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# Notes
## Action cams, underwater domes: https://www.amazon.com/Diving-Trigge-Underwater-Waterproof-Accessories/dp/B08L68TJ72/r https://www.amazon.com/GEPULY-Waterproof-Housing-Underwater-Photography/dp/B08TTP2KB8
## Update for PD:
Best Password Managers
Best Merino Wool Clothes (with Adrienne)
Best Portable Hard Drives
Best Binoculars
Best Barefoot Shoes
Best Photo Printing Services
Best Action Cameras
Best Sleeping Pads
## birding update:
don'ts - dye in hummingbird feeders, bread, etc seagulls
t-shirts
bird nerd
## terms
EPC Earnings Per Click: an affiliate marketing term that refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks one of your affiliate links.
CVR Conversion Rate: a marketing metric that tells you how many users are converting on your website
AOV Average Order Value. This is an eCommerce metric that indicates the average amount a customer spends during each transaction.
GMV Gross Merchandise Volume: shows the total sales value for merchandise sold through a marketplace over a specific time frame.
CPA Cost per acquisition: financial metric that is used to measure the revenue impact of marketing campaigns
CAC Customer Acquisition Cost: see above
# Scratch
packages
18x18x18 10lbs
Last Week
Best Action Cams
Best Instax cameras
coffee day deals post
best coffee subs
prime day blurbs. not many, but a few
This week:
Best Fire tablets
Best binoculars
Rest of the blurbs, plus building best of. i assume. provided I get everyone's edited blurbs
Operating Systems Ranked by Usefulness
1) Linux
2) Nothing. Nothing is even close, which is why Linux is running the server you're reading this on to the seat back display on planes, to your ATM, to the cash register at the coffee shop.
3) Android/macOS. macOS has become so nagging even Gruber is complaining. https://daringfireball.net/2024/08/the_mac_is_a_power_tool
4) iOS
5) Windows
## APD Blurbs
#### [Instax Mini 11 for $59 ($16 off)](https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-Instax-Mini-Instant-Camera/dp/B08527W1MF)
This is a very mediocre deal. I point it out mostly to suggest you skip it and buy the [Instax Mini 12 for $77](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWNZLQ69/) instead. It's only $17 more and it has a host of features the Mini 11 doesn't. The best is the parallax correction, which means you don't have to guess where the center of the frame is for close-up subjects. What you see is what you get, which means you won't blow those selfies and potentially waste film.
#### [Sony Alpha 7R V Full-Frame Mirrorless for $3,498 ($400 off)](https://www.amazon.com/Sony-Full-Frame-Mirrorless-Interchangeable-Camera/dp/B0BKLQFFSF)
#### [LifeStraw Personal Water Filter for $10 ($9 off)](https://www.amazon.com/LifeStraw-Personal-Camping-Emergency-Preparedness/dp/B006QF3TW4/)
#### [SOG Folding Shovel for $15 ($13 off)](https://www.amazon.com/SOG-Folding-Shovel-Survival-Entrenching/dp/B0038A05X6)
https://www.wired.com/gallery/overlanding-guide
#### [Bluetti AC200L 2400W Portable Power Station for $1,300 ($500 off)](https://www.amazon.com/BLUETTI-AC200L-Expandable-Generator-Emergency/dp/B0CLGZB3L6)
www.wired.com/gallery/best-portable-power-stations
# Outdoor Gift Guide
hatchet
Local hiking guide
Black Diamond Mission MX Mitts (chris)
jefferson's bourbon: https://jeffersonsbourbon.com/whiskeys/jeffersons-ocean-bourbon/
# Darktable
Every great piece of software starts with a problem. Good software solves the problem. Great software so elegantly solves the problem we forget that it ever existed. Writing machine code was a problem. Enter the compiler. Try finding someone who remembers days when writing machine code was the only way to program.
Elegance is in the eye of the beholder of course. Everyone sees elegance in their favorite text editor, though others may not. Some see elegance in various ways of the fibonnaci sequence, or writing a Perl script in the shape of a dolphin. tk etc
If I were picking the ultimate in elegance I would pick something that might seem obscure, but borders on the magical when you really think about it. It's not just one piece of software, but a chain of things that enable you to transform something you've seen in the real world into something that exists on your screen.
For me this is Darktable. Darktable is a RAW image editor. It's in same vein as Adobe Lightroom, except that it's far more powerful, and open source to boot.
## Darktable alt
One of the great myths of free software (free as in freedom, not necessarily free as in beer) is that if it doesn't work the way you like, you can take the code, modify it to suit your needs, and go on your merry way. This is the cornerstone of the Free Software Foundations argument for why free software is better than proprietary software.
While this is technically true -- the provisions for copying, modifying, and redistributing are governed by the licence -- it ignores the social reality of programming. There is more to software than code.
The code is perhaps the least important part of a software project, particularly a large software project. All software starts with a problem. Good software solves the problem. Great software moves beyond the problem entirely. Which is to say that code must be there, but at some point in the life of a software project the code takes a back seat to the other two elements at play, the human elements, the developers and the users.
These are the two elements that determine the fate of the code (again, taking for granted that the code does in fact solve the problem).
Perhaps the oddest part of programming is that these two factors, the producers and the users often end up producing a tension that can make or break projects. In the best cases this tension drives the project forward. From what I've witnessed over the years in the free software community successful projects have great leadership, whether that's a very talented individual or a governing body of individuals. What makes a great leader is difficult to say, it seems to vary by project even.
While there are doubtless exceptions, most major project splits I've witnessed have been related to personalities within the project more than the capabilities of the code. Think LibreOffice, which spun off of OpenOffice in major part because the developers wanted a more egalitarian project structure, or NextCloud, which was forked from OwnCloud in part because, again, there were cultural differences between developers and the parent company. There are plenty of other examples. WordPress forked from b2, MariaDB from MySQL, Tenacity from Audacity.
In every case the project that ends up continuing is the one that draws in the most developers and most users.
Software without developers quickly dies. This is obvious. What's less obvious is that software without users quickly does the same. Developers need users. The relationship between the two is what makes software more than code, more human.
When we make something public a certain amount of control of that thing slips out of our hands. This is true of any writing, software, fiction, even this column will no longer be exclusively mine once it leaves my notebook. Somewhere in the process of publishing it, I fade to the background, the reader comes to the foreground. What matters now isn't what I have written, but what you think of it. These words don't belong to you in a legal sense, but in reading it you become part of a conversation and any community that surrounds it.
The same is true in software development. Whether you are a contributor or just use a piece of software, you are a part of the conversation that surrounds that software and whatever community may exist around it.
As with communities in other parts of life, some software communities are better than others.
Therefore, you have
certain responsibilities if you distribute copies of the software, or if
you modify it: responsibilities to respect the freedom of others
The conversation and community look different depending on where you stand.
Personally I don't use software made by people I don't like.
Somehow segue to darktable.
One of the more interesting examples of software
like undeveloped film : a raw image can be developed by software in a non-destructive manner to reach a complete image that resolves every pixel in a RGB color space. Raw development adjustments include color, contrast, bjurightness and details recovery. A given raw dataset can be developed many times with different adjustments.
When Adobe moved Lightroom to a subscription model I started looking around for alternatives. I tried a few, but quickly settled on Darktable. It has the same conceptualization as Lightroom -- it is both a photo file manager and RAW image editor -- that it felt familiar even if all the tools and workflow was different.
According to the commits in Git, Darktable came on the scene in 2009. I believe I first began using it in 2010.
So it is literally the raw recording of the camera sensor. It's not even an image file as I understand it, it's just raw data, which is why you need a program like darktable or lightroom to display it.
4:32 PM
But it gives you more editing capabilities than jpg.
4:32 PM
And ultimately, when you're done tweaking it, you export it to JPG, TIFF, PNG or whatever
4:33 PM
Jason Kehe
ahh, fun
4:34 PM
so the column is about darktable - which is obviously NOT a programming language - but, sure, it kinda sorta qualifies as machine-speak in a way, right?
4:36 PM
sng
yeah because I really want to talk about the user/programmer relationship. the give and take (give and build?) that happens there. I'm just going to use darktable as an example of how that works in both good and bad ways.
# Blurbs
## Urbz Window Planter
If space is really tight, consider the Urbz Window Planter, a small plastic orb that moves your counter top garden to the wall. It will attach, and I mean really, solidly attach, to any non-porous surface—windows, a tile backsplash, bathroom mirror, and more. I even got it to stick to some very smoothly varnished wood, although that wasn't quite as secure. These little planting pods are also easy to move around if you change your mind about where to put them.
There's a water catcher so your floor won't get wet, and I was also pleasantly surprised to find that window plantings did not fry in summer or suffer from our cold winter. You will want to stick with sun-loving plants if you put the Urbz in a window, but I had great results growing everything from succulents to herbs in the course of my testing. —Scott Gilbertson
## Root Pouch
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