Rain! Snow! Clear skies! Friends, family, strangers and acquaintances! This trip had it all. Notably I have now cemented my affinity for fuzzy .3 megapixel camera phone photos. I even shelled out for a USB cable so I don’t have to send each photo individually to Flickr through MMS.

Other stuff:

• I satiated my Providence/College Hill nostalgia. I still love the city and campus, but obviously nothing feels the same when all the people you lived with are gone.
• After missing the Michigan Theater sneak preview of Where the Wild Things Are for my 5 hour affinity diagramming meeting a few weeks ago, I saw it in Cambridge with Andrew. I’m glad I finally got to see it, but I found it mildly disturbing and in retrospect I am glad I didn’t end up seeing it by myself.
• I failed miserably to develop any kind of sense of direction at all. All the awesome navigating skills I thought I had developed last year were obviously a direct product of the Chicago grid system and very visible and non-ambiguous landmarks.
• I only slept about 5 hours each night but it was totally worth it.
• Somehow I actually managed to get some homework done.

tags: boston, list, photography, providence

Yesterday was my last day at work. My (ex)co-workers are the best! I got cake, a signed copy of the Polar Bear IA book, my first taste of White Castle miniature burgers and breakfast sandwiches, and a very bizarre poncho-sash.

I took the picture above with my new toy, a used Nokia N82 camera phone that I got cheap (= massive scratches all over the screen) on eBay. I think the pictures are pretty good all things considered, although if you view at full resolution you can see some nasty compression artifacts — it’s not hip like the low-res grainy compression my flip phone photos have.

The N82′s camera functionality isn’t as good as a standalone point and shoot camera. It takes a long time to “process” images right after you take photos (although maybe this will be improved when I get a microSD card so it doesn’t have to right to the phone’s built in memory). It also doesn’t remember your settings (ISO, white balance, flash, etc) when you exit camera mode.

I also don’t like the phone functionality as much as my little flip phone. Sure, the N82 has GPS, FM radio, WiFi, Bluetooth etc., but it has crappy enough buttons that I don’t feel like using any of the extra features besides the camera. Text messaging, on the rice-grain buttons is painful compared to sliding over the flat buttons on the flip phone. Also, sometimes it is nearly impossible to press the power button with my finger.

Despite all of this, I’m still glad I got the phone because it was cheap, and it’s already achieved the purpose I wanted it to search: a snapshot camera that will encourage me to take more photos because it is compact, discreet and attached to a cell phone. I’m definitely still hanging on to my old phone. When camera phone interfaces and compression quality improve in the future, I think I’ll revisit whether I’d ever completely switch other to using a camera phone for all my cell phone and snapshot camera needs.

tags: photography

Why We Must Ration Healthcare by Peter Singer is an explanation of why fear of health care rationing is not a good reason to be against socialized medicine. The main point is that health care is already rationed in America, it’s just hard to point fingers here because the rationing isn’t being done by one central institution.

Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?

Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than $200 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.

There’s no doubt that it’s tough — politically, emotionally and ethically– to make a decision that means that someone will die sooner than they would have if the decision had gone the other way. But if the stories of Bruce Hardy and Jack Rosser lead us to think badly of the British system of rationing health care, we should remind ourselves that the U.S. system also results in people going without life-saving treatment — it just does so less visibly. Pharmaceutical manufacturers often charge much more for drugs in the United States than they charge for the same drugs in Britain, where they know that a higher price would put the drug outside the cost-effectiveness limits set by NICE. American patients, even if they are covered by Medicare or Medicaid, often cannot afford the copayments for drugs. That’s rationing too, by ability to pay.

This post on cell phone photography finally cemented my decision to get a cell phone that can also function as a point-and-shoot camera. I actually like the crap quality photos that my current phone produces but I’d like to have more of a happy medium between my .3 megapixel phone camera and my 8 megapixel DSLR (sadly I no longer have the same drive that I did in high school, where I brought my SLR with me every single day and wore it around my neck most of the day…in many situations it feels overly obtrusive, delicate or serious, and other times I just can’t be bothered to lug it around). I’m hoping that this will help me get back into the habit of taking miore photos.

tags: philosophy, photography

Today I jumped in the lake with my clothes on and went swimming, after dunking my feet and undergoing an intense internal struggle for half an hour. Triumph! Wet denim cutoffs feel pretty gross both in and outside of the water, but it was totally worth it.

tags: chicago, photography

Today I finally managed to put a new tube in the back wheel of my bike. It took me at least 45 minutes but the satisfaction was worth it. And now I can bike around! A whole new world of possibilities is open to me, most notably biking to work and biking on the trail.

Other recent accomplishments include doing laundry for the first time and acquiring a large garbage can, a dish drainer, a rice cooker and a small kitchen cart to put the microwave on top of. There is a furniture in the living room and a television with a DVD player. We also figured out who is going to cook when and what food to share. I supposedly signed up for gas online but I am not sure if the request went through. And finally, I stuffed a blanket and some towels in the crack of the futon frame so that the mattress doesn’t dip down in the middle.

Tomorrow: back to work, and getting used to the MacbookPro-external monitor-Parallels setup, and keeping track of all my time.

tags: biking, chicago, photography

Today is my last day in Providence and my last day at work. I am glad I am moving but I will miss this place. This is the best summer I have had in a long time.

Things to do before I go: hope that car has a mini-jack input, pack some more, clean up kitchen, take out trash, have dinner with Dan, pick up rental car, pack car, sleep.

P.S. Happy birthday Mummy!

tags: brown, photography, providence, work