Fotolog...

As a result of reading the O'Reilly book on digital photography hacks, I've been browsing some "flog" sites on the 'net  and found Fotolog to be of interest. Like LJ, there are free accounts and non-free accounts, though unlike LJ, there are limits on what you can post. Free accounts can upload one image per day, and there are time limits on updating the image and its description. Paid accounts can upload up to six images per day.

I found the breakdown of membership by country to be curious. Participants who say they are from the United States number just under 50,000 at the moment, while members from Antarctica (!) number just over 2,000. Also, just under 5,000 souls say they are from the Neutral Zone (which is apparently a place called home by some LJers, too).

None of that raised my eyebrows. The fact that Chilean fotologgers number almost 55,000 twitched one eyebrow. Seeing the number "260,910" after Brazil, however, resulted in a full-up, brow-wrinkling, elevation of the eyebrows to their maximum extent. Yikes!

I realize there is no competition here, and that the numbers really don't mean anything, both in and of themselves and the fact that a lot of people who say they're from Russia appear to type fluently in something I'm guessing is Portuguese. But it's still curious.

As far as the photos themselves are concerned, feel free to check out the site for yourself, but the general trend follows Sturgeon's Law, if  you get my drift...

Cheers...

Thinking about choice...

One of the issues that has kept me from voting for a Republican or a Democrat in a national election for the past 20 years (and for the lesser of evils, generally, in state and local races) is the answer to the little voice in my head that asks: "Are you going to be any freer in four years if you vote for either one of these candidates?" Because the answer, invariably, is a resounding "No!" And so, I end up voting for the Libertarian candidate.

Fred Reed's position on democracy, as it is currently practiced in the U.S., is heavy on the cynicism:

Autumn looms and presidential elections will soon roll around, like droppings pushed by dung beetles. We will be exhorted to vote. Better advice would be not to vote. The proper response toward what we occasionally imagine to be democracy, methinks, is to retain one’s self-respect by not participating in it.

So in a year when the best the Republicans can do is George W. Bush and where the Democrats apparently brainwashed themselves into believing that "anyone but Bush" would do as a candidate and decided to prove it by nominating John Kerry, it's a breath of fresh air to read Libertarian Presidential Candidate Michael Badnarik's answers to questions posed by readers of Slashdot.

Cheers...