Light L16 packs 16 cameras into a single portable body

Light L16 packs 16 cameras into a single portable body

Wow. People have been talking about “computational photography” for years now, where images from multiple lenses and sensors are combined in software to make an image that’s greater than the sum of its parts. To some extent it’s an obvious next step; a traditional lens is just a physical mechanism for performing mathematical transforms on light beams, after all. So why not do the math in software instead? But it’s still impressive to see someone do the tough engineering work to make it a reality. I’ll be very interested to see what this camera’s capable of when examples start getting into photographers’ hands.

Update: Stu Maschwitz has a good writeup on the L16 over at Prolost, along with a much better description of what computational photography entails for photographers.

The Verge’s Web Sucks

The Verge’s Web Sucks

I’ve recently thrown up my hands in frustration and added NoScript to my arsenal of browser extensions. It’s pretty much the nuclear option of content-blocking tools, and it’s not for the faint of heart. It breaks a number of sites by default and requires quite a bit of configuration to get the content you want while blocking what you don’t.

But it’s pretty amazing how fast the web is when you’re not loading megabyte upon megabyte of advertising and tracking Javascript. Not to mention quiet; I don’t think I’ve seen a single popover or autoplaying video ad since I installed it. And it’s been enlightening seeing exactly how many remoras each page can have attached to it; as the article points out some popular sites can number in the dozens.

There’s been a lot of talk online lately about how the open web is too slow (for publishing text articles!) and new tools like Facebook Instant and Apple News are necessary remedies. But the web is slow because sites like the Verge have spent years piling every tracking and ad script they can find into their pages without a thought for the performance ramifications. I’m hopeful that the upcoming iOS9, with its built-in support for content blockers, will make blocking this stuff easy enough and widespread enough that it forces publishers to rethink some of their more obnoxious practices.

Stormclouds

This one’s a repeat for anybody who follows me on Facebook, but I liked it well enough to repost here. It’s probably noteworthy that this was taken and edited entirely on my phone; Lightroom Mobile puts an impressive amount of processing power right in your pocket.

Stormclouds
Stormclouds Indiana, 2015

How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

How Well Can You Hear Audio Quality?

This is worth going through for anybody interested in music or audio quality. I didn’t do particularly well, but how I failed was more interesting than the score I got. I was able to pick out the low-bitrate 128kbps MP3 in every case (except for the Jay-Z track, which I’ll come back to). But distinguishing between the 320kbps MP3 and the uncompressed file was basically luck of the draw. For all the press that uncompressed music has been getting lately, high-bitrate lossy compression is still very good.

I’m also interested in why the Jay-Z track foiled me (twice in a row!) while I was able to reliably pick out, say, the Suzanne Vega track without listening to more than a couple seconds of each sample. Part of it, I’m sure, is my lack of familiarity with hip-hop as a genre and Jay-Z in particular. But the processed vocals and electronic background sounds also seem to make it tougher to discern the effects of the compression. I’d be interested if other people have similar problems with it or any of the other tracks.

Anyway, I ran the test over my lunch hour on my work computer, which I’m sure does not have the best audio output. I’ll have to try it on a nicer sound system at home when I get a chance.

Know that you were doing wrong

Know that you were doing wrong

Dr. Drang weighs in on the “Deflate-gate” scandal. On the surface this may seem like yet another post dogpiling on the Patriots, but it’s really a good example of the difference between real engineering and the armchair engineering that appears in news articles and online comments. Given the gallons of ink spilled on this topic, I love his description of the problem as “fun”, “simple”, and most of all “low-stakes”.