Tag Archives: photos

Photos taken by Raoul Pop

Thoughts

These modern times

We live in some interesting times, don’t we?

We’re more than happy to share private information with all kinds of strangers online, but we can’t be bothered to share our private thoughts with our spouses. Too busy for that… It’s no wonder the divorce rate keeps increasing.

We talk (a lot) but we don’t listen.

We know how to eat right, but we still eat crap.

We know how to exercise, but we’re getting flabbier and fatter.

We have access to more information than ever before, yet individually, we know less than ever. Our ability to condense the avalanche of information into knowledge is decreasing, because we’re more focused on quantity than quality. We read tons of articles every day, but we’ve lost the art of enjoying a single good article and thinking about what we’ve read.

We know exactly what we’re doing that’s hurting the environment, and instead of changing, we move our factories to developing countries, where no one cares (yet).

We can be entertained in more ways than ever thought possible. We can have incredible amounts of fun, yet most of us will admit to having little fun in their lives. Everything seems empty to some.

We know how to de-stress, but we don’t do it.

We know how to de-clutter, but we continue to accumulate more stuff.

We know how to be more efficient, but we continue to waste.

We have the manual, but we don’t RT*M.

We know when we need to grow up, but we continue to be immature just the same.

We know what meaningful work means, and we’ve heard of focusing on the task at hand, but we prefer to whittle away the hours on meaningless tasks that could be postponed or avoided.

We know we have innate abilities that make each of us special, but we don’t pursue the development of those hidden talents. Instead, we dream about what would happen if we did.

Our lives could be so much richer, individually and collectively, if we only did what we already know to be right and true.

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Thoughts

Better media width compatibility in WordPress

One thing that works against you when you want to try out new WordPress themes (and this applies for either self-hosted WP installs or for WP.com blogs) is the width of your media, like the images you upload for your blog posts. Many themes are narrower than the width you may have chosen for your images over time, and this means images will either overflow beyond the margin of the main column, crowding out the sidebar and generally making your site ugly, or be cut off, which looks a little better but still ruins the user experience.

For example, most of my posts have images posted at 640 px, 600 px or 550 px wide, and that eliminates a lot of themes for me, even though they may be very nice, because their post column is too narrow to display the images.

I have a solution to this problem.

You know how you can set the size of your photos and videos on the Media Settings page?

And did you know there’s also a media width “guideline” within each theme’s CSS settings page (at WP.com)?

That width is the maximum allowed for videos and images. My current theme, “Journalist” by Lucian Marin, allows media embeds at widths up to 720 px, which is a LOT wider than most other themes, which are still stuck at 500 px or even less, at 420 px.

All of these differences would be okay, provided the WordPress platform were to read the maximum column width of a theme and adjust the maximum image width on the fly.

In other words, instead of hard-coding the image width when they’re uploaded to a blog post, it could simply say “thumbnail”, “medium” or “large”, much like it does for the image align attributes (“left”, “center”, “none”), then figure out what the “large” size really means by looking at the theme’s width limit value.

This way, no matter what theme we may choose, images and videos will still display properly and we’d be happier. After all, they’re already doing this for video auto-embeds. As you’ll see if you look at the screenshot I’ve posted above, they say “if the width value is left blank, embeds will default to the max width of your theme.” What’s to stop them from doing the same with images?

I would also encourage Automattic, should they consider building this into a future version of WordPress, to make sure it’s backward compatible, so that no user should have to go back through all of his or her old posts and make sure all the images are set to the right width if they decide to switch themes. Perhaps they can do this with a wizard that goes through all the images and sets them to the correct width, or the new image embed code can auto-magically fix the image width for old posts.

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Thoughts

Oh, the paperwork…

You can get buried in paperwork in this modern, electronic, paperless society of ours. Bank statements, tax records, property tax statements, mortgage statements, credit card statements, store receipts, business expenses, insurance records, car records, the receipt for last Tuesday’s gadget purchase that you have to keep for two years because you also got an extended care plan, the restaurant receipt from last August’s meal with a client that you have to keep for the IRS since you’re deducting it from your taxes, etc., ad nauseam.

Can’t we have it simpler? Can’t it all be truly electronic? Can’t everyone just send us email receipts and statements instead of giving us paper ones? I like the way the Apple store does it. You buy something, you have the option of getting an email receipt. They have these neat credit card swipe machines they carry with them (they’re wireless), they check you out where you are in the store, and you get an instant receipt listing your purchase. It’s beautiful! Why can’t restaurants do this too? Why can’t the vehicle emissions and inspection stations do this? Why can’t all stores do this? Why can’t all banks and credit card companies handle everything electronically? My bank (USAA) has been doing it for years, and it works beautifully. Why can’t city and county governments do this? Why can’t mortgage companies do this?

On a larger and more important scale, why don’t hospitals and insurance companies handle EVERYTHING electronically, without any paper of any sort? If you’re a doctor and you have to file claims, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, then your secretary or claims specialist does… You have paper records for everything. Everyone has electronic systems, but very few talk to each other, and paper is still the only way to transfer information. This is pathetic. Hospital information systems ought to be able to send an electronic record of a patient consultation filed by a doctor to that doctor’s medical records system, which in turn ought to be able to process that information and send it to insurance companies electronically, who in turn ought to be able to process that claim and send an electronic notification to the doctor’s medical records system to update the claim status, then issue an electronic funds transfer to that doctor’s bank account. There should be no paper involved whatsoever, but those of us who deal with this stuff know it’s a far cry from it.

If there’s overpopulation, and we’ve got dwindling resources, and forests are being cut down at alarming rates all over the world, why do we have this constant avalanche of paper rolling toward us every month of the year, burying us under? If you’ve got multiple credit cards and bank accounts, a mortgage, a couple of cars, and a business on the side — and it’s your misfortune that the business is a medical one — you’re likely suffocating under paperwork. It’s nuts.

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Events

Would you like to give life to someone?

My wife’s cousin (her name is Estera, or Esther in English), has suffered from the effects of Hepatitis C, and is in Stage III-IV of the disease, which means her liver is pretty much shot to pieces. Doctors say she’s got to get a liver transplant this month or next month, or it’ll be too late to do an operation. You can see her and her two daughters in this photo. Estera is the third from the left, on the couch, next to her husband, Adrian.

Estera has already placed herself on a liver transplant list long ago, and has waited patiently, but time is running out. Her blood type is also rare (O1), and that makes it doubly hard to find a donor.

As you may know, the liver regenerates itself, so whatever bit you give will grow back. The bit the doctors transplant into her will, in time, and if everything goes according to plan, grow into a full-size liver. You’ll end up with an incision above your liver and the priceless knowledge that you helped a mother see her daughters grow up.

If you or someone you know is interested in doing this, please get in touch with Adrian, Estera’s husband, at adydrobota@yahoo.com. Since Estera lives in Romania, we’re looking for someone who lives in Romania or at least in Europe, so it’ll be easier for them to travel to her, but we’re not going to turn away any willing donor.

If you’re Romanian, make sure to read this post on my wife’s blog as well.

Thank you.

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Reviews

Camera preview: Nikon CoolPix S570

The Nikon CoolPix S570 digital camera is small — just about the same size as the Canon PowerShot SD780 IS camera — so it invites a comparative look. I looked at it side-by-side with the SD780 recently, and here’s what I think.

The design is good, but not as good as that of the SD780. I like the beveled lines and the metal accents, including the protruding camera strap anchor, but I think the CoolPix logo is badly placed, and ruins the clean look of the camera. Think about it, would you want your brand logo to be smaller than the line logo? It makes no sense, yet that’s what Nikon’s done. They’ve emphasized CoolPix over the trustworthy Nikon name. Canon hasn’t made this mistake. Have a look at the SD780 IS and you’ll see they know how to do this right. Another thing that bugs me is the annoying font chosen for CoolPix. Nikon, please, if you’re going to keep using CoolPix as a line name, then please use a decent font or at least make the writing smaller.

When it comes to features, there are more of them overall than on the Canon SD780 IS, but right off the bat, one can see the S570 lacks HD video capabilities. That may or may not be an important criteria for you, depending on your needs. The S70 certainly offers other wonderful selling points, such as a 5x Zoom and a very nice maximum aperture of f/2.7, not to mention that the price is about $50-75 less than that of the Canon SD780 IS.

  • 12.0 megapixels resolution
  • Ultra Thin and Compact
  • 5x Nikkor Zoom Lens
  • Bright, 2.7″ LCD
  • Scene Auto Selector
  • Smart Portrait System with Advanced Face-Priority Technology, Smile Timer, Blink Proof function, Blink Warning, Active D-lighting and the new Skin Softening function
  • 4-way Image Stabilization with Vibration Reduction, Motion Detection, High ISO (up to 3200) and Best Shot Selector
  • Quick Retouch
  • Standard Definition video recording (640 x 480 @ 30 fps)

Other differences between this camera and the Canon SD780 IS include:

  • The new Skin Softening functionality, which offers three levels of in-camera smoothing, allowing you to diminish age lines or imperfections from your subjects’ faces right in the camera
  • Lack of optical image stabilization, which is compensated by the presence of electronic Vibration Reduction and Best Shot Selector (the SD780 includes the equivalent of Motion Detection and also goes to 3200 ISO)
  • Wider field of view (28 mm equivalent vs. 33 mm equivalent on the SD780 IS)

The Nikon CoolPix S570 digital camera can be purchased from Amazon or B&H Photo.

Photos used courtesy of Nikon.

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