Jay Rosen's "Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Journalist"

At one time, I considered a career in journalism. And, like many would-be journalists, I daydreamed about the adventure of being a foreign correspondent.

This memorial speech, PressThink: Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent, does a superb job of not only memorializing fallen journalist Sander Thoenes, but also gives a glimpse at the challenge, sacrifice and real importance of an increasingly endangered breed of journalism.

Great JPEGCrops Photo Cropping Utility

I've really been enjoying the new Sony DSC-V1 digital camera. One thing I found was that it really, really wants to save in JPEG format (it can save to TIFF but literally freezes for a long time while processing). So, I started looking around for a simple Windows utility that would let me crop my 4:3 pics for printing -- which for a 4"x6" print is 2:3 -- without further reducing the quality of the JPEG files.

Enter JPEGCrops, a great, completely free utility developed by Danish programmer Toke Eskildsen. It does just what I need: rotate and crop JPEGs losslessly. Very easy to use and includes lots of little conveniences. For example, when cropping you can toggle a set of "Rule of Thirds" guidelines.

You know, The Linux community is very vocal about the abundance of quality free software available for that platform. I think Windows programmers who do similar work often don't receive the recognition they deserve because there's so much Microsoft-bashing going on. There are fabulous freeware, donationware, and shareware out there that solve problems big and small. I think users do themselves a disservice not to investigate what's out there, and programmers like Toke deserve a round of praise for their efforts and generosity. Glaedelig Jul!

A wish for the holidays...

That you have a safe and happy holiday and start the new year off on a great note!

Oh, and while we're at it, how about that the Beagle 2 lands safely on Mars Christmas Day...

Among other things, the Beagle 2 will be looking for signs of life in the Martian impact basin, Isidis Planitia. There's a great site if you want to know more.

If it not only completed its six-month journey successfully, but also found definitive signs of ancient life on Mars -- what a Christmas present that would be!

British bookmakers have the odds at 25-1. The real odds are probably a LOT higher, but I'm still pulling for them!

12/31/03 Update: No joy so far. Beagle 2 is down but incommunicado. The Mars Express orbiter is moving to a new polar orbit that will have it going right over the Beagle's landing area, so there's some hope that it may pick up the signal.

Sony shutterbug

For the holidays, we bought our first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot DSC-V1 digital camera. It's small, super fast, and has enough bells and whistles to keep me scratching my head into the new year . Seriously, I couldn't be happier with the choice. Digital Photography Review deserves all the credit: it's a fantastic resource with exhaustive product reviews and a very active discussion board (so we could see the pros and cons real world users found)!