Not to sound like a total corporate shill but Photoshop CS4 is the utter shizz. Isn’t this neat? I dropped a few photos in, Photoshop did all the stitching. Took almost no time.
Tahoe Panorama
Author: lux
Dead Brand Walking
Not unexpected, but still….a bummer:
G.M. said Tuesday that it would phase out its Saturn brand by 2012.
My 2000 Saturn SL2 will hit 100,000 miles sometime in the next month or so. It’s not the most stylish car on the road, but it is reliable as hell and gets +30 MPG on the highway even now.
The “different kind of car company” hasn’t been different for a while now, so in a way it’s not much of a loss to GM. Still, I can’t help but think that GM really screwed the pooch with this brand. Saturns are/were great cars with a loyal following. Now they’re a footnote.
I’d been planning to drive my Saturn until it dropped, but this news makes me want to make sure that day doesn’t come for a good long time. Time to call the mechanic and schedule a tune-up. 🙂
Living History
I was struck by something when looking at some website analytics today.
This is the image I was looking at:
Notice that line of dots across the middle of the state? That’s no accident. Here’s why:
The Erie Canal was a major engineering feat of the early 1800s and was a key transport path for over 100 years, although after around 1950 or so it stopped being a significant part of the commercial transportation network.
It’s kind of neat that the canal is visible from cyberspace.
On Google Latitude and Why I'm Not Going There
Despite my relative blogging paucity of late, I’m hardly shy about putting personal information online. Between Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and the various other odds and ends of my online life, I’ve shared quite a lot over the years. And given my relatively unique name, it’s quite easy to enter a few search strings and pull up an awful lot of detail about me. But Google Latitude is a bridge too far, even for me.
Here’s a quick rundown on Latitude, if it hasn’t gotten onto your radar screen yet:
This Wednesday, Google launched its much-anticipated location-tracking service, Latitude, which uses the GPS hardware found in smart phones (such as Google Android phones and BlackBerry and Windows Mobile handsets) to pinpoint your position on a map and share that information with your friends.
I’ve always been very clear about the line between personal and private information, and Latitude falls smack into the camp of private, as far as I’m concerned. It’s too much sharing. I’ll happily tell the world what I just ordered at Starbucks, but that doesn’t mean I want to world along for the ride as I walk down the street carrying my coffee.
Perhaps it’s a gender thing, but I find the concept that someone can know exactly where I am at all times to be more than a little scary. My work address is easy to find, but being able to see exactly when or what direction I’m walking in when I leave at night? Sorry, but that’s just not something I want the world to get access to.
And yes, I know that by default Latitude wouldn’t share anything unless I actively made the choice to share it, and yes, I know that simply by having a GPS-enabled phone, the phone company already can track me if they want to. If some government agency forces AT&T to give up my personal data, there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it. But if a person I’ve shared my location with gets their phone stolen, their account hacked, or even decides to sell access to their account, that’s a different story.
I know not everyone feels this way, and they’re perfectly happy checking in on Brightkite or adding everyone in their address book to Latitude. I wish them well. But that’s a party I’m just not joining.
What I Really Want To Know
How the hell did Rod Blagojevich get elected in the first place?
Was he always this crazy or did it happen more recently?
Things You Don't See Every Day
The 140 character version: Guests around table, chair on an angle, butt met chair, solid wood chair broke into pieces, butt met floor. Hilarity ensued.
It’s really, really busted. So now we have 5 chairs (that might or might not also fall apart) and one pile of kindling. Nobody was hurt and the chair wasn’t all that expensive, but 9 years later finding a replacement that matches will be a challenge.
Other than that, though, it was a good weekend.