This is a short one today…

It’s official: I’m a Deep Thought loyalist.

It’s funny. No matter how frustrated I get trying to encourage people to write for DT, to read DT, and to take part in discussions on DT, I keep coming back.

No matter how many times I want to give up--or tell myself that I want to give up or that I should give up--I keep coming back.

No matter what, I keep coming back.

Why, do you ask? Maybe it’s because I’m the last of the original staff still active here. Or maybe it’s because I’ve poured so much of my time and effort over the past three years into trying to make DT a success. Or maybe it’s because this is my home online. Whatever the reason, I keep coming back.

I hope you do too.

I’m not in this for the money. None of here are. If we were, we would have given up long ago. I’m in this because I want to make Deep Thought work. I am committed to making Deep Thought the best it can be, as is the rest of our team (and we have some very exciting things we’ve been working on that you’ll see in the not-too-distant future). I don’t give up that easily. I want Deep Thought to work. I hope that some of you feel the same way too. After all, this isn’t my site. This isn’t just my place to get on a soapbox. This is…
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An interesting topic has come up in my online Flash course, and with Macworld Expo looming, what better time to tackle the subject; namely, what web trends do I predict?  Such a broad topic can not be answered briefly, as it covers a multitude of issues and gives no specific time frame.  However, these are my opinions, speculations and predictions on where the Internet is headed, along with the future of technology, media, and society.

The Here and Very Soon

Over the short term, we will see a continued increase in “social networking,” as is termed numerous sites, trends, and methods for sharing data.  Social networking has evolved over the years as the Internet has matured; we’ve gone from Usenet lists to IRC and IM to message boards to blogs, profile-based sites like MySpace or Friendster, and Twitter.  We have vast worlds that take place entirely within the realm of games, including World of Warcraft and Second Life.  Sooner or later, someone will come up with the next big means of communication with random strangers from around the world, and social skills in the real world will further diminish, especially among the younger child, teenage and young adult crowds.  What technologies and methodologies this new modus operandi will specifically are not important, only that it allows people to connect with each other in some subtly unique way.

We will also see a slow but steady decline in information-gathering, news reporting, and overall social commentary.  Reputable news agencies, though sufficiently numerous today,…
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I’m exhausted, the winter here in Kentucky is eating away my constitution to live. On top of this I lack all funding for Christmas gifts for anyone, and a merry Christmas is not in the question. I miss the summer, I miss the life, I miss being able to drive my bike to the park and simply ride for hours and hours until I run out of water and just want to die because I’m so thirsty. I miss the orange of the air, I miss it all.

Ive been lacking the motivation to write as of late. I still lack the motivation; the only reason I write now is to call DT my home. I have been here two years, writing and reviewing, and if it’s up to me I’ll be here two more. In all of my two years, never have I seen such a depression for blogs. All over the blogosphere, blogs are dropping like flies, and forums are dropping even faster. Today I look at DT, hoping to breathe my depressed air into it and bring its shuddering frame back into a rhythmic life. Or maybe I’m just insane.

The site has been through a lot because of me; I netted us the worst partnership of a lifetime. Geeks.com decided to start sending us computer parts for us to review, and as soon as they did, there was a disagreement, and it was gone. Along with it went the loss of any chance I would get to…
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Toast: a piece of bread, cooked in a metal box by some heated coils. Smoldered toast, the toast thats been left in your metal box too long. I was looking at my older articles here on the site and discussing them with Nick when he gave me the above analogy. I had noted that my wit inside of my ramblings and rantings had been dried up, and he proclaimed it to be smoldered like toast left in a toaster too long. So here is my response, a response in the tradition and style of my article about EOS (Email Overwrite Syndrome).

The smoldering effect is the drying of a wit, the poisoning of a well, the pissing on a hobo fire. It’s where one has been told no so much they completely remove all wit and slightly risky phrases and wordings from their writings. For me, I say: no more. No longer will I run around like a washed up 80’s hair band wishing that my makeup actually came off and that my voice was two octaves lower. No longer will I sit around deleting sentence after sentence and just type more BS than Al Gore managed to muster with his crap about global warming. I present you with someone who has been a long time wishing that he could overcome an obstacle so great yet so invisible (like the blaster worm for Windows). I am done suffering at the hands of The Smoldering Effect.

How can one cure oneself of…
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HDR imaging, the proverbial crown jewel of photography tricks, has been limited to those using Adobe Photoshop for too long. For about three months now I have been researching the best freeware way to create HDR images. For those who do not know what HDR means, it stands for High Dynamic Range, which is a method of photography that attempts to capture more of the light spectrum than a traditional image. Using samples from the high and low end of the light spectrum, HDR is a digital composite of many different images at different exposures. Creating an HDR image is a complicated process, one that usually takes no less than half an hour to churn out one photo, and on top of this, your images can never be appreciated in their 64-bit native color depth because of the computer industry’s failing to upgrade monitor standards. If you are willing to put the time and effort into achieving a beautifully detailed image that HDR spits out, then pay close attention.

What you need

Creating an HDR image does not require highly-sophisticated equipment as one would think. Basically any camera with an adjustable exposure value (EV) setting can be used and will churn out a beautiful image. This is what makes HDR imaging so great; even those of us who can not afford a $600 USD Nikon camera can still create some stunning pictures. Heres the short list of what you need to make an HDR image:

• A tripod
• Any digital camera with…
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