Size Matters

Back when I took pictures for a living, we had a physical limit of about 40 images because of the size of a film cannister. We rolled our own, re-using the cannisters dozens of times. Since this was the newspaper biz, and we did not wait till we had finished the roll, on small assignments we might only roll 8 or 10 frames' worth, so we wouldn't be wasting film & chemicals to develop them.

Last night I popped an 8GB memory chip into my new 12Mp camera, and looked at the frame counter, dismayed that I can only shoot half as many frames as I could with the same amount of memory in my older, 10Mp camera. Only 743 shots per chip! And then I remembered the days when a standard roll was 36 or 24 frames. And you had to buy a new roll each time.

Short Notice, but worth attending

The congressperson who represents a goodly piece of Silicon Valley and the Peninsula, Anna Eshoo, is having a pair of town hall meetings this weekend. Eshoo is one of the few members of Congress who has consistently voted against the war, against war funding, against Big Oil, for protecting the environment and against all the administration's violations of our civil rights. It's kind of frustrating having her as a rep, because there are so few others who vote the right way, making her mostly ineffective.
( her invite is behind the cut )