Theoretical Limits to Data Enjoyment

Tom has a great article here. How much can we produce and consume effectively? Our computers and infrastructure are getting to a stage where it’s possible to collect or produce or hoard more personal data and media than we can consume easily!
He took 10,000 photos over the last three and a half years. I take that many photos in 6 months! How can I possibly look over those photos? It’s impossible isn’t it?
I’ve already reached the saturation point with traditional media – buy the Sunday Times on Sunday and maybe, just maybe, I’ll have it read by the following Sunday. I bought €25 worth of books last weekend. This adds to the pile of dead-trees I have yet to read. It’s stressful knowing there’s so much stuff to consume!
I don’t have the same problem with music – fire up xmms, load a playlist and there you go. I can listen to it while I work. It’s when the consumption of my personal data requires my primary attention that I get into trouble!
Maybe I should take that longed for holiday soon just to catch up on my reading?

The knot conspiracy – Wedding Photos From Both Sides

Oooh, this thread on dpreview caused a bit of a stir! Someone linked to this thread on theknot.com about copying the photos taken by professional wedding photographers. For some reason the original message is gone but the replies remain.
In this digital world it’s getting harder and harder to prevent copyright theft, and even though the bride and groom paid for the photos, the copyright for those photos remains with the photographer.
Woofy had a good idea – offer images on CD, perhaps only low-res ones with prints later. Darrell refined the idea by suggesting he provide one or two high quality prints as well.
At the end of theknot.com thread several photographers joined in, no doubt from dpreview, their comments are worth reading, if only to remind oneself that for these people, photography is a business.
These linked generated a great conversation on , which did *not* descend into puns or jokes, although that could be because Kevin wasn’t around..

GIMP Intelligent Background Eraser

Here’s a plugin for the GIMP that you can use to erase the background.. a Windows .exe is included, and source but not a Makefile. My interest doesn’t extend to writing one unfortunately!

Gimp plugin for “intelligent Erasor”
replace the selection with an interpollated background. If the border along the selection is relatively continuous, i.e. a pretty boring background, then this tool works as an erasor.