andyvanee

I’ve just picked up Gene Wolfe’s collection of short stories, “Endangered Species” for a second read. I stopped after the introduction to think about it for a while. It’s that good. ...

It’s been bugging me for a while that I didn’t understand the method behind jQuery’s function chaining. So I built the smallest functional version of it. I call it aQuery (for andy, or awesome). ...

Developing native apps is a pain. Yes, you have the luxury of fixed screen dimensions and access to hardware features that may not be available elsewhere, but when you’re done, you have an app that only works on one platform. ...

School has started and I’ve been very busy with projects, but haven’t had time to write. And in fact there’s not a lot to write about. Sure, I’ve been working on a lot of cool stuff, but the big picture hasn’t come into focus. ...

Backups and Archives are two different things. Ideally you should have a good archiving system, and your backup would be a redundant copy of that. In photography, a robust archiving system has between two and four copies of any file. These copies are: ...

I’ve been blogging a fair bit lately about metadata, archiving and dealing with the masses of information that we produce and consume today. It all comes from an idea that has been alternatively percolating and distilling in my mind. It’s the idea of stability. ...

One interesting part of the weekend photographic seminar I just got back from was the emphasis on metadata. It's important to take great photos, but it's just as important to know how you got those results. In the days of film, A photographer would keep a shooting log, recording aperature, speed, lens, etc. A decent digital camera will record all that information for you as long as you know where to look for it. ...

Just finishing up the weekend photographic seminar at the lake. Got some good shots and some good practice at composition, lighting and rhythm. ...

Data is chaotic. Our attempts to tame it are largely attempts at dehumanizing ourselves. Here’s a transcript of a piece of cardboard on my Grandfathers wall: ------------------------- | | | WALLET LIST | | ------ | | EARS | | CANE | | WATCH | | | | SWIM | | | |_________________________| Even by typing it here, I am imposing a fair bit more order than the original had. The original was written with a Sharpie and, although it was very legible, the intent and structure was difficult to parse. “List” may or may not have been the title or one of the items to remember. “Ears”, I assume, meant his hearing aid. All the items seemed like a general checklist for leaving the house until “Swim”, which makes the list seem very specific to a certain day, or day of the week. He has had this list posted by the door for quite some time. ...