“Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style” has sold more than 10 million copies since its initial publication in April 1959.

Newsday highlights the 50^th anniversary of the classic text on English grammar and writing style.

This is the book on the subject.

The best book of writing advice I’ve ever read. I read it cover-to-cover about once a year.

– John Gruber

I considered offering my copy out for loan. However, I would not be happy without a copy in my possession. It is a small book, and you owe yourself an edition of it.

It saddens me that writing style seems a fading art. This book is not read enough.

The Orbis Ring flash is a low budget option for using portable strobes to power a ring flash. There are two big advantages to the Orbis: light & cheap. That said, the build quality is very solid and more than I was expecting.

I decided to try mine out at a friend’s housewarming. This was the result:

To shoot with, it was a breeze. My SB-24 mounted snug in the adaptor. An old sync cord linked my 5D2 to the flash and I was away. The results were impressive.

For shooting an event, such as a party or a wedding, the ring flash gives a nice fall off of light without too much in the way of highlights. For candid portraits, it was simply wow.

I’m looking forward to trying it out in a more staged environment. There are a few lighting options I’d like to try, such as using it for fill or using it from off-axis.

The Orbis team has put a few videos on YouTube, and there is a group of Flickr showing what people are doing with it.

Recent reports highlight Internet Explorer’s drop in percentage of internet users. Given the huge war between Mozilla and IE, it sounds like big news, but is it?

These days I don’t think browsers are as important. The innovation in one is rapidly copied to another. The UI differences between Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome are minimal. Each of them does a good job of rendering standards based HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Each vendor has a use for their browser. Microsoft has a component version of IE it can embed in most of Windows. Apple has a component version of Safari that it can use across Mac OS X and iPhone OS. Google’s browser is optimized to run Google’s style of application. Firefox is a great platform for building browsers, while also being a browser.

The important thing today is to own a destination worth browsing to. And that is a much harder challenge.

My challenge for 2009 is to become better at video production. So far I’ve spent a bunch of time learning to use Final Cut Pro, and reading up on editing techniques. However, the best way to learn is to try.

The video above is the result of a bit of an experiment.

For camp, we pitched 9 large A-Frame tents. This seemed a good event to try out some timelapse photography.

Three still cameras were used to capture the footage. My Ricoh GX100 was set to take the wide angle at a rate of two frames per minute. This was let run for the entire event. Phil took the close up video with a Canon G9. It captures time lapse video straight to Quicktime. I also used my DSLR to capture some stills.

The wide angle stills were processed in Lightroom to improve the colour, add a vignette and crop slightly. Exported to JPG and imported into a FCP with 2s per frame. The G9 footage was cut in over the top, along with the still frames.

To tie it together, transitions were added to each cut and motion added to the stills to create a sense of movement. The final image includes a text overlay created using Title 3D. Compressor then rendered the final output, that YouTube then crushes.

While in Beijing, I did a lot of dining out. There were some great experiences and one questionable one.

• Huajia Yiyuan Restaurant - frequented by Cathay Pacific flight crews when in Beijing, this restaurant is close to the top of my list for Beijing. With a wide variety of food on the menu and a tea list longer than most wine lists, there is much to like. The atmosphere is wonderful, nestled in the midst of Ghost Street, without succumbing to the surrounding commercialism.
• Da Dong - Modern way to experience Peking Duck, Beijing style. The mini “hamburger” variant was interesting to try, with its heavy garlic. The classic duck was classic. Extensive menu allows for a wide array of choice for accompanying dishes, beautifully photographed. I considered enquiring to buy a copy of their menu, given the print quality, typography and photo budget; it bordered on food porn.
• Quanjude - Classic roast duck. The most famous in Beijing and for a good reason. Established over 130 years ago, this is where government officials go to eat, with many private rooms available, if you book in advance. We had a set menu that included just about every part of the duck. Duck hearts were the big surprise in how tasty they were. Duck feet were edible, but not quite to my taste. The roast duck itself was classic and delicious.
• Sichuan Restaurant - if you’re staying near the Hard Rock Cafe in Beijing, keep walking. There is a great Sichuan style restaurant just around the corner from it. They have English menus (with pictures), but not much English for the staff. Very good food considering the lack of price. The staff were fascinated by Super Monkey Ball, which was playing on my iPhone while I waited for my meal. Not sure of the name of it though, so may be tricky to find.
• Local food - there were many local food places I dined at that had wonderful food. Requires a bit of enthusiasm to try some of it, but many more hits than misses. Don’t turn your nose up at something without at least trying it first. You may find something you really love.
• Hard Rock Cafe - ok, so I caved on my last night in Beijing. After many hours walking around the Great Wall, I was not feeling adventurous. I regret this decision. I thought a burger would cure my woes. The burger was average and overpriced. The service was classic American style; not a good thing. I was interrupted three times while trying to eat, each time to ask if my meal was okay. Certainly wasn’t improved by hassling me about it.

I’m open to suggestions for future visits. I’m not staying in Ningbo long enough to write too much about it, although I did stumble across a place with traditional local food that struck me as quite strange; they did not serve tea! The food here is quite good from the little I’ve tried. I am not holding out much expectation for Shenzhen; hopefully I will be surprised.