Comments on: Donncha’s Friday Links

By: No Name

No Name — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:36:08 +0000

I’m also glad that Thomas Hawk chose not to post those images.

By: Computer Guru

Computer Guru — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 20:15:04 +0000

I haven’t tried it on WPMU myself, but I’ve heard my XCache plugin works there – I won’t swear to it though

I wouldn’t expect there to be much of a difference in the actual page load times under no load between Memcached and XCache – they both work the exact same way, after all. However, the Memcached backend (as a result of its intended usages and language-agnostic facilities) will slow down once the load starts – but that’s just my experience.

Please do let me know how it goes with WPMU, I just don’t have the time to test it out! (sad, I know )

By: Donncha

Donncha — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:26:53 +0000

CG – I’ve looked at the generation times WP Cache prints at the end of each page. That’s what I base my observations on. Those times are generally the same for both engines, but I have something else up my sleeve for high-traffic sites.

If I get around to it next week I’m going to look at how well it works with WordPress MU. I think the object-cache just needs a “site_id” in the key prefix to work and even that might be optional.

By: Computer Guru

Computer Guru — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:43:00 +0000

About the XCache plugin/backend: have you benchmarked/stress-tested it, or just subjective testing? Under (little to) no load, you probably won’t see a difference between most of the opcode caching engines.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:47:46 +0000

What’s genuine in digital photography? I couldn’t say. I just feel that chasing after “film look” is probably futile because it will probably never look genuine.

I’m not much on telling other people what to do with their photography, though. Everybody’s different. My own take on Mike’s article is that people who are serious about their (digital) photography should at least *consider* the issue of technical style. Whether they decide to try to develop a technical style of their own or not, at least they’re aware of it. But in my opinion it’s still the photographer’s choice. I don’t have to like their photos.

By: Lloyd Budd

Lloyd Budd — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:26:03 +0000

I’m also glad that Thomas Hawk chose not to post those images. Dave Olson (uncleweed) chose to post the photos of a violent death that he came across in Vancouver (“Abbott Street Incident” if you must), and it was hard for me to wonder into them in his in his photo stream.

By: Donncha

Donncha — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:22:07 +0000

Thanks Doug for commenting! I have to wonder, what is genuine these days? Is it straight out of the camera with no post-processing and resizing? Even film was processed more than that in the dark room.

I completely disagree with what Mike was saying in that post though, digital manipulation is so flexible I don’t see the point in limiting oneself when one is capable of producing a beautiful print.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:06:29 +0000

A couple of clarifications on the “integrity” of digital photography. First, it was Mike’s comment; I merely quoted him.

My interpretation of what he was saying was not that digital photography is necessarily lacking in integrity, but rather that digital photography doesn’t have any natural technical style. My reading is that Mike is suggesting that one could shoot film and automatically get a technical style based on the type of camera, type of film, type of processing, type of paper, etc., but with digital photography one has to specifically set out to create a technical style.

And (again, my interpretation) Mike suggested that simply mimicking “film style” with digital is probably doomed to failure. We can still recognize wood-grain plastics despite the best efforts of industry, and I think that he is saying (by implication) that we will always be able to recognize film-style digital photos.

My own feeling – and my motivation for quoting Mike – is that instead of trying to make convincing film-style results from digital photos, perhaps we should instead accept digital photography as its own medium. Given a choice between imitation film and genuine digital, my personal preference is for the genuine.