Brandymore Castle

Over the last year, I have been working with Tom Davenport, and Matthew Davenport, of Hollin Farms , a small, independent but very internet-savvy family farm to start a social networking service Farm Foody (farmfoody.org), which uses the Internet to connect local farmers like you to their customers. I would like to summarize why we believe social networking is so important to the survival of the independent family farm, by posting a revised version of our flyer. A social network is a group of people who become connected to each other through their activities and interests within an online community. We believe a social network increases the economic leverage for the independent farm. A catalog of farms or an individual farm homepage does not change the economic leverage of a farm. A social network gives the small farm leverage in a big agriculture economy in two principle ways: by helping farmers manage their relationships with customers more efficiently and generating a more effectiv...

What is SpeakUp? A simple text markup language for transcripts of moving pictures or video including a markup language for annotation. Overview When the Folkstreams project required a way for filmmakers and academic contributors to create and maintain transcripts for films archived and presented through the Folkstreams website, I decided a simple text markup language would be the best way to store and edit transcripts. A transcript markup language defines a series of conventions for formatting text (like wiki text) that is translated into HTML for display. SpeakUp was designed to contain as much content as possible and preserve meaning for possible later conversion into XML or database form. Speakup is implemented as a module extending the PEAR Text_Wiki library text translation module and is a requirement for use. Although development and documentation of Speakup is not complete, it is in use on the Folkstreams website. Speakup, including all markup, code and documentation is ope...

I have frequently been the victim of an author who has a peculiar view on a subject, which turns out to be simply wrongheaded. Because there are so many books, many more than I could purchase, read and evaluate and because turning to book reviewers is frequently just as useless as getting the wrong view from the wrong authority, the value of books can be somewhat limited. It is easy to assume that if a book is published on a subject that the author knows something about the subject, that they are well versed in he subject and The problem is that authors have differing views on the same subject. They have different backgrounds and differ about what is important to them. Writers generally write what they know. This is a problem, for example, in music. Thirty years ago you could not find a book explaining harmonic theory behind blues harmony. Oh, there may have been a few academic or musicological works on the subject, but generally, if you wanted to learn blues harmony you had to listen ...

Thanks to the persistence of Olympus users asking for the feature, and the hard work of the Olympus engineers, the E-510 (as well as the E-3) now supports Image Stabilization for non-Four Thirds lenses, including legacy optics. I had to try it out on one of my favorite lenses, the Minolta MD 45mm f/2.0 mounted to my Olympus E-510 using JR's MD to 4/3 adapter. Here are the results of my first test shot. As you can see, it works very well. Shot f/8 @ 1/13 second hand-held in dark room (under horrible compact fluorescent lighting...sorry for the terrible white balance). I just brought the out of camera JPEGs into Photoshop for a quick auto contrast and white balance. To use IS on a such an ancient lens, you have to enter the focal length into a setting under the IS menu. To adjust the setting, hold down the exposure compensation button and turn the adjustment wheel until the correct focal length appears in the window. You're ready to shoot. My testing shows the EXIF data does not ...

In an article, Facebook-Based Applications Can Now Run on Other Sites by Heather Havenstein, Computerworld, IDG, quoting Sean Aune, said ...Aune added that Facebook is looking to stem criticism for being like a "walled garden in that things do go in but nothing comes out. However, the social network is like a walled garden, which is part of its power to filter information through the social network instead of searching. This could balkanize the web, turn it inward, where people only see content posted by friends and their subscribed networks. But this is not too different from how people use email discussion groups, forums and other social media. The web could end up becoming a network of social networks and search engines might become either dinosaurs or searching the social networks instead of indexing random public web pages. The social network empowers users to manage who can see their content instead of just loosing it on the web. This can reduce the power of serendipitous f...

While developing Farmfoody.org over the last two years, we came up with a very similar idea independently. Most sites designed to help you connect with local organic farms require you to search for farms in your locality. We thought that people shouldn't have to search for stuff, it should come to them automatically. If you wanted some fresh locally grown tomatoes, instead of searching for for farms with tomatoes for sale in your area, you just check your own profile to see if any of the local farms you are friends with have tomatoes available. This might be through a map of local farms or through a farm you have become friends with that has put out a bulletin about their new tomato crop. We decided that a social network was the best way to direct and filter this information to the consumer and enable them to make unexpected connections with farms and foodies whose interests and connections mirror their own. People could explore the world of small independent farms and the ...

Happy chickens in bucolic countryside on carton of eggs. -sek, Jan 2008

One of my favorite software applications is SecondCopy , from a local Fairfax, Virginia software developer. It is not only useful but perhaps one of the most well designed user interfaces to backup or mirroring software I have seen. Strike that. It is one of the most easy to use, easy to comprehend interfaces I have ever encountered in software. Moreover, it does one vital thing every application for backup and copy should do: clearly tell the user in plain language what it is going to do before it does it. SecondCopy, when creating a profile, tells you exactly what files will be affected and where the source and destination will be located in very clear and complete language. Some of my favorite things about SecondCopy: * Only copies what is new or has changed. * Can generate a report of all files to be copied or deleted on source and destination disks before copying. * Easy to use with clear explanations of what a copy operation will do. Creates a warning tailored to your choices, ex...

It can be frustrating for new LightZone users to figure out how to optimize the preview window when editing photographs. On each side of the preview window are panes for displaying navigation and the tool stack, which by default, does not leave much room for previewing the image. Most users want the image to fill the screen as much as possible while editing. After all, isn't that why we paid good money for those huge monitors? On the left border of the Tools pane is a "grip" denoted by a dot pattern. Grab this with the mouse and drag it to resize the editing window. Generally, you will not be able to create much room this way, because the panel stops at the tool stack. You can only take space from the preview area. To get the most out of your screen, the best approach is to close one or more of the panes. To close the Tools pane, click on the Tools tab. To restore click the tab again. Do the same with the Styles tab and the whole window is devoted to the preview window. T...

This is one of the best explanations of how aperture, shutter speed and sensitivity (ISO) interact to create exposure. http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/the_basics I highly recommend it. The metaphor of a see-saw makes the concept easy to grasp and memorable. The article and illustrations provide solid answers to common questions new photographers ask, such as is there a relation between ISO and shutter speed or aperture? The answer is yes, and the see-saw makes this relationship visible. It is helpful to keep in mind that a combination of shutter and aperture (at a given sensitivity) has equivalents resulting in the same light value. So that 1/125 sec. @ f/11 is the same exposure as 1/250 sec. @ f/8. Increase the shutter speed by one stop and you need to decrease the aperture number by one stop (the aperture opens wider to allow more light in to balance the reduced time the shutter is open). The calculation can be verified at Bob's exposure calculator . Select 14 for existing light, IS...

One of the significant issues that came up over the history of Folkstreams was the concern by small, independent filmmakers that people could download their films freely once they were "streamed" on our website. We chose to answer that concern by only allowing high resolution, full length films to be streamed and not downloaded. At the time, it was fairly difficult to save video being streamed over one of the major streaming media systems, Real or Microsoft (which we never supported because of its closed, proprietary nature). Our mandate as a non-profit organization is the widest possible dissemination of our catalog of films and to archive and present content in as open a way as possible. This is why we still offer video only through the antiquated method of a standalone media player and not the fancy embedded Flash player popularized by YouTube. In the beginning, we did not want to frighten off filmmakers from contributing films to our project. I hope that as filmmakers be...

The reason consumer electronic makers are scrambling to end the format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray is simply because watching movies delivered by spinning discs is a rapidly obsolescing technology. The days of the CD and DVD are coming to an end. The emergence of static memory devices that can store the large amounts of data required for audio, video and images spells the end of storage devices that require physically moving parts. The growth of video on demand over the network and in general networked storage means the only reason the HD format discs are hanging on to viability is that it remains expensive and difficult to send the HD quality video over a network or store it on static memory. The window is closing and unless the DVD makers get their act together their technology will be eclipsed and no one will need a "Blu-ray" player to play anything and those DVD can be used for coasters. Archives may be one of the best customers for storage systems that spin discs to s...

Unfolding an origami swan-- the grain of paper on the hand. -sek, Jan 2008

My print from Mokuhankan.com arrived from Japan today. It is a lovely print of turtles swimming carved by David Bull and printed by one of the Mokuhankan printers. You can see it at Hokusai Turtles - Swimming Turtles (I do not want to link to the image). Dave is one of the few people left in the world making wood block prints in the Japanese tradition. You can learn more about him from his woodblock.com website, which is one of the earliest examples of a website showing an artist's works and how they were made (although Dave does not consider himself and artist, but a crafts person). The carving of the water is graceful. I love the way the turtle on the surface, the water pattern and the gray shadow of the submerged turtle create layers. I thought it was more effective than the original carp print (from the lovely Hanga Treasure Chest series) the water design was borrowed from. The visual idea was adapted from Hokusai Manga , the famous collection of books of 'sketches' an...

I had my first experience today with the emerging new technology of labeling individual food items in order to make them traceable. I opened a carton of eggs from Giant supermarket, picked up an egg to make my breakfast (my favorite fried egg and leftover dressing concoction). I noticed some writing in gold ink on my egg. An Easter Egg! WooHoo! And then I thought, perhaps it is one of those crazy internet projects where people put writing on things directing you to a website to track it. Like a garden gnome, a book or paper money. No, it said "Best by" and a date. Aha, I recognized it was an example of the individual food item labeling I'd heard about and seen demonstrated on television. I checked the egg carton hoping there would be some information about the code on the egg. Yes, the carton directed me to a a website where I could find out more information about my egg: giantfreshegg.com (or you can go to http://www.myfreshegg.com/ for other brands), which redirects to ...

I recently received an email from a well known supplier of enterprise level file sharing systems. In the enterprise, one solution is called "Wide Area File Services." There are other ad hoc solutions. I am not very familiar with the details of these systems, but understand some of the problems they are trying to solve. A corporation wants fast, simple access to files from any location (anywhere their employees are) while ensuring users access a single version of the file. The are also concerned about the cost of bandwidth (which ensuring a single file helps, since users normally waste resources copying and forwarding a file or video by email, since they are really not aware of the consequences and generally do not understand they can just forward a link). Although these issues are important, I think this perspective misunderstands the most important need today. Corporations are always concerned about meeting requirements, being defensive, controlling their population of emplo...