Unbecoming Levity

Distributed Computing = Distributed Responsibility = Fingerpointing

Abacquer — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:27:16 -0400

So this morning I tried to process an order a customer had sent me last night. I went to log into my photolab service provider, exposuremanager.com, just like I always do. Bzzzt. Can't get in. "This link appears to be broken."

Huh, maybe it's my machine. So I try my daughter's machine, nope she can't see it either. Internet down? Nope I can get my email and see all the other sites I use regularly.

So I (reasonably) assume exposuremanager is down. That's not too cool--because while it is down my customers can't place orders. So I call customer support and leave them a message that their site is down.

A little while later I get an e-mail from them stating their site is up and running fine (and by the way, nice pictures on your site!) Thanks, but I still can't get in.

So I try the DOS utility "ping" to ping their server. Sometimes it can't resolve exposuremanager to an IP address (implying a problem with a domain name server at Comcast) and other times it can resolve the IP address but gets no response. I check with WHOIS on Tucows (their registrar) to see if their domain has expired, but it hasn't. WTF?

So then I run a traceroute in an attempt to see where the communication fails between me and exposuremanager:

Tracing route to exposuremanager.com [66.254.91.235]

over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms www.routerlogin.com [192.168.1.1]

2 7 ms 10 ms 7 ms [ my IP omitted ]

3 8 ms 8 ms 6 ms ge-1-2-ur01.gardner.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.187.109]

4 11 ms 10 ms 9 ms te-0-8-0-2-ar01.woburn.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.162.93]

5 14 ms 9 ms 9 ms pos-0-15-0-0-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.162.145]

6 15 ms 14 ms 22 ms pos-0-0-0-0-ar01.chartford.ct.hartford.comcast.net [68.85.162.70]

7 16 ms 18 ms 17 ms pos-2-4-0-0-cr01.newyork.ny.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.61]

8 22 ms 18 ms 17 ms Vlan546.icore1.NJY-Newark.as6453.net [206.82.132.41]

9 17 ms 45 ms 18 ms if-6-0-0-25.mcore3.NJY-Newark.as6453.net [216.6.57.41]

10 19 ms 17 ms 18 ms if-2-0.core1.NTO-NewYork.as6453.net [216.6.57.66]

11 17 ms 18 ms 19 ms sl-gw31-nyc-14-0-0.sprintlink.net [160.81.249.29]

12 18 ms 19 ms 17 ms sl-crs2-nyc-0-2-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.13.35]

13 23 ms 27 ms 19 ms sl-bb20-msq-2-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.74]

14 22 ms 22 ms 24 ms sl-bb21-msq-15-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.110]

15 26 ms 26 ms 27 ms sl-crs1-rly-0-8-5-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.73]

16 25 ms 25 ms 26 ms sl-bb20-dc-5-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.162]

17 24 ms 28 ms 25 ms sl-crs1-dc-0-0-0-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.15.11]

18 74 ms 73 ms 74 ms sl-crs2-fw-0-11-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.19.200]

19 * * * Request timed out.

20 * * * Request timed out.

21 * * * Request timed out.

22 * * * Request timed out.

23 * * * Request timed out.

24 * * * Request timed out.

25 * * * Request timed out.

26 * * * Request timed out.

27 * * * Request timed out.

28 * * * Request timed out.

29 * * * Request timed out.

30 * * * Request timed out.

Trace complete.

As you can see, the communication makes it to "sl-crs2-fw-0-11-3-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.19.200]" and then fails. Sprintlink.net is inside of the Sprint network. To get as far as I did required the services of three companies, Comcast (comcast.net), Tata Communications (as6453.net), and Sprint (sprintlink.net). None of these companies is my company (sagewoodstudios.com) or my photolab service provider (exposuremanager.com). In fact after the last hop, I don't know what the next address would be--it might be a fourth company, or another server in the Sprint network. Exposure Manager can't help me--it's not their computer. Comcast can't help me--it's not their computer either. Sprint *might* be able to help me, but I'm not their customer.

What I do know is, if I didn't have to use this route, I would indeed be able to get there. I found an online provider of the standard 'net tools (ping, traceroute, etc.) called Network-Tools.com (that's a handy link btw, you might want to bookmark it). I can get to their server to see their website, and when I ask THEM to do a traceroute to exposuremanager, they can get there just fine:

TraceRoute to 66.254.91.235 [exposuremanager.com]

Hop

(ms)

(ms)

(ms)

IP Address

Host name

1

8

6

6

206.123.69.137

-

2

9

6

6

8.9.232.73

xe-5-3-0.edge3.dallas1.level3.net

3

12

7

7

4.69.145.140

ae-3-80.edge2.dallas3.level3.net

4

8

15

6

4.71.220.14

xo-communic.edge2.dallas3.level3.net

5

10

12

9

207.88.13.122

207.88.13.122.ptr.us.xo.net

6

41

40

40

207.88.12.46

207.88.12.46.ptr.us.xo.net

7

41

40

40

65.106.1.69

65.106.1.69.ptr.us.xo.net

8

41

49

52

65.106.5.10

p0-0-0.mar2.la-ca.us.xo.net

9

46

40

40

207.88.81.170

p15-0.chr1.la-ca.us.xo.net

10

50

44

45

66.238.50.106

66.238.50.106.ptr.us.xo.net

11

53

45

47

66.254.64.1

gw1.pixelgate.net

12

53

50

47

66.254.91.235

host235.exposuremanager.com

Trace complete

As you can see, because they are starting from a different provider (level3.net) their communication path takes a different route that never involves any of the companies I'm forced to use. If Network-Tools.com provided a "browser in a browser" basically an embedded frame that I could point anywhere I want to, I'd be able to get to my photolab and process my customer's orders.

In the meantime I'm pretty stuck. I can't help my customers, and my service provider can't help me. Welcome to the Internet... where you really "can't get thar from hyar".

Oh Yeah. I Have a Blog.

Abacquer — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:58:54 -0400

What I don't have is interest. There's a lot going on in my life, and I'd rather get on with it than write about it. Besides I doubt anybody really wants to read about it. So I've been neither writing in my blog, nor really reading the blogs of others. I check in on Aces Full and Pandora's Tea Room every now and again, but that is pretty much it. I post on MOTL every now and again, but not too frequently now that the werewolf games were cancelled due to people taking them too seriously.

What's been occupying my time is my photography business. It seems to be picking up, which is great, because I simply love this work. I did a school dance in February, and a photoshoot for an aspiring actor. In May I did a costume shoot for a dance school which is the first shoot I've done where I can unequivocably say that I made pretty good money.

June's been hopping. I did a graduation shoot for a relative (no money, but I did some networking at the school while I was there that might turn into business), and a graduation party for the same relative. This past Thursday night I shot the dress rehearsal for a stage production of a dance interpretation of Peter Pan. Friday night I shot the eighth grade dance of a middle school in southeastern Massachusetts. Then Saturday I shot the 1PM and 7PM performances of Peter Pan (42 Gb of pix in one day... yowza!)

I wrote about this a little bit on a message forum, so I figured I'd share that here.

June 12, 2009 11:01 AM

Last night's shoot went well but I am exhausted. I took a chance and produced a 36" x 24" (poster size) print of the main cast (with some added text) and it came out GREAT. I was amazed. I expected at that size the image would be very fuzzy--you know "stand a few feet away and it will look fine". Nope, it was nice and sharp. About 90 minutes of post production and cost about $50 to print, and I gave it to the dance school director as a gift.

She went positively gaga over it and hung it immediately as a poster for her show. The kids loved it too.

Of course I had a couple totally unrealistic parents come up to me after the show asking if I "had any extras" or would "give them one". "These are quite expensive to print. Of course I can have one made and shipped to you but it would cost $100." "Oh forget it then." LOL. It's so hard to make money in this business unless you are doing weddings or products. For the costume shoot I spent 8 hours shooting, and 50 hours in post production. My total profit after printing and shipping was $800--that's $13.75 per hour and no matter what price you charge people think it's too much.

Anyway the dress rehearsal shoot went great, apart from the 580 EX burning though batteries like there's no tomorrow. 4.5 hours of shooting, 1,105 pictures, 30 batteries eaten. I picked up a digital frame and loaded it with a bunch of work I've done over the last couple years and set that up next to the fliers--that got some attention. I had a number of people come up to me after the show and tell me how much they loved my work, which is always nice. We'll see if they still love me when I raise my prices next year.

So tonight I have a middle school dance to shoot, and then tomorrow I have to shoot the performances that I went to the dress rehearsal for. Busy few days!

June 13, 2009 1:55 AM

Tonight's Middle School Dance shoot was exhausting but fun. These kids were different that the kids at my daughter's middle school--they were a lot stiffer... nobody danced for like the first 90 minutes. I was like WTF? Heck I wanted to put the camera down and dance myself. The DJ was great, all the tunes were current.

This was an 8th grade dance and soon the kids will all be going off to different highschools so there was a lot of emotionality... a lot of kids were crying toward the end... that doesn't exactly make for a nice photo.

Kids at my daughter's art school are also more hammy for the camera, these kids pretty much constantly ducked and hid whenever the camera showed up. This behavior drives me nuts, I'm being paid to shoot the dance, these kids are bawling that they're not going to see their friends again, and they're not going to have pictures of their friends to remember because they're too busy responding to the camera in the way they've been trained to respond "ooh don't take my picture I look ugly". You just want to say "Jesus, grow up already." Sometimes I say to them "this may come as a surprise, but we can all see you... we already know what you look like." No matter, I just switched to the 200mm and shot long... you get nice closeups that way and the kids don't know who is being photographed.

All in all I think it went well. Two big shoots tomorrow... man am I beat.

June 13, 2009 9:44 AM

Fell out of bed about 8:20... showered, shaved, and will be heading out for the third and biggest of this weeks three shoots. What an exhausting time this has been! No flash today ('cept before and after) so I shouldn't need a frickin' gross of AA batts...

June 14, 2009 7:37 PM

Yesterday's shoots were positively EXHAUSTING! But I think it went well. At the end of the afternoon performance I knew I was in trouble tho... I had shot 20+ Gb of pictures, and I only had 22 Gb in CF cards with me. I had time before the 7PM performance so I went to best buy and purchased another 20 Gb of CF memory (1x 8 GB, 3x 4 Gb). During the second performance I shot the entire remaining 22 Gb. For the after photos I had to switch from RAW to JPG, and pull out my old "emergency card"--a 512 mB card that I've often questioned why I still carry it. Thank heavens I had it!

But 42 jigglebytes in a single day is some outrageous shooting. About 3,500 pictures. Sorting through this is going to be fun. Lightroom is chewing on them now and probably will be until tomorrow.

Emma was able to perform as Peter Pan, which was nice, though she had to hold back and give a slightly more subdued performance to prevent further injury to her ankle. It was nice seeing her dance at all though.

The "movie poster" was a big hit. About 700 people filed past it and every time I went out into the hall to shoot candids there were people looking at it and my digital frame (yay!). The thing I liked best was when I caught the dancers looking at it, they really liked it and it made for some nice photos. Have I mentioned how much I love this work?

I got more compliments and requests on Saturday, some people looking to buy the poster print. I added it to the show gallery and enabled large format printing options (and T-shirts, which my lab has begun to offer).

So now begins the long slog of post processing. But with so many pictures to choose from I should be able to come up with some that are sure to please. And the post work should be hella easier than the costume shoot was.

Gonna be a lot of busy nights tho... but not today, today I am recuperating... 12 hours of driving over the last 3 days, getting home every night after 1 AM, sore as heck from shooting...

(Good news, I had two orders today from earlier galleries. Yay! Only $70 but I'm taking it as a good sign.)

Wow am I beat. But it's a good kind of beat, when you feel like you accomplished something.

On a quick run through the performance photos I found a nice little series. Peter Pan was not on a wire, so she got about by making beautiful acrobatic leaps. I managed to snap a series of leaps (on the tail end of the leap as she was coming down) as she leapt around the dancer playing the part of Wendy Darling. In the series it looks like Peter is flying... Sweet!

Hear Hear or Here Here?

Abacquer — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:04:35 -0500

So today I found myself agreeing with someone online and went to type "hear hear" but then remembered seeing someone else type "here here" a couple days earlier.

I was pretty sure the correct phrase was "hear hear" as opposed to the other variants I'd seen ("here here", "hear here", "here hear") but I'd never actually looked it up. So I decided to check popular internet usage using Google:

"hear hear" = 1,740,000 hits
"here here" = 3,880,000 hits
"hear here" = 307,000 hits
"here hear" = 334,000 hits

Well dang. According to popular usage twice as many people say "here here" than say "hear hear". But is that correct? Wikipedia says no:

Hear hear (Wikipedia):
...Hear, hear is an expression used as a short repeated form of hear ye and hear him. It represents a listener's agreement with the point being made by a speaker.

It was originally an imperative for directing attention to speakers, and has since been used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as "the regular form of cheering in the House of Commons", with many purposes depending on the intonation of its user. It is often incorrectly spelled "here here", especially on websites...

A quick double check of OneLook Dictionary Search confirms this. Six dictionaries list "hear hear" and only one lists "here here" (and that one happens to be the wiki article above.)

Popular usage drives the movement of meaning, though, so at some point in the future "here here" may end up being the correct phrase if we don't do something about it.

So if you want to avoid yet another English colloquialism that will have your great grandchildren scratching their heads and saying "WTF?" (or whatever kids will be saying in those days) then type "hear hear" at every opportunity.

Go on, say it, you know you want to.

90+ Articles in 24 Hours

Abacquer — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:42:11 -0500

Sheesh! Time to get back to work. Talk to you guys later today. I'll keep checking the outstanding states and senate seats.

Election: Can You Help Unbecoming Levity?

Abacquer — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 13:15:58 -0500

If you are a US citizen and planning to vote I could use your help. During each presidential election I run a blogathon and one thing I like to do is publish "polling station reports". Basically I have friends and acquaintances drop me an e-mail after they vote to tell me about their experience at the polls. I'm looking to do the same thing this year, and I'd love to get poll reports from any of my friends or readers who are interested in helping out.

Though my blog is very opinionated, the poll reports are not intended to be partisan--I'm not asking who you voted for or why. The sort of info I would be looking for is:

1. Where did you vote (City/State--even if you voted absentee):

2. What date and time of day:

3. What were the conditions like? (i.e. was it crowded or deserted, chaotic or organized, did you have to wait a long time, were the staff professional, were they nice or rude, what kind of location was being used for voting--i.e. gymnasium, school, post office, church, etc.)

4. If your station used voting machines, did they seem to be working or were they out of order? What sort of machines were they (hole-punch, optical scanner, touch-screen, etc.)?

5. Were you the subject of (or did you witness) a voter challenge? If so what was that like?

6. If you voted early or by absentee ballot, how did that work out?

7. Anything else you want to add.

This should basically boil down to a few lines in e-mail. Doesn't matter if you cover all of the points above--basic idea is to say where you voted and what it was like. I will likely edit/digest reports I receive for grammar and clarity before posting them to my blog.

If you are interested in helping out, please drop me an e-mail with your poll report after you vote on November 4. Poll reports should be sent to: pollreport@plastereddragon.com. That e-mail address will be disabled on November 5. All reports should be sent on November 4th (or earlier if you voted early/absentee)--the idea is to log things as they happen.

DRM, Electronic Arts, and Censorship

Abacquer — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:52:45 -0400

So, the creators of Spore, Electronic Arts, created an online discussion forum where people could talk about Spore. Unfortunately they made the mistake of offering a feedback forum where people could post feedback about the game, and the reviews are positively ghastly. So many people are irate about how shallow the game is and the various bugs in it that last week EA released a patch for the game, only a week after the game went to market. Anybody in software development knows what happens when you rush a patch out the door. And it happened big time... the patch made the game experience WORSE for a lot of users, fixing some bugs but creating a whole host of new ones. Interest in the game is visibly on the wane, online Spore traffic has been pretty much falling since day one and people are already clamoring for "expansion packs". It's generally not a good sign if you are looking for game expansions after owning the game for one week. By comparison I've owned Oblivion IV for over a year now and I only purchased one of the available expansions. I haven't needed to buy any more because there is plenty of content there to keep I (and my family) entertained. But I digress..

The interesting thing is (as you might expect) a number of EA's customers are not at all pleased that they are limited to 3 installs of their game before it won't install anymore, and some are unhappy with SecuRom being installed on their machines without their consent. So along with feedback about various other flaws in the game, EA gets plenty of feedback about DRM and the headaches it is causing their customers.

Which they delete.

Yeah, you heard that right. If you post feedback about the DRM in Spore, they simply delete your feedback. They don't want customers discussing DRM or complaining about DRM. And the reason is quite simply this:

DRM does not stop pirates. It never did. The day Spore was released, there was already a DRM-free hacked version available for download from the various piracy sites. ANYBODY who did not have an ethical problem with stealing the game, could simply download a fully functional pirate version. Personally, I think game makers should be paid for their efforts, so this is not an option for me.

Electronic Arts isn't staffed by morons--they have tech savvy engineers working there who know full well that DRM will not stop pirates. So why do they keep claiming they put it in there to prevent pirates from stealing their game? Why is it really there?

My theory (and a lot of other people think so too) is they want to control (or basically kill) the resale market. If you want to play Spore and figure you'll buy a used copy in a year or so, think again. By putting the install limit on the game, EA prevents you from selling your property to a third party when you tire of it. Why would anyone buy Spore if it had only 1 install left, or less? So if someone wants Spore six months from now, they're going to have to buy it from EA--or they will get stiffed on reinstalls if one is ever needed.

That's fairly evil and a number of people (including myself) have posted threads to that effect on EA's feedback forum only to have them quietly disappear.

Which is also evil.

Business Website Updated

Abacquer — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:58:41 -0400

Well I spent this afternoon making some more updates to my business website. I incorporated a few more images and rearranged the order of the images on the thumb bar at the bottom of the page.

I also added arrow buttons to allow the user to manually rotate through the thumbs, and also set the thumb bar to auto-rotate if the image currently displayed by the slideshow doesn't appear on the thumb bar.

One invisible but important change was to set up timely preloading of the images such that there shouldn't be a big wait for individual images to load, but also no big wait up front. Basically the page now loads an image, and schedules the preload of the next image a few seconds later, long before the slideshow will automatically display it. In this way, the next image is loading while the user is viewing the current image, and should avoid delays.

If the user dorks with the thumb-bar the preloads and slideshow are cancelled and rescheduled to be further out. Theoretically this should prevent the user from being interrupted while working the toolbar with annoying delays or images loading.

I Can Haz Internet?

Abacquer — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:43:22 -0400

So yesterday I was exhausted in the morning. I had fallen asleep about 10 PM the night before and then woke up around 2 AM. I was excited to be writing about Mara and Kennis again, and when I woke up I went back to work on it. By 7 AM the chapter was nearing completion but I was utterly wasted. So toward the end it got a little rushed but all in all I was satisfied.

It also looked to be the only day we weren't going to have rain. So needless to say the fam was up and about by 8 and looking to go out for a day hike. But I was so not up to it. So I slept on the couch while they went out and had fun. I woke up around 1:15 or so, and trekked to the information center in Thornton where there was a public access internet terminal. The wifi on this old laptop is fried... so I need more than an access point.

When I got there two people were coming out, a man and a woman, and the man was saying "well ya, I could have checked that if I could have gotten on the computer." That didn't sound good.

Once inside I noticed a teenage girl was on the computer, so I decided to kill some time and asked the person on staff for information about local architecture that I could shoot. He recommended a list of covered bridges starting with the Blair Bridge. I had already shot the Blair Bridge last year, but thought it would be nice to try again with the 5D. Plus I had an idea for something new to try, and even had the necessary lens in my bag--fisheye shots from inside a covered bridge. I thought that would look really cool.

We talked for about 20 minutes. When we were done the young lady was still using the computer, so I said, quite clearly from about 3 feet away. "Thank you sir, do you mind if I wait here for a bit? I need to use your internet access." The staff member said, "Sure no problem." The young lady glanced up at me and then went back to what she was doing.

I had brought my Kennis and Mara story with me, all preformatted and ready to post. All I would need to do is copy and paste it into a window and click a button. Then I wanted to check my mail, respond to any comments on my blog or flickr, check twitter and post a tweet about shooting bridges, and then I would be on my way. I figured it was about 10-15 minutes of time on the computer. So I sat in the chairs provided to wait. These chairs are situated immediately behind the computer, which is probably not a good idea because it means you can see whatever the person using the computer is doing.

And in this case the person using the computer was on MySpace. I realize it is a public access terminal, and nothing I was going to do was any more important than poking about on MySpace. That wasn't the problem. The problem was this young person was posting comments on MySpace pages and then waiting for responses to be posted. Or rather, hoping responses would be posted. She would check her incoming MySpace messages, and then scroll up and down, up and down, up and down, on her MySpace page, continually refreshing it, to see if she had gotten a response. After a few minutes of no response, she would click on one of her friend's pages, post a message there, and then return to her page and scroll around waiting for responses. This is clearly not the way such a resource should be used, you get on, you do what you need to, and you get off. If you are going to just wait around for messages to be posted, you let other people on and get back on when they are done.

After about 15 minutes she got bored scrolling around, so she went to YouTube to watch videos of kittens playing with toys. After 5 minutes or so of this she glanced back at me, at the time I wasn't looking exactly at her. I was looking a little to the right, sitting forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, and clearly doing nothing other than waiting. I think it occurred to her at this point that it was obvious she was just fucking around with the PC, so she had three options: (1) get off and get back on later, (2) do something other than simply kill time, or (3) try to make it *look* like she was doing something other than kill time and hope that I would give up and go away... like the people before me had.

Guess what option she chose? She turned back to what she was doing and opened a new browser window. The home page was a New Hampshire tourist information page, so she clicked around and pretended to read information about local attractions that she probably would not be visiting. And then, about once every 30 seconds or so, she would switch back to the browser window containing her MySpace page, refresh it, look for new messages, and then minimize it and go back to pretending to read tourist information. Occasionally she had a message, but most of the time she didn't.

I was not going to be bested by this kid, so I remained where I was. I figured I would wait until she looked at me again and if she did I would ask her how long the wait was going to be. I figured I could offer as a consolation that it would take about 15 minutes for me to take care of what I needed to post.

It took another 10 minutes or so before she looked at me again. By now I had been in the information center for almost an hour. This time when she looked at me, I made eye contact with her and made clear from my expression that I was not going to leave.

"Are you waiting to use this computer?" she asked.

Gimme a break. She knew I was waiting. Still I just wanted to get on, so I gave her an out.

"Yes. I need access for about 15 minutes."

"Um, okay, I'm almost done I just need 2 more minutes."

Yeah. Two minutes so you can post a message to whoever you are yakking with on MySpace to let them know you need to get off the computer and you will be back in 15 minutes.

"That's fine thanks."

After about 5 minutes she shut down her MySpace page.

"Ok all set."

"Thanks. I'm just checking my e-mail and posting an article. I should be done in 10 to 15 minutes, and then you can get right back on."

"Okay, thanks." And then as she left "I'll be back in 15 minutes."

She was just letting me know not to take my time. Now if I had been an asshole I'd have sat there and waited for her to get back, then watched videos of kittens on YouTube. But I actually had things I wanted to do that day... and should have long since gotten started doing them.

It took 10 minutes for me to post my material, check my mail, and respond to my messages. And then I left. No kid in sight outside.

But I'll be returning today to post this article, upload 5 covered bridge fisheye-pix to flickr, and check and respond to mail/comments. And of course to minimize my time on the PC I have prepared everything in advance. Should take about 10 minutes again. I wonder if I will have the joy of waiting for her again? My plan this time is to show up at 9 AM. I got the sense this young person doesn't do 9 AM.

The fisheye pix came out nice BTW (1 2 3 4 5). When I get home I'll be able to do some proper post processing. All I have here is IrfanView, which doesn't do well with Canon RAW files. 100% chance of rain today, but it is 8:22 AM and nothing has started yet. So I am probably going to at least *try* to shoot some covered bridges today. Wish me luck!

Cut Off From the Hive Mind

Abacquer — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:15:00 -0400

So day one of my vacation was uneventful, except that I am bothered by not being able to access the internet. I guess it has so become a part of my life to be deeply connected with various remote sources of information that it is positively annoying to be cut off.

I'd like to be able to check my e-mail just in case a customer places an order on my photography business website, but I can't. I'd like to be able to check my friend's blogs and find out what is going on with them, but I can't. I'd like to be able to catch up on my discussion fora on flickr, but I can't. I'd like to check my twitter and my GoogleReader, but I can't.

*sigh* This sucks.

I woke up at 3:30 AM (so really this is day two of my vacation) and remembered that my Verizon LG phone is supposed to have some kind of web service (which I have never used). I tried it and found that I needed to pay $1.99 for 24 hours of web access. I figured it was worth $2 to find out exactly what I could do, so I opted to sign up for 24 hours. I was promptly informed that my order could not be placed at this time, and told to try again later.

So I repeated this process a few times, and eventually (FINALLY) managed to get to a page which said my order had been accepted. I was instructed to shut off my phone, turn it back on, and then wait "a few minutes" before using the service. I was further told that if I saw the "Verizon Web 2.0" signup page on my next access attempt, then my order was still processing and I would have to wait a little longer.

That was 45 minutes ago and I still don't have web access. So I gave up and started writing this... using notepad... knowing it would probably be 7 days before I could post it. How annoying. I think one of my missions today is to try and find someplace in New Hampshire where I can get internet access. Either a library or an internet cafe (if they have such things here) or something. I can try asking at the office here, but I don't expect much luck.

I seem to recall asking them last year and getting a mystified "why would you want to get on the internet--you're on vacation" sort of response. I can't really buy into that silliness... I'm sitting in a cabin with electricity, beds, a kitchen including a stove, sink, refrigerator, and microwave, hot water, fans, and a television with built in DVD player. Hell I even still have my annoyingly-web-useless cell phone! I'm on vacation? From what? Beyond a far less comfortable bed, how is this any different from being at my house? I suppose the fact that I'm maybe 100 yards from the highway here and can listen to cars zooming by all through the night is a little different. Ready access to a swimming pool is also a little different, but other than that all I can see is that I've traded a living space with far more entertainment value for a much smaller living space with far less, at considerable expense.

My main reason for being here is to be with Patty. She doesn't see our house as a place of comfort or pleasure, but instead as a long list of chores that need to be done. It's true that there is always something that needs to be done, and she seems far more acutely aware of that than I. When she's here she's on vacation from the house. I have to respect that. Somehow, the exact state of things that drives me crazy, is precisely what relaxes her, and vice versa. Oh well... that's what marriage is like sometimes... doing things you don't enjoy in order to make your spouse happy, finding the enjoyment in the happiness of your spouse. Methinks I need to work on that a little. Maybe a little cabin off the highway in New Hampshire is the right place to do it.

Creepy

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:02:00 -0400

What is it that prevents some people from realizing when they are being creepy? I recently uploaded some photos to my flickr photostream from a birthday party I attended. Then later I was tooling around in the Fitchburg Photo Pool and saw some cool architectural photos, so I left a comment telling the photographer I thought the shots were nice.

Within minutes I had three e-mails. The first was flickr informing me that the photographer had added me as a contact. The second seemed nice enough, the photographer wanted to talk about other landmarks that were good to shoot. The third seemed a little peculiar and forward for someone who doesn't know me from dirt:

"Hey how do you know that girl XXXXX in your photostream? She's a real knockout!"

So I responded about Fitchburg landmarks, and on the second item, remarked just that she was a friend of a friend, and that she was very photogenic.

Within minutes, two more e-mails. More chatting about landmarks and camera gear as well, and the second:

"Man is she cute. Hmm."

So I'm getting a little weirded out by this dude. I mean, if you are friends with someone it's one thing to compliment someone they know once, but if you barely know a person it's kind of creepy to do it repeatedly. So I decided I didn't really want to keep talking to this guy, and chose not to respond.

A few minutes later, another e-mail comes along:

"Do you think she would let me take some shots of her sometime?"

Yeah. That will happen. She's going to pose for some stranger on the internet because a friend of a friend photographed her at a party. Who asks a question like this of someone they barely know? I have a terrible time just asking people I do know if they will pose for me.

Any way, I really didn't want to talk to creepy dude any more, I knew if I called him on it I'd get assured up and down that his request was completely innocent in nature. As if it is quite normal to ask strangers on the internet if you can photograph their friends. I mean seriously, if you are THAT desperate for models, there are places to go (http://www.modelmayhem.com/). So I just blocked him... that will be the end of that, thanks.

I generally think it wise, when someone adds you as a contact on flickr, or favorites one of your photos, to check their profile and see what groups they subscribe to, and to also check their favorites. It's usually quite clear when they are using flickr for something other than an appreciation of great (or even mediocre) photography. If you see anything that looks creepy, it's probably a good idea to block them.

Creepy dude didn't have any bizarre group subscriptions or prurient favorites that I could see, but his behavior was enough to warrant the block IMHO. The only thing his profile had to say about him other than a laundry list of his gear was that he was "Male and single".

Call me "Male and unsurprised".

Das Rad

Abacquer — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:46:54 -0400

Here's a funny animation I caught on Pharyngula, the excellent science blog by P.Z. Myers. The audio is German, but there are subtitles. I got a kick out of it, perhaps you will too?

Das Rad

Comment Moderation is now On - Thank the Asshole

Abacquer — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:06:20 -0400

Friends and readers, ULev has acquired its own troll. I should feel flattered I guess, but this coward is such a scumbag he's not above leaving anonymous comments insulting my daughter. What does this mean for everyone else? From now on once you post a comment it will be sent to me for moderation. This means it will not appear on the blog until I approve it. I apologize for the delay. Thank the asshole.

Another Indie Music Dump

Abacquer — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:57:21 -0400

So it's been awhile since I've posted a summary of the indie music I am listening to. As you know I follow 3Hive, GigaTracks, and also Obscure Sound to find out about new small independent bands and get some of their music. I check these sources every few months and backtrack through the posts to see if there is anything good. Usually, I like very little of what I hear, and that which I do like is merely "passable".

Well this time I waited over six months, and let me tell you my favorite source (3Hive) has been positively dry... dry dry dry. But even when it's dry you can usually find a few things, and some of these are quite fun. There's been a dearth of kickass dance music lately though, and I would say only one song in this list (Duality by The Martial Arts) qualifies as a song you could dance to.

Anyway, I've got most of this stuff on a mix disc and I'm listening to it in the car these days to get a feel for which bands I might want to purchase a CD from. There's definitely a couple I would like to hear more from. Anyway, throw on your headphones and have a listen... I don't think anything here will knock your socks off (there's no Afroganics or Aviatics in this bunch) but you may find something you like here.

Christine Fellows

3Hive describes Fellows as "Experimental Pop"--but I'd simply describe this as thoughtful acoustic music. The only song available via 3Hive is "Advice" which is a beautiful piece advising young people not to be in a great hurry to find love, or at least to "give themselves away". I find it quite pleasant.
- Advice
Club 8

I have a soft spot for Swedish bands, but I would love this duo even if they weren't Swedes. Lovely soft-pop with lots of acoustics and simple vocals that you can sing along with. It isn't dance music… in fact, it's Christian music. Strange that an atheist would enjoy Christian music? It's just words folks, and I can sing them and enjoy them without believing them. Maybe you can too.
- Jesus, Walk With Me
- Heaven -- I particularly like this one… very happy.
- Spring Came, Rain Fell
- What Shall We Do Next? -- Less acoustic, more poppy.
Colour Revolt

This band from the deep American south makes a good attempt at wailing guitar rock with "Naked and Red". It's also a bit of a refresher after the happy spirituality of Club 8. The song opens with a line about God swinging from the "licker tree" and it only gets weirder from there but ties up its interesting message with the idea that "Eden is a hell of a place." I'm glad somebody noticed!
- Naked and Red
Elk City

I seem to be on a spiritual kick lately, because Elk City also serves up a religious offering with "Los Cruzados" (The Crusaders) -- I'm a sucker for a good hallelujah chorus, and Los Cruzados delivers. 3Hive has another song by them available which I didn't enjoy but you may. Check them out.
- Los Cruzados -- Hallelujah… hallelujah… my wife heard me singing some of these Christian/spritual songs and asked "Are you having second thoughts?" Hee hee hee.
Empty Rooms

Sombre and haunting, I'm not sure how to characterize this rock band. In some ways they remind me of Duran Duran, and in some ways they remind me of The Fixx, but their sound is definitely their own. I'm linking two songs here, there's a third on 3Hive that I didn't particularly enjoy.
- Off with His Head
- Try Again
Hasch'm'Méneum

Is it electronica or jazz? It makes me tap my toes and rock my head whatever it is. Unfortunately some of the available tracks seem to cut a little short… probably because the band wants you to buy their CD… well I'm considering doing just that. If you like chirpy electronica with a comical side to it, this may be the blurps and bleeps for you. There are no vocals, or at least no lyrics... it's all instrumental.
- Christerium -- This song is a little funny. Something about it makes me smile. Sadly it is cut short.
- Heliotrope -- This piece is more meandering and contemplative… it would make great background music to read to or engage in some other mental activity.
- Red Sniper -- Stronger rhythm track and a hint of some sort of illicit activity going on in the mood of the music. This would make a good movie soundtrack for a montage where a character is putting his evil plan into action.
- Slide -- Probably my favorite song by Hasch'm'Méneum, this one is goofy and fun. It's another one that makes me tap my toes. Alas it is also cut short. :-(
The Heavy Circles

I have to see if I can find some more music by the Heavy Circles. This pop piece definitely sticks in my head and includes some great whirling sound.
- Henri
The Hermit

Some songs are background music, some songs are dance music, some songs you sing along with, and some you just want to close your eyes and slowly rock from side to side. "Wonderment" is onesuch with its sweeping poppy electronic sound and gently echoing vocals.
- Wonderment (Affekt remix)
- Flutterbye (Sputnichek remix) -- Faster paced than wonderment.
The High Water Marks

Squelchy retro guitar beach music... at least that's what it feels like to me. 3Hive has three of their songs up. The only one I've included here is "The Leaves" although I felt that "Queen of Verlaine" was passable.
- The Leaves
The Martial Arts

Okay, this is another group I need to find more music by. This is great summer music--even beach music perhaps. Music you can sing along with and even dance to, which makes it a little unusual because this latest 3Hive dump doesn't include much in the way of dance music.
- Duality -- Probably my favorite song of all the songs listed here today.
Oslo

This is darker stuff. Sometimes when you are disgusted with the state of the world, it's cathartic to listen to something dark--or at least therapeutic. Rise and Fall of Love and Hate is about divisiveness and how we are taught to be divisive. Sure touches a nerve with me, because I am fed up with all the demonizing I see going on these days.
- The Rise and Fall of Love and Hate
Sittser

If 3Hive has been dry, GigaTracks has been postively barren, but this one piece makes up for all that. It sounds like of a great 80's guitar ballad.
- Losing My Fear of Heights
Sneaky

So if you took Indian music and set it to a funk track and built in a solid driving whorling drone and a lot of repetition you would probably get a hypnotic piece just like this one. Excellent driving music this. I dig it. Purely instrumental.
- Beduija
Spitzer

Okay, I was iffy on including this piece by the French group "Spitzer". This is definitely electronic, like Trash80-style electronic. No vocals and very very synthy, but it has a good beat and it gets the head bobbing and the fingers tapping. Give it a listen... come on... you know you can't pass up a song called DISCO BISCUITS.
- Disco Biscuits
Wojtek Godzisz

I'm not sure what to make of this artist. 3Hive refers to this as "theatrical pop" which as good a way as any to describe it. They listed three songs but this was the only one I enjoyed.
- Light Over Dark Earth

Hope you enjoyed at least some of these... I'll keep trolling the intertubes for good indie music... check back in 3 months!! :-P

Lens Cults and The Isoceles Field

Abacquer — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:14:59 -0500

So early this morning I couldn't sleep and I ended up writing an article on flickr in one of the many "what lens should I buy" discussions that goes on there. I have noticed, in my days on flickr, that certain pieces of equipment and certain techniques have a following, and often get recommended simply because of the following rather than because the equipment/technique is actually suited to the purpose of the person asking. In an effort to supply a counterbalancing opinion, I found myself in need of trigonometry.

The Argument

One such "cult" item is the "nifty fifty" (the EF 50mm f/1.8) lens made for Canon EOS cameras. It is very sharp, very fast, and very cheap ($80). If you are on a tight budget (or even if you aren't) it makes sense to have one for your EOS camera unless you have a better 50mm prime, or don't need a 50mm prime.

While I will not argue that it is probably one of the best value-for-money lenses, it is not versatile at all, and yet it seems to get hailed as a magic-bullet lens. I regularly see people making claims like "it never comes off my camera". And after having used it myself, I can only conclude that these people shoot one type of thing and one type of thing only, or it never comes off because they don't own any other lenses.

There is a certain love affair with the 50mm focal length because it was the standard focal length for 35mm film for decades. But in the age of digital SLR cameras, things are different for the less expensive consumer DSLRs. These DSLR's tend to use an image sensor that is smaller than 35mm film. The APS-C style sensor, or crop sensor, does not render the entire image cast by a standard lens, but only a smaller piece in the center. This results in an apparent magnification factor of 1.6. Hence if you put a 50mm lens on a crop-sensor camera, it's like working with an 80mm lens (50 x 1.6 = 80). The end result is a smaller-than-expected "field of view" (FOV).

On an old Canon 35mm film camera, a 50mm lens has a FOV of 46°. But on a crop-sensor camera the FOV is a hair under 29°. This loss of over a third of the FOV means that on crop-sensor cameras the EF 50mm f/1.8 lens has distinct limitations as to how much you can fit in the frame.

Fortunately, on my EOS 5D the 50mm behaves as expected. Because the 5D is a full frame camera, its sensor is the same size as a 35mm film frame. So I get 46° out of my EF 50mm, just as nature intended.

The "nifty fifty" on crop-sensor cameras is often described as a "portrait lens". With the crop factor, the 50mm lens behaves like an 80mm lens, and 80mm is ideal for portraits. But if you want to shoot anything larger than a head-and-shoulders portrait with the EF 50 1.8 on your Rebel XT or 30D, you'd better have a lot of room behind you, because you are going to need to back up... a lot.

But how much?

The Trigonometry

Well that's where the trig comes in (you can skip this section if you don't want to see how I figured it out). In order for me to say how much, I needed to be able to reliably compute the distance necessary to view an object of a given width. But how? I started by drawing a diagram like this one:

V is my viewing angle. Okay it's not 29° (or 28.98333° which is the actual FOV of the nifty fifty on a crop sensor), but close enough. The legs of the triangle extending out from V represent the edges of my FOV as the distance to the subject (marked by the dashed line, d) grows. The base of the triangle (marked as w) is the width of the field of view at the distance d. Basically this is a representation of the wedge or cone of that falls within a particular FOV, in this case 30°.

I can pick any distance I want for d, but what I really need is a way to say what d should be to accomodate a subject of a certain width. In other words, to fit a subject 10 feet wide in my viewfinder, how far back do I need to stand with the nifty fifty on my EOS 30D camera? I supposed that given a formula for that, I could solve the formula for the width so that one could also compute the maximum width viewable given a distance.

The triangle depicted above is an isoceles triangle, as both the legs are the same length, and consequently the angles where the legs meet the base is also to the same. I spent some time looking online for computations for isoceles triangles, but what I was looking for didn't appear (namely, given the length of the base, and the angle of the peak, what is the height or altitude of an isoceles triangle?)

I studied trig over 20 years ago so I remember very little of it, but I did remember there were a lot of simple equivalences for right triangles (that is, triangles where one of the angles is 90°). And I realized while looking at my diagram that the line I had drawn to represent the distance, bisected V and split the triangle into 2 right triangles, each of which looked like this:

Bisecting V gives me a 15° angle (V'), and a base width exactly half of what it was before (w'). So if I could take a given distance d and come up with a formula for w', then I should be able to solve that formula for either d or w', keeping in mind that V' is V/2 and w' is w/2.

Doing a quick check online I found the two rudimentary trignometric equivalences for right triangles: for either of the angles other than the 90° one, the sin of that angle is equal to the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypoteneuse, and the cos of that angle is equal to the length of the adjacent side divided by the length of the hypoteneuse. Here are those equivalences for the right triangle above:

Sin V' and cos V' I can get with a pocket calculator, and I'm going to pick a value for either d or w' and solve for the other. I can solve the equation on the left for w' [w' = (sin V') * h] and I can solve the equation on the right for d [d = (cos V') * h], but both of these solutions require me to know what the hypoteneuse of this triangle is.

But in order to get w' from d or d from w' I need to do more work, mostly because I am not going to know what the hypoteneuse is. I'm only going to be starting with either V' and w' or V' and d. So what I need to do is solve one of the equations for h, and then plug that into the other equation. That should give me a formula I that I can use to solve for either d in terms of w' and V' or w' in terms of d and V'. So I picked the equation on the right. Solving that for h gives h = d / (cos V').

So I should be able to substitute d / (cos V') in the equation on the left, like so:

Now I'm good. I know what V' is, I can get sin V' or cos V' from my calculator, and I am going to pick either d or w'. So now I can solve for either one, like so:

Done, right? Well, yes, if I want to know what the appropriate distance is for half the width of my subject using a lens with half the field of view. Now I want to substitute in the equivalences that w' = w/2 and V' = V/2. In the equation on the right that will put w/2 on the left of the equal sign, so I will multiply both sides by 2 to solve the equation for w. That gives me:

Okay they probably aren't the cleanest formulas in the world, but they work and let you get the height of an isoceles triangle from its base width and peak angle, or vice versa. Using these formulas I could handily compute the needed distance for a given width in a given field of view, and this allowed me to present something more concrete than "gee whiz, that EF 50mm 1.8 is awfully confining on a crop sensor camera."

Back to the Argument

So how confining is that nifty fifty?

5 feet wide = 9.7 feet away
10 feet wide = 19.3 feet away
15 feet wide = 29 feet away
20 feet wide = 38.7 feet away
25 feet wide = 48.4 feet away

Pretty confining! If you are trying to capture 3 people sitting on a couch which is 8 feet long all in one shot, you need to stand 15 feet 6 inches away. Better have a big living room, or one where there isn't a TV 10 feet from the couch. Or maybe if you moved the couch outside... that would be cool for an album cover, but for Aunt Bea, Uncle Joe, and Granny, it is probably less so.

Working with the EF 50mm f/1.8 is a good exercise though for learning how to push a lens to do what you need, and it's plain old good exercise, because you're going to be backing up a lot. You can get that 8 foot couch in shot if you shoot from an angle, but then you will need to stop your aperture down to widen up the depth of field so that everyone will be in focus... which means you can't shoot low light anymore so you might need lamps or a flash. Or you could give up on that shot and shoot the people individually.

Or, you could simply not get the EF 50mm 1.8 in the first place, if you are not planning to shoot primarily portraits. If you want to consider the traditional FOV that the great 35mm film artists shot with, you need a lens that gives a FOV on a crop-sensor camera similar to a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera (i.e. 46°). The closest bet would be a 28mm lens, like the EF 28mm f/1.8 or EF 28mm f/2.8. These have a crop-sensor FOV of 47.25°. With one of these lenses the width to distance figures look like this:

5 feet wide = 5.7 feet away
10 feet wide = 11.4 feet away
15 feet wide = 17.1 feet away
20 feet wide = 22.8 feet away
25 feet wide = 28.6 feet away

Much more reasonable. And quite interesting how the distance to subject is almost the same as the width of the subject. No surpise that the 50mm lens became the standard on the cameras of old.

Who is the Plastered Dragon?

Abacquer — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 23:28:11 -0500

As I go from discussion forum to discussion form, I repeatedly get asked that question in some form or another. "What's 'Abacquer' mean?" or "What is a Plastered Dragon?" When that happens I get to tell a story that I've told many times. And each time I tell it I embellish it a little more than the last time. But writing it over and over again each time it happens is a bit silly. So I've decided to put the latest incarnation here so that I can just refer people to this article in the future. It will save me on typing. Good friends of mine already know this story and have already heard some of these jokes before. But if you are really curious, read on...

In a sort of story I wrote once (a D&D campaign really) there was a dragon who had a penchant for getting drunk.

As the story goes, many hundreds of years ago the residents of the little community of Wayside and many people from the surrounding towns and environs are gathered at the Wayside Inn for the annual Oktobrefest--a huge party which sees partygoers from all over their country--all manner of tradesman, adventurer, and race is sure to be there. And many get swilling drunk of course, particularly the gnomes (as is their custom) who prefer to drink more than anyone else (as is their custom) from a trough (as is their custom) and then beat each other senseless until they pass out (as is their custom).

So anyway as I said this party was going on one brisk Oktobre morn when all of a sudden this young bull drake appears in the sky, circles the town, and promptly lands right smack dab in the center of the town green. Nobody knew what to make of it. It was neither a metallic nor a chromatic dragon, so nobody was certain what its disposition would be, but it was also quite young as dragons go and would therefore be "easily" put down by the town guard if need be.

It turned out that need did not be, because the drake trotted to the trough of ale, stuck his head in, drank the whole thing in about 30 seconds flat, let out a loud burp and promptly passed out, to much admiration from the gnomes. The party continued about the sleeping beast unabated. Apparently the dragon was simply another partygoer, Wayside's first of that particular variety. And he quickly became the life of the party once he woke up and started dancing to the fine music provided by the local musicians. And apart from the inevitable property damage, his performance was well received.

It was the beginning of a long friendship, and as the years went by, the half-seas-over reptile would return each Oktobre to drink himself silly and make merry during Oktobrefest. He explained to the townspeople (in a rare sober moment) that his name was Abacquer (that's pronounced AB-bah-kur) and that his unusual coloration was due to his curious pedigree. His father was a benevolent copper dragon of some fame known as "Morrich the Claw". His mother was a chromatic dragon (specifically a white dragon) that had been raised as a foundling by copper dragons, who went by the moniker "Tiarrel the Rime". By his own admission, as a White/Copper hybrid, that made him a "Whopper Dragon", a fact that brought him much amusement and was sure to produce a beery guffaw from him whenever he brought it up. And given that his white dragon descent included a frost breath weapon, he could immediately chill your drink for you, so most people put up with hearing the story over and over, for his company was a good one, even if a bit sozzled.

Abacquer took a liking to Perronian Pink Champagne in particular, and the Wayside Inn began to stock up on it for his annual appearance. Once word of the inebriated dragon began to spread, the Oktobrefest became even more of an attraction that helped put Wayside on the map like never before. People would come from all over New Irth just to catch a glimpse of the "plastered dragon".

Upon reaching adulthood, Abacquer, like all dragons, chose a title for himself. He chose "Abacquer the Belch", much to the consternation of his parents, in recognition of his uncontested claim to the longest running belch in recorded history (12 minutes 48 seconds).

Later in life he made his aerie on Sherenpate Pyke and became something of a protector of the surrounding communities and vineyards. Especially the vineyards. Go figure. In his massive ice cavern he welcomed visitors and even had one visit of note from the musicians of a nearby farming village. A painting produced by a local artist hangs in the town's music hall commemmorating this event. In the painting the band is seated and playing in Abacquer's aerie while nervously glancing up at the (clearly intoxicated) dragon as he dances upside down on the ceiling. Of course white dragons can walk on any frozen surface seeming without regard for gravity, but as a half-white, Abacquer's icewalking ability was, according to him, "a little spotty". According to records of the event, the Belch informed the musicians that they needn't worry, his icewalking only gave out when he was drunk. Somehow that wasn't very reassuring, but the event went off without a hitch although all further concerts in his honor were held in town.

Eventually the fame of his story became so great that the Wayside Inn was renamed Inne of Ye Plastered Dragon (or simply, the Plastered Dragon Inn), and the rest is history. His life was long and colorful and he did many great deeds in spite of being a complete sot. He was knighted by the gnomes of Perro (there's a switch, as Abacquer once noted, being a knight and a dragon both meant that if he ever took a damsel hostage he would have to slay himself and then marry her, and not being the marrying sort, that was probably best.) And it is said that he is up for canonization in the gnomish pantheon, which is kind of a big deal. All previously canonized gnomish saints were bartenders and Abacquer has no talent for mixing drinks anywhere but in his belly. But the gnomes of Perro say (as is their custom) that he is "noseworthy", and I guess when it comes to binge drinking, nobody would be a better judge than they. And besides, being the biggest single consumer of Perronian Pink Champagne in all of New Irth (200 barrels a month) there's a certain economic interest among the gnomes of Perro in staying on his good side. But I digress... as is my custom.

I've always loved the Abacquer character, and so over the years, my online name has always been Plastered Dragon, or PDragon, or some variant thereof. And that's the story behind it--at some great length!

Andrew Meyer's Shocking Performance

Abacquer — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:06:45 -0400

It's funny that James wrote about this today, because I wrote about it last night on a discussion forum. I'm pleased that James and I saw the same videos and came to the same conclusions. If you haven't heard, a young man (Andrew Meyer) caused a disruption at a John Kerry Q&A forum and finally was removed by the police. During his removal he became more combative and resisted the officers which ended up getting him arrested and finally tasered as it was the only way to get him to stop shouting and remove him from the hall. Predictably (I suppose) people have seen an editted version of the video that makes Mr. Meyer look like more of a victim than he actually was and the most outspoken conclusions I see on YouTube basically boil down to "he asked a question 'they' didn't like so he was tasered and arrested, wake up America, we are living in a dictatorship". *yawn*

Anyway, here's what I wrote on a discussion forum where someone had posted the editted version of the video under the heading "A Most Terrifying Video":

The video was editted to make the kid look more like a victim than he was. There is a more complete video with commentary that makes the kid's behavior easier to see through and makes the cops behavior more understandable:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

I'm a liberal and I believe in civil liberties. The kid was totally in control of that situation, he WANTED a big scene and he got it. He was totally playing to the cameras.

The cops were standing behind him because he had a reputation for causing trouble at public events. The moment he took the mic and began speaking one of the college officials went to the police and said "he's a troublemaker, watch out". This made the police suspicious of him. At one point a police officer told him to finish his question and let Kerry answer, he responded rudely (through the mic so everyone could hear) and continued. As Kerry tried to answer the boy's first question, he ignored Kerry and launched into his second question. It was clear at that point he was there to talk not to Kerry, but to the crowd.

Well it's cool if you want to talk to a crowd. You can put a video on YouTube, or you can schedule your own rally and see who shows up, but you can't just grab the mic, take the floor, and talk whatever crap you want as if it is your show. It's not your show and the organizers are going to eject you if you won't play nicely, which they attempted to do at the end of his THIRD question which is the part you got to see. No surprises there.

All this boy had to do is say "sorry officer, I'll cooperate" and in all likelihood they would explain to him why they were ejecting him the moment they got him out of the room. Which by the way, they did, except you don't get to see that because the video that was posted at the top of the thread doesn't include it. Heck, if he had cooperated they probably would have let him go at the door.

This video does show his detainment once they get him outside the room:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

Watch that video where he reveals by his own behavior just how much of a neurotic nut he is:
"They're going to give me to the government! They're going to kill me!"
Those of you who think its actually okay to scream HELP HELP and WHY WHY when a police officer has decided to detain you should take heed: when the police arrest you, they are allowed to hold you and don't have to charge you with ANYTHING for 48 hours. That is the law of this country. If you don't agree with it, please contact your representatives and work to get the law changed. If a police officer tries to escort you out of a building, you DO NOT have a right to know why. If a police officer chooses to arrest you, you do not have a right to be told immediately why you have been arrested. If a cop tells you "stop shouting, and stop resisting me or I am going to arrest you (or taser you)" and you choose to continue shouting and resisting, well duh, do the math.

The rights you do have upon arrest are read to you in long form, or in the abbreviated form:
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."
Did you see "you have the right to know why you are being arrested" or "you have the right to scream loudly and resist arrest"? Me neither. That's because we don't have those rights.

It's a shame this boy provoked the police into tasering him by repeatedly refusing to cooperate. I'm sorry he got tasered, but freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to disrupt a political rally. Watch the full video and pay attention to the commentary, and watch the second video that shows what happens outside, how he keeps craning his neck so he can shout to the cameras... because he's all about the cameras.

1. http://youtube.com/watch?v=1na1hcGQCHg

2. http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NWukZhsiBw

I'm trying not jump to conclusions (paranoia is unhealthy). As far as I can see, this boy orchestrated what happened to him through his own behavior and could have put a stop to it at any time.

There are a lot of affronts to free speech in this country, serious ones that we should be concerned about ("free speech zones" for example: http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/08/04/hilden.freespeech/index.html), but this nut and his bad performance art does not qualify. He should have been ejected, and he was.

eBayers Drive Me Crazy!!

Abacquer — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 10:32:46 -0400

Looking down the notes/status on my selling/sold auctions, they read like something out of "How to be Obnoxious -- A Practitioner's Guide". Let's run through them, shall we?

Item 1 is a very rare set which did not sell because some rather clueless sellers all decided to run auctions for the same item at the same time as mine, and undercut me. As a result they all hurt each other and nobody made what the set was worth. One guy had an extremely low minimum bid and got no bids. After his auction ended, there was only one auction left to bid on, it shot way up over the first guy's minimum despite having poorer quality cards. Thinking about that makes my brain shrivel. Now I have to wait around for all of these shmoes to finish relisting and selling their sets so I can get a fair price for mine. And they appear to be waiting for me. Greaaaaaaat.

Item 2 is my most valuable set, wouldn't sell for 80% of the retail price. I received the most ridiculous offers, promises from people who then disappeared, and got strung along by people who eventually just backed out as if surprised when I repeated stuff to them which was clearly stated in the auction description. Meanwhile the auction has had hundreds of views and dozens of people watching it. I've now relisted (cha-ching! extra ebay fees!) lowered the price to 70% and it still isn't selling. Jesus. I'm going to have to split it up and sell it in pieces (cha-ching! more fees!)... and I'll end up making way more than the current asking price. Had one buyer offer the full price if I would ship to Spain (auction says shipping to USA only.) He assured me up and down that it was perfectly safe and he does it all the time. Then I told him that he would have to assume the shipping risk (i.e. item goes missing, he has to wait for the UPS refund, up to 6 months). And suddenly it's no longer something he feels comfortable doing. (Guess he doesn't have as much faith in the Spanish courier services after all.) Currently I have one offer from a guy who "is trying to get the money together". We'll see... past history is not a good indicator.

Item 3, a set so rare that only a handful exist in the world. I set a reserve and have people who expect me to sell it to them for one tenth of the reserve. One bidder offered to buy it for the reserve price, but insists I cancel the auction and relist it with a buy it now option first!! (For those wondering, it cost about $9 to list it the first time, and would cost another $9 to list it again.) Guy refuses to just bid the goddamned reserve amount. I refused to end the auction for him.

Item 4, fixed price/best offer auction. I accepted an offer of $150, only to discover that the buyer was from Japan (you don't get buyer's location until you accept their offer.) Auction description says shipping to USA only. Genius. I recalculating the shipping charges, and they tripled. Sent buyer an invoice and pointed out that he should have contacted me first before he bid because that's exactly what the auction description says. I hope he doesn't back out, but I suspect he will (and I lose $5 in listing fees... cha-ching!)

Item 5, sold Aug-31. No contact from buyer. Invoice sent 9/1. Reminder sent 9/4. Still no contact. Standard eBay grace period is 3 days from end of auction. Going to have to send buyer a warning tomorrow and if he doesn't pay within a day after that it will be negative feedback and relist the item (cha-ching! more listing fees...)

Item 6, shipping to USA only. Bidder from Germany pleaded with me to ship to him, and eventually I agreed and let him bid. Then after winning the item he argued with me about the shipping costs and insisted I ship USPS instead of UPS.

Item 7, buyer asked repeatedly about card condition despite pictures of the cards being in auction description, and then took his sweet time getting his payment together after he won (took 5 days to make an instant electronic payment.) At least he apologized for taking so long. He'd be the first.

What next???

I See How It Is...

Abacquer — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:35:11 -0400

As you know I am selling some of my MTG collection (the oldest and the bestest stuff) to finance photographic gear. I spent awhile researching prices so my stuff could be competitively priced--which was a little challenging because for some of the hotter stuff (the Unlimited and Arabian Nights sets) there hasn't been an auction on ebay for months on these items. I finally figured out why. Potential sellers are waiting for a price to beat. After months with very little in the way of complete sets of Unlimited/Arabians, within a day of me listing my sets for auction, a bunch of other sellers crawled out of the woodwork and listed their sets for auction, all undercutting me by small amounts (typically about $50), or by setting high reserves and no minimum bid. Since all these auctions are now running simultaneously, there is suddenly a lot of options for the prospective buyer, and since mine is ending before the others, the lower-priced auctions are going to see all the action.

So at this point I don't expect the Arabians or Unlimited sets to sell, and now I'm going to have to sit around like the other campers and wait for some other seller to come along so I can undercut him or her.

Pain in the ass. The amusing thing is, sets this rare sell so infrequently that if a seller waited until my auction was over, he'd end up doing better than he would if they all try to sell at the same time and undercut each other. Oh well... I guess the buyers win!

I Laffed

Abacquer — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:27:02 -0400

Solo and the Wookee

Do I, Really?

Abacquer — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:35:04 -0400

You know... there's a group for everything on flickr...

Activate Your Geek Powers...

Abacquer — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:28:48 -0400

Okay my geeky friends, what's so funny about this?

Gettin' Edumacated

Abacquer — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 10:16:41 -0400

So I'm learning about taking pictures... mostly by screwing up. I'm learning that brilliant midday sun is generally not great to shoot by, at least for the stuff I am trying to shoot. I'm learning I really really need to stop saying "ah, I'll just leave the tripod in the car, I won't need that".

I'm learning about masking in PhotoShop, and how to use it to airbrush a subject (thanks James for the link), or how to use it with layer blending to rescue a picture that otherwise comes out half overexposed and half underexposed, like the one at right.

Another thing I am learning about is photo composition, what makes a good photo, and what doesn't. The most basic rule that I keep hearing about is the "rule of thirds". This rule basically states that you should divide your viewfinder up into 9 equal sized rectangles (basically like a tic-tac-toe diagram), and try to place your interesting subject matter on one or more of the intersection points as opposed to dead-center in the photo. Theoretically this makes for a more pleasing photo. Judge for yourself... which is better?

According to the photo pros, the one on the right is far superior. The top-left daisy falls on an intersection point, and the out-of-focus small daisy falls close to one. Of course I am also taking advantage of another "rule" in the photo at the right, "groups of three are most pleasing". Unfortunately I don't always frame my shots this way because I am still learning.

But thanks to photoshop, I can deal with that by cropping the photo. I built a template that looks like a big tic-tac-toe grid where the squares are transparent. I simply paste this over my photo in pshop and then resize and reorient it until I have the interesting subject matter on an intersection point (or on a "thirds line"), and then I crop the photo to that rectangle. Because I start with a grid the same size as my photo and I shrink it proportionally, the resulting shot retains the same image proportions so the cropping is not so obvious. Then I just delete the layer which has the rectangular grid in it and my composition is repaired.

Another thing I've been learning about is "depth of field". When the camera shutter opens you have control over how wide it opens. This is called the aperture. The wider the opening, the more light gets in (and of course, the faster your shutter has to close in order to avoid overexposing the photo.) Another interesting effect of the aperture is how much of your photo is in focus. A very wide aperture leads to only a very narrow range of distances from the camera where things are in focus and a very narrow aperture leads to an extremely large range of distances where things are in focus. If you are taking a shot of your subject and there is a mountain in the background, you use a wide aperture to keep just your subject in focus, and a narrow aperture to focus both your subject and the mountain. The range of what is in focus is your "depth of field", and the different aperture settings are referred to as "f-stops" (as in f/1.4, f/2.8, etc...), with larger numbers referring to a larger depth of field (and inversely, a smaller aperture).

For portraits and macros (extreme close up shots, like the daisies above), a wider aperture is recommended (I used f/4.5 on the three daisies pic, which is why one of the daisies is out of focus). Using a wide aperture will blur the background so that your subject stands out and becomes the focal point of the picture. A nicely blurred, even, and nondistracting background seems to be the best, unless it is intended to convey context. The flickr folks toss around the term "bokeh" (Japanese for "blur") in reference to this effect.

Speaking of backgrounds, you have to think about them a lot. If your background has too much going on in it, or has a major distracting element, it detracts from the photo. When I first took the picture of this rugosa rose covered with water droplets I was sure I had a great shot. But the barn in the background was distracting and various commenters on flickr told me so. Unfortunately this shot can't be saved by a crop if I want to see the whole rose, but it is a reminder of a good lesson for me, so I hang onto it.

The one exception (as noted earlier) is when the background provides useful context. If your subject is a guy sitting in an outdoor cafe with a big boat oar leaning against his table, the out of focus image of Venice in the background communicates useful information!

I seem to be pretty good with macro shots. And some of my landscapes come out nice (and more would if I would start paying attention to the frikkin lighting). But so far, I'm not good at portraits. This is mostly due to lack of practice... nobody I know really wants to be photographed hundreds of times while I figure out how to do it right, it's awkward to photograph strangers on the street (but apparently legal if you don't profit by it), and I can't afford to hire a model. But sooner or later I'll figure something out. I've taken precisely 2 portraits to date where I was pleased with the result, and only one of them is of any quality. I definitely need to work on this department.

ID Please - The Power of the Internet (and flickr)

Abacquer — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 09:30:39 -0400

Here's a little something neat I found on flickr. Like most big internet repositories, flickr has had a virtual community of photographers that have sprung up around it. One way it facilitates this is through "groups", also called "pools". A group is simply a collection of photos that you can submit your photo to. Typically groups have some sort of theme (like landscapes, cities, cats, clouds, water, or highly specific stuff like "Fitchburg, Massachusetts"). Some groups are intended to help you become a better photographer, in that if you submit a photo, you must critique the N photos that were submitted before yours. This guarantees input from other people which can be very useful if you are trying something new.

But one of the most interesting groups I've found is called ID Please. This is a group for submitting photos you took of things you can't identify. The group members have specialized knowledge, and if they recognize the thing you posted, they'll tell you what it is. The primary submissions seem to be pictures of flowers, insects, and birds. But I have seen pictures of all sorts of things go by and get identified, airplanes and vehicles, antiques and apparati, cityscapes and locations, even one person who had taken a picture of something on the ground from the window of an airplane at high altitude and wanted to know what it was.

Since I discovered this group I am rapidly becoming familiar with the local plants and animals in my area. In exchange for their help, I try to offer information on pictures of birds that are submitted to the group.

All in all, it's pretty neat! If you've got a picture of something you can't identify, perhaps you should upload it to flickr and submit it to the ID Please group.

Mind What You Post on Flickr

Abacquer — Wed, 30 May 2007 10:02:59 -0400

(Or anywhere on the internet really.) People will find your images, copy them, and use them for their own purposes.

I mention this because I have just heard about Flickr user "Lara Jade" who recently discovered that a self portrait she photographed when she was 14 years old was used as the cover for a pornographic DVD without her knowledge. The responses she has received from the DVD company border on the bizarre and betray an extremely warped sense of morality and personal responsibility.

Sadly for Lara Jade, she cannot afford the legal fees necessary to pursue the matter, especially since she lives in the UK and the photo was misappropriated by a company operating in the USA.

Read her story here.

Those of you who post personal or family photos are advised to publish them as "private" photos -- viewable only by people you name as family or friends. This is not something I've ever worried about on my blog, but I am now wrestling with the idea of marking some of my photo albums as private. If that happens, anybody who wants to view those albums will need to create a reader account so I can add you as an approved reader. I haven't decided what I am going to do. This could be a good opportunity to just switch to Flickr. I'll have to think on it.

Commonplaces RSS Feed

Abacquer — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:55:31 -0400

BTW, the "Commonplaces" album has its own feed if you want to follow it:

http://unbecominglevity.blogharbor.com/blog/Photos/Commonplaces/index.xml

Aces Full of Trouble

Abacquer — Mon, 21 May 2007 15:42:37 -0400

Those of you that enjoy the thoroughly wonderful blog Aces Full of Links (which is written by my friend James) have probably noticed it seemed to be down for most of the day today, and now although visible is not available for commenting. James is having server issues and asks that you please bear with him while he gets things back in order.

Here's to you Aces Full. Get well soon!

How Much Do We Do Without Thinking?

Abacquer — Mon, 21 May 2007 11:58:10 -0400

So the other day I was commenting on a blog where the authors were working on a new layout. I spotted some strange wrapping issues and uploaded a screenshot of my browser window for them to look at. Repeatedly, whenever the screenshot was on the screen, I caught myself trying to click the browser's back button in the screenshot. Needless to say, each time I did this was followed by a disjointed moment of confusion where I wondered why it wasn't working. Is my browser locked up? What's going on? After a second or so the realization would come. You dummy, that's not your browser, that's a picture of your browser.

I think it served as a reminder of how much we do automatically once we've "learned" to do it. The entire metaphor--hand to mouse, mouse to cursor, cursor to back button, click--all automatic and interpretted by the brain as "go back".

Anyway, next time I upload a screenshot of the browser, I think I'll leave the menu and toolbar out of it.

I've Been Stumbled Upon

Abacquer — Sun, 20 May 2007 13:49:29 -0400

Well apparently somebody really liked my "Why I am an Atheist" post yesterday because they linked me up over on StumbleUpon.com. The end result? Last night my blog had over 3,700 hits on that article, and 860 hits on another article I linked to from within that article. Total bandwidth consumed 319,389,696 bytes. That's about 304.5 Mb, or a tenth of my monthly bandwidth.

Not that I mind! I'm excited that my hits have temporarily tripled... always nice to have readers. (Hopefully we'll get some new regulars here at ULev.) But I was a little worried about my bandwidth, so I ordered up another 5 Gb from BlogHarbor just for this month, just in case. In all likelihood I probably won't need it, but better safe than sorry.

The last time something like this happened was when I entered a submission to one of FARK's photoshop contests. That time the graphic I had linked to got so many hits I had to delete it... like 9,000 in the first hour. Crazy!

ULev Joins Planet Atheism

Abacquer — Sun, 20 May 2007 12:52:22 -0400

As of a couple days ago, Unbecoming Levity has joined Planet Atheism as a contributing feed. You might have spotted the new link in my sidebar under "Badges and Doodads". Planet Atheism is a feed aggregator for a large number (75 at present, and counting) of atheist-themed blogs. This makes it a very nice source for catching up on atheist bloggers and seeing what's going down in the non-believer blog-o-sphere.

ULev regulars will no doubt be thinking that people reading Planet Atheism will not want to hear about my new teeth or the funny thing my cats did the other day. I agree. That's why there's a new topic in my topics sidebar called "PlanetAtheism". The Planet Atheism aggregator only subscribes to that topic, so not every article on ULev will be dumped onto Planet Atheism's feed (much to their relief I'm sure!) This is possible because Blog Harbor offers category-driven blogs, where each category can have its own RSS feed.

Belonging to Planet Atheism has already caused an uptick in my hits, and brought new commenters to Unbecoming Levity, for which I am very grateful. I encourage anyone who has an atheist themed blog (or a category-driven blog with occasional articles of interest to atheists) to contact the proprietor of Planet Atheism and see about inclusion. (If you're curious, here's their FAQ.)

Even if you don't, at least drop the Planet Atheism feed into your aggregator (Google Reader, Bloglines, whatever...) and you will never run short of articles of interest to atheists.

Various

Abacquer — Fri, 11 May 2007 15:34:24 -0400

Okay, here's a bunch of little things I want to talk about. None of them really deserves its own article but I want to share it anyway. I suppose I should caution you that I am on percoset right now, so I am a little loopy... I apologize if this is a scatterbrained.

Eating

I still can't chew, and won't be able to for another week at least. So I am exploring different things that I can eat without chewing. Stuff that has worked out well has been jello, applesauce, soup broth, rice in thick gravy, spagettios, small bits of bread soaked in broth, yogurt, pureed fruit mixed with yogurt and juice, and so forth. Pureed baked beans is really grainy, and I don't like it. Gonna try baked beans again sometime soon where I just try to swallow the beans whole, unchewed. I've found I can eat Italian Ices, but all the acid in fruit juice is making this bothersome.

All this nigh-liquid food combined with drugs that mess up my sleep schedule, and amoxicillin (to avoid infection) is making my stomach pretty upset. But I'll get through. (It's not like I have a choice!)

NPR Podcasts

When I go to bed I like to listen to music or speech on my MP3 player. I find that listening to the same stuff every night helps me sleep. But eventually I get tired of the same stuff. The NPR website has always been a great place to go to stream shows you've missed, but at some point they began offering these shows as podcasts. (The difference, from my perspective, is that you can download old shows as MP3 files, drop them on your MP3 player or your computer, and listen to them anytime.) You guys were probably aware of that, but to me it's big news... streaming is great, but it is much nicer to grab the last few episodes of my favorite NPR program and listen to it whenever (in my case, when I go to bed.) NPR has a huge podcast directory with shows from all their member stations. Here's a link to the directory... you can subscribe to these shows as feeds in Google Reader or just hit the URL directly and save the MP3 files.

The podcasts (shows) that I am most interested in are:

Stem Cells

So I was listening to one of those podcasts of NPR Science Friday where the topic matter was stem cell research. A guy called in who equated a 14-day-old blastocyst with a person. He was in the crowd that considers a fertilized human egg to be a human being, what he framed as "life begins at conception". Obviously holding that view, there was no way he could get behind stem cell research since it involved killing embryos.

Then one of the guest experts offered the caller a challenge which I committed to memory because I never wanted to forget it:

Imagine you are a fireman dealing fighting a fire in a fertility clinic. You enter a room and find in it a six year old girl, and a tray with 20 frozen embryos. You can either save the girl or the tray of embryos. Which one do you choose?

In my opinion, the caller chickened out. He said something like "that would be a call I would have to make as a fireman... it would depend on who was closest to the door and who was most likely to survive." I felt his answer betrayed that he couldn't really equate 20 embryos with 20 people... if he could, the decision should have been both straightforward, and patently ridiculous... as if anyone could ignore a 6 year old girl screaming for rescue from a fire and instead choose a rack of test tubes.

Although it isn't clear exactly when an embryo becomes a person, it seems downright obvious that a 14-day-old blastocyst is far less a person than a six year old girl. I'm going to remember this challenge. It really made me think.

Birdies

I've been feeding the birds in my yard again lately. I stopped many years ago, but started up again after my Dad passed away. It's funny, I sort of got him interested in birds and birdfeeding years ago, and now he has sort of gotten me back into it. Things haven't changed much. Regular wild bird food doesn't have enough millet in it, and has some other seeds that most of the birds don't eat. So I went back to one of my old recipes and it worked like a charm, but it involves buying parakeet food and mixing that into the seed, which is expensive. I have to find a place where I can get millet cheap. Anybody know a place?

Dawkins Discussions... on Amazon?

I've been following some discussions on Dawkins which are popping up on Amazon. Apparently any product for sale on Amazon gets its own discussion forum. So at the bottom of the amazon page for The God Delusion are the hot forum topics related to that book. It's amazing what lengths some people will go to in order to discredit Dawkins. Check it out, if you dare. This is where I found out about the "Dawkins Pause" video... this particular discussion links to the video (it's something of a relief to see that the theists seem to be in the minority on this forum.)

If you need more Dawkins, here's a feed for RichardDawkins.net which you can drop in your news aggregator.

I'm about halfway through The God Delusion myself. Having trouble reading it right now... mostly because of the percosets.

Topix.Net

Don't know if I've recommended this before, but topix.net is a nice source for regional newsfeeds for small towns. They incorporate feeds for local newspapers and blogs, and all you do is enter the zip code of the town you are interested in, and topix.net will generate a feed for that town that you can plonk into a feed reader like bloglines, Google reader, and so forth. (It's my understanding that IE7 has a feed aggregator built right in.)

My Shared Shite

I've been regularly flagging articles in the feeds I read as shared so that other people can enjoy them. You can access the GoogleReader page devoted to my shared articles here.

3Hive Decency

Some fairly decent stuff has cropped up on 3Hive since my last article about indie music. I recommend The Autumn Defense and Lymbyc Systym.