flickr has a top-secret formula, on par with Google’s PageRank, that ranks how interesting your pictures are. Since the top 500 appear each day on flickr.com/Explor e, they don’t want people to know the secret or they may game the system. Here are my top 10 most “interesting” pictures in suspense (reverse) order. See if you agree with flickr. #10

#9

#8

F-Spot is looking really good and sporting a much better looking website. They now support RAW files as well as XMP data. Perhaps some of their programmers can share this with the GIMP people - hint hint!

Fluxbox, one of my favorite window managers, and the one I’m using now, won a 2005 linuxquestions.org Choice award!

Fedora Core 5 release has been pushed back to 20 March.

God’s Debris, by Scott Adams, is a total mind-blow. It is, indeed, one of the most provacative philosophy books I have read in a long time. As Adams says himself, the book is not a reflection of his opinions or necessarily of anything more than nonsense. He just took the simplest answer for the philosophical questions he poses. However modestly he begins the book, it’s clear he hasn’t fooled around. The points he presents in the book on religion, the sexes, and other topics will cause you to seriously think about your beliefs and why things are the way they are on this earth. Especially poingnant is his chapter on Holy Land when we have so many groups fighting each other on account of Holy Land.

I wanted to get an idea of what the Brits thought of this whole scandal with the US allowing their ports to be run by a company owned by the country United Arab Emirates. I found a British article with an interesting side to the story. As you know, the ports used to be run by a British company. The article said that he couldn’t believe that a company based in England for over 140 years could be sold away to another country. It was, he said, one of the last vestiges of the British Empire. The former CEO was nearly outraged at this. The biggest irony in the whole situation is that the new company is owned by the state of Dubai, a former English colony. So a symbol of English colonialism was bought by a former colony. I couldn’t help but smile a little at that. That particular article didn’t have much to say about port security and Arabs. Personally, I think most of the American outrage came over the fact that the proposal came out of nowhere. Even pres Bush *claims* not to have known about it until it came out in the news even though he said he would veto any negative responses. Kinda weird for someone who was supposedly in the dark. In the end, it’ll probably pass, but his credibility has been sorely damaged. I heard the other day his approval ratings were down to 34%.

England is, well, England

Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales

United Kingdom is England, Scotland, Wales, and South Ireland.

The British Isles are England, Scotland, wales, South Ireland, North Ireland, and some other little islands.

Sure, this is mostly a technology (read linux) blog with some politics thrown in. But long-time readers know I am a religious person. Not a religous fanatic, but religious nontheless. I just wanted to take a post to express my gratitude for things that have been going so well for me. For instance, my mother’s flights to and from, and her time in, Mexico were safe. There are many other things, some of which I may be able to discuss in the future. Thank you God.

Webmonkey has run a special on the ten best flickr mashups. What is a mashup with respect to flickr? I only know of mashups as songs where different groups put their songs together to create something new such as Jay-Z and Linkin Park. Basically, since flickr has opened up their API (as has Google with most of their web stuff), users can create all kinds of neat applications based on flickr without needed permission. You may have seen on some of my Linux screenshots where I have one such application that runs through my photostream. Well, these people have all kinds really neat website they have strung up. My favorite one is the sudoku one where instead of numbers, one has to play sudoku with pictures. Putting in djotaku for the username will allow you to play as me. I will be linking to my favorites on my links on the right over the next few days. Enjoy!

#6 this photo has been wonderful for me because not only is it one of my most favorite of my recent photos, but others have agreed! In just one week it went from #99 to #6. In fact, it was originally #8 when I was writing the list of #1-5.

#7 - taking this picture gave me the creeps. What if the glass broke?

It’s amazing how much of a difference there is between the number of views of my #1 viewed photo and my #2. They then follow in groups close to each other in number. (#5-10 to follow tomorrow) #1 with 352 Views is

#2 with 246 (more than 100 less!)

#3 with 242

What GIMP needs to implement for me to stop using Adobe. (Thus saving myself and others $600+)

1. RAW Support (preferably the new standard of DNG)
2. 16bit File Editing
3. XMP Tag support
4. Panorama Tool
5. Adjustment layers

Number 1 is important for those of us who wish to capture the camera’s RAW data and then losslessly manipulate it before getting it into the image editing program. There are some plugins which do bits here and there of RAW support, but I need it to be much closer to at least Adobe CS 1. For those who, like me, do editing on nearly every photo, 16 bit files are important because each pixel holds more data and, therefore, less is lost overall with each edit. XMP tag support is important as it is the standard for applying tags, titles, and copyright notices to photos. Many agencies expect this and it also allows for pretagging of photos so that they upload to flickr with tags already in place. I was so happy when flickr finally adapted that ability. The panorama tool is alone amongst these five as just me being spoiled. There are many ways to create your own panoramas by meticulously lining up the photos and messing with the layer masks. But I don’t want that! Why? Because Photoshop almost always gets things perfectly, allowing me to do what a photographer is supposed to be able to do - be creative! I don’t want to fiddle endlessly to get a panorama to work or it’s not fun for me. Endless tweaking is ok when I’m programming, but it frustrates me to no end with photography. Finally, #5 is almost the most important feature. In Photoshop adjustment layers are layers for some of the adjustments one normally makes TO a layer. In other words, instead of tweaking the luminosity on a layer, you create a luminosity layer tweak. This does many important things. First of all, it is non-destructive to the photo. If, twenty steps down the line, you don’t like the effect anymore, just remove the layer. You don’t have to undo through 20 steps and lose all that you’ve done along the way. Ever since I discovered adjustment layers they completely changed the way I worked. Second, you can make adjustments to your adjustment later without having to go back through the undo stack. If you know what I’m talking about, you know how useful this is.