I read can instantly be flagged for offline reading on another device.
If you are a consumer of web articles, you absolutely need to get on one of these services. They’re both free, so there’s no excuse not to do so!
@uwWestmorland Awesome, Stuart. I want to plan a trip for the aurora, but have been put off by being at the trough of the 22 year cycle. in reply to uwWestmorland#
Arrived safely in Manado with all my bags. Biggest hurdle is over! #
It's great when you live in a time when you can accidentally download the wrong 11 gigabyte archive and have it not be a big deal. #
RT @sterlingz: New pin code lock is very welcome feature in @dropbox 1.1. @evernote – can you add this to your iPhone app already? #
I'm still averaging around 80MB/s transfer rate to and from my Netgear ReadyNAS Pro. Highly recommended NAS box! http://ech.cc/9YGrx5#
Is this $5 better than NetNewsWire? RT @sterlingz: Newsrack – finally an iPhone RSS Reader that's actually usable: http://zum.bz/ajkFre#
@sterlingz OK. I'm sold. I use ReadItLater, Delicious, Twitter and Bit.ly APIs, and it will be welcome to have that all in an RSS reader. in reply to sterlingz#
Test from Newsrack: Laptop storage and workflow – Wetpixel :: Underwater Photography … http://ech.cc/df583B#
Eric Cheng’s stock video footage / show reel of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in clear water off the coast of Dominica (central Caribbean). Includes footage of Scar, the famous resident 10-year old male sperm whale in the “Group of 7″ pod. Whales from the “Group of 7″ and the “Utensils Group” are both included.
Footage shot with a Canon 5D Mark II digital SLR in High Definition 1080p, H.264 @ 40Mbps.
X-Rite hosts a neat color IQ test in which you arrange color tiles in hue order. I scored a 3, with errors in the part of the spectrum right on the green side of blue-green.
@ggoodale Found a cheaper skin place: uniqueskins. But I am trying to get Gelaskins to take me as an artist. Who knows if they will. in reply to ggoodale#
I'm performing with the Stanford Symphonic Chorus in Memorial Church @ Stanford next Fri/Sat, Feb 26 and 27 at 8pm. http://ech.cc/9PHEDE#
We've announced the winners of the Our World Underwater 2010 photo and video competition http://bit.ly/9GRI7U#
Unfortunate: just had to use Chrome instead of Firefox for a Flash app (app had bug when running Flash 10 inside of Firefox). #
@johnolilly Sure thing. Firefox never crashed, but the Flash app behaves differently in Firefox vs Chrome. First time I've come across this. in reply to johnolilly#
Quiet Sunday alone at home. At least I'm getting some work done. #
I had never seen a Twitter chat before today. Is that USA, or something about Arizona State? http://yfrog.com/4a5gvp (@johnolilly) #
Time to retire old wetsuits. I'm going to try some new brands. #
For backups and external storage, I use a Wiebetech RTX400-SV connected to a Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P PCIe card in my Mac Pro, which is running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2. Today, I connected two new 2TB SATA drives and tried to create a RAID 1 (mirrored) volume with 256K block size (for video). My Mac Pro immediately kernel panicked.
Upon rebooting, I discovered that if I connected either of the drives in the RAID 1 volume, my Mac would immediately kernel panic. Not good.
To recover, I had to connect the drives using a second Wiebetech enclosure to another machine, an iMac, which uses a Firewire interface to the drives. I re-partitioned the two drives and created a RAID 1 volume with the default 32K block size, and all is working now.
UPDATE: Note that I could successfully create a RAID 1 volume with 256K block size on the iMac via Firewire, but it resulted in a kernel panic as soon as I plugged the drives into the Mac Pro via eSATA. A RAID 1 with 128 block size seems to work fine, and is what I have settled on using.
Video footage of bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas) in murky water
I had to put this together for a submission to a production company, so I thought I’d post it here. Despite all the time I’ve spent in the water with sharks, I’ve only had bull shark encounters a handful of times. I was once rammed by one in mid-water, which was very exciting, but most of my encounters have involved me holding my breath trying to get close to them.
The exceptions were encounters at Beqa Lagoon in Fiji, and at Walker’s Cay in the Bahamas, which were prolonged and close. This footage is all from Walker’s Cay, where the water can get quite murky when stirred up. It was shot in 2006 with a Sony Z1u HDV camcorder in a Light & Motion Bluefin underwater housing and was one of the first times I took a video camera into the water.
Andy Biggs in my place after his appearance on View from the Bay
Photographer Andy Biggs was on The View from the Bay (ABC7) today talking about his African safari expeditions and giving tips about photography. The 3-minute clip is online at the View’s webpage (or you can see it embedded in this post (click through)).
I’ve been on safari with Andy in Tanzania, and it was a fantastic (and photographically productive) trip — highly recommended. (read more »)
"Adobe promises faster Flash on Macs" In the future, my quadcore Mac Pro may b able to play Flash video w/o stuttering. http://bit.ly/dsQc42#
Switching to Zoom H4n instead of Edirol R-09 to take advantage of phantom-powered XLR inputs. Need to start doing interviews on the road. #
USPS change of address online broken. Requires credit card with old address as billing address? Can't zone property as live AND work? #fail#
Tea with Jesse Lichtenstein, who is here interviewing notable social media and infrastructure companies. #
@gfmorris I can't travel with that, unfortunately. My lav mics take batteries as well, so I should be able to bypass phantom when using them in reply to gfmorris#
Aperture 3 announced! Face recognition, GPS, brushes, presets, slideshows. Hope it has "do not corrupt library" feature http://bit.ly/bxobrZ#
One important thing glossed over by Aperture 3 announcements: video and audio support. This is huge for asset management. #
Does anyone know whether Aperture 3 supports XMP sync? (Not just import) #
Great post, Sterling! RT @sterlingz My first impressions of … Apple Aperture are up over at Wetpixel: http://zum.bz/cuiVVZ#
@sterlingz I'm going be on Blackberry only until more options appear. Will probably go iPod Touch, in the meantime. in reply to sterlingz#
@sterlingz @andybiggs The reason I'm going Elgato is that I've been delivering 1080p H264 @ 12Mbps. Even transcoding on new MBP takes ages. in reply to sterlingz#
NGOs: please spell my name right when you ask me for free images. #
Abstract mushroom leather coral in Papua New Guinea
Happy Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year, and President’s Day weekend! I’m in Southern California visiting family, and will be back in the Bay Area on Monday.
I consider myself to be an active conservationist. I regularly donate time, photographs, and money to the conservation organizations I have relationships with, and I give images away to other organizations when I feel that the donation will have a positive effect. Of course, there is a limit to the amount of time I can spend giving away my work. If I give away too many, I not only compromise my own ability to continue to photograph wildlife, but I also contribute to making it difficult for hard-earned images of any kind to have value in the marketplace.
Over the past two days, I’ve had a rather unpleasant exchange with a guy I will refer to as Wayne out in Maui. I am not going to post his full name nor his affiliation unless he continues to antagonize me. (read more »)
Excellent condition. Screen perfect (covered with screen protector as soon as it was taken out of the box). Original box, manuals, and AC charger / USB cable. Box has UPC cut out for original rebate application. Originally purchased in November, 2009. Selling because I am sticking with my Blackberry.
TSA employees should come to Dominica for pat down and bag search technique. Very thorough! #
@lightroomblog Sean -checkbox for removing all non-essential interfaces would be a great. want to use for trip reports and single galleries. in reply to lightroomblog#
Dominica: hey, might as well do a second security check in case we spontaneously sprouted something dangerous while in the waiting area. #
The entire plane load was moved to a tiny holding room! We're crammed in here like sardines. This is totally bizarre. #
Overnight in San Juan. First ice cream since sailfish in Mexico. Yummm… #
"Politica de Devolucion" sounds so much better that "Return Policy". #
Hung out with @andybiggs last night. Was great to see him! Also met @heygrover and Tom Jow. #
Tony Wu and I have had a few articles appear in the UK press over the last couple of days, and while it is always fantastic to get news out to the general public, I’ve been extremely disappointed by what seems to be a growing global sentiment equating Japanese people to whaling.
Our article in the Daily Mail about Andrew and Scar
If you look at the comments in the various articles that have appeared — or, indeed, in pretty much any article about whales in the last couple of years — many seem to be about how evil Japanese people are and about how whales need to be saved. (read more »)
Over/under image of a juvenile sperm whale in Dominica (Physeter macrocephalus)
We have finished our 6 days on the water here in Dominica, and will be headed home later on today. Our last day was probably a rather typical winter day with the whales here in Dominica, which is to say that we weren’t dropped into a social group within an hour of leaving dock (as we have been on previous days!). We went around the south part of the island into unprotected waters and watched whales from the surface, but were not really able to work with them successfully.
Tony and I were interviewed for local TV last night, and I stressed that Dominica’s healthy reefs and clear water will probably not be seen by underwater photographers (other than the cruise ship happy-snappy people) until the transportation problem here is fixed. American Eagle has strict limits on baggage, and leaving here requires an overnight in San Juan. It takes me longer to get to and from Dominica than it does for me to get to Bali, and even if it were possible to get dive gear and camera rig here via indirect international check-in, it might be impossible to get the gear out.
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