h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah... that's either for red-eye reduction or prefocus. You can probably turn that off in the settings.

Most people using flash at arenas and such don't know their phones/cameras have "settings".

I leave mine on because generally I don't use it at gigs and at the footy nobody cares - but if I do use it inside the house I need that flash

The camera-flash-at-arenas thing has been around since cameras first got automatic built-in flash. I can remember it being commented upon as far back as the Atlanta Olympics, that your average flash doesn't go any further than about six feet, and yet whenever there's a lot of people taking pictures in the dark at an event you see a dazzling sea of flashes that really aren't going to help the picture at all.

I think we've already established that these days all it takes is one complaint for the wishes of the majority to be ignored in favour of the twerp who's irked by something everyone else has no problem with, because organisations are so afraid of complaints/angry people/lawsuits and will often side with the complainant without bothering to consider the merits of their point because, well, appeasing anyone who complains, regardless, is what their customer service training taught them to do, but in this instance I think I side with the twerp.

Dear Bob Almighty, people. You really don't record *everything*, and you really don't need to put your lives on the internet for everyone to see. How about actually enjoying the moment instead of watching it through the LED display of your phone?

I know that last paragraph is a lost cause, by the way.

The flash-at-arenas thing goes back farther than that!

I can distinctly remember being in the Astrodome for some big event, maybe it was Dar Robinson jumping from the top of the dome, or maybe it was Evel Knievel making a jump... whoever it was the emcee explicitly told the crowd to turn off their flashes OR REMOVE THEIR FLASH CUBES. This was back in the days of Kodak Instamatics, in the mid '70s. (I can smell the polyester.) And sure enough, I was as dazzled by the sea of flashes across the 'dome as I was by whatever stunt or feat I was seeing. It wasn't as dense as the ones today, but it was still amazing how many people were actually burning flashcubes even though they were JUST told it was useless and would actually ruin their shot.

Flashcubes Oh my, I remember those. I had a friend who got an Instamatic for Christmas one year. Was I jealous? Of course not.

I have a collection of old cameras behind me. I do not have an Instamatic but I do have an unopened (mint-in-box) pack of flashcubes.

My mother had an Instamatic. Maybe it's still somewhere in storage.

I remember once using an instamatic flash to find my way back to my campsite once in conditions of moonless and starless stygian darkness.

Flash, take the requisite number of steps, flash again.

Saved a lot of encounters with tripping hazards.

The alternative would have been to get down on my hands and knees and crawl.

When I purchased my last camera, a Canon SX 170 IS, the feature that made me choose it was that the flash folds down into the camera body. I don't know if it still flashes, but at least no one can see it

F S

This is the Instamatic my mother had. With one like this, you'd have to be no more than 4 flashes from camp to make it back.

http://www.kodakcameracollection.com/media/images/site_library/78_instamatic_x-15.jpg

The very same camera.

As I remember, I had a couple of spare cubes and there was a lot of open space along the course, with one difficult hedgerow and a fence line to get past.

I had this one, the flash cubes were the same. I loved how they just burnt out then revolved when you wound the film forward.

http://images.dpchallenge.com/images_portfolio/60000-64999/61651/1200/Copyrighted_Image_Reuse_Prohibited_865147.jpg

And my schoolfriends would sometimes take pictures of me, or me with other friends, and invariably as they pressed the shutter button would also push the camera down. I have loads of pictures of headless bodies, but great pictures of our shoes!

when I'm at the footy I often take a picture of Junter the club mascot for my daughter (he chased her around the shop once, she hates him)
and sometimes I'll film the fans behind the goal in the standing area, because they are, frankly, brilliant.

or now and again at an open air, just to remind me later that I really was there. (and yes, sometimes selfies of me with with someone like Niel Young in the background)

"New Task Force Aims for Zero Traffic Deaths"

Oh, that's just priceless. You should take that on the road
http://www.twcnews.com/tx/austin/news/2015/02/4/new-task-force-aims-for-zero-traffic-deaths.html

I thought I knew all there was to know about stupid driving until I came here. It's the biggest reason I've never had a Texas driving licence in all these 15 years. I've seen things that have taken my breath away. I've been tailgated at 70mph on the freeway... by an ambulance! (which wasn't on an emergency call).

"...somebody texting and driving--which, believe it or not, is very dangerous."

No, you do surprise me

Sorry, task force, you're wishing for something that just ain't gonna happen until you do several things... which ain't gonna happen. The first of which is to get rid of right-turn-on-red.

I should probably qualify that first statement.

I thought I knew all there was to know about stupid driving after having been a professional driver for 14 years in London and seen the way people lose all their common sense and decency once they get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

I'm just going to disagree with you about right on red. There isn't anything inherently dangerous about it as long as drivers pay attention. Inattentive driving is the issue.

I can see restricting right on red turns in urban areas like where you live, with increased pedestrian and bicycle traffic, but in rural areas it just makes sense. In West Virginia I've seen right turn yields that don't even require a stop. Of course at that intersection the only pedestrians you expect to see are colored bold black and white and say, "moo".

Inattentive driving is definitely the issue, but there's less chance of that changing as there is of Ted Cruz declaring that the Affordable Care Act is a good thing. Which is why right-turn-on-red is a bad idea. Because, in my experience most (in the high 90s%) drivers:

Treat a red light like a yield/give way instead of a stop. In fact they're far more likely to stop at a stop sign than they are at a red light.

Have their necks craned and their gaze facing hard left when they send their car over the stop line, to see just how fast, hopefully without stopping, they can make their turn.

Are oblivious of the possibility that a pedestrian might be crossing (I have had multiple examples of that happening when the walk light is in my favour).

Right-turn-on-red after, say, midnight, and until, say, 6am, I could go for. I have memories of spending more than an hour out of a six-hour route sitting at red lights throughout my night-time magazine run, with no ing traffic going in the opposite direction.

But until people can learn to drive with consideration, with safety of others in mind and with due care and attention, right-turn-on-red needs to go, in my opinion, and speaking as an interested (trying to stay out of hospital/a wheelchair/the ground) party.

I knew there was one other thing.

Too many drivers, when their gaze is turned hard left, don't look up at the light as they make their turn, and notice that it's now gone green and there are pedestrians crossing on the walk light, who the driver would plough through if they didn't have their wits about them.

So it's not really inattentive driving. That's not a strong enough term to describe it. Impatient, selfish, inconsiderate, oblivious, and I guess downright stupid on occasion.

"Driving without due care and attention" & up before the beak, translating it to old world speak.

"The low cost of living"
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20150311-a-weird-place-for-business

Oh that's a good one. You're having one hell of a laugh there matey boy. Apart from Austin now being one of the most expensive places to live in the entire country, because of sky-rocketing property values and rents (don't get me started on that ), almost everything in that piece about Austin being this little place of weirdness and non-conformity is at least five years out of date. Since all the residential towers with their million-dollar condos started going up downtown, since east Austin became hipsterville, since so many of the old music venues and drinking holes started closing down, and since so many of the old landmarks have been bulldozed for more new development, the people who made Austin the kind of place it was when I got here can hardly afford it any more.

I've always, since high school, ....dreamed is too strong a word, but I've always wished I could live in Austin. And when I say "live", I mean afford to live comfortably in Austin. The problem has always been that I've never felt like I could find a job in Austin that would pay me enough to live in Austin. Houston is going the same way. Gentrification is rampant. Everyone is attracted to an area because of the quircky local artist nature of the local folks that live there because that's where they can afford to live and before you know it the quircky local artist crowd can't afford the new loft apartments they built when they tore down the quircky local neighborhood.

Austin has always been more expensive than Houston with a smaller job base.

If you'd come here around the time of the dotcom crash, and been able to find a suitable job, you could have. Property prices and rents dipped around that time, considerably.

Apart from what's going on in East Austin, I wouldn't call what's happening here gentrification. It's yuppiefication. Or whatever today's equivalent of the yuppie is. Either way, their aims and effects are the same as the yuppies of the 80s (and the people driving up prices in San Francisco and surrounding areas). They're here for the tech and IT jobs, whatever those may be; web design, video production, engineering. And those jobs pay well. And there's a shortage of places to live, despite all the new condo towers downtown and all the apartments being built, especially along my road I hardly need explain what that means for house prices and rents.

Ironically (an appropriate use of the word, in the circumstances ), it's the artists that have driven up prices and gentrified east Austin. Not the old local artists though. Hipster artists And in their wake, new, horrible, cookie-cutter buildings are going up where there used to be neighbourhoods, Hispanic mostly. Places you could go to buy all your ingredients for a good molé, or any kind of Mexican food that takes your fancy (and not at inflated CM prices), are disappearing and being replaced by restaurants and bars that cater for... them. Hipsters.