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Question: How many files are listed in your "Purchased" playlist in iTunes?

My Answer: 1329 items. I've probably purchased about 1000 of those (the rest were free). 1000 items tied to FairPlay is a little freaky to me, but at the same time, I don't foresee a future (not in the next five years anyway) that doesn't include using a Mac, so…

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Are you in favor of making the metric system the "default" measurement system in the U.S.?

My Answer: Hell yeah. Nothing about the English system is "good" except for the familiarity of it. Plus, it'll be hella neat to drive "100" legally and my TV will suddenly seem larger ((Other men may enjoy the, uhh, "enlargement" of other "gadgets" in their life.)) - 152.4cm! Jokes aside, the metric system makes sense while the English system relies on all sorts of unusual numbers - 12, 5280, 4, 6, 3. Did you know that an acre is an area of land equal to one chain (four rods) by one furlong? Huh? I studied chemistry in school, and believe me - base 10 is where it's at. Heck, I wish I could have gotten my Touareg in the metric system.

Thanks to /. for the question.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I was bored, so I spent 30 minutes tonight setting up a little shot I've seen done a few different times. It's the old "drop something in a wine glass" shot. I chose a cherry in a glass filled with green dyed water (no sense wasting actual mint liqueur).

Shot was taken with the Canon 50mm/1.8 lens. I used only two Alien Bee strobes in this shot, both angled at about 45° off to the left and right (you can see their reflections). The left strobe had a 20° honeycomb filter on it and was aimed more at the front of the glass, while the other (with the full 80° spread) was aimed towards the background (setup shot in the extended entry).

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I've posted a new page, my "wishlist," to the top of the page here. It's mainly a wishlist of my tech goodies and gadgets. I'll update the list as things go along, but for now, there it is.

What's on your wishlist?

Today I added the strobe lights to my small little soft box setup. The results I got before weren't very good. These results were much better, even though the old ones look just fine after trips through Aperture and Photoshop.

Today I added the strobes to the setup. I had pretty long exposure times last time with the camera stopped down far too much, and shadows and color casting and all manner of problems. The strobes let me fix a lot of those.

Here's the current setup:

(Note: the halogen lamp is just in its storage spot. I doubt I'll ever use it for photos.)

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This is the first - and may be the only - post I make on Net Neutrality. I've not followed the issue like I should, but having done a little reading on it, my opinions are pretty clear.

More here. Thanks Jesper.

P.S. When I'd finished watching this video on YouTube, "House Rejects Net Neutrality" was one of the suggested/related videos. WTF does Hugh Laurie have to do with the Internet?

Two things, both related to The Sand Trap…

One: If you're getting this feed and you expect to be getting a feed for The Sand Trap, please update your feeds to point to http://thesandtrap.com/feed/. I mistakenly copied a .htaccess file that redirected users - some permanently - here to my personal blog.

Two: I've resolved (or worked around) this issue in WordPress at TST by redirecting wp-feed.php files to /feed/format/ (i.e. wp-rss2.php now redirects users to feed/rss2/). I believe the bug is fixed in WordPress 2.1.

1 + 2 = 6! Yes, in the RDF, even math is different.

I don't care about the Apple TV. I don't care about the iPhone because I can't get Cingular service in my area (and, from what I have heard, they suck lately anyway). And how does "approval takes two months" mean June anyway?

But mainly I'm deeply disapopinted that the iPhone is available only for Cingular. Apple could have sold a trillion unlocked units at $799 or probably even $999. Instead, people are somehow forced to decide between what I agree is a truly revolutionary phone and their current contracts, network coverage, etc.? Why not let all the carriers sell the phones and sell them with their own contract extensions or agreements. Why go "long-term" and "exclusive" with Cingular???

Deeply disappointed.

Total out of pocket today and, aside from iWork and iLife upgrades I suspect we'll see soon, total in the next six months: $0.

This one is a simple poll, folks.

No doubt as I have time to absorb it myself, I'll post more.

A few days ago I wrote about a problem I was having with WP-Cache. Cache files were being generated, but none of them were ever being used and the cache counter in the admin area never incremented (it always read zero).

After going through my plugins one at a time, the problem was oddly with External Links (version 2.2). Upgrading to version 2.4 did not solve the problem, but turning off the "Process all outgoing links" option did - now WP-Cache works properly. Turn the feature on - WP-Cache stops working. Turn it off and WP-Cache begins working again.

This bug was witnessed to occur with External Links 2.2 and WP-Cache 2.0.19-2.0.21 and EL 2.4 and WP-C 2.0.21.

Last night I took what I would consider my first attempts at semi-decent planned photos. I took photographs of some golf shoes in the smaller soft box I'd constructed. There were several problems with the actual shoot:

1. Three 60W bulbs - and a flash - are apparently not quite enough light, somehow. I suspect my implementation was inappropriate, but perhaps I just need stronger work lights.
2. I didn't cover up enough of the wooden table. I think the brownish/reddish tint I got on the white parts of the shoe was due to the brownish/reddish tint of the table. Next time, use more poster board.
3. I shot black and white shoes on a white background. I want white backgrounds (because the site they'll eventually be posted to is white), but perhaps for black and white golf shoes, a green or tan background would have been better.
4. The sheets I bought are perhaps too thick - or again the lights way too dim. perhaps I should have picked up some tracing paper instead?

I messed around with both aperture and exposure time. Two shots worked at f/20 and 0.8s, two at f/7.1 and 0.1s, and the remaining two at f/11 and 0.125s. I shot in full manual mode so I could pretty easily control the aperture and shutter speed. I used the on-camera 430ex SpeedLite to provide some fill, though most of it hit the top of the soft box (and didn't enter). I even stuck to my new 50mm/f1.8 (a bargain at $70) lens.

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It's nice to see WebKit add support for the box shadow property in CSS3. I look forward to the day when we can sit back and talk about the good ol' days when we had to build three separate images and stitch them together with clever CSS and HTML just to get a darn shadow.

My only fear is that Safari 3.0 will beat every other major browser to the punch, and the Web will be split for quite a long time until Firefox and - eventually - IE add support for some of the things that will have been in nightly builds of WebKit and released versions of Safari for months or years.

P.S. Firefox still doesn't support text-shadow?

Now that OpenDNS has fixed the "caching" issue, I'm down to one reason not to use them: the removal of the "auto-.com" feature wherein I type "apple" in the location bar of my browser and it dutifully tries first the local network before quickly switching to "apple.com." ((Technically "www.apple.com" of course.)) This feature even works with subdirectories, like "apple/trailers" and is quite useful in my day-to-day life.

If I am using OpenDNS and I type "apple" into my location bar, I'm presented with a list of search results at an OpenDNS page, not taken to apple.com. Some apparently like this "feature" because "the web will need to continue to evolve and expand past the current TLDs" and the auto-completion of only .com domains is "a hindrance to that future expansion."

My argument is simple: most browsers already have a search bar that's just as easy to get to as the location bar. Forcing the location field to effectively act as a search field costs me the "auto-.com" feature. I'm worse off than where I was before.

Furthermore, I don't believe using this feature from time to time is "short-sighted" as has been suggested in the comments. I'm merely using the tools available to me now. In the future, as TLDs expand (and we're not quite there yet), I'm sure my usage patterns will change. I don't think the committees in charge of "expanding" the Web give a flying hoot about the feature, so they're not going to let it stand in their way. Browsers will change based on their decisions - not the other way around.

I spent some time at Lowe's today, and I've built the frameworks for two "do-it-yerself" soft boxes. I got some five-foot lengths of half-inch PVC pipe for a whopping cost of $0.97 apiece, some three-way and 90° elbow joints for about $3 per ten, and eight round butt caps for $0.24 apiece. Total cost: under $15.

I also bought four 75W work lights ($2.97 apiece) with a little clip (and the lights to go in them - 13W 3500K halogens that are supposed to be equivalent to a 60W incandescent) and two 150W bulbs for the Alien Bee strobes (as modeling lights).

Back to the soft boxes, though: the larger box measures 24" H x 44" W x 30" D and the smaller box measures 15" H x 24" W x 15" D. Going from memory there, but those numbers seem about right.

I'm a little worried that the large soft box will be too large, but I can always cut it down to size. Alternatively, I can disassemble both and fit the tubes together in an entirely different configuration.

Now I just have to find something to drape over it.