Soldier Ant 

A quick Flickr photo-essay on good design in corraling shopping carts in parking lots.

Our dog Polly is small. Not Do Pesos small, but she's certainly no bruiser. 20 lbs, most of it heart. (And the remainder attitude.) Yet she never looks all that small in photographs. I carry a picture of her and my wife on my Treo as wallpaper, and occasionally someone will see it and (due to her coloration, I suppose) ask if she's a Rottweiler! Gawd no, she's just a mouthy Manchester Terrier/Chihuahua mix. In the picture (which I won't post here, cause my wife hates that picture) the perspective is a little screwy - Polly is on her lap, and leaning into the camera, therefore the dog's head looks about twice its actual size.

We've kinda got the same problem with our other dog, Dozer. He's not a big dog either (50lbs - big to some, but friends who've never seen him in person sometimes think he's a horse.) And when we photograph the dogs together it gets real confusing, real quick. Due to perspective, she sometimes ends up looking bigger than him.

What's my point? None, I suppose. But I've had this idea in mind to do a series of photographs of the dogs, with various reference points (alongside a human, compared to a hydrant, that kind of thing.) If I get around to it, keep an eye on Flickr, or here.

Oh, and other people must have the same problem with their doggey-pictures.

...to avoid Lima.

Flickr user prolix has a great series of street portraits taken in San Francisco. Really impressive.

Flickr user furbo has a thing for cute noses.

Last week I did a quick, 5-minute thing at the inaugural Ignite Columbus event. Met a fun group of folks (many of whom I'd already met at this summer's Startup Weekend Columbus.) My talk, Algorithms for Interesting was a riff on the Reputation Systems one I've been pimping around most of this year, but I altered it quite a bit, to focus on content reputation (and also to fit within the brutal Ignite-format constraints—15 seconds a slide, and exactly 20 slides.) So... wander on over there and enjoy the slides and a little Flip-video as well.