2025-06-01 03:00:00
This considers how two modern cameras handle a difficult color challenge, illustrated by photos of a perfect rose and a piano.
We moved into our former place in January 1997 and, that summer, discovered the property included this slender little rose that only had a couple blossoms every year, but they were perfection, beautifully shaped and in a unique shade of red I’d never seen anywhere else (and still haven’t). Having no idea of its species, we’ve always called it “our perfect rose”.
So when we moved last year, we took the rose with us. It seems to like the new joint, has a blossom out and two more on the way and it’s still May.
I was looking at it this morning and it occurred to me that its color might be an interesting challenge to the two fine cameras I use regularly, namely a Google Pixel 7 and a Fujifilm X-T5.
First the pictures.
First of all, let’s agree that this comparison is horribly flawed. To start with, by the time the pixels have made it from the camera to your screen, they’ve been through Lightroom, possibly a social-media-software uploader and renderer, and then your browser (or mobile app) and screen contribute their opinions. Thus the colors are likely to vary a lot depending where you are and what you’re using.
Also, it’s hard to get really comparable shots out of the Pixel and Fuji; their lenses and processors and underlying architectures are really different. I was going to disclose the reported shutter speeds, aperture, and ISO values, but they are so totally non-comparable that I decided that’d be actively harmful. I’ll just say that I tried to let each do its best.
I post-processed both, but limited that to cropping; nothing about the color or exposure was touched.
And having said all that, I think the exercise retains interest.
The Pixel is above, the Fuji below.
The Pixel is wrong. The Fuji is… not bad. The blossom’s actual color, to my eye, has a little more orange than I see in the photo; but only a little. The Pixel subtracts the orange and introduces a suggestion of violet that the blossom, to my eye, entirely lacks.
Also, the Pixel is artificially sharpening up the petals; in reality, the contrast was low and the shading nuanced; just as presented by the X-T5.
Is the Pixel’s rendering a consequence of whatever its sensor is? Or of the copious amount of processing that contributes to Google’s widely-admired (by me too) “computational photography”? I certainly have no idea. And in fact, most of the pictures I share come from my Android because the best camera (this is always true) is the one you have with you. For example…
That same evening we te took in a concert put on by the local Chopin Society featuring 89-year-old Mikhail Voskresensky, who plays really fast and loud in an old super-romantic style, just the thing for the music: Very decent Beethoven and Mozart, kind of aimless Grieg, and the highlight, a lovely take on Chopin’s Op. 58 Sonata, then a Nocturne in the encores.
Anyhow, I think the Camera I Had With Me did fine. This is Vancouver’s oldest still-standing building, Christ Church Cathedral, an exquisite space for the eyes and ears.
Maybe I’ll do a bit more conscious color-correction on the Pixel shots in future (although I didn’t on the piano). Doesn’t mean it’s not a great camera.
2025-05-31 03:00:00
This is just a gripe about two differently bad ways to compare numbers. They share a good alternative.
Typically sloppy usages: “AI increases productivity by an order of magnitude”, “Revenue from recorded music is orders of magnitude smaller than back in the Eighties”.
Everyone reading this probably already knows that “order of magnitude” has a precise meeting: Multiply or divide by ten. But clearly, the people who write news stories and marketing spiels either don’t, or are consciously using the idioms to lie. In particular, they are trying to say “more than” or “less than” in a dramatic and impressive-sounding way.
Consider that first example. It is saying that AI delivers a ten-times gain in productivity. If they’d actually said “ten times” people would be more inclined to ask “What units?” and “How did you measure?” This phrase makes me think that its author is probably lying.
The second example is even more pernicious. Since “orders” is plural, they are claiming at least two orders of magnitude, i.e. that revenue is down by at least a factor of a hundred. The difference between two, three, and four orders of magnitude is huge! I’d probably argue that the phrase “orders of magnitude” should probably never be used. In this case, I highly doubt that the speaker has any data, and that they’re just trying to say that the revenue is down really a lot.
The solution is simple: Say “by a factor of ten” or “ten times as high” or “at least 100 times less.” Assuming your claim is valid, it will be easily understood; Almost everyone has a decent intuitive understanding of what a ten-times or hundred-times difference feels like.
What actually got me started reading this was reading a claim that some business’s “revenue increased by 250%.” Let’s see. If the revenue were one million and it increased by 10%, it’d be 1.1 million. If it increased by 100% it’d be two million. 200% is three million. So what they meant by 250% is that the revenue increased by a factor of 3.5. It is so much easier to understand “3.5 times” than 250%. Furthermore, I bet a lot of people intuitively feel that 250% means “2.5 times”, which is just wrong.
I think quoting percentages is clear and useful for values less than 100. There is nothing wrong with talking about a 20% increase or 75% decrease.
So, same solution: For percentages past 100, don’t use them, just say “by a factor of X”. Once again, people have an instant (and usually correct) gut feel for what a 3.5-times increase feels like.
Not just living, but also squirmy and slutty, open to both one-night stands and permanent relationships with neologisms no matter how ugly and imports from other dialects no matter how sketchy. Which is to say, there’s nothing I can do to keep “orders of magnitude” from being used to mean “really a lot”.
In fact, it’s only a problem when you’re trying to communicate a numeric difference. But that’s an important application of human language.
Perversely, I guess you could argue that these bad idioms are useful in helping you detect statements that are probably either ignorant or just lies. Anyhow, now you know that when I hear them, I hear patterns that make me inclined to disbelieve. And I bet I’m not the only one.
2025-05-28 03:00:00
Last weekend we were at our cabin on Keats Island and I came away with two cottage-life pictures I wanted to write about. To write cheery stuff actually, a rare pleasure in these dark days. Both have a story but this first one’s simple.
It’s just an ordinary evergreen tree, not very tall, nothing special about it. But spring’s here! So at the end of each branch there’s a space where the needles are new and shout their youth in light green, a fragile color as compared to the soberly rich shade of the middle-aged needles further up the branch. Probably a metaphor for something complicated but I just see a tree getting on with the springtime business of tree-ness. Good on it.
Now a longer story. What happened was, we had an extra-low tide. Tide is a big deal, we get 17 vertical feet at the extremes which can cause problems for boats and docks and if you happen to arrive with several days worth of supplies at low tide well it sucks to be you, because you’re gonna be toting everything up that much further.
But I digress.
I went for a walk at low tide because you see things that are usually mostly hidden. For example these starfish, also known as sea stars or even “asteroids”. No, really, check that link.
These are Pisaster ochraceus, distinguished by that pleasing violet color. Have a close look. They’re intertidal creatures hiding from the unaccustomed light and air. The important thing is that they’re more or less whole, which is to say free of wasting disease, of which there’s been a major epizootic in recent years. The disease isn’t subtle, it makes their arms melt away into purple goo; extremely gross.
Plus, ecologies being what they are, there are downstream effects. Sea stars predate on sea urchins only recently they haven’t been because wasting disease. It turns out that sea urchins eat the kelp that baby shrimp trying to grow up hide in. Fewer stars, more urchins, less prawns. Which means that the commercial prawn-fishers have been coming up empty and going out of business.
Anyhow, seeing a cluster of disease-free stars is nice, whether you’re in the seafood business or you just like the stars for their own sake, as I do.
And light-green needles too. And spring. Enjoy it while you can.
2025-05-18 03:00:00
Back in the early days of this blog, I used to publish posts that were mostly pictures of plants and flowers. Especially at this time of year. I think that energy went into Twitter and now the Fediverse, where it’s so easy to take a picture and post it right then. This week I got a freshly-repaired lens back from the shop and it put me in the mood to get closer to the botanical frenzy springing at us from every direction. Herewith four pix of two plants, one of a lens, and more thoughts on a familiar subject: Whether it’s better to repair than to replace.
The lens, by the way, was the Fuji 18-55 oops its full name is “Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS” so there. I bought it in March of 2013 and have dropped it more than once; I have retained 1,432 pictures taken with it over the years. But then it stopped working.
More words on that later, but pictures first.
Roses have names and this one is “Fru Dagmar Hastrup”. Therein lies a tale that is either 17 or 111 years old, depending how you count.
That’s the first picture I took with the repaired 18-55. But then I thought that the whole point of this basic zoom was that you could go wide to capture big things, or long to, well, zoom in on ’em. So I went out front.
Trees have names too. This is a White Ash (Fraxinus americana).
That ash is one of the trees lining the street we moved onto last October. It’s really immense. Let’s crank the zoom way wide and capture most of it. Doing this reveals really great geometry, so let’s subtract the color and add some Silver Efex sizzle.
And then we can zoom back in.
The closer you get, the better it looks.
I like quirky fast compact opinionated prime lenses just as much as the next photoenthusiast, but a decent midrange zoom is just too useful not to have. I could’ve replaced this one with the new-fangled 16-50mm (also has a long complicated Real Name but never mind). That would cost me extra money and might not even be better.
So I poked around on the Fujifilm Web site and sure enough, they offer repair as a service, just package it up and mail it in. A few days after doing so I got an email quoting me a price and asking for approval, which I granted. You shouldn’t be surprised. Way back in 2011 I wrote Worth Fixing, the exemplar of which was a different excellent lens. And then just last year my Parable of the Sofa touched a few nerves. So I didn’t think very hard about it.
But then I realized I hadn’t even checked whether the price was reasonable. So I turned to eBay and, well, I could have got a mint-condition secondhand 18-55 for less than the cost of the repair. Not a lot less, but still. Oh well. If it were reasonable to care about a single instance of a standardized commercial product, I’d care about that lens.
Anyhow, it works pretty well. Showing its age, but still reasonably handsome.
If I live long enough maybe I’ll take another thousand pictures with it.
2025-05-07 03:00:00
Another Long Links curation (the 31st!); substantial pieces of reading (or watching or listening) that you probably don’t have time to take in all of. One or two, though, might reward your attention. The usual assortmet of music, geekery, and cosmology.
Ever heard of Laniakea? Neither had I. It’s another word for our home. This 7-minute YouTube video, The Laniakea supercluster of galaxies, is graceful and mind-expanding; highly recommended.
I was sitting up late, pretty mellow, and Google Music showed me Atom Heart Mother as performed by Japanese tribute band Pink Floyd Trips in 2016. It woke me right up. The Japanese hipsters are instrumentally strong and use keyboards for the acoustic-instrument parts. As for the vocals, well, oh my oh my, definitely next level. Good stuff.
Which made me curious about other performances of Atom Heart Mother. Turns out Floyd recorded a 1971 performance, coincidentally also from Japan. Obviously they’re competent, but they’re just four guys and the keyboard technology was way more primitive back then, so they’re at a disadvantage compared to the resources they had in the studio when recording it, or the technology deployed by PF Trips. A lot of the visuals are of the band arriving in and traveling around Japan, which is OK, because their performances in that era weren’t particularly visually stimulating. Credit to Gilmour for hitting the high notes (albeit with some electronic assist), but once again, he’s at a disadvantage compared to the awesome Japanese singers.
The arrangement is quite a bit different than the original on the eponymous album and, within the limitations, is good.
There’s a cover by “Pussycherry et l'Orchestre d'harmonie de Clermont Ferrand” which I abandoned partway through because the orchestra just isn’t very good, clumsy and harsh. There is a nice little cello part though.
I will link to Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France with Ron Geesin at the Théâtre du Chatelet, once again an orchestra and a chorus. Ron Geesin is the guy that Floyd hired to do all the orchestral stuff after they’d recorded the basic tracks and went on tour. The orchestra is way better but disappointingly equals neither Geesin’s original take on the album, nor PF Trips. And the big choir doesn’t come close to those two Japanese women.
There are more performances out there, but I had to go to bed.
I have written quite a bit about C2PA and other “Content Authenticity” initiative stuff. Recently, Adobe has released more C2PA-enabling technology in several of its apps, and there is commentary from DPReview and PetaPixel.
If you care about this stuff like I do you’ll probably enjoy reading both pieces. But they (mostly) miss what I think is the key
point. The biggest value offered by this stuff is establishing provenance, and the most important place to establish provenance
is on social media. Knowing that a pic on Fedi or Bluesky was first uploaded by @[email protected] is highly
useful in helping people decide whether it’s real or not, and would not require a major technical leap from any social-media
provider.
Joan Westerberg’s excellent Notes from the Exit: Why I Left the Attention Economy is full of passion and truth. About stepping off the “content creator” treadmill, she writes:
Leaving the attention economy doesn’t mean vanishing. It means choosing to matter to fewer people, more deeply. It means owning the means of distribution. It means publishing like a human being instead of a content mill. It means you stop playing to the house odds and start building your own game.
And the rest is just as good. For what it’s worth, what she’s describing is what I’ve been trying to do in this space for the last 22 years.
I don’t read The Register often enough; for many years they’ve been full of fresh takes and exhibited a usefully belligerant attitude. For example, When even Microsoft can’t understand its own Outlook, big tech is stuck in a swamp of its own making excoriates “the weird cruft that happens when Microsoft saws bits of our limbs off to make us fit into whatever profit center is running strategy today.” I actually disagree with some of the article, as I often do with the Reg, but I enjoyed reading it anyhow.
Time to put on your hardcore-geek hat and look at Formally verified cloud-scale authorization. A group at AWS replaced a single heavily-used API call implementation with formally-verified code, simultaneously making it smaller and faster. The link is to an overview piece, the full PDF is here.
These are not lightweight technologies and this was not a cheap project; a lot of people did a lot of work and these are not junior people. But when what you’re working on is this call:
Answer evaluate(List<Policy> ps, Request r)
That call is at the core of where AWS grants or denies access by anything to anything, and it’s called more than a billion times a second. That’s billion with a B. A situation where this kind of investment isn’t merely justifiable, it’s a no-brainer. I know a couple of the people on the authors list, and I offer all of them my congratulations. Strong work!
Regular readers know that my family has a boat, that we’re trying to decarbonize our lives, and that the boat has been the hardest part of that.
So, I pay close attention to the latest news from the electric-boat scene. I’m starting to gain confidence that in a single-digit number of years we’ll be using a quieter, cheaper, more environmentally praiseworthy vessel of some sort. So, in case anybody has similar worries, here are snapshots from a few of the more viable electric-boat startups: Navier, Torqueedo, X Shore, Candela. Also, here’s Aqua superPower, which wants to bring dockside charging to the electric-boat scene. And finally, here is the Electric boats category from the always-useful electrek electric-mobility site.
2025-05-05 03:00:00
Ever been to a soccer match and noticed the “supporters section”, full of waving flags and drummers and wild enthusiasm? Last Saturday I went there. And marched in their parade, even. I could claim it was anthropology research. But maybe it’s just old guys wanna have fun. Which I did. Not sure if I will again.
For the rest of this piece, when I say “football” I mean fútbol as in soccer, because that‘s what everyone on the scene says.
MLS (for Major League Soccer) is the top-level football league in North America and, depending on whose ratings you believe, the 9th or 10th strongest league in the world. At the moment, the Vancouver Whitecaps are the strongest team in MLS and are ranked #2 in Concacaf which means North and Central America. That may become #1 if they win the win the Champions Cup Final on June 1st in Mexico City, against #1-ranked Cruz Azul.
Who knows if these good times will last, but for the moment it means they’re kind of a big deal here my home town. I’ve become a fan, because the Whitecaps are fun to watch.
Mind you, the team is for sale and will probably be snapped up by a Yankee billionaire and relocated to Topeka or somewhere.
When I’ve been to Whitecaps games, I’ve always been entertained by the raucous energy coming out of the supporters section. They provide a background roar, shout co-ordinated insults at the other team and referee, have a drum section, and feature a waving forest of flags.
They’re called that because they inhabit the south end of the stadium, behind the goal that the Whitecaps attack in the second half. Check out the Web site.
So, on a manic impulse, I joined up. It didn’t cost much and got me a big-ass scarf with “Vancouver” on one side and “Southsiders” on the other. Which I picked up, along with a shiny new membership card, at Dublin Calling, a perfectly decent sports bar where the membership card gets you a discount. I have to say that the Southsiders people were friendly, efficient, and welcoming.
My son was happy to come along; we got to the bar long enough before The Parade to have a beer and perfectly OK bar food at what, especially with the discount, seemed a fair price. This matters because the food and beer at the stadium is exorbitantly priced slop.
Since I wrote this, I learned that there are actually four different fan clubs. Especially, check out Vancouver Sisters.
Forty-five minutes before game time, the fans leave Dublin Calling a couple hundred strong and march to the stadium, chanting dopey chants and singing dopey songs and generally having good clean fun. It’s a family affair.
Note: Kid on Dad’s shoulders. Flags. Spectators, and here’s a thing: When you’re in a loud cheerful parade, everybody smiles at you. Well, except for the drivers stuck at an intersection. Since we’re Canadian we’re polite, so we stop the parade at red lights. Sometimes, anyhow.
Note: Maximal fan. Scarves held aloft (this happens a lot). Blue smoke. Flags in Whitecaps blue and Canada red.
When the parade gets to the stadium, everyone kneels.
After a bit, someone starts a slow quiet chant, then they wind it up and up until everyone explodes to their feet and leaps around madly. That’s all then, time to pile into the stadium.
Which is visually impressive on with the lid open on a sunny day.
The Southsiders section is General Admission, pick anywhere to stand. And I mean stand, there’s no sitting down while the game’s on. There’s a big flag propped up every half-dozen seats or so you can grab and wave when the spirit moves you. There’s a guy on a podium down at the front, facing the crowd, and he co-ordinates the cheers and songs and… He. Never. Stops.
The Southsiders gleefully howl in joy at every good Whitecaps move and with rage at every adverse whistle, have stylized moves like for example whenever the opposing keeper launches a big goal kick everyone yells “You fat bastard!” No, I don’t know why.
When I shared that I was going to do this crazy thing people wondered if it was safe, would I get vomited on, was there violence, and so on. In the event it was perfectly civilized as long as you don’t mind a lot of noise and shouting. The beer-drinking was steady but I didn’t see anyone who seemed the worse for the wear. If it weren’t for all the colorful obscenity I’d be comfy bringing a kid along.
The crowd is a little whiter than usual for Vancouver, mostly pretty young, male dominated, with a visible gay faction. Nothing special.
Note: Canadian and rainbow flags. Somewhat obstructed view; the flags are out because a goal has just been scored, you can see the smoke from the fireworks. The opposing goal is a long way away.
What’s good: Being right on top of any goals scored at the near end. The surges of shared emotion concerning the action in the game.
What’s bad: Standing all through the game. The action at the other end is too far away. The songs and chants grow wearing after a while.
The Whitecaps won, which was nice. It was pretty close, actually, against a team that shouldn’t be much of a threat. But then, most of Vancouver’s best players were out in healing-from-injury or resting-from-overwork mode. I still think the Whitecaps are substandard at working the ball through the middle of the field, but do well at both ends; At the moment the stats seem to say that they’re on top both at scoring and preventing goals.
Here’s what to do if you’re watching a game: If either Pedro Vite (#45) or Jayden Nelson (#7) get the ball, lean in and focus. Both those guys are lightning in a bottle. I’ve enjoyed watching this team more than any other Vancouver sports franchise ever. It probably can’t last.
Will I do the Southsiders section again? Maybe. I suspect I’ll enjoy their energy and edge just as much even when I’m not in the section, plus I’ll get to sit down. We’ll see.
My son and I had fun. No regrets.