There are two words in the French language for pride: 'la fierte' (dignity) and 'l'orgueil' (arrogance). In English, the same word has two very different connotations: one of the prides is good, and one is bad. ('I'm proud of you, son' is the good kind, while 'She's too proud to ask for help' is the bad kind.) I think it's cool that French has two separate words for pride. 'Bravo' in the Spanish language also has two meanings: a shout of approval and arrogantly obnoxious. We went and supported Bonnish in her school's cheese play a few nights ago - it was cute and clever.

What's the deal with Adobe Acrobat 5.0.5 (full version, not the free reader)? There's an updated web client available every single time you check for updates, which is impossible - it's a bug. Also, it always says there's a problem with Acrobat not being able to display PDFs in the browser, but it really doesn't matter - it still will: just check the "don't show this again" checkbox and you'll be just fine. Also, if Acrobat Reader (the free reader) prints all the words run together (no spaces between words), then select "print document as image" in the print properties, as this solves the problem on most computers. Also, upgrade to the latest version (currently version 5.1.0), as this solves it, too.

Elizabeth Smart was found. Simply glorious and remarkable. I sincerely hope she can return to a normal life. Everyone goes on and on about how great WS_FTP is. Well, it's not - for one simple reason: it doesn't support temp transfer file renaming for large file transfers (like most webcam software does). Obviously a major oversight. What's the issue, you ask? Well. Let's say you start to transfer a 150 KB photo to your website. While you're in the middle of the transfer, I click on that link on your website. What happens? I get a partial file download. In case of a photo, I get only a portion of the image. In the case of a document (like a PDF), I get a corrupt file that won't open. WS_FTP could help minimize this problem by taking a cue from the Webcam32 folks, and incorporating the "temp transfer file rename" feature. This works by the file being transferred temporarily under a different name, and then once the transfer is complete (very important, the very crux of this problem being that it takes time to transfer large files), it overwrites the previous copy on the server by renaming the temp file with the correct name. Cam software does this all the time, to refresh webcam images on a site. Why should this be so hard for 'regular' FTP programs to incorporate?

War in Iraq ('Operation Iraqi Freedom') has started, whilst Operation Valiant Strike (Al-Queda in Afghanistan) is still underway. I like the live Baghdad streaming webcam that MSNBC has provided.

There's quite a bit of confusion out there about digital image quality, specifically between DPI (print size) and Pixels (screen size), and also about compression. Frogprints has a great tutorial on digital camera compression, specifically the differences between JPEGs and TIFFs. As for DPI (75 dots per inch vs. 300 dots per inch), it has nothing at all to do with photo quality, but only with printed image size.

The photo compression level (JPEG, 95% vs. TIFF uncompressed) and the original image size (800x600 pixels vs. 1600x1200 pixels) is really the determining part of technical digital quality (artistically, however, if you can't seem to take a decent photo, none of this really matters, does it?!). DPI is just for determining printed image size (on paper) - you can't change this setting on digital cameras - it's automatic). You can, however, adjust the size (DPI) of the photos with Photoshop or in your desktop publishing software, if necessary. In fact, many programs will determine the correct DPI setting for you based upon how big you want it to be when printed - in other words, you hardly ever have to even worry about DPI at all.

Bottom line: If you want to take good quality digital photos, get a decent camera, use a high resolution and very little compression, and take a photography class!