Begin 1984, phase I

When did this turn into a police state? It's not even a *real* state!

Cameras Set Up Around D.C. for New Year's Eve

Things that say "Buy Me!"

I think I found a new favorite website...

Stupid.com

I haven't poked around the rest of the site yet, but when I was Googling for Sushi Adhesive Bandages (a stocking stuffer I received for xmas, which is well worth sharing), stupid.com came up. In the "Stuff you might also enjoy" section of the page, there were such delights as Bacon Strips Adhesive Bandages and Meat Air Fresheners. I'm getting my order together right now. If anyone else wants in, we can see if we can get a bulk discount.

Edit to add: Sadly, it appears that the Meat Air Fresheners are sold out. I'll keep an eye on the site and post if/when they come back.

Surreal

sur·re·al (adj).

1. Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism:
2. Having an oddly dreamlike quality.
3. Walking into your favorite local sushi restaraunt and hearing Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" on the house audio system.

GPS + camera = AWESOME!

I just stumbled across the Ricoh Caplio Pro G3 (note, that is four separate links, for those of you with too much free time).

(Photo linked from LetsGoDigital.org. I'm not sure of the etiquette on linking images, so I hope they don't mind)

Basically, it is a new camera (apparently unveiled at the 2005 PMA trade show) that embeds GPS data into photos via it's onboard GPS unit, or an external GPS device, much the way other cameras imbed time/date info onto photos. It doesn't appear to be on the market yet, but hopefully will end up there. I think by the time things are shown at PMA, they're destined to be real products and not vaporware. In my humble opinion, the one thing that could make this camera even cooler would be to make it waterproof. That would make it a "must have" gadget in my book.

This is either so new, none of the usual nerd/gadget/camera sites have it yet, so old that they have already had it and archived it (and I missed it entirely), or so uninteresting nobody cared enough to point it out. I'm hoping for door #1, but I'd settle for door #2.

I found the link via Rob's blog and, oddly enough, Earthmover and Civil Contractor Magazine, ("Australia's leading civil construction magazine", it's said).

Is this interesting to anyone in the world besides me? Perhaps. Being both a Camera Nerd, and a GPS Nerd of the First Order[tm], I'm pretty impressed. And since this is my blog, you suckers...er...gentle readers will just have to suffer through it. Muhahahaha!



(Edit to change "gentile" to "gentle" as not to offend my throngs of non-Jewish readers. Thanks for the correction, Ben! Thanks for nothing, spell check!)

Religion and skydiving

Here's what I don't get about religious people (and I'm not knocking them...I'm just saying). You have a story like this:

Skydiver survives fall, gets baby surprise

"SILOAM SPRINGS, Arkansas (AP) -- Shayna Richardson was making her first solo skydiving jump when she had trouble with her parachutes and, while falling at about 50 mph, hit face first in a parking lot."

And your take on it is:

"...not only did God save me but he spared this baby," she said.

Why not "Not only did God throw me face first into a parking lot at 50mph, but he did it while I'm pregnant."?

Maybe that's the definition of "faith".

Tai Shan

Took my shot at the the baby panda cub (Tai Shan) at the National Zoo in DC today. Talk about your tough shooting situations! Low light, strange colored light, tons of people, tight viewing location, a wall of glass between him and us, and an uncooperative subject :-)

Of our allotted 10 minutes viewing time, he spent the first two with his back towards us, his face plastered to the rock, drinking the water that ran over it:



After that, he turned around and meandered a bit, before stopping to chomp for another minute on a bit of what looked like burlap in his den area:



Then he struck a pose:



And then retreated to his private chamber, away from adoring fans.

We only had about 5 minutes of time with him. Not a total success, but not a total failure either. I felt bad for the group who came in after us, as the little beastie looked like he wasn't coming out any time soon.

I was shooting at ISO800, but I really should have been at 1600 or 3200. Noise you can fix; blur from slow shutter speed you cannot. My most disappointing shot from the day had to be this one:



I love the way the curve of his face matches the curve of the rock. I just wish it would have been in focus!! I fired off a number of shots (including this one) just holding the camera above my head, to get over the crowd. When we arrived there, I was up front (while he had his back to us), but I didn't want to monopolize my time there (I am 6'6", so when I block views...I *really* block views), so I rotated out and took a spot on the side of the viewing area.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the shots I got. I can see getting up *early* and trying to get last-minute tickets for another try at it...perhaps this weekend.

Link

Just realized that a friend of mine (and fellow mountain biker and beer drinker we'll call "Spearman" as a tricky psudonym), has had a blog for a while but I've neglected to put a link in my little listy thing over there

--------------------->

So, I've just done so. This "Spearman" character has quite a way with words. Check him out.

Honestly, since adopting RSS as the best thing since sliced bread...it's been a while since I've even hit my own blog.

Harbinger?

Is this a sign of things to come? I have hit just about every non-photo store in my neighborhood looking for simple ISO100 speed, color print film (as opposed to slide film). Should be a snap to find, right? That's what I thought too...but evidently we're both wrong. Everybody stocks ISO 200, 400, and 800. Nobody has 100.

Old-ass Safeway: No.
New-skool Mega-Safeway: Nope.
CVS #1: None.
CVS #2: Not here either.
Giant Foods: Shit, they got rid of their entire film dropoff kiosk!

The reason for my quest? A couple of weeks back I made a total spur of the moment purchase on Ebay. I happened across a bidless auction with 52 seconds left. The auction was for an inexpensive 3D camera. No bids? $12 selling price? No brainer.

So here I sit with my new gadget, countless hours of fun on-hold due to a lack of film.

With this camera, you can use it as it was meant to be used (see "What is lenticular"), but there is only a single place in the country that can develop the film (and at a premium, no less). Or, you can cover the inner two lenses, and use the photos taken by the outermost lenses. This will allow you to create a stereo image, similar to those popular at the turn of the century. Also, you can create twitchy animated .GIFs that cycle through both images, tricking your brain into seeing them in 3D. Skilled viewers can actually train their eyes to "free view" the image pairs, negating the need for the viewer itself. This technique is the same used to see those "Magic Eye" images, popular a few years back (some find them tacky...I happen to still dig).

So, I've either got to put in another order with Amazon, or hit one of my local camera shops to finish-off the camera and start learning the world of ultra-budget 3D photography. Imagine the shots I should be able to take some pretty crazy mountain bike race shots once I perfect this!

Fuck you, Singapore

You can kiss my lilly white ass if you think you are *ever* getting one dime of my God Loving American Tourist Dollars™. Fucking backwater, barbarian country.

Singapore Hangs Australian Drug Smuggler. Hanging some 25 year old dumbass for smuggling. And I thought Texas was fucking barbaric.

I hate you, too.

(The irony here is that I am not any of the following: a drug smuggler, a drug user, a death penalty opponent, one of those "every life is sacred" dorks). I am, however, currently drinking.

*sigh*

$2,677.93

Good thing it's only money!