There is a volleyball game ongoing not 20 feet away, but the bushes are not physically disturbed by humans during the 15 minutes of filming -- the occasional movement of the bushes is due to wind.

The video has been cut down to the most interesting 5-minute stretch.

• Esc
• Enter
• All the arrow keys
• Tab
• Home, End
• Del, Backspace
• Alt, Ctrl

Most laptop keyboards, unfortunately, have one of the following problems:

• A stupid little "Fn" key as the lower right key, making it nearly impossible to hit left-Ctrl without looking
• No space around the arrow keys, so I can't feel which button I'm touching
• Little or no consideration for the placement of the Home/End keys, rendering them unusable without hunting (or that blasted Fn key)

My modified keyboard

I've modified my current laptop keyboard to add space and remove annoying keys:

Victims include: Tab, Scroll lock, Ins, Context menu, and some proprietary dollar and euro keys nestled in with the arrows.

I'm not looking for a fancy machine with an amped-up graphics card or fingerprint reader or other such nonsense. I just want a basic laptop with standard hardware and a keyboard that doesn't suck.

Anyone want to recommend a manufacturer?

Cross-posted to LJ and the Neon Guild mailing list.

Is there some trick I can use to make this work? Here are the options I can imagine:

• Have the feed pull images from geohash.info, which in turn downloads the real image file and caches it
• Again, have the images come from geohash.info, but this time have the page act as a non-caching proxy for maps.google.com (but setting a far-future expiration)
• Trick the browser into sending geohash.info as a referer
• Serve a different version of the feed to aggregator bots (based on their referer), using their API key (I don't know how I'd get that)
• Have the image URLs point to a page at geohash.info that grabs the API key for the referer, and redirects to the maps.google.com URL using that API key (again, probably not an option)

Update a few hours later: That last approach worked! I found a way to look up the API key for any site, so now I can embed key-less static maps, like this:

• When an ant brings a bit of dirt out of her nest, she pats it into place, just how squirrels pat the ground after burying an acorn.
• Ants don't like having a camera lens hovering above the anthill. They huddle just inside the entrance.
• Beetles are shy little bastards. Their favorite place to hang out is always on the other side of the stem.
• Beetles are very hairy.
• Cicadas, grasshoppers, and wasps all have three smaller, jewel-like eyes in the middle of their foreheads.
• On a cool but sunny day, a basking lizard may decide that being petted by a big, scary human is a lesser evil than hiding in the shade.
• A male carpenter bee has greenish eyes and a yellow patch on his forehead, and his buzz is higher-pitched than that of a female.
• The best way to get video of a carpenter bee in flight is to look for a male hovering a few inches off the ground. He's usually guarding a female, who is hiding in the leaves.
• Stand still long enough and carpenter bees will forget you exist.
• Every square foot of foliage seems to have at least one bug.
• Jumping spiders have no fear.

What they sent me back was a Canon Powershot S5 IS. Sweet!

The malfunction

Experiencing technical difficulties

The malfunction first appeared in late December 2007. The sensor intermittently produced a purple cast with horizontal lines and severe distortion. When the weather was warmer or more humid the problem occurred with greater frequency, and leaving the camera on for more than a few minutes increased the chances of seeing the "purple lines of death". (Not the official name.)

I was pretty bummed, having taken some freaking awesome pictures with that camera. But it was 3 years out of warranty, so I expected that was the end. (Repairs can be pretty expensive, even surpassing the price of a used camera.)

Then my dad discovered that his Powershot A65, unused since his summer trip to the Bahamas, was no longer working. (Turned it on and the screen remained black, but there was a faint repeated clicking from the front.) That's when he discovered the service notice on Canon's website and alerted me to it.

The service

My dad sent his A65 in and it was repaired quite expediently, so I decided to give it a shot. I wrote to the listed email support address and described the problem. They sent back a printable pre-paid UPS shipping label, and I bundled up my camera and sent it off.

A week went by, and I received a repair estimate of $0.00 and a description of the work to be done. Another week went by. Finally, I received a package by UPS. Opening it, I discovered a shiny box containing what I suspect is a new (not refurbished) Canon Powershot S5 IS. An enclosed note explained that necessary parts were not in stock at the repair facility, so to expedite the repair they sent me "a new or refurbished camera of equal or greater value".

Canon's support and repair staff were highly professional, and I was not expected to pay anything at any point in the process. Most astonishing was the company's willingness to take the burden of repairing a well out-of-warranty camera.

The camera

The S5 is quite an upgrade! While I couldn't be more thrilled to have this camera, there are a few areas where the S1 IS was superior. (Very few.) Below I describe the major differences as they apply to everyday use.

Raw specs

"Super Macro" photo of a ladybug

Now I've got 12x optical zoom instead of 10x (which was already extreme, especially at the time I bought it), and 8 megapixels instead of 3.2. Video is now available from almost all shooting modes, and ranges from 30 fps to 60 fps. Super Macro mode allows me to photograph insects that are nearly touching the lens.

Physical interface

The body is slightly bulkier, making it a bit less portable, though I still carry it around bandoleer-style everywhere I go. I don't mind the extra bulk too much, because 1) the LCD screen is much bigger, and 2) the lens cap actually pinches off instead of being held on by friction. (Still a little touchy, I must say.)

I'm still getting used to the button layout. The omni control (4-way directional button) of the S1 was just the right distance and direction from the Set button such that I could work the former with the tip of my thumb and the latter with the first knuckle down. On the S5 the Set and Menu buttons are recessed and directly under the omni control, which slows me down. Perhaps I just need to get more comfortable with the slight changes to the layout.

Features

There are a ton of new features, but most of them seem to be in the category of post-processing; I prefer to do any color-correction in a powerful photo editor such as the GIMP or Adobe Photoshop. Unfortunately lacking is the intervalometer (time lapse) tool that all its predecessors have. Instead, there is a "custom timer" which can take up to 10 pictures with up to 30 second intervals, a far cry from the 2-100 pictures with 1-60 minutes intervals. However, the highly-unofficial CHDK was recently released for DIGIC III/DryOS Powershots, and I can run all sorts of fancy bracketing and interval scripts. (It's a boot-time in-memory firmware patch, so it doesn't actually void the warranty.) CHDK also enables RAW capture, cabled remote triggers, and in-camera image stacking — astounding. Go read about it.

Focusing works very differently. There are three distance ranges: Normal, Macro, and Super Macro. They are optimal for normal range, close range, and super-close, respectively. Interestingly, Super Macro does not allow use of the zoom lever — it seems to pull the zoom as far back as possible and rely entirely on focus. The camera also provides a number of settings to tweak how and when autofocus, IS, and other automatic features are brought into play.

Overview

Overall, the S5 is a pretty stunning camera, especially with the CHDK filling in for deficiencies. I highly recommend it for mid-level amateurs such as myself.

The Customer Support request form is not expressly for account deletion, but at least one individual has used it and reports having received confirmation from Facebook that the account was deleted.

Of course, your data would still reside in backups, and who knows if they secretly keep a copy of your data anyway? I recommend that you fill your profile with junk incrementally over a period of weeks before submitting the request.

As for the request itself, here's what I typed:

Please delete my Facebook account

I want Facebook to completely and irrevocably delete my account and all associated information. I understand that Facebook cannot delete messages I have sent to others (and perhaps comments I have left on journal entries) and that my info might remain in older backups, but all other info within or pertaining to my account should be destroyed.

If my information can also be removed from backups, I request that it be removed.

I hereby revoke all license, expressed or implied, for Facebook to store, display, use, or analyze my submitted information. This formally terminates my relationship with Facebook.

Their clickwrap EULA is non-negotiated, and so is my letter. If they can claim a license to my content, I can claim to revoke it. Sounds fair to me!

I'll follow up on this when they respond. (If they don't respond within a reasonable period of time, I'll start sending more requests, including by email.)

Update: I have received a response:

Hi Tim,

We have deleted your profile information and removed your email address from our login database. Please let me know if you have further questions or concerns.

Thanks,

Audrina
User Operations
Facebook

Of note: The form I link to above apparently sends the message as an email to privacy@facebook.com, so sending to that email address is probably just as good a way of getting this done as using the form itself.