With the rise of digital cameras, we have seen incredible growth in the variety of camera sensor sizes. With film cameras, there were not only fewer cameras but the 35mm film format was ubiquitous. So-called "full-frame" camera sensors are now a minority. Values like focal length and f-stop work well when most cameras have the same sensor format, but are less useful otherwise. I propose new metrics that give better intuition about the relative performance of photography equipment, without relying on the 35mm sensor format as a frame of reference.

I have come up with a list of books that have changed my whole perspective on shit. It is a pretty short list, and each one is still affecting me today, when I see new ideas or data. Since each one of these books has had some lasting effect on me, I wish more people had read each one. I will present them in the order I read them. The first I remember was "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins:

I have watched a lot of movies, probably too many. Music is completely ubiquitous and necessary in movies. Many movies have forgettable music that you don't even notice, and some movies have music that is conspicuously bad. Then some movies use music in a memorable way that increases how much we like the whole film. I've thought back on the movies I have seen, and tried to remember scenes like these.

We waste a lot of time with our calendar. We are constantly using calendars to look up things: from what date it is today, to what day of the week New Years falls on. For the geek in me, I think it would be nice if we never had to do this. Our current calendar--like a lot of other things we have inherited from less busy ages--could be a little more efficient.

There is so much crappy software out there. There is a lot of crappy shareware software with annoying nag screens, free programs which are poorly written, and of course overpriced commercial software. For almost every case of software that you either have to pay for, or is of this annoying shareware variety, there is a nice little freeware program that does the job better. Over the years I've used a lot of different software and I think I've found the best for most of the things you'll do on a computer.