DNG Support

For those of you who are looking for better RAW support, I suggest you consider installing Adobe's free DNG converter, and then using that to import your photos into Picasa. DNG is an excellent archive format anyway that is likely to stay around longer than your camera-of-the-year's proprietary format.

in reference to: RAW format images : Basics - Picasa Help (view on Google Sidewiki)

Firefox 4.0 Beta 10 has AWFUL font rendering!

Wow. Just took FF beta 10 for a test-drive, and I have got to say, the font rendering is awful. Look at a screenshot of Chrome vs. Firefox:




This may not look like a big deal in such a small sample, but trust me, after browsing for a few minutes, the eye strain was unbearable.

At this rate, I'm pretty sure that IE9 will regain market share after FF4 is released.

Comparison of dietary fats and oils

Source: http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/fn620-1.gif

If they were countries...

... from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/node/17910000?story_id=17910000

The efficiency of mass transit may surprise you...

Here is an interesting string of blogs that I picked up regarding the relative efficiency of various means of transportation:

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2008/08/update-on-my-li.html

- Discusses San Jose Light Rail versus automobile, and others, very clean graphics

http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html

- Illustrates that light rail in the United States is terribly underutilized and thus very inefficient

I was very surprised to see how much cars have improved, efficiency-wise. In the last 30 years, cars have become 30% more efficient!

Electric vehicles are the clear winner, however. Check out this graph from Coyote Blog:

Even more interesting is that my bicycle is less efficient than an electric scooter. I wonder if this is due to regenerative braking? Maybe this is a mistake.

BLM Land Color Key

Everyone who camps a lot probably already knows this, but I had a hard time hunting down the information online.

Yellow - Bureau of Land Management (BLM),

Darker yellow-orange - Wilderness Study Areas within BLM lands

Purple - National Park Service

Green - National Forest

Dark Green - National Forest Wilderness Areas

Blue - state lands

Pink - Bankhead-Jones Land Use Land

Private lands are untinted.