It's official, it's quantifiable

According to a story on CNN, MD drivers are dumber than VA drivers.

DC still takes the "Dumbest Drivers in the Region, and Nearly the Nation" award. You could have fooled me. I'd have sworn MD drivers were the dumbest on the planet. I don't think I've seen one on the highway in weeks who knew where the turn signal was. And why oh why, do so many MD drivers feel the need to go 56mph in the left lane?

(Note to my MD readers, I'm not saying all MD drivers are bad, just that the vast majority of bad drivers I've seen in the last few years have had MD plates).

The test is currently offline, but I'm hoping it is back up soon. I'm interested to see how I score.

***

Edit to add, if you hit this link, it should take you to the test, even tho the main page still says it's down. Strange. Good luck!

***

A game

I think I need to make a game for this blog. I'll give you a movie description from my digital cable's guide service, you have to figure out the movie. Ready? Go!

Description: "[title character] and flying cyborg Jet Jaguar meet a giant cockroach and a big black chicken sent by Seatopians."

Title:________________________

Credit

It took a little while, but it's nice to see that Team Bike Works' official "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" page has finally put up my photo credit and link. Not sure if anybody will look at the page again until next year's race. Oh well. Next year, maybe I'll try to work something out with them in advance. Hopefully by then, I'll have better flash photography skillz.

Tour Sponsorship: From Apropos to WTF?

Reading the weekend section of my local paper, I come across upcoming local concert info. Two things catch my eye:

From Apropos:

Pop tarts...sorry, that should be "'Pop-Tarts' presents American Idols Live Tour 2006".

To the tour that should be called "WTF Has Become Of Us Live Tour 2006":

VH1 Classic presents Ministry and the Revolting Cocks live at the 930 Club.

I GIVE UP!

Uncle! I surrender! Whatever you want to call it, I'm done working on photos from the 2006 "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" race. Fin.

The first 130 images, I individually post-processed (resized, cropped, adjusted brightness (if necessary), adjusted sharpness (after the resize), cloned out unwanted spectators a couple of times). They can be seen here.

For the final 76 images, I simply batch-resized then posted them. No sharpening. No brightening. No cropping. Presented "As Is" for your viewing pleasure. They can be found by clicking this link, or by clicking on the red tricycle image on the last page of the Lodi gallery.

In addition to all that, I was contacted by a number of racers for whom I (gladly!) worked-up full sized images of themselves. (I love knowing that people enjoy my work). But had I spent the time to post those last 76 images, the race would have been long forgotten.

Anyway, pass the word. If any racers find shots of themselves and want larger/better copies, have them email me (gmr2048 at gmail dot com) and I'll see what I can do.

-g

What...

...the f*ck has gotten into this country? Don't we live here because of freedom or something? Somebody needs to mention that to these folks:

The first:
BLACK JACK, Mo. (AP) - The city council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

That sounds vaguely familiar. "Well, we used to throw you out cuz yer brown. Now we're gonna throw you out cuz yer not livin' the way the Good Lord intended".



The next example of stupidness run amok is:
"...judge jails 14-year-old"

...snip...

"The teen, jailed since Wednesday, insists she is not a sex abuse victim and is demanding a lawyer be assigned to represent her, court records show.

However, jail officials said Monday she cannot speak with anyone without permission from county prosecutors."

Will she be "safer" in jail? Perhaps. The kid doesn't sound like she's ready to make decisions by herself yet (regardless if she's of legal age or not). But I would think that by putting her in jail against her will, she should have the right to talk to an attorney.



And finally, a couple from the "well, of course photography = terrorism, dumbass" department...

A NJ lawmaker wants to criminalize taking photos of power-plants and other sensitive infrastructure (via BoingBoing):
The [NJ] state Senate Law and Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss a bill today which would make it a crime -- punishable by up to 18 months in jail -- to photograph, videotape or otherwise record for an extended period of time a power generation, waste treatment, public sewage, water treatment, public water, nuclear or flammable liquid storage facility, as well as any airport in the state.

And lastly, the organizers of the 5 Boros Bike Tour in NYC have a photo contest. Rule #1?

1. Photos must be taken on Tour Day, Sunday, May 7, 2006, and must relate to some aspect of the Tour. Taking photos on bridges or their access points is strongly discouraged in the interest of public safety. Any such photos will not be considered for prizes.

Cool

I've been spending a lot of time processing the hundreds of shots I took at the 2006 "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race (still have more than 200 to go through, too!). After I had the first few batches done and posted, I sent an email to the race organizers. Guess they liked my photos (at least one of them) cuz it made it onto the official Lodi homepage. Only drag is that they didn't credit me or provide a link or anything.

So I sent them an email, explaining that I'd like a credit and a link back to my pbase gallery for the race, cuz I figured other racers might want photos of themselves. They were nice enough and said they'd provide both. I'm hoping it happens sooner rather than later. One of these days, I'm gonna have to start charging for my services. Gotta pay off these camera parts somehow!

So much for that

So I ran out of steam on the "Photo-a-Day" project. Who'd have guessed. It started to feel like a job (after only...what...8 days?). "Must...process...more...pictures...". So that was passively abandoned.

I did manage to get down to Fredricksburg, VA for a couple of hours near sunrise this past Sunday for the "12 Hours of Lodi Farm" mountain bike race.


(Click the picture to see the the gallery of shots I've processed so far).

I hit this race last year, and got a lot of cool shots out of it. Although I only had a bit over 2 hours of shooting time this year, I was hoping for similar results.

As far as the photos go, I started off badly. Super-stoopid rookie mistakes. I was keeping shutter speed vs. focal length in mind while shooting, but not shutter speed vs. high-speed mountain bikers tear-assing past. Consequently, my first bunch o' shots suffered from too slow shutter speed (even with the use of my crappy flash). The little LCD on the camera didn't allow me to notice my mistakes. Thankfully, as the sun rose, the light got better and my shutter speed was able to increase a bit (for those who care, I was shooting mostly AV mode), so my later pics were better in terms of blur (and lack thereof). I ended up shooting something over 300 shots in two hours. Many of those have been/will be tossed. So far I've processed and posted ~56 shots (at the link above) and have probably another 100 to do. I'm not doing much post processing on them. Just a quick resize and "save for web". If anybody reading this happens to see a shot of themselves that they want, email me (gmr2048 at yahoo dot com) and I'll be happy to send you the full size image (if it's not crap).

So the next time I get delusions of grandure and start thinking I want to become a pro photographer, I'll come back and re-read this entry and realize just how far I have to go.

Shamelessly pimped myself (don't you just love recursive links?) and eighteenpercent.net over in the comments at one of the photo/DIY blogs I read regularly, photocritic.org (he asked for it. I've not resorted to spamming just yet). Guess I need to come up with some new content now, huh.

It's coming.

I promise.

Wait for it.

Wait for it...