More Zonkyness

Is The Print Better Than The Web?

Nov 212018

To use a phrase I’m known for: Well yes and no.

There is no doubt that nothing quite beats a huge (A3+ or bigger) print of a really good quality landscape photo. But what proportion of all the world’s photographic images are available as such a print?

Probably a tiny minority; in the past when everyone shot film, most photographs were developed as prints 5″ x 7″ (or similar) which is tiny. At an estimate of 200dpi (which is probably an overestimate of the average print), that is a resolution of 1000×1400.

Now if I compare this with pictures shown on the web on my laptop screen (a rather titchy display), it compares rather favourably – a Facebook photo capture was around 850×850, and an EyeEm photo capture was 1212×900. Of course it is also shown somewhat larger – the laptop screen is 13″.

And on my main desktop screen (a very elderly 30″ screen), the same two pictures are far bigger and in a higher resolution – 1028×1300 for the Facebook picture and 1200×1800 for the EyeEm photo.

And finally, on my 4K TV, the photos are shown at only 2/3 (very roughly) the resolution of the original files, and far, far bigger.

Yes the display pitch is less, but the size is far larger and unless you have spectacular close vision you will be able to see far more detail with a screen image than an average print.

Again I say that this is not intended to bash prints – in many ways a photographic image isn’t finalised until it has been printed, and a really good print at 300dpi and printed large is far better than the screen. Even before you consider the permanence of the print.

This is aimed at those who snootily dismiss low-end photographic equipment as being “only suitable for the web” – they may be surprised that even relatively modest screens can compare favourably with 5×7 prints and it won’t be long before even larger prints are surpassed.

Why Does Tilde (~) Mean Home In Linux?

Computing, History No Responses »

Nov 112018

If you use the Unix or Linux command-line, you may very well wonder about the origins of some of the “special” characters. One of those is tilde (~) which is expanded by the shell into “home” :-

✓ mike@Michelin» echo $HOME                        
/home/mike
✓ mike@Michelin» echo ~
/home/mike
✓ mike@Michelin» echo ~root
/root

This doesn’t of course work in general; just in the shell.

But where did this usage originate?

As it turns out, it was the markings on the keyboard of the ADM3A terminal :-

If you used Unix in the late 1970s/1980s, you may very well have used the ADM3A terminal and it seems that those who added the tilde feature to the Unix shell were amongst the users.

They Died For Our Freedom …

General, History, Politics No Responses »

Nov 112018

Horseshit.

Normally on Remembrance Sunday, we remember the dead of all wars, but this one is a bit special – it’s exactly 100 years since the armistice that brought the killing phase of World War 1 to an end.

Around this time of year, there are often those who make grand pronouncements about the sacrifices those who fought made for some sort of noble goal – our freedom, the freedom of others, to defeat a really nasty enemy.

None of that applies to those who died in WW1; some of them may have felt they were fighting for their freedom (and our freedom). But they really fought because of the 19th century equivalent of mutually assured destruction.

Austria-Hungary and Serbia fought because of the assassination of a single man. Russia fought to support Serbia; France fought to support Russia; Britain fought to support France. And Germany fought because Austria-Hungary fought. This gross over-simplification happened remarkably quickly – all of the declarations of war occurred within about 1½ weeks.

So no great debate on the aims and goals of what the war was for then.

So whilst those who fought (and in some cases died) in wars are not to blame, not all wars were fought for good reasons – certainly you’ll find it hard to find a good reason for WWI.

Terrorism: The Alt-Right’s Hypocrisy

Politics No Responses »

Nov 062018

There are plenty of arguments to be had with the alt-right, beginning and ending with their repulsive policies. But this post isn’t about that …

I’ve encountered the alt-right’s asinine attitude to political violence before, but I was reminded about it again this morning (obviously some time ago now) with the news that someone had sent George Soros, Hilary Clinton, John Brennan, and Barack Obama a letter bomb.

Yet the alt-right would have us believe that it is the left who are more violent than the right. And both less violent than the Islamic extremists. Turns out that is not the case.

It is not even close. The overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in the US are perpetrated by the right-wing.

The bête noire of the far right – Antifa? Never murdered anyone; in fact if you add together all of the political murders of the far left in the US over the last 10 years it adds up to 7-8 people (2-3%) whereas the far right are responsible for over 70% of the murders.

Antifa may well be more violent than you are happy with; their purpose after all is to tackle the fascists, which isn’t done without breaking heads. But they don’t intentionally go out to murder people – so don’t be taken in by the main stream media’s portrayal of them when they are busy denying that the far right (and “alt right”) are far more violent.

Even more than those evil islamic terrorists (who are pretty much the same as the far right).

Denying your own side’s violent actions and pretending it is the other side who are really the violent ones is classic gaslighting.