Fnord.

I changed offices a few weeks ago from the second to the sixth floor. I don’t have a window, but this is the view along the hallway leading there:

View out horizontally

and looking down into the courtyard:

Down a bit, bioengineering and CE/CS

Yeah, I am lucky.

If you’re like me, you spend significant amounts of time digesting PDFs. Papers, articles, documentation and the like. On OSX, the default Preview application does a good job of displaying files, but several things from the dead-tree experience are lacking:

• I like to, if I’m really diving into a paper, mark it up: highlighter, underline, questions in the margin and scribbles galore.
• Like a printout, how would I convey notes and such to someone else? If I’ve printed it and scribbled, I can just give it to them, but if I use another program to take notes (e.g. Voodoo pad) then it’s a pain to share.

A while ago I found (via Cool OSX Apps) the solution, a free program called Skim. Here’s an example screenshot, where I’ve used most all of the annotation tools on a single page to show the possibilities:

(Click for fullsize)

As you can see, you have highlighter, box, yellow post-it, side notes, freehand doodles, elliptical mark, and lines. I’m pretty sure there’s even more I haven’t found yet.

What’s more, any annotations are saved as part of the file, (see below, I was wrong on this) so they can be shared, saved and reopened later when you’ve forgotten that key insight. S’wonderful.

Highly recommended. Consider setting it to be the default program for PDF files as I have, and spend 30 minutes learning how to use it. For me, this was one of the last real reasons to print stuff out, now vanquished. Bravo.

Update 3/28: Commenter JRF points out that I hadn’t read the Skim FAQ, which explains that the annotations are stored in extended attributes and not the file itself. This makes them more fragile and hard to send via email, svn or the like. Skim is still useful, but read the FAQ if you want to share the results.

I was browsing iPhoto and found this from our Chicago days, one day on the waterfront. Lousy 2.1Mpixel image, but I like how the composition and balance came out.

(Click for fullsize)

Good memories

Despair has a great poster about the difficulty of recognizing one’s own lack of sanity:

Yeah, that’s bonkers. However, check this out. Image is from Suunto PR:

(Click for 1280×800 or so image, original was a crazy 36MB at 7000pix wide!)

Check out the vertical below him/her, and the narrowness of the landing zone. If I had ever tried this, they’d mail my remains home in a sandwich bag. Wow.

I’m guessing that this is a brand spokesperson for Suunto and therefore survived, which impresses me even more. Somehow, ski and snowboarding isn’t as impressive as two wheels on an unyielding rock face.

Took me a while, but the album of Hong Kong pictures is finally posted! I selected about a third of the entire set, so its not as large. I also resized all the pics to a max of 1200 pixels, so they should load pretty fast. Enjoy!

The explanation is that this is the Hong Kong Watch and Clock Show, biggest in the world, been running for 25 years. It’s a great place and I hope to return someday.

Tips:

1. Buy an Octopus card in the airport. It’s 150HK but works many places – subway, tram, vending machines, airport shuttle. If you remember you can get the deposit back by returning the card at the airport before you leave; I was not so clever.
2. Buy an PCCW sim card from 7-11; there’s one in the airport. This gets you a local phone and unlimited SMS. I used my unlocked iPhone, which combined with #3 rocked.
3. In many many places, there’s WiFi from PCCW, and you can signup for a free 30-day trial if you have a local phone number! Instant WiFi in most places, including subways and many phone booths. Yeah, the phone booths have WiFi; the US has become a second-world nation in many ways.
4. Thanks to Locke Lee, I knew to hit Sam’s tailor, on Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Suit, blazer, shirts and more, and they look fantastic and were quite reasonable. Highly recommended!
5. I stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Kowloon and recommend it. Cheap, very nice, centrally located, only complaint is that WiFi is 120HK per day.
6. If you’re into vintage watches, Berne Horology in Central is magnificent.

I’ve posted about HDR before, the idea is to combine multiple exposures into a single image with a wider range of light and dark. Here’s my first attempt, using the Fuji camera, a tripod and the 1 f-stop auto bracketing. Processed in Photoshop CS3’s HDR code:

Yep, that’s my Marinemaster all right! (Click for enormous version)

Notes:

• I had to shoot in JPEG mode, as the Fuji won’t bracket in RAW mode. This reduces the quality quite a bit, and is super annoying.
• The Fuji’s bracketing is limited to +- 1 f-stop, and 2.5 or 3 would produce better results. I’ll try it by hand and see if it’s worth the trouble. Hand-setting the f stop and such is hard to do without moving the camera, and that ruins the result.

I’m still pretty happy with the result, quite professional looking in my opinion.

Click the image for or here for the pictures, a superfast 4-day trip to La Selva Biological Reserve in Costa Rica. Supercool, incredibly hot & humid, and not nearly long enough to enjoy.

Pictures from Karen and Terri:

Been remiss on albums, so here’s one for y’all – Alessandra visited, and we went to a nice park on the Point Loma. Lots of Anna pictures for the grandparents out there. Enjoy!

From HPWREN, a new set of cameras capturing 20-megapixel (!!) images of the city and view:

Wow. For those of you still in the depths of winter, feel free to click through and see the awful conditions here.