Obviously I post very rarely. It’s been a long time since my last one.
So, in an effort to actually make this something that gets updated, I’m changing the way I’m going to do it. I’m not going to wait until I have an essay to write, because it’s clear that doesn’t work. Instead, I’m going to write short posts.
This is the first one. Hope you enjoyed it. Read it again if you like.
Damo
I read this article in CNet that talks about functionality we can expect in the next generation of digital cameras. Cameras that have face detection are already fairly standard, and Sony’s new Smile Shutter feature takes it one step further; only taking the photo when someone in the shot smiles.
The CNet article mentions a few technologies that are interesting, and the combination of these technologies look to make the sorting of photos a lot more hassle-free. There’s the possibility of automatic tagging of photos for location based on GPS, tagging of people based on face recognition, and tagging of emotion based on expression detection. I could imagine extensions into analysis of the scenery in the background too. Identification of buildings in the background, perhaps the weather, whether it’s night or day, indoors or outdoors, etc. The possibilities seem nearly endless given the gigantic leaps that are being made in computerized pattern recognition.
Give it a few years, and automatic tagging could mean that you could just snap away wherever and whenever you are, transfer the photos when you get home, and have some basic photo software organise and name your photos for you. Without doing any manual tagging yourself, you might be able to search for all photos of John in Paris, or even photos of at least three people with the Eiffel Tower behind them when it’s raining and at least one person is looking miserable.
The prevalence of digital cameras and the plummeting price of solid-state memory has basically meant that you don’t need to wait for a great shot to start snapping away. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for people to come back from a two week holiday with over 1000 photos. Who wants to sort through all of that?
I’m heading to Thailand soon and I’m likely to come back with more photos than I know what to do with. With the technology where it is right now, I’ll be spending a very long time sorting through those photos when I get back. I’m dreading it even now. I’m sure I’ll long for the day when I don’t have to do it at all.
Damo
Hi all,
I’m ignoring the fact that “all” is probably nobody by the way.
So I’m back online with a new web host and am planning some changes to some things around here. The first change will be the link to “Home” just on the right there – it still goes to my old domain… Any ideas on how to fix it? I can’t find it anywhere in any of the WordPress or theme files – I’ve checked sidebar.php about 14 times…
So anyway, this new host will be hosting some new projects coming up. I moved from my old one mainly because they didn’t support Ruby on Rails, and this one does. I’m a bit excited about RoR at the moment, even though I haven’t touched any code – just pages of a book. I’ll probably blog on that when I do.
That’s enough for now, keep an eye out – the blog may not be the default damianbrady.com.au page for long…
-Damo “Visa” Brady
I’ve been a bit slack with the posts lately. I could make excuses citing lack of time, but truthfully I haven’t found much that I’ve been motivated to write about.
While I honestly haven’t had a great deal of free time (self-inflicted, as always), I guess I’ve just been consumed with things happening around me rather than things I’ve read about or have heard about.
Perhaps the lack of motivation comes down to recent disappointing events. Last weekend my volleyball team lost two finals, knocking us out of contention for the flag despite finishing third after round games. St. Kilda, the AFL team I support, suffered a similar fate at the hands of the Melbourne Demons (and injury) and the Broncos (NRL) lost the first of their finals to the Dragons. On top of that, Australia lost two legends in Steve Irwin and Peter Brock.
So all in all, it’s been a fairly ordinary last week or so. I’m sure I’ll be motivated enough to put something decent up here soon.
Damo “Visa” Brady
Well I’m sure you’ve heard already but Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, has died while filming an underwater documentary off Port Douglas.
Steve did a lot for environmental causes and will surely be missed.
Damo
Steve Pavlina has written a post called 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. Apart from being slightly abrasive in parts (which I have to believe is intentional), it’s a really good read and makes you question the wisdom of what you do for 8 or so hours of each weekday.
I’ve heard most of these arguments before – mainly while studying at QUT’s Brisbane Graduate School of Business (BSGB). I distinctly remember listening to a lecture from the current Executive in Residence Anne McKevitt (fairly famous in the UK) where she raised many of these points herself.
The main idea is a simple one: why work for someone else, trading time for money, when you can earn passive income 24/7 by providing a service that runs itself? The advent of the Internet has made this a much more feasible prospect. If you can set up a web-based service that generates income without needing much maintenance, then you’re on your way. It’s been done countless times (think eBay, Amazon, del.icio.us, etc.), so you can’t say it’s not possible.
I remember reading about a teenager who set up a website called The Million Dollar Homepage. Really simple idea. The site consists of a single image, 1000×1000 pixels in size. You can put whatever you want in this image (within reason obviously), with links, and it’ll cost you $1 per pixel. It’s win-win: Businesses can advertise very cheaply, and this guy gets a million dollars. It was sold out when I looked a minute ago.
Of course, to make this passive-income thing work, you need an idea and sufficient commitment to see it through. Every time I hear about this kind of thing I think, “Yeah, awesome! I’m going to do that!”. And every time, it fades into obscurity. I’ve still got some ideas, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never been excited enough to see them through. One day…
And no, I’m not telling you what my ideas are 
.
Damo
A few things I found thanks to Simon…
Coding Horror: Separating Programming Sheep from Programming Goats: Talks about an article about some research done into why some people just can’t write code. I remember when I was doing IT at uni, there were people who would not have been able to write a strip of code to save their lives. It seems that you either get it or you don’t. My subconscious is telling me, “I knew that”…
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments: This research basically gives legitimacy to the idea that stupid people think they’re smart, and smart people lack confidence. I love this article. My subconscious is now banging on the side of my head and asking why I never listen to it.
The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager: This is really interesting. Basically it just shows you the change in popularity of baby names. It’s a nice flash interface, and you can see some definite trends in names. Interesting ones to search for are Prince, Hillary, and Brandon. See if you can pick the reasons for the shape of those graphs…
Damo
Some of these are hard… Well, not the easy ones, but if you go to the very difficult section they get hard very quickly.
http://www.folj.com/folj.com/puzzles/
Damo
Welcome to damianbrady.com!
Obviously there’s not much on here at the moment, but hopefully there will be.
I had an attempt at keeping a blog up to date not that long ago, but for the few of you who actually read a post or two, you’ll realise that I got slack. The main reason is because I was using blogger, and then found WordPress and decided to upgrade. I really didn’t feel like continually updating a site that I was about to destroy…
Anyway, feel free to email me, post comments, and kinda do whatever. The email address for stuff related to this blog is blog@damianbrady.com.
Damo “Visa” Brady