This set me off on a train of thought…

I looked up the size of an HD movie. It appears that such a movie represents about 4 to 8 GB of data in uncompressed form, and compressed for over-the-net viewing it might weigh in at an off-the-cuff average of 2 GB of actual transmitted data. That’s 2³⁰ * 2, or 2,147,483,648 bytes of Data.

Twitter, as most geeks seem to know, is limited to 140 bytes (characters) per message. Why is this? It’s because that’s the message limit for an SMS text message as defined by the telephone companies.

So, an HD movie is the data equivalent of roughly 15,339,168 text messages. The phone companies seen to charge about 20 cents per text message across the board, data plans notwithstanding.

At that price, the phone companies think it’s worth $3,067,833.78 to stream that HD movie.

That same 140 bytes of data costs Netflix about 3.25*10^-9 cents.

That’s 0.00000000325 cents.

So, in terms of actual costs, a text message costs virtually nothing to send. Or you could say that it costs about one cent per 4 million text messages.

If you are a world-class text messager, you might be able to send about 1200 text messages a day., let’s say 35,000 or so a month. (There have been higher counts recorded!)

Text messaging plans are the worst deals on the planet. Printer ink? Pikers. For corruption and sheer craven greed, no one beats the telcos.

The photo is of Jeppe Hein’s Bench Around the Lake, a wonderfully whimsical set of swoopy benches that seem to spring out of the earth in places around the lake, do odd things, and disappear again. The only thing I have against them is that they are a photographically hideous shade of yellow, which pretty much knocks them out of the running for anything except black-and-white portraiture.

Oh well.

Dear Phil Jern,
My name is Sandra Gxxxxxx and I am an editor at www.gpsmycity.com. We are currently compiling a self-guided walking tour to Indianapolis that will be published on out site www.gpsmycity.com as well as in an iPhone application.
We hereby seek your permission to use one of your photos of Lady Spray Fountain on Flickr.com as part of the tour guide in question. The photo we need is:
www.flickr.com/photos/pjern/4797268948/
Naturally, we intend to credit you fully for the authorship of this photograph.
I thank you in advance for your permission and look forward to hearing from you soon.

People need to get out of the habit of thinking that they’re entitled to other people’s work for free if they intend to resell it. I visited the site mentioned, and found out that they’re selling iphone apps.

I was offended by the tone of “Oh we’ll give you credit” and thanking me in advance for my permission, (which isn’t likely to happen ever!).

Greedy people suck.

Please feel free to visit me there, as well. It’s far more dedicated to the art and practice of photography, and I’m putting how-to and practical articles there.

This tree had so many lights on it I understand NASA is looking into it for use as a planetary beacon.

I just had to try this. Light painted with a mini-maglight.

Sunset today. Incredible.

Mammy’s Cupboard. Just south of Natchez, MS on US 61, the sight of this looming out of the early morning fog caused me to nearly break my neck snapping around to get a better look. I actually went back to get a picture- too bad it was closed.

This building is falling down right next to the old Illinois Central line in Vaughan. It may once have been the site of a Casey Jones Museum, as it is adjacent to the site of his famous wreck.