Art tends not only to discover the truth but to exaggerate and finally distort it. And, maybe in this distortion lies the essence of art.

• Matthew Nowicki
  via NOTCOT

Pano is one of my new favorite iPhone apps. It’s super-easy to use and does a great job of stitching together all your shots, although a steady hand and far away subject matter definitely help.
As great as the app is, it still has room for improvement on the user interface. Like when you want to switch from portrait mode to landscape, you need to hit ‘Cancel’. Huh? The ‘Cancel’ button is actually the default button through the application experience.
After you’ve taken your photo series and need Pano to stitch them together, you hit ‘Cancel’ to bring up the options to: ‘Start Over’, ‘Make my panorama now!’, or ‘Resume shooting’. It makes no sense. There’s other options for button labeling to make the process less confusing, as well as plenty of real estate on the bottom nav bar if additional buttons were necessary (but I don’t think they are). Hell, even changing the button to read ‘Options’ would help out.
Here’s some shots I took up at the reservoir at Central Park today:



Pano for iPhone

My Suunto Lumi watch (Suunto calls them ‘wrist computers’) arrived this past week. It’s the first watch I’ve worn in around 8 years. I saw it posted on a gadget blog and fell in love with it. I mean, look at it, how could you not?

The only issue I have with the watch is the fluorescent orange band. I’m going to try and get a custom leather band made for it.

I wacked most of my information on my Facebook account and then deactivated it today.
I don’t find Facebook that useful anymore.
Ok, I never found it useful, but now I find it just plain annoying. It might be that I’m all growns up and have evolved my digital self. Or I could just be turning into a grumpy old man. Probably a little bit of both.
The status updates from my friends and my “friends” have been driving me postal lately. Most are updates in their lives. I guess this is good and appropriate, but I’ve been hitting the “See Less” link on my friends more and more, so my homepage feed is a tiny subset of all my friends.
My brother Mark published a great book a few years ago on the art of the away message, ‘Where There’s a Will, There’s Away… Messages: A 21st Century Guide to the Art of Absence‘. He wrote it in reference to his instant messaging methodology (back when we posted our status on AIM), but it’s just as relevent to the world of Twitter and Facebook.
Mark’s thoughts on posted his actual life status:

…Now there are two reasons I chose NOT to post Away Messages like those. Ever. The first is out of consideration to any onlookers; it’s boring. And the fact is, no one really cares where I am at any given time, they just want something to do while they’re bored or distracted. So I thought, “Why not give people something to read? Entertain them!” So I got into the habit of creating a new Away Message every day. I never repeated a Message. And each one had to be interesting in some way, so that there was a payoff for checking it. Clever, witty, funny, curious, ironic, familiar… as long as it was a nice diversion for all of 10 seconds, it was fair game.

Take some notes people, this isn’t just a plug, it’s good advice.