Kevitivity

Chowhound has a long internet history as being a great place for people who love food to gather.  And as a longtime user (over ten years now) I’ve contributed many posts as well as helped spread the word about this site.   One down side to Chow, however, has always been the overly militant and inconsistent moderation tactics which have an effect of alienating us users – something that’s deadly for user driven sites.

I’m not the only one to complain about this – A simple Google search reveals just how widespread the problem is.  Often, posts are deleted by mods without any word as to why.  Sometimes, and most egregiously,  Chowhound moderators will forbid users from even mentioning restaurants with no reason given, as was the case with Jujube and Napa and Co.

What makes this all the more maddening is how terribly inconsistent the mods are, deleting one users posts while preserving anothers.

Some moderation is necessary, obviously, but this is starting to get ridiculous.  My recommendation?  Use a truly crowd sourced site like Yelp.

Continue reading: Foodie Fight, Chownhound Board Nazis, Whats the big deal w/CHOWHOUND?, Deleted posts on Chowhound, Banned on Chowhound

Techno-Elitist

I have to admit that I found Cory Doctorow’s anti-iPad post at Boing Boing quite bizarre and techno-elitist. He seems to dislike both how easy the iPad is to use as well how efficiently it’s physical parts are put together (glue as opposed to screws).

His argument that the iPad is “Infantalizing [sic] hardware” is particularly short-sighted. I view the iPad as a sort of satellite of my  main workstation. With such a device, good user interface design should free the user from the sort of things that make a full blown computer more cumbersome, albeit more powerful. When you’re relaxing on the couch with a cup of coffee, or on a road trip to San Fran, and all you want to do is read Wikipedia, peruse your comic library, or catch up on the latest news, your iPad is probably a good delivery method.

Furthermore, what’s more important? Simple and easy-to-use access to the world’s information database, or you’re ability to disassemble the device your using to read it? The answer is obvious. The benefits of miniaturized (system on a chip) ICs, vertical circuit fabrication, and the power efficiency they bring far, far outweigh the the benefits of being able to disassemble such a device. And I would argue that the physical device itself is far less important in the grand scheme of things compared to the almost infinite software possibilities.

And of course, as a professional Unix admin, I know that options exists for people who want to tinker at a very low level (Linux + cheap commodity hardware). We shouldn’t think of the iPad as a replacement, but rather just another option.

You can read the full story of the Cabazon Dinosaurs here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabazon_Dinosaurs

Helped some friends by taking their family Christmas photos. This particular one probably isn’t the one they’ll pick to send with their Christmas cards, but it’s easily my favorite.

Halloween evening, Emily and I took our cameras to the heart of downtown LA with the intent of getting a few interesting long exposure photographs. I’m always on the lookout for interesting photo locations and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently came up on my radar because of the reflection pool that surrounds the building.

The conditions could not have been better for a night shoot and we were both very pleased with our photos. Clear skies on a warm October night!

You can see another image from this shoot here.

This photo is licensed by GettyImages. All rights reserved.