We May Be Living in a Simulation, but the Truth Still Matters

I like this article because Kara Swisher actually gets the history right. Read my series on this starting with Can I move to a Better Simulation Please?.

An abstract timelapse of the California coast.

The sequences were shot over about six hours using a Sony RX100V, f5.6, 1 second exposure, ND3 filter and ISO 80 to around 250 depending on the light. Most of the frames are from the Marin headlands, one sequence is from Sutro Baths in San Francisco.

Post production used Lightroom and LRTimelapse. I skipped LRTimelapse rendering and wrote a custom application to mirror the frames (for this video mirroring is left/right top/bottom and for one sequence both). I then used ffmpeg to render each mirrored sequence and Premiere Elements to edit them together. Finally I added music with Filmstro.

If anyone is interested in the mirroring application post a comment below and I'll tidy it up a bit and release it.

This timelapse is absolutely inspired by the main title sequence for Bosch on Amazon Video.

Timelapse of Bangalore (Bengaluru) in Karnataka, India:

The segments in order are:

• Sunrise from the 11th floor of the Shangri-La hotel. 
• Tipu Sultan's Summer Palace. This chap had rocket propelled swords. 
• Lalbagh Botanical Garden. Shot looking over the Peninsular Gneiss Rock, one of the oldest in the world. 
• Krishna Rajendra (KR) flower market. 
• Bangalore Palace.
• High Court of Karnataka from Cubbon Park. 
• Finally sunset, again from the Shangri-La.

(Previously)

A timelapse portrait of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2019.

Hike: Mt. Livermore on Angel Island

Catfood Earth 4.00 has been released. The new version includes 4K remastered day, night and cloud images as well as the latest timezone database.

It's a month for updates - you can also grab Catfood WebCamSaver 3.20 which includes an updated list of working webcams around the world. WebCamSaver is a Windows screensaver that shows you a feed of open webcams.

Meeting defragmenter is real!

How to fix the Washington Post democratic candidate quiz.

Previously:

• 2019: Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review
• 2018: I'm not afraid of Google
• 2017: I didn't think I'd ever fall for fake news of Facebook

Some photos from a visit to the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve: Harbor Seals, Sea Stars, a Chiton, a Hermit Crab and a Sea Anemone.

(Previously)

The Washington Post has a fun quiz that asks you 19 questions and then tells you which Democratic candidates you agree with the most. I took it last year and it said Warren, which I agreed with, but they have just updated it:

"Since we first published this guide in November, new candidates have joined the race and several others have dropped out. We have included everyone polling at least 1 percent in The Post’s national polling average. This new version adds questions on such topics as gun control and the criminal justice system."

Taking the quiz it now thinks I'm in the Yang Gang, even though I gave a thumbs down to universal basic income (my objection is that as much as I'd like $1,000 a month from the government I don't need it, there are much better things to spend it on). My full breakdown was Yang, Warren, Buttigeg, Sanders, Klobuchar, Steyer, Bloomberg, Biden and finally as a last resort Gabbard.

I think the problem with this sort of quiz is that it doesn't let you indicate how much you care about each issue. I'm totally fine with legalizing marijuana at the federal level but it's not the first thing I'd want any democratic president to work on. So I downloaded my results and fixed this by force-ranking the scale. My #1 was eliminating the electoral college and #19 was letting all prisoners vote (I agree with Sanders here, but he should work on it after he fixes the pot law which is #18 on my list). Once weighted on this scale my #1 issue is worth 1.00 points and #19 is just 0.05.

With this list Warren is restored to the top spot. In order I now have Warren, Yang, Buttigeg, Kloubuchar, Steyer, Sanders, Bloomberg, Biden and again if some form of green room food poisoning kills the top eight, Gabbard.

I'm a little surprised that Buttigeg is so high up this list and very surprised that Sanders (who I voted for in the last primary) is so low. Without any policy assistance from WaPo I'd go Warren, Sanders, Kloubuchar, Biden, Yang, Buttigeg, Steyer, Bloomberg and (sorry again) Gabbard. Although, full disclosure, if it would get rid of Trump I'd vote for a McConnell/Graham ticket.

If you want to try this and save a few minutes here's my spreadsheet. Add your quiz result in columns B through J and then rank the issues in column L from 1 to 19 where 1 is the most important to you.

Back in 2016 I shared an idea for a tool that would automatically arrange meetings to maximize stretches of production time. As a marketing genius I called it Meeting Defragmenter.

I just read about Clockwise, a startup that is doing exactly this. Right now it supports GSuite and it looks like Office365 is coming soon. Can't wait to try it!