Function of the day: rgrep
Posted by Jorge Bernal May 08, 2008
Add this to your ~/.bashrc
rgrep ()
{
grep -rin "$*" .
}
And you get a handy grep replacement
$ rgrep function wp_head
./general-template.php:785:function wp_head() {
A secret to make money online
Posted by Jorge Bernal April 23, 2008
I’ve found at 37signals’ blog the presentation by David Heinemeier Hanson called The secret to making money online. I know it sounds like cheap unrealistic marketing, but it’s actually quite simple:
- Great application
- Price
- Profit
The second and key point is price. It may sound obvious, but if you look around the second round of the tech bubble is coming strong about free, with advertising as the only revenue model. Some have even declared the web 2.0 to be dead.
Another key point is: instead of aiming to become a billion dollar company, settle for a million, maybe even less. Solve a real problem, do what you love and charge for it
We both know some people who own more than a billion (dollars) and they’re not any the happier
By the way, with this video I’ve discovered omnisio, which lets you upload videos and synchronize them with slides. The result is great as you might see.
Mercurial is great for personal projects
Posted by Jorge Bernal April 15, 2008
First, I hope this doesn’t become a flamewar about version control, it’s just what I’ve found useful.
Sometimes I feel the need to be able to go back in time when doing small changes. I don’t want to set up an external repository, creating branches or anything like that: just plain file revision control.
Whenever I feel that need I do:
$ hg init $ hg add $ hg commit -m "Initial import"
And I’m ready to go
The only thing I have to care about is the .hgignore file, to skip logs, cache files and so on.
If I don’t need version control anymore, I just have to remove the .hg directory and everything is like it was before.
By the way, I’m working on my new personal site: stay tuned for more!
I love to hack my phone
Posted by Jorge Bernal April 03, 2008
koke@warhol:~/tmp$ sqlite3 sms.db SQLite version 3.4.0 Enter ".help" for instructions sqlite> select rowid,date,text from message where rowid = 2; 2|1206801673|arr. Habemus iPhone sqlite>
10 Tips for better candid shots
Posted by Jorge Bernal March 11, 2008
If you like this article, vote for its publishing at JPG Magazine: Candid shots
One of my favorite subjects in photography is people. Not people posing for the shot, but doing what they usually do.
The basic idea of candid photography is to make the photographer invisible in the pictures. I have some tips that might help to go stealth
1. Use Long Lens and Cropping
You should have some long lens at hand if you plan to take sneaky shots of people. But don’t try to take every picture at 200mm. Even with image stabilization, focusing can be quite difficult when people are moving.
You want to find balance here. I have a 6-megapixel camera so I can’t crop too much for JPG Magazine, but less resolution is usually fine for the web. I’ve been uploading pictures to Flickr resized to 1000px for a year.
2. Shoot from a Bar or Restaurant
Taking shots of people in the streets without being noticed can be difficult. Try a coffee with big windows and enjoy your pictures of unaware pedestrians. This is especially useful if the place is dark and the street is well lit.
3. Use High ISO
You want clear images, so you’ll have to use relatively fast shutter speeds. You also don’t want to use flash if you want to stay unnoticed. There isn’t much more to adjust, so push the ISO settings in your camera to 800 or 1600. Of course you will get some noise, but then you can try converting to B/W and see some magic happen.
Don’t obsess with quality. When you are taking pictures of moving subjects in low light conditions there’s no room for studio quality, so forget about it. This is all about capturing the moment, not every detail.
Also, you can bump the exposure afterwards in post processing. I’ve got some nice portraits that way that looked almost black at first.
4. Carry Your Camera Everywhere
You might be thinking about your camera’s weight. I know they can be heavy. I carry a DSLR with a heavy lens almost every day in my backpack. It might not be very comfortable, but sometimes it’s worth the pain. A few weeks ago, some friends called me to go to a free concert just after work. I had my camera with me and I got great pictures there. I might be starting my professional career because of this event.
Also, you can always carry a Point-and-Shoot in your pocket. They are getting really small lately.
5. See Boring Moments As Opportunities
I don’t like shopping: I find it really boring. But last time we went to Camden Market I just forgot about all the shops and used the whole afternoon to take pictures. There is a lot of human interaction in a place like this, and a lot of people. In the case of Camden there are weird people too, so you definitely can get great pictures.
6. Shoot in Museums
Museums are places where I love to shoot. You can find there every kind of people, they are often well lit and you can get great face expressions. Most people will be watching closely the exhibition, so only a few will even notice your presence.
This goes back to the last point. In our last trip to London we went to the British Museum, but I had already been there. So I tried not to complain and use the opportunity to take pictures of people.
7. Use Events in the Streets
If you happen to find someone singing in the street, some band playing, or any other kind of performance it’s a good idea to capture the show. But look around you: there will be people enjoying the moment, with great expressions in their faces to portrait.
8. Try Black and White
Black and white is not a thing of the past. Especially in low light conditions, when you have to push ISO to the maximum, noise can be a problem in color, but in B/W noise can give more emotion to the image. And with digital photography, you can always go back to color if you don’t like it.
9. Watch out for Kids
I’m sure you already knew this one. Cameras love kids. Try to find them in the streets. They are much better in groups, when they are playing. Look for the kid you have inside.
10. Take Pictures of Everything
This is one dirty trick, but it usually works. Take pictures of everything: people, furniture, plants, objects… If everybody sees you doing so they won’t find weird that you take some pictures of them (at least not so weird).
I realized this one in a conference. Since I was taking pictures of everyone -and everything- people just started to ignore me. The other dozen of photographers also helped with that.
Extra tip
As a bonus tip, when you are trying to do all the previous things, avoid having someone by your side taking a picture with flash. It has happened to me.
Remember, if you liked this article, vote for its publishing at JPG Magazine: Candid shots
Also, if you liked the pictures in the post check out my Strangers set on flickr.
What’s wrong with colors in Firefox?
Posted by Jorge Bernal March 08, 2008
I’m not the first one to realize this, but there’s something wrong with color management in Firefox. Look at the following screenshots.
This is the original picture in Aperture, with colors exactly like I wanted:
Now the same picture in Safari
And now for something completely different: Firefox
In this particular picture, I used saturation to give strength to the moment, only to find out Firefox decided to wash out my colors.
The technical story here is that our monitors can’t display every color, so we have color spaces, and Firefox ignores them. Good news is that color profiles are supported in the Firefox 3 beta, though not enabled by default. You’ll have to open about:config and switch the gfx.color_management.enabled variable to true.
Bad news is, that will only work for you. If you’re trying to show your pictures to the rest of the world, they won’t see the same colors.
To learn more about this:
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken”
Posted by Jorge Bernal February 28, 2008
I don’t know why, but lately I’ve stopped blogging. I usually don’t have enough ideas or content for a complete blog post, but mostly small things. One of those small things are quotes.
I don’t want to crowd this blog with quotes, so I’m using tumblr for that: My quotes
Some of them:
If you think you are too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.” -Betty Reese
A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships were built for.
Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it.” -Walter Chrysler
Does your company have Happiness Engineers?
Posted by Jorge Bernal January 28, 2008
The answer is probably no. We don’t have one at Warp. But the folks at automattic are looking for one. I case you don’t know who I’m talking about, these are the guys behind wordpress and akismet.
The details on this position are as following:
Happiness Engineer
Our software and services are far from perfect, and when things go wrong people aren’t shy about contacting us asking for help. We consider the support side of the user experience to be vitally important because it’s the person who interacts with our customers most and makes the biggest impression in their time of need. In fact everyone who joins Automattic, regardless of position, does support for 3 weeks. The customers range from the everyday blogger to VIPs like CNN, Flickr, and People Magazine. The job requires:
- Patience and grace.
- Excellent writing skills.
- Working knowledge of WordPress, HTML, and CSS.
It’s hard to explain how thrilled I am about the existence of a position like that, but I’ll try: it has made me hesitate. I’m one of the owners of Warp, we have recently passed our third year, we are growing, we have 20 employees and we’re close to release version 1.0 of eBox platform. I’d call this a success. But, when I read job descriptions like these, I feel the need to apply or, at least, meet these people.
I’m aware I cannot be in all places at the same time, so I have to let that one go. The good experience I get from this is collecting those details that made me want to go there and trying to make Warp a better place for all of us
Make your e-mail conversations better using happy faces
Posted by Jorge Bernal November 25, 2007
I’m sure every one who uses email frequently, has suffered more than one email discussion.
Usually you may say things in an email that you wouldn’t say in person, or reply furious about something before counting to ten. This screenshot shows my little trick:
I’m using Apple Mail with Addressbook, but most of email programs support adding pictures to your contacts.
Find a picture of every of your colleagues, or people you write most and assign it to their contact info.
Make sure he or she is smiling, or with a lovely face, or even use a picture that reminds you of the best moments you have spent with that person.
Next time you are furious with that person (no matter what the cause is) you’ll see that picture and it might help you calm down and think in positive. It works quite well for me.
