...more recent posts
From the geeks on the CentOS list, the butterfly effect: a mesmerizing java applet of a Lorenz Attractor.
The demonstration shows a graphical representation of the time variation of three variables X(t),Y(t) and Z(t), coupled by non-linear evolution equations.... This tiny difference in the initial conditions becomes amplified by the evolution, until the two trajectories evolve quite separately. The amplification is exponential, the difference grows very rapidly and after a surprisingly short time the two solutions behave quite differently. This is an illustration of the butterfly effect - the idea in meteorology that the flapping of a butterfly's wing will create a disturbance that in the chaotic motion of the atmosphere will become amplified eventually to change the large scale atmospheric motion, so that the long term behavior becomes impossible to forecast.
Finally. How many years have I been talking about cell phone cameras replacing traditional point and shoot models? But the industry moves so slowly! It's been so frustrating. Like monitoring the pitch drop experiment.
Anyway, it looks like Nokia has finally done it. The N93 is packing a 3.2 megapixel, 3x optical zoom, mechanical shutter, auto-focus Vario-Tessar lens camera. It's not going to be as good as your brand new digitcam, but it's going to be good enough I think.
The transformer style swivel phone allows for configuration in a mini video camera mode, and can take decent vga quality video at 30 fps. And while Nokia has had photo uploading capabilities for a while (tied into their lifeblog system,) these new offerings come with flickr support baked in. Very cool.
Plus, this thing has "802.11b/g connectivity, a TV output capability, an FM radio, and EDGE data support in addition to the triband GSM and UMTS capabilities...." Nice. (Will an American carrier really ship it with 802.11 support? Color me still slightly skeptical.)
On the down side, it is pretty big. More photos are here. I don't mind it, but some people will be turned off by the somewhat clunky design. For them Nokia has the more traditional candy bar style N73 which sports the same great camera.
Of course it's not actually out yet. :-( Looks like some time in July. Not sure I can wait that long as my need for a new phone is rather desperate. If the treo 700p drops in May I will probably jump. But at least my *next* phone after that really is going to replace the digital camera that I don't have yet either (but that's another story.)
Good job Nokia.
Hey Mark, if you don't want to post NAB notes to your page, or that super old red.com camera thread, feel free to post them as comments here. I'd love to hear about anything interesting you see, or just reports on the general atmosphere. You know, you could do it in all your spare time. :-)