New Camera - Canon 6D - full sensor, higher noise free ISO, GPS, and wifi

Besides smartphone cameras I have a Canon SD100 w GPS and Canon 7D, but after my Canon SD100 had a warranty covered failure losing a GPS tagging camera made me think about the Canon 6D which I decided to go ahead and get.  The main reasons I wanted it were the full sensor vs. an APS-C, higher noise free ISO settings (there is not a built in flash in a 6D), GPS built in, and wifi.

One of the things a full sensor makes it easier to do is blur the background to focus on a subject which the flowers in the center pop.

Higher ISO let's me crank things up. I shot this at ISO 1600, 80mm, f/7.1, 1/250.  Focus isn't quite there as this was only the 2nd day with the camera. :-)

The high ISO also means the video in low light works really well.  Here is a screen scrape from a video.

GPS tagging is really handy and I believed in the feature 13 years ago when we tried to tell people at Microsoft that GPS tagging of images would be big.  Huhh??? was most the reaction back then.

What's the wifi good for?  Wireless remote control of the camera from an iPhone or Android phone.

This is when I am so glad I am able to use MarsEdit.  Writing this blog post would be totally painful in a browser app.

Not at Uptime Symposium again

Last year I skipped Uptime Symposium given I didn't qualify for a media pass.  So, I went to the hotel bar and met 99% of the people I would want to meet and was there for 12 hours straight.  This year I am in the bay area during uptime, but didn't have the time I had last year.

Uptime just announced there are free exhibit passes, so I thought I could see if there was anything interesting.

LAST CHANCE FOR A FREE PASS TO THE DATA CENTER PROFESSIONAL INDUSTRY EVENT OF THE YEAR!
 
Register for a FREE EXPO PASS!

But, I looked at the times when the expo was open, and I am busy during all those times.

Exposition Hall will be available to you during these hours:

• Mon 5-7pm
• Tues 12-2:30pm, 5:30-7:30pm
• Wed 12:30-3pm

So, I'll be passing on Uptime's free offer for the exposition.  The good thing is I'll be able to talk to some friends who are at the show and hear if they found anything interesting.

One guy I recently met is presenting and he is a newbie to Uptime, I'll be curious what he has to say about the conference and his observations.  Sometimes it is good to get a new set of eyes to look at what is going on.

Centurylink Outage, is human the cause of the outage? no known time for resolution

Centurylink Internet Network is down.

Where are your five nines now? CenturyLink’s nationwide outage affects millions

by Stacey Higginbotham

2 HOURS AGO

3 Comments

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SUMMARY:

If you’re one of CenturyLink’s 5.8 million broadband subscribers, you’re probably fuming because your service is out. Such nationwide outages are rare, but that doesn’t make it any less painful for customers.

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Most cloud outages are caused by human errors, and there is a good chance that CenturyLink's outage is also caused by human errors in the ability to detect the problem, identify the source of the problem, and possibly taking the wrong action to fix the problem.  we'll see what the postmortem reveals as the events that caused the outage.

Woohoo, workaround for Squarespace API issue, back blogging in Marsedit

I've been down from my writing because I haven't been able to use MarsEdit. 

“Nearly every word I write for Daring Fireball is published through MarsEdit.”John Gruber, Daring Fireball

MarsEdit 3

Desktop blog editing for the Mac.

The best way to write, preview, and publish your blog.

I've been trading e-mail with Daniel Jalkut, ex-Apple guy like me, but we didn't overlap our time in Cupertino to see if he sees the same problems as I do.  He just go a workaround that fixed the problem.

To get things back to normal for your Squarespace 5 blog in MarsEdit:

1. Open MarsEdit
2. Click the Squarespace blog icon in MarsEdit’s main window.
3. Select Blog -> Edit Settings from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
4. Change the API Endpoint URL to:

   http://five.squarespace.com/process/service/PostInterceptor

   Note that this is identical to the malfunctioning URL with the exception that the “www.” has changed to “five.”

5. Close the settings window and Refresh the blog to confirm it works.

This works and I am back using an Editor.  Yeh!!!

I like Squarespace, and I agree with Daniel, I don't think they understood the severity of the problem.

I have been in touch with Squarespace through their regular support channels, but they do not yet seem to appreciate the scope of the problem. In short: all Squarespace customers who rely upon 3rd party editors (not just MarsEdit) that use the API interface, were met with a sudden stoppage of functionality for those apps. The reason? The API through which the service is provided suddenly stopped working and instead redirects to a 404 landing page:

Words of Wisdom from a Funny CEO, Twitter's Dick Costolo U of Mich Commencement speech

Telling the facts is boring and not something many spend time sharing.  Telling good stories, being funny, and entertained is what gets people to share.  

Here is Twitter’s Dick Costolo commencement speech at U of Mich from Youtube.

If you don’t want to watch the whole video which is 17 minutes long go to this part where Dick discusses a conversation with Steve Carrell and one of the more important points Dick tries to make. http://youtu.be/oqRPesTumlA?t=11m47s

13:15there are no expectations there’s no scripts

13:19when you’re doing well what you love to do

13:23you become resilient

13:25because that’s the habit you create for yourself

13:28you create a habit