Geek in Heels - Page 88

Jun 23, 2011 • In Art/Design, Gadgets, Geek, Photography

Lytro: The Camera That Lets You Shoot Now and Focus Later

In the past couple of days, the tech and photography world has been abuzz with news of Lytro, the focus-free camera that promises to change how you take pictures forever.

Lytro is the brainchild of a young Stanford Ph.D named Ren Ng. While the technology has existed since the mid-90s, Dr. Ng was able to take his award-winning dissertation research to adapt the imaging technique — “light field,” which once meant some 100 cameras in a room — for consumer use.

The basic premise of Lytro’s technology is such: the camera captures every ray of light, deflecting off every object at every angle, in any given image. Where traditional camera lenses “simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light,” the “light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light.”

What the user gets then is a digital photo that is adjustable in an almost infinite number of ways. You can focus anywhere in the picture, change the light levels — and if you’re using a device with a 3D ready screen — even create a picture you can tilt and shift in three dimensions.

Immediately my first thoughts were that the digital files for each image would be HUGE, and that many computers may not have the power to manipulate such images.

However, Ng insists that the file size will be roughly comparable to the average size of today’s digital photos. Additionally, the brunt of the work will be handled by the camera’s own processors. And the hyper-sensitivity of its light sensor will allow the user to easily take pictures in low-light situations, even without flash.

Lytro’s website showcases a gallery of interactive photos which demonstrate the technology. Take a look at some of them below — by clicking anywhere on the image, you can change the focus accordingly. Especially impressive is the third image, where you can focus back and forth between a street scene and a reflected image on the glass.

The light field camera will not be available until later this year, but with the splash it is already making, I have no doubt that will once again make big headlines when it is finally released. (Obviously, I have added my e-mail to Lytro’s mailing list.)

The Secrets of the U.S. Dollar Bill

My X-Files loving, conspiracy-seeking, paranoid teenage self knew most of these. It felt good being reminded of all the symbols and imagery adorning our most-used piece of currency.

Via Credit Sesame.

Laughing at Mommy Already

Sometimes I can’t decide if Claire is incredibly lazy, extremely stubborn, exceptionally clever, or all of the above.

Case in point: she never rolls anymore. I know that she is physically capable of doing it, because I have seen her purposely roll both ways several times. But I also know that she does not enjoy it.

Hence, whenever she is in a horizontal position — whether on her back or stomach — she will only withstand it for however long she pleases…then the whining and screaming begins.

(On a related note, did you know that psychologists believe whining may be the world’s most annoying sound?)

No matter how long we try to ignore it, do our best to guide her to roll, sit up on her own, etc, she refuses to budge once she is in this state. It’s like she knows that if she screams long enough, someone is eventually bound to come pick her up.

The upside to her refusing to roll anymore is that we have never had an instance where she screams in the middle of the night, begging to be rescued from whatever precarious/uncomfortable position she has arranged herself in.

Our next challenge comes with crawling. Yes, my daughter will turn 9 months old next week and she is not crawling. She shows no interest in crawling either — believe me, I’ve tried.

I’ve watched YouTube videos on instructing your baby to crawl. I have asked other mothers for advice. I place her favorite toys all around her, just out of reach, so that she needs to at least make the first attempts at crawling in order to get to them.

Do you know what she does instead? She will pull on the blanket/sheet/rug under her and the toys and use it to pull the toys toward her. Or she will use whatever else that is within reach and use that to guide the toys her way.

Last week, I gave her a bottle of pills to distract her for a few minutes while I was on an important phone call. When she couldn’t get the child safety-equipped cap off, she started to drag the edge of the cap against other larger objects around her — a book, her toy mirror, and even poor Comang — as if she were trying to use them as leverage to pop the cap open.

And just now, because a friend had told me that her son had gotten motivated to crawl after seeing other kids crawl, I put her down on the floor in a crawling position and started to crawl myself.

“See, baby?” I said as I started crawling back and forth in front of her. “This is how you crawl…”

She took one look at me and started cracking up. She laughed so hard that she fell from the crawling position, down onto her stomach. As I watched her little body shake uncontrollably in laughter, I couldn’t help but feel like a complete idiot.

I give up. Maybe she’ll be like J and his brother, who never crawled and went straight to walking.

P.S. — I’m a few days late, but here is the Father’s Day e-card we made for J. She was extremely afraid of the balloons, so it took quite some time to get these two photos.

The Horcrux Pie Chart

Courtesy of my new favorite Tumblr blog, I Love Charts.

…I’m ashamed to admit that the first time I saw this, I wondered to myself why the chart wasn’t divided into seven equal wedges.

P.S. — After another month+ of teething, Claire finally cut her third and fourth teeth today! I had given her some apple slices to munch on and noticed some blood on the apple. Of course, I freaked out and examined her entire body to make sure she wasn’t hurt. When I couldn’t find any cuts, I checked her mouth to discover her top two teeth poking out. (It seems that the apple helped break the skin over the teeth, or it aggravated the already-sensitive skin around the new teeth.) Since her first four teeth came out in pairs, should I assume that she will continue teething in groups?

Girlfriend still refuses to let me get a picture of her teeth. Here’s what she looks like now:

(image source)

How Many Households Are Like Yours?

Over the weekend, the NYTimes ran an article titled “Baby Makes Four, and Complications” which tells the story of a woman, her son, her sperm donor and his lover, citing them as an example of the changing face of the American family.

This was no big news to me. After all, the idea of the traditional nuclear family is being questioned every day, and for the first time ever, the percentage of households headed by married couples has dropped below 50 percent (according to 2010 U.S. Census figures).

What particularly caught my eye about the article was its accompanying interactive webpage, “How Many Households Are Like Yours?” Upon entering the page, the visitor is prompted to choose the primary residents of his/her household, to see how their household compares to the rest of America, and to explore how the different types of American families have changed over time.

I quickly entered our household stats: a married couple with two children (BebeDeux isn’t born yet but she still counts in my eyes) under the age of 18. Here is how we stacked up:

I was pretty surprised by the results — I really believed that a married couple with two kids would account for more than 7.25% of all U.S. households!

It was also interesting to note that compared to other groups, a higher proportion of Asians live in our type of household, and how we fit right into the $75k-$150k income category. (I guess we are pretty stereotypical? 😉 )

How does your household compare? Are you at all surprised by the statistics?

WordPress for the Everyday Blogger:
Part 7 — Plugins

It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve written anything in my WordPress for the Everyday Blogger series…eek! And since I have entirely re-designed this blog earlier this month, all that hard work almost seems obsolete. 😐

One of my New Year Resolutions has been to try my best to finish everything that I start. For this reason, I have decided to continue on with the series, but in a different direction.

I had promised that the last post in the series will list all the WordPress plugins I use for my blog, and this is precisely what I will do in this post. However, this is by no means the last post of the series (hopefully)…because I am leaving the rest up to you, my readers.

Is there anything else you’d like to see covered in
my WordPress for the Everyday Blogger series?

Do you have any specific questions on how I
styled/coded certain elements of the site?

If so, please leave a comment to this post or shoot me a message via my contact form!

Now, on to the post.

According to WordPress.org’s Plugin Directory, there are currently 14,903 plugins available (as of today) for the WordPress platform. I know that many experts recommend using only the bare minimum number of plugins because the excessive installation of plugins has been known to slow down sites. Well, I should take their advice…because I currently have 28 plugins installed! 😯

That being said, I just can’t bear to part with any of these plugins. I also know that the majority of them only run when I tell them to (or when I have them set to run), so I don’t believe the slowdown is that bad.

So here is a list of my plugins in alphabetical order…

1.) AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Buttons — One of the most popular social media plugins available. (If you’re not sure what this does, just click on the green button at the bottom left of each post.) Good alternatives include SexyBookmarks and AddThis.

2.) Akismet — If you must have only one plugin installed, this should be it. Nothing prevents comment spam better than Akismet.

3.) All in One SEO Pack — Widely considered by many to be the best SEO plugin for WordPress. Even just the default settings help optimize your blog for search engines.

4.) Broken Link Checker — One of the most annoying (yet best!) things about the web is how frequently its content is changed and updated. And if you have a blog that goes back several years like mine (this is my 1,294th post!), it can be a royal PITA to ensure that all your links are working properly. This does exactly that for you.

5.) Comment Reply Notification — Adds a checkbox at the end of each comment form so that when someone replies to your comment, you can be notified by email.

6.) Contact Form 7 — Probably the most popular contact form plugin available for WordPress.

7.) FD Feedburner Plugin — The easiest way to set up your Feedburner feeds!

8.) Google XML Sitemaps — Automatically generates XML sitemaps which will allow your blog to be better crawled by search engines.

9.) LinkWithin — Do you see the “See also…” links at the end of each post, like so?

LinkWithin is a powerful tool that generates related posts, with or without thumbnails. It is a great way to engage new visitors to your site, and I can honestly say that my bounce rate has gone down significantly since I’ve started to use it.

10.) No Self Pings — I am continually linking to old content (again, another great way to engage readers) and I personally don’t like how WordPress pings back to my own site. This plugin prevents exactly that.

11.) Quick Cache — I used to use WP Super Cache (which is considered one of the must-have plugins for WordPress installations), but I personally found Quick Cache to be simpler and less intrusive.

12.) Really Simple CAPTCHA — This is a plugin that was created to work in conjunction with Contact Form 7 (referenced in #6 above). It’s not necessary if you don’t get a lot of spam through your contact form, but I find it useful.

13.) Recent Comments with Avatars — Many blogs showcase recent comments in their sidebars, but this plugin allows you to include the commenters’ avatars along with the comments, like so:

I had to do some customizing to the PHP file to make it look the way it does, but I’m happy with the results (and again, please let me know if you would like me to detail how I did this).

14.) Redirection — I had briefly talked about using your .htaccess file to create redirects here. If you prefer not to mess with your .htaccess file (because it can royally screw up your site if you do something wrong), or if you want a simpler method of managing your redirects, you can use this simple-to-use plugin.

15.) Relevanssi — Replaces the default WordPress search engine with a more robust, more customizable one. Some good alternatives: Search Everything, Search Unleashed, and Google Custom Search.

16.) SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam — I know that most people hate having to decipher CAPTCHA when filling out comments, and I used to be one of them. However, I used to get hundreds of comments in my spam filter every day thanks to Akismet (#2 on this list)…and while I love Akismet, it’s not perfect and many non-spam comments would get caught there too. I have found this CAPTCHA system to be one of the easiest to decipher, and I also love the reload function too. (SI CAPTCHA also used to have an audio button, but it has been disabled in the latest version due to security reasons.)

17.) Smart Archives Reloaded — The archiving system I currently use for my Archives by Date page. I chose this one over Snazzy Archives and In Over Your Archives, both very attractive and very robust systems, because it was the simplest and I didn’t want readers to get overwhelmed.

18.) TinyMCE Advanced — Adds additional features/buttons, all customizable, to WordPress’ default WYSIWYG editor. For example, this is what my current visual editor toolbar looks like:

19.) Twitter Widget Pro — A highly customizable Twitter widget plugin. This is what I use for the Twitter widget on my sidebar:

Of course, I had to do a lot of customizing to get this effect (both to the PHP and CSS), so if you’d like to know exactly how I did it, please let me know.

20.) Vimeo Quicktags — I’m not sure exactly why, but Vimeo videos don’t always embed correctly on WordPress. This plugin allows you to embed Vimeo videos easily by adding a button to your WYSIWYG toolbar. Not only that, you can access all the customizable features of the embedded video such as the size of the video, and the options to show/hide bylines, titles, and much more.

21.) WassUp — The best real-time visitor stats plugin I have found. I use this in conjunction with the WordPress.com Stats plugin below for the best comprehensive view of my site’s visitors. (Nothing beats Squarespace‘s traffic stats though. That’s one thing I really, really miss about Squarespace.)

22.) WordPress.com Stats — While WassUp above is best for real-time, short-term stats, this plugin is better (IMO) for bigger picture stats, such as monthly and yearly visitors.

23.) WP-DBManager — From the plugin’s official description: “Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of database.” Even if you don’t use this database manager, you should use an alternative to at least regularly backup your blog.

24.) WP-Polls — For the few times that I include polls in my posts, this one is the simplest and easiest.

25.) WP-Print — See the “Print this Post” link at the bottom of each post? This plugin allows me to do exactly that by creating printer-friendly versions of each post.

26.) WP Security Scan — I run this about once a month to ensure that my blog’s settings are secure.

27.) WP Tweet Button — This is the plugin that runs the “Tweet” button at the bottom of each post.

28.) Zamango Page Navigation — There are many great page navigation plugins available for WordPress (see here for a great list), but I have personally found this one to be the best for my needs.

Phew! That’s quite a list! If you have any questions about this list, please don’t be afraid to ask in the comments.

And, as stated above, if you have any additional topics you would like to see covered in my WordPress for the Everyday Blogger series, and/or you would like to know how I styled/coded certain elements, please let me know and I will continue the series with your questions!

Update — July 10, 2011:

I have found a better alternative to #11, Quick Cache, and that is W3 Total Cache. After following all the instructions on their “installation” page, my Google Page Speed score went up by 3 whole points!

anaPad: An Analog iPad

I’ve always said that even if we do end up getting an iPad or a Motorola Xoom (we still haven’t decided which), I would be reluctant to let our kids play with such an expensive device.

Then there’s the imagination factor. As much as I am a geek and technophile, it always makes me a bit sad when I see little kids preferring digital devices over some paper and crayons.

Lucky for people like me, there is an adorable kids’ alternative to the iPad: the anaPad.

From its Etsy description:

Meet the anaPad–a children’s toy that promotes analog learning and creativity in a digital world.

A magnetic white board, perfect for drawing, games and learning, is framed inside a wooden frame cut to the exact dimensions of an Apple iPad. Companion app magnets and marker are included.

The best part? At $28, it is a mere fraction of the cost of the iPad and its competitors.

Via Design Milk.

Winner of the BB Cream Giveaway

Thank you to everyone who entered my BB Cream Giveaway! Without further ado, the winner is…

According to my spreadsheet, #31 corresponds to commenter Ruth, who wrote:

I will be contacting Ruth via email shortly to work out all the details.

A huge thanks once again to everyone who entered…and please stay tuned for more giveaways in the future!

(And please continue to spread the word about my blog, as I will have the resources to host bigger giveaways more often if the readership continues to grow!)

P.S. — Posting will be light today, as I woke up completely nauseous and then found some blood in my vomit-bile. I’m not sure if the blood came from my stomach, esophagus, or just my gums…but since it hasn’t happened again I don’t want to go to the hospital and am just taking it easy for the day. Morning sickness usually subsides after the first trimester, but I have been a lot more nauseous during the second trimester, throwing up practically every day and night. Just like Claire, BebeDeux is not making this pregnancy easy for her mama!

A Comical Father’s Day Ad

We are currently at my parents’ where I am helping my mother prepare my famous galbijiim (Korean braised short ribs). I wanted to share a photo of Claire I took earlier today in celebration of Father’s Day, but I am not able to process RAW files on my parents’ laptop. 🙁 As such, here is an oldie but a goodie in honor of this special day.

Enjoy, and Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there!

Via Designer Daily.

Tips for Finding a Good Nanny

Today was not a good day for me. I experienced perhaps my worst case of nausea since becoming pregnant and spent the majority of the day sitting on the bathroom floor (with my phone and Comang to keep me company), gagging and vomiting what had to be mostly stomach bile. I managed to slowly consume a couple of loaves of bread and some cookies, but proceeded to puke it all out almost immediately.

I know that many pregnant women go months feeling this way. I do not envy them.

Thank goodness for me, our part-time nanny Cindy was there to watch over Claire and even offer to bring me glasses of water.

Cindy has been with us for two weeks now, and already I cannot thank her enough. I called her our own Baby Whisperer from the beginning, because from day one she has been able to put Claire down for naps without a fuss (even I still have some trouble doing this), keep her entertained and happy, and even provide parenting advice…but only when this clueless first-time mom asks!

When I first wrote about finding a nanny, reader Christine asked if my sister would mind writing a guest post on how she helped me find Cindy through Craigslist. Lucky for us, she was happy to stamp out a post. Enjoy, and please be sure to leave her lots of comment love!

How we found a fantastic nanny through Craiglist:

1.) Figure out exactly what YOU want in a nanny. Are you fairly easy-going or do you want someone who can keep up with your instructions to the T? Also, if you may require help in areas beyond just watching your child (i.e. occasionally walking the dog, fixing meals, tidying up, etc.), make sure you are clear about your needs from the beginning.

2.) Create an ad for help wanted. We used craigslist, but there are plenty of other options. Be concise, but clear. Here is what we wrote in our ad:

We would like to hire a part-time nanny to come in 2-3 days a week (14-16 hours per week). The schedule will change on a weekly basis so we are looking for someone with a flexible schedule.

We have a healthy 8-month-old daughter who is relatively well-behaved. We live in a 2-bedroom condo in ________, in a quiet neighborhood where parking is not too difficult to find (public transportation by bus is also convenient). We are a non-smoking family and would like to keep a tidy house. We also have a small 15lb shih-tzu that is very friendly and well-trained. Some occasional dog-walking may be included as part of the job.

Applicants MUST have experience with infants and be fluent in English. Please attach a resumé and references.

This job will ONLY require you to watch one baby (and the occasional dog-walking mentioned above). There is no cleaning, housework, or cooking involved. As such, the pay will be _____ per week. This job would last past the summer so we are looking for qualified applicants who can continue working throughout the year.

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to speaking with you!

3.) Create a separate email account to read and respond to the ad. If you’re like me, you check your email throughout the day and may even have notifications popping up multiple times a day to inform you that someone wants your attention! You don’t want all of the responses to your ad to get lost amid all of your personal/work emails (not to mention spam). Simply create a new account and check it during times when you can sift through without a million other distractions getting in the way.

4.) Once the applications come rolling in, you may begin to feel a bit inundated. Personally, I was able to narrow it down pretty easily based on these criteria:

Some responses screamed, “MASS/GENERAL APPLICATION!” It was obvious some people sent their resumés out to a number of prospective jobs. That’s fine, but at least have the courtesy to personalize it a little bit with a short introduction that shows that you actually read my ad. If they can’t take the time to write a proper email, it’s not worth my time to follow up.
Based on the timing of the ad, many applicants were looking for just a summer job. (Even though I made it clear that we were looking for someone past the summer, ahem.) Make sure you are clear about how long you would like the position to continue. It would be horrible to find the perfect nanny, have your child become attached to him/her, and then have said nanny leave after a few months. Then, you would have to start the whole process over again. No fun.
Excessive spelling and grammatical errors? No. I know plenty of intelligent people who can’t spell to save their lives, but seriously? Almost everything these days is equipped with spell-check! Misspelling something like, “I’m interested in your add,” makes me cringe a little, but it’s excusable. If the email is loaded with errors, however, that’s just plain sloppy. You can feel free to disagree with me here and say that you’re looking for someone who can put your child to sleep easily, not edit novels for you, but proper spelling, grammar, and diction in a job application (even in an email!) shows that the applicant takes the job seriously and took the time to inquire about the position properly.

5.) After all of that, I only had a few to choose from. If additional information was required, I corresponded with the applicants. After that, I checked their references. The nanny who Jenny hired had a GREAT reference. She couldn’t say enough about how great Cindy was, and the real selling point was that Cindy’s previous employer had been a first-time mom too. So see if you can find a nanny who is not only experienced, but experienced in the way that you need. Do you have three boys under the age of 5? Or a newborn girl? Make sure that they have experience in the type of care you are looking for.

6.) Cindy, Jenny. Jenny, Cindy. They meet. Claire loves Cindy, and Cindy is a baby-whisperer. All is good in the world. 🙂 GOOD LUCK!

P.S. — My sister is actually quite a writer. (She used to have a blog, but no longer writes in it…boo!) You can check out a particularly side-splitting piece she wrote here.

Lytro: The Camera That Lets You Shoot Now and Focus Later

You may also like:

The Secrets of the U.S. Dollar Bill

You may also like:

Laughing at Mommy Already

You may also like:

The Horcrux Pie Chart

You may also like:

How Many Households Are Like Yours?

You may also like:

WordPress for the Everyday Blogger:
Part 7 — Plugins

You may also like:

anaPad: An Analog iPad

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Winner of the BB Cream Giveaway

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A Comical Father’s Day Ad

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Tips for Finding a Good Nanny

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