Unbecoming Levity

Peter Schiff on FOX News in 2006 and 2007

Abacquer — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:37:35 -0500

YouTube video of loons at Faux News laughing at Peter Schiff as he tries to warn of impending financial disaster in the 07-08 timeframe:

Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition)

What stock picks were the FOX tools recommending? WaMu, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs... financials basically.

NYT on Nate

Abacquer — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:57:37 -0500

Here's a nice article in the New York Times about Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight who's predictions about the 2008 presidential and senate races were so amazingly accurate. Hat tip to my friend Bruce who brought the article to my attention.

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.

Election: Proposition 48 in Colorado -- Religiously Espoused Gov't Interference

Abacquer — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:38:33 -0500

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has a penetrating and thoughtful article about proposition 48 in Colorado. This proposition would declare a fertilized human egg "a human", thus elevating nonpersons such as zygotes and blastocysts to full human status. This is an obvious ploy to outlaw abortion and embryonic stem cell research without challenging them directly. Read the article, and if you are a Colorado voter, please, come down on the side of reason, not religion:

When is a human human? (Bad Astronomy):
…There are other vital issues, like how granting civil rights to a collection of cells takes away many civil rights of women, and the huge increase in governmental involvement this would mean in people’s lives. These are important to be sure, but not the point I want to make here. Also, these are age-old arguments, and in fact I can see where intelligent people can come down on opposite sides of them.

The real point is, Prop 48 isn’t about science, and it’s not even about legal issues. It’s about religion. This proposition is obviously based solely on religious beliefs; there is little reason outside of that to even bring the argument up that a fertilized egg is entitled to rights as a human being. It is only the belief that the human soul enters the cell at that moment that this is an issue at all.

Proposition 48 is religion trying to create legislation, pure and simple.…

Looking Iffy

Abacquer — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:03:19 -0400

Yeesh. Things are starting to look a little iffy in my industry. So far my work has been unaffected by the instability in the markets, but I am beginning to hear from other developers that potential clients are becoming nervy about starting new development projects. Hopefully that won't hit us, but frankly I've been expecting it to. Usually software houses take a hit when the market looks uncertain.

Anyway, I have a lot to do and I am heads down on it. This post (and my previous 3) have been posted via "moblogging"--I send an e-mail to the blog provider and they turn it into a post. Still planning on doing a blogathon on Tuesday November 4 to cover the election. I encourage all my friends to drop me an e-mail with their experiences at polling stations.

Juncos are Back...

Abacquer — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 10:37:43 -0400

Just saw some Juncos outside when I was looking out the washroom window. Yet another sign that colder days are upon us.

I really should get some birdseed... it's been awhile since I've just sat and watched my feathered friends.

Products of the Morning Toil

Abacquer — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:13:29 -0400

Today I went in for my "final impressions" which is what you see in this image (crappy quality because I used a cellphone to shoot it.)

The blue thing at lower left is the final upper impression. It will be used to mold the fit of the upper denture.
The blue thing at lower right is the final lower impression that will be used to mold the fit of the lower denture. Eventually I will probably need one more lower impression to reline the lower denture once my gums have healed and receded.
The white thing in the center is an amalgum impression of my temporary upper denture. This will be used to shape the teeth in the new denture so they will look and feel consistent with what I have right now.
That pink and yellow monstrosity at the top is a wax model. The pink part is wax, I don't know what the yellow part is made from. The whole wax part of this model had to be in my mouth at once! Not pleasant. The dentist has carved out some teeth on the upper part for reference. He will use this to make sure the bite of the new dentures matches my current bite, and to make sure everything fits.

The dentures will be ready in about 4 weeks, and then I will have the surgery to remove the teeth.

And then I will be officially toothless.

Seven More To Go

Abacquer — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:54:16 -0400

As you know I had extensive oral surgery last year to remove all but seven of my teeth for health reasons. Over the intervening year I have watched those remaining teeth degrade over time. Before long they were staining, losing chips, and otherwise falling apart... as I had feared they might.

The other day my lower partial denture broke in half so I visited my dentist this morning and asked him to look at the teeth. He was surprised at their state. He could tell I have been taking care of them, but nonetheless they are deteriorating rapidly. There was nothing else for it really, except to remove these teeth as well.

So he took an impression today for a new (full) lower plate and an updated impression for the upper denture, plus x-rays for the oral surgeon. In two weeks time I go to see him again for some final impressions and then they will set up my surgery. After that I'll be back for adjustments and then the long sorry tale of my teeth will finally be over.

I'm blue about it of course, but I am trying to take it in stride. These things happen. Better it be handled now before these teeth start making me sick again.

It turned out that the temporary lower partial was indeed not made to last, the final lower partial would have had a metal or otherwise far more permanent construction. At least I got a year+ wear out of it. No sense in repairing it now since the rest of the teeth have to go.

What's With That Big Glowing Ball in the Sky?

Abacquer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:36:06 -0400

Oh I remember now... that's the sun! I saw that the day we left to go on our vacation here in Rainland. How nice that it has decided to grace us with its presence... on the last day. Well I'm not going to be cynical today (I mean, after this point). Clark's Bridge was a bust yesterday... rain dumping down and you have to pay to get in to the tourist trap it is ensconced in... a veritable fortress of phony, brightly-painted, dreck. So I'm not going back there. But maybe I can get to the Flume Bridge today. We'll see. Either way there should be something to shoot.

Unless it starts raining.

Okay, starting from now, I mean...

Designing the Fun Away

Abacquer — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:52:38 -0400

Ever have a challenging pastime to which you applied analytical skills and ended up making it so easy it ceased to be fun? This happens to me occasionally. A couple years back we had a sort of "puzzle craze" in the United Stated over "sudoku", a sort of numeric logic puzzle originating from Japan.

The basic puzzle is a 9x9 box of squares in which some of the squares have been filled in with numbers. Your assignment is to fill in the rest of the squares by following 3 simple rules: (1) each number can appear only once in each row, (2) each number can appear only once in each column, (3) each number can appear only once in each "major square". The major squares are nine 3x3 boxes superimposed over the 9x9 puzzle in a non-overlapping fashion (so the first major square is formed by columns 1, 2, and 3 where they pass through rows 1, 2, and 3, the next at the intersection of columns 4, 5, and 6 with rows 1, 2, and 3, and so on.) Since every row contains 9 squares, and every column contains 9 squares, and every major square contains 9 squares, the only numbers you will ever add to the puzzle are the numbers 1 to 9.

There are larger and more complex variants on the basic sudoku, but the above is the most popular and familiar variety. I did sudokus for awhile but eventually tired of them and moved on to new pastimes.

One reason I tired of them is that a large part of sudoku is simple, repetitive, busy work. You eliminate the possibilities for each square until a solution pops out for one square and then you fill that in and go back and reevaluate the possibilities for the other squares. For example, a given square can be any number between 1 and 9. But if you look at the column that square is in and find 1, 5, and 6 are already used, those are no longer possibilities for that square. If the row that square is in contains 2, 3, and 7, then those possibilities are also eliminated. Further if the major square it is in already contains 4 and 9, then those possibilities are eliminated too, leaving only 8, so in this case the square must be 8.

It's much more interesting when you start getting into the more complicated bits of reasoning that involve multiple squares. Like for instance if a major square is filled in except for two squares, then those two squares have only two possibilities. Let's say the possibilities are 5 and 9. Further assume that these two squares are in the same row (or column). Immediately we can say of all the other squares in that row (or column) that none can be 5 or 9 since those two options have to be used up by those two squares. But getting to that point involves getting through a period of tedious repetition.

But when you are stuck in a cabin in the rain for a day, away from the amenities you typically would enjoy, even a tedious pastime is welcome. However, I've found one thing consistently true among software engineers: they generally hate doing tasks by hand which would be better done by a simple computer program. So I was plonking along with sudoku puzzles, eliminating options by hand when I said "this is stupid, I could make a simple spreadsheet macro to do this for me."

So I built a spreadsheet that would show me the remaining possibilities for each row and column as a row or column header. Then when I was eliminating possibilities for major squares I said "this is stupid, I can use the same macro to do this for me." So I added a bit to my spreadsheet to show me the possibilities remaining for every major square. So now for a given cell I could compare the possibilities for its row, to the possibilities for its column, and the possibilities for its major square and the intersection of those three would represent the possibilities for the cell. (For example, if the cell is in a row with 4,5,6,7 available, and a column with 2,3,5,7,8 available, and a major square with 1,5,7,9 available, the possibilities for that cell are only 5 and 7, because that is the intersection of the three sets of possibilities.)

I suppose you can guess what happened next. "This is stupid, I can write a simple function to take the intersection of these possibilities."

One other basic sudoku-solving technique is to look for "loners". A loner is the only square in a row (or column or major square) that includes a particular number as one of its possibilities. For example if you have four unfilled squares in a major square and their possibilites are (2,3,4), (2,3,5), (3,5), and (2,5) you can say the first one has to be 4. Even though 2 and 3 are possibilities for this square, since it is the only square that can be 4, then it must be 4. Finding loners is also tedious, and you can imagine what I did as a result. "This is stupid, yadda yadda yadda..."

So now I had a spreadsheet that would eliminate all the impossible values for a square based on simple cross checking and which would identify loners for me. But I found as I was entering puzzles that this solved so much of the puzzle automatically, there was very little left for me to do. The spreadsheet would notify me when I caused an error (forced the possibilities for a cell to dwindle to nothing) and in those cases where I needed to make a guess to explore one possible solution, the spreadsheet would allow me to snapshot the puzzle at that point so I could get back to it if the puzzle didn't work out. With these features available puzzles rated "difficult" were taking under 2 minutes to solve. After 5 or 6 of them I shut Excel done and was done with sudoku for the day. Why bother? It was too easy now.

The pastime had become writing the code to perform the tedious operations. Once that was accomplished I was no longer interested in performing those operations. Go figure.

Watching Ants

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:04:49 -0400

Yes I know, first I'm writing about the likelihood of contacting alien civilizations, then I'm talking about immortal humans who have sex for three days straight and write books in their sleep, and then about creepy flickrites, and now I am writing about watching ants. You don't come here for consistency.

I was leaving my office around lunchtime the other day for a brief walk. The front of the building has a raised garden with some azaleas and a really nice looking stone wall bordering it. As I walked out I noticed the wall was swimming in tiny black ants. Not the big ones you see wondering solo, but hordes of teensy ones. Usually that means that a tasty food item has been discovered and the colony is out to disassemble it and carry it back. I could see where the ants were clumped up, but didn't notice anything there that I recognized as anything ants would want to eat. But I figured maybe somebody had spilled a soda and they were gobbling up dried sugars right off the rockface. I went off to my walk and didn't think any more about it.

Later that night when I left work, I glanced at the wall and noticed the big cluster of ants was still there, but it had moved a few feet to the right. Again no food was evident. Just ants in a big tangled mass. So I leaned close to peer at them and noticed that ants were bunching up around other ants, and apparently biting each other. Other ants seemed to be carrying away dead (or dying ants). I leaned back and noticed that unlike a typical feeding situation where you see a river of ants leading from the colony to the food and back, this was the meeting place of two rivers of ants. One from one crevice about 5 feet to the left, and another from a crevice about 4 feet to the right.

That's when I realized I wasn't watching a feeding frenzy. I was watching a war. It was an epic battle between two colonies of ants that had both claimed this rock wall as their territory. Thousands upon thousands of ants continually poured from both crevices, and converged in the center to engage in a massive melee. It was mesmerizing to watch the supply lines bringing in fresh ants as the wounded or the dead were hauled away (presumably as food). They moved in tides and complex whorling patterns as they made war... it was so intricate it was actually mesmerizing. I checked my camera bag but I had neglected to bring ANY macro lenses with me that day, or I would have had pictures of all-out insect warfare and abject carnage to upload to my photostream.

It made me a little sad to think of these ants fighting for hours over a few feet of turf. After 15 minutes I suddenly realized the time and made a mental note to bring my macro lens to work today.

But when I arrived this morning, the battle was over, and the battlefield had been swept clean. Had I not noticed it, the day before, I never would have known it had happened. In my inner thoughts I could not help but make the connection between the affairs of the ants and the affairs of humanity. In 100,000 years, if humans are still here, what great battles and wretched suffering of ours will have passed into the unknown? Will we forget World War 2? Will we forget the Holocaust? Will we repeat it? Big thoughts from the tragic ant war of June 25, 2008.

Silent Sky - A Thought Experiment

Abacquer — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:57:30 -0400

This is an interesting thought experiment and it involves statistics and some figuring, so I welcome any of my smart friends or anybody who cares to think about it to chime in here.

Assume that sentient civilizations with the ability to transmit some form of radiant communications signals (radio, light, whatever) started appearing in our galaxy as early as 4.5 billion years ago (when the Earth was forming), and assume that they continue to appear (each on its own evolutionary trajectory) for another 4.5 billion years. Further assume that over this timespan of 9 billion years a total of one million different intelligent civilizations begin transmitting radiant communications. After a random time period of 100 to 1000 years each civilization stops transmitting radiant signals, either because they move on to a better technology that does not require radiant communication (pretty much necessary for interstellar communications) or the civilization dies out. Finally given that our galaxy's diameter is about 100,000 light years, assume that any of these civilizations when transmitting would be at some random distance from us which does not exceed 100,000 light years (yes I know that's a little big since we aren't at the very edge of the galaxy, but bear with me.)

Now, here we are, smack-dab in the middle of that timescale, halfway between year 1 and year 9 billion. We turn an array of radio telescopes to the sky and listen in all directions simultaneously, constantly, for a period of 1,000 years.

Is our sky silent? Or is it noisy? With a million civilizations out there at some point or another, all sending signals out at different times, what are the chances we would hear none of them at all even if we listen for 1000 years?

I threw together a crude simulation last night to try and answer this question, and I have a result which you might find surprising, but I'm curious to know what other people think first. Care to venture a guess? Or perhaps create your own sim and see what results you get? I'll post my results tomorrow.

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

Soil Bacteria of Antibiotics: "Delicious!"

Abacquer — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:17:03 -0400

I was listening to NPR Science Friday on podcast a few nights ago and caught an interesting segment detailing a recent discovery regarding bacteria found in soil. It has been demonstrated (for example, by the discovery of the nylon bug) that bacteria in the presence of an abundance of one substance or another may evolve to be able to metabolize that substance... even if the substance is synthetic. It's also been shown that bacteria in the constant presence of antibiotics will evolve immunity.

These newly discovered soil bacteria have done both. That is, not are they only immune to a disturbingly long list of known antibiotics, they have evolved to the point where they can actually eat antibiotics. The Royal Society of Chemisty has an article on this recent discovery:

[...] The soil samples were taken from many different places [in the USA] including public parks and farms, pristine forest, and land treated with wastewater.

'The increase of multiple-antibiotic resistance in human pathogens is continuingly weakening our ability to fight infectious disease, and any accessible reservoir of resistance mechanisms that could transfer to pathogens could exacerbate the problem,' say Dantas and Sommer.

So far, the researchers haven't found any known human pathogens among their antibiotic-consuming organisms, but they say that some are closely related species. This might make it rather easy for pathogens to acquire antibiotic-resistance and antibiotic-metabolising genes from innocuous bacteria. [...]

Scary stuff! But rather unsurprising since antibiotics get into the environment every day through their continued use.

The segment on the antibiotic-munching bacteria was followed by another segment on an alternative form of antibacterial treatment called phage therapy. Phage therapy, instead of using chemical substances to combat bacteria, uses viruses, specifically bacteriophages--viruses that only infect bacteria. This sort of therapy was predicted shortly after the discovery of bacteriophages in 1917. Once antibiotics were discovered (in 1941) phage therapy wasn't pursued further in the west, but continued to be studied in Russia.

The advantage of phage therapy is that the anti-bacterial agent is also a living organism, so as bacteria evolve to become immune to it, the phage species also evolves to continue to prey on the bacteria. Antibiotics, being chemical compounds, do not evolve, hence eventually bacterial evolution will defeat an antibiotic unless you can rapidly deplete the bacterial population to the point where your own immune system can fight off the infection successfully. As bacteria with antibiotic resistance can be found in the environment, and people have been infected with resistant strains, there is apparently renewed interest in phage therapy.

No human phage treatments are presently approved in the USA, though the use of phages to prevent bacteria from growing in food have been approved here. Phage therapy on humans is used in some states of the former USSR, especially Georgia. In the NPR podcast linked above the scientists interviewed spoke of a patient with a resistant bone infection that was successfully treated using bacteriophages after being told here in the USA that amputation was his only recourse. Interesting!

Hope Never Dies

Abacquer — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:12:08 -0400

Well it's been a little over a year since my Dad passed away, and it's been a sad time. Work has not been going very well, and it's hard sometimes to stay motivated. But good things happen too, which cheer me up some.

Dad loved Spring, especially when the birds returned.

Today as I was driving to work feeling a little blue I spotted some red-winged blackbirds in a small marsh still specked with ice.

Spring returns. Hope never dies.

Neutralizing Free Radicals

Abacquer — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 23:57:32 -0500

That's what I'm doing. No I have no idea what that means either. As I slide downslope having gotten over the peak of this gout attack (it was not pretty) I have been drinking 100% blueberry juice. Blueberries and blueberry juice is apparently nature's #1 antioxidant. I know this because it says on the bottle. The back of the bottle helpfully explains that antioxidants are good for me because they neutralize free radicals. Ooookay.

Wikipedia to the rescue...

...a "free radical" is any molecule that has a single unpaired electron in an outer shell.

I guess free radicals readily combine with other compounds in your body and thereby oxidize them. Apparently this can have some damaging effects, but an antioxidant combines with the free radicals so they can't oxidize other compounds in your body. Okay. If you say so. I'm just drinking it because it is recommended for gout sufferers.

I have to tell you it's pretty acidic and has a sharp taste. I don't think I could drink a lot of this stuff. It's also a little thicker than other fruit juices... has a little more body to it. Not like syrup but noticeably heavier. Can't say I like it very much but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

Return of the Gout!!

Abacquer — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:14:14 -0500

Crap! My daughter was sick all last week, but thankfully she is feeling better now. Unfortunately now it is my turn with her cold... which is bad enough in and of itself. Except that I was stuck at home all weekend and there was a shortage of beverages in the house. And generally when I have a choice of water or nothing, I choose nothing unless I am direly thirsty. (I'm sure this will provoke a "typical man" comment from somebody.)

Anyway most of the food I ate was salty. On Sunday I snacked on Ritz crackers with easy cheese spread, quite a few crackers actually. Okay a LOT of crackers. As you know those are quite salty as is the cheese spread. I barely drank anything except one cup of tea. It should have occurred to me that this would dehydrate me, but it didn't.

That is until late last nite when I woke up with a sharp pain in the knuckle where my big toe ends and my right foot begins. Then it occurred to me that what I ate just before bed was a big bowl of salty lipton cup-a-soup. Greeaat. So I staggered downstairs and got a glass of filtered water and then hobbled back to bed. It's probably too late now. Once the gout starts it really needs to run its course. I had managed to eat well enough to avoid it for a few years, but here it is again.

Ouch.

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.

Here We Go Again...

Abacquer — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:51:46 -0400

Definition of "undercutting":

Me:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120163294055
Starting time: Sep-27-07 19:45:00 PDT (scheduled, so as to begin after other auctions ended)
Starting bid: US $49.99
Duration: 7-day listing

The other guy:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170153862318
Starting time: Sep-27-07 20:27:48 PDT
Starting bid: US $0.89
Duration: 7-day listing

From Bulk Comes Bilk and EBay Wants Your Money

Abacquer — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:21:12 -0400

I've been so busy with work and trying to sell cards that I haven't had time to do much photography. I did get some great pix in Hyannis a couple weeks ago and some more good stuff at a reception for a christening I went to last weekend, but I haven't had time to photoshop the photos, clean them up, organize them, and so forth. It's just been either work or eBay the last couple weeks. Here's one picture I took (at the office, of couse). Somebody in my building went out and got one of those "Dream Cruisers". Isn't it gorgeous? Wow.

On the eBay front I continue to sell and sell. Part of my unlimited set is gone now, and I've gotten the right price for it, and I continue to identify rarities or obscurities in my collection and put them up for sale. I am happy to report that I am at 90% of stage one and expect to make it there by the end of the week. Cool beans!

But I have learned one important lesson about selling. Selling in bulk may allow you to ship more product, but it definitely costs you money. I sold a set of 8 revised dual lands back on the tenth of September for $122.50. In preparation for the end of that auction I got another 7 dual lands together and was prepared to sell them as a batch. But I decided not to. As an experiment I decided to sell the 7 duals as individual auctions (here they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). They went for a total of $139.60.

Sold as a batch, they went for $15.31 apiece. Sold individually? $19.94. That's 30% difference!!! Viewed from that perspective it makes sense to sell individually unless you have a very small market (say you are selling on a table on your front lawn... maybe a couple dozen people swing by and look at the items, chances of selling them all individually are remote.) But on eBay the market is huge, millions of potential buyers, so go for it right?

Well there *are* the eBay fees to consider. eBay will charge you for absolutely anything you can think of and plenty of things that wouldn't even occur to you. Back in the early days of eBay there was a listing fee and a sale fee. The listing fee used to be 30 cents. That was it. Then if the item sold there was a sale fee which was this sliding scale thing that was very complicated but generally worked out to about 4% to 5% of your sale. Nowadays everything costs money. No longer is the listing fee flat, but it is based on the minimum bid of your auction. If your minimum bid is a dollar, the listing fee is 20 cents. If your minimum bid is $49.99 your listing fee is $1.20, and if your minimum bid is $59.99 the fee is $2.40. As you can see the fee is determined inside some sort of bracketed structure. Want to add a reserve price? You'll be charged 1% of your reserve price. Want to add a buy-it-now price? There's a fee for that. Want to schedule your auction to start later in the day or later in the week? There's a fee for that. And so on and so on and so on. Sale fees aside, eBay takes a hefty chunk out of you up front just for listing the item. To the point where it makes no sense at all to sell anything for under say, 5 dollars. Ebay will simply eat so much of it that it becomes pointless to sell it.

And of course once your item sells, eBay charges you for a percentage of the sale price, this you would pay no matter how many items you are selling, but the listing fees are paid for each item. My listing fees for the first dual land auction was 30 cents (I had no minimum bid, no buy it now). The 7 individual auctions cost 40 cents apiece to list (probably because I set a minimum bid of $9.99, otherwise it would have been 30 cents). But that is $2.80 to list 7 individual items instead of 30 cents to list one.

Then come the PayPal fees, which generally work out to about 3.5% of the sale price but which have overhead costs causing them to be at least 30 cents as a minimum. I read an amusing story about a guy who overcharged his customer about 90 cents for shipping, and offered the customer a refund via PayPal. So the customer got sixty cents. Ouch. For items worth about $20 each, the overhead is not really all that relevant, but it would be for inexpensive items. The PayPal fees would be easier to stomach if PayPal wasn't owned by eBay. Yes, that's right, you pay eBay to list your item, you pay eBay to sell your item, and you pay eBay to collect the payment for the sale of your item. Yeesh. And, to make it even more annoying, PayPal fees are instantaneously applied to any cash transferred, but eBay fees are simply billed to you at the end of the month. That way, PayPal can charge you a percentage off of the $100 you were paid, instead of the $100 you were paid minus the eBay listing and sale fees. I hasten to point out again that PayPal *is* eBay. Double dipping anyone?

After correcting for eBay listing fees, eBay sale fees, and eBay PayPal fees, the group lot went for $14.20 per card, and the individual lot for $17.80. That's still a 25% improvement in price, even after being ~~robbed~~ charged for eBay's fine services. Altogether the 8 auctions sold for $262.10, which isn't bad, even if eBay took $23.92 in total fees. My state government charges 5% in sales tax. eBay? 9.13%. Yikes!!!

So from now on I'm going to sell individually and try not to think about the fact that I might as well just set every tenth item on fire since I'm not going to end up with any money for it.

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!

Oral Update

Abacquer — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:00:18 -0400

Well I was back at the Longview Corporate Center yesterday for a followup visit. They wanted to check me out after last week's oral surgery. The doctor confirmed that it was normal for me to still have swelling and soreness a week later. He said it would take awhile to recover.

But on the upside, he said that it looked like I was healing up nicely. I thought he was going to remove the stitches today, but he said that they were dissolving stitches and we would just let them fall out on their own. For the past week I've had to keep the dentures in all the time (even when sleeping), the doctor said it was necessary to stretch out the tissue. But now he has reversed those instructions and told me to take them out as often as possible. Confusing business this.

Personally? I'd really like to get through this so I can have my permanent set of dentures made. I was hoping to get that done before my birthday in October. Oh well, at least it doesn't hurt as bad as it did last week, and I'm starting to chew a little bit again. Hopefully in another week or two I'll be back to full strength.

The Experiments Continue...

Abacquer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:37:10 -0400

The 24$ Pentax K-Mount to Canon EF-Mount adapter came in the mail today, and when I got home I took out Dad's old Chinon CE-4 camera, removed the Chinon 50mm 1.9 lens and attached it to my 400D using the new adapter.

It would be an understatement to say that I am impressed with the results.

What a terrific piece of glass this is! If you go on eBay you can buy this very lens for under twenty bucks and yet it takes amazing pictures! My friends, if you have been considering getting a DSLR but have been put off by the price of the glass, and believe me, there's a lot to be put off by, and you don't mind setting the aperture manually and focusing manually, you may definitely want to consider old manual lenses on a new SLR body.

As for me, well I already have a fast 50mm prime, but I really wanted to see Dad's lens in action again. I was not disappointed.

Frankenstein's Lab

Abacquer — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:58:18 -0400

As you might recall I decided to sell my old Nikon gear off to Adorama and parlay it into new lenses. Over the phone Adorama quoted me about $250 for my Tamron lens, and $200 for my 28mm Nikon lens. The camera body is now worth a pittance (like $30), and there was the 400mm Sigma telephoto which they wanted to examine before giving an estimate on, but I was expecting at least $100 for it. It was never a great lens but it wasn't total junk either, and it went for $600 when it was new. So for the whole kit I was expecting $500-$600.

Upon receiving the gear Adorama took over two weeks to get back to me and then (after I chased after them for a couple days) offered me $175 for the entire kit. I could see from looking at their own used equipment inventory page that they would sell the Sigma alone for almost $400. Yeah. So like, um, no. I told them to ship it back to me on their dime. They offered $200 if I would consider trading it in on a purchase, but I wasn't biting. I was planning to finance my 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens with this old kit, but given that the new lens was $550, if I ditched my entire Nikon kit at their offer I'd STILL be $375 short. Not worth it.

Instead I sold my MtG Online account which had a pretty decent collection of virtual cards in it. I got $510 for that and that ended up financing my telephoto lens (with which, I am totally in love.) Meanwhile the Nikon gear came back and got stacked next to my old camera bag, into which I had stored my Dad's old Chinon gear, which my Mom had given to me. Dad's gear included 2 lenses (of which one is infested with fungus and therefore history) but combined with my old Nikon gear that is four lenses that once took beautiful pictures:

Nikon Nikkor 28mm f/2.8
Tamron 90mm f/2.5 (for Nikon)
Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO (for Nikon)
Chinon 50mm f/1.9

Nikon cameras for ages have used the Nikon F-Mount. In fact the mount was introduced in 1959 and is still in use today (though it was extended when autofocus came on the scene.) So as long as one is prepared to use them in a manual fashion, one could attach lenses 1 to 3 to a modern Nikon and go... no additional equipment necessary. Many camera manufacturers created completely new mounts when moving to autofocus, to howls of disapproval from customers who had invested in lenses, but not Nikon. The other notable exception is Pentax. The K-Mount was created in 1976 and is still standard on Pentax cameras. I bring it up because the Chinon CE-4 uses an old K-Mount which means lens #4 in the above list should fit on any modern Pentax camera, although it would probably only function in a manual fashion.

So I began to wonder if I could find adapters that would let me use these lenses on my Canon EOS 400D. People have been saying for awhile that it is not possible with Pentax K-lenses, until a working adapter was invented awhile back. But for Nikon lenses the adapters have been around awhile and are available cheaply, so I picked one up from an ebay seller in China for the hefty sum of $7.99 (plus $8.01 shipping) and it arrived the other day... and I spent a couple hours playing Dr. Frankenstein, attaching old dead lenses to my EOS 400D.

Nikkor 28mm f/2.8:

I only tried a few shots with the 28mm. I was surprised by how hot the colors were from this lens. I can tell it is a good one and with practice I should be able to get some nice pictures with it. This is one I'd like to throw on the camera and just go out shooting for awhile with it. It was fairly wide, and therefore I could stand comfortably close to my subjects while shooting with this lens.

Tamron 90mm f/2.5:

The colors out of the Tamron were also very hot, though not quite as hot as the 28mm. This and the Sigma are the only large primes I've ever owned, so they take some getting used to. I found that the body of the lens isn't in the greatest shape, the focusing wheel would sometimes slip and turn a little on its own, so I sort of had to hold it in place. I really took my time with this lens and did a number of shots. I did notice a lot of flaring (I was shooting without the hood) so I don't know if the lens has an internal issue, although I did a long exposure low light shot that came out looking just fine.

Given the slippery focus, I don't think I'd use this prime too much in the field, but for still life at home where I have a lot of control it still can produce nice pictures. I'm willing to bet I could send it out to be cleaned and have the focusing ring tightened up. I may try that... the picture quality is definitely worth it.

Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO:

As expected this beast was the touchiest of the three. If I ever end up getting that EF Canon 100-400mm someday, this lens will end up on eBay. I need to do a head to head test with the 70-300mm I own at some point, but I'm willing to bet the newer lens will win.

At 400mm the lens magnifies hand shake extremely, and it was never a very clear lens in the first place. But I found if I baby it enough (and use a tripod) I can still get some very nice shots out of this lens, like these pretty magenta flowers here which required a half-second exposure even though it was a bright sunny day. Granted, they were in the shade... but a half second???

All in all it was a successful experiment. I'm sure I will use the Nikkor 28mm and the Tamron 90mm on my EOS 400D. The Sigma... maybe, I need to experiment with that one some more. This was pretty fun, and it was nice to see these lenses in action again. With no electrical contacts the lenses were strictly manual... manual focus, and aperture had to be set manually as well using the controls built into the lenses. As far as the 400D was concerned, there was no lens on the camera when I took the test shots you see above.

One note about the adapter though, it is extremely thin and getting it on and off is tricky. It's probably easier to just buy one for each Nikon lens you are going to use and then simply leave the adapter on the lens (note, you'll need to buy a lens cap for each lens you do this to... once the adaptor is on, the lens cap that came with the lens won't fit.) I've ordered both a Pentax-K adapter for my Dad's old Chinon lens and an M42 style adapter for possible future use. (There are some really high quality lenses out there which are made to fit the M42 screw-mount, and they can be had very inexpensively. I think I may want to try some of those one day... the Carl Zeiss Flektogon 4/20mm springs to mind as does a bunch of Takumar lenses.)

Wedding Gear...

Abacquer — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:00:00 -0400

So while sitting around yesterday trying to work from home, aching and dealing with my swollen face, I considered the sort of kit I would need to take quality wedding/portraiture photos.

It occurred to me that if I had 10 grand kicking around, I could put together an amazing kit for doing wedding photography and portrait work. In a moment of idle dreaming I listed it out on Amazon using their "Listmania" service. You can see it in great detail here. I don't see how I could come up with that kind of dough unless I sold off my collection of Magic: the Gathering trading cards. It probably wouldn't get me all the way there, but it might get me far enough along to build a useful subset of the gear.

A serious wedding photographer brings a spare camera body on a job--both because the primary camera could break down, and also because it can make switching between lenses much quicker, so I would want a more serious body to be my primary camera and my XTi would be my backup body. Then I would need a couple high quality zoom lenses and a flash for the new camera. That would be the basic wedding kit.

Basic Wedding Kit
EOS 5D 12.8 mpx Camera	$2,643
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens	$1,139
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens	$1,699
580 EXII Speedlite	$430
TOTAL:	$5,911

In order to do serious portraiture these lenses plus those I already own would probably suffice, but there is a little more equipment I would need for portraiture, and there is at least one additional lens that would be nice to have for the wedding work, and some flash enhancements that would be good for both:

Stage Two
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens	$1,449
Botero #035 Black Muslin	$129
Impact Support System	$99
Pony Spring Clamps	$8
OC-E3 Flash Cable	$75
Gary Fong Clear LightSphere II	$49
TOTAL:	$1,809

The 16-35 lens gives me serious wide angle capability for large family shots (not unusual for weddings) and I can use it for landscape work when I am shooting for pleasure. The muslin backdrop, support system, and clamps would be necessary for decent portrait shots, and ultimately I would probably want a few varieties of muslin backdrop, but for starting out, basic black would be fine. The OC-E3 would allow me to separate the flash from the camera and hold it overhead or mount it nearby, and the LightSphere would let me diffuse the flash for softer lighting. Stage two brings the total pricetag to $7,720. This would be a solid wedding/portrait kit.

The only thing lacking is an even longer lens for very special sorts of situations, and a quality backup lens for the XTi body if I am ever shooting with an assistant and we both need to be in the most common shooting range (20's-70's) at the same time. That's where stage three comes in:

Stage Three
EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L IS lens	$1,410
Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens	$379
TOTAL:	$1,789

The 400mm L glass with image stabilization should provide the last conceivable bit of reach necessary for weddings and I suspect for most weddings it wouldn't be necessary. However it would be a solid lens for wildlife when I am not shooting weddings. The 28-75mm Tamron gets a lot of respect despite the brand and the price, and as a backup lens on the XTi body, that would be fine. This brings the total pricetag to $9,509 and gives me enough glass to do almost anything I want. Yes, there's no extreme length lenses (> 400 mm) but I can't conceive of a use for such lenses that could justify the expense.

The glass listed would cover me for macro, wildlife, weddings, landscape, low light, sports, and portraits (especially when you include the 28mm, 50mm, and 90mm primes I already own). Looking toward specialty landscape and architectural photography, the only other thing I can think of that would be "nice to have" would be a fisheye lens and a perspective-correcting lens. That would be the "bonus stage":

Bonus Stage
EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens	$580
TS-E 24mm f/3.5L Tilt-shift lens	$1,099
TOTAL:	$1,679

The fisheye lens lets you squeeze a lot of lanscape into a single shot by giving the shot a spherized look... here's an example taken with the EF 15mm fisheye. A tilt-shift lens is a strictly manual focus lens that allows you shift the focal plane in order to correct the perspective and distortion that often results from shooting tall structures from relatively nearby with short focal length lenses. Here's a sample shot with the TS-E 24mm. Anyway this would put the pricetag at $11,188, but what a killer kit this would be!! Ah well... if I win the lottery someday... fun to think about I suppose.

If I sell off my MTG collection and save up my pennies for awhile, the basic wedding kit becomes a distinct possibility. I'll be devoting some serious thought to that over the coming days.

No Photos Today...

Abacquer — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:19:26 -0400

I couldn't go to work today... nor could I shoot any pictures or do much of anything because I had oral surgery yesterday.

This shot was taken with my 1.3 megapixel VerizonLG camera phone yesterday after the surgery which took about 90 minutes. I felt as awful as I look here... doped out of my skull and with bloody spatter on my cheeks and chin. Yechhh.

I'm on percosets right now and feeling pretty crappy. My face is very sore.

You may or may not know that I had 19 teeth removed back in May and was fitted with dentures. Unfortunately as a result of that surgery I ended up with a fistula in my right upper jaw that went up into my sinus cavity. As a result unless I was careful, there would be communication between my mouth and sinuses of food or fluids. I discovered this one morning when Listerine came out my nose while I was washing my mouth. (Ow!)

We had hoped the fistula would close itself over time, but it didn't happen. So yesterday once they knocked me out, they sliced open a flap of gum tissue, laid it across the opening of the fistula and stitched it down.

I haven't taken the dentures out since, it's just too sore, but they are discolored so I know they are full of blood and need to be cleaned soon. I'm nervous about removing them because I am so sore and the surgeon said I am only allowed to take them out for short periods--I can't take them out when I sleep for a week.

I also can't bend down low for any reason or my gums start to throb. So this has been fairly rough and it has been impossible for me to do any shooting today. I might try to do some still life later if I can, but I wouldn't expect anything today.

Saving the Sky

Abacquer — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:45:23 -0400

I really need to learn how to use exposure lock on my camera, then I might not need to do this to my pictures in order to get the sky to look properly exposed. I suppose this would work better if I shot at the waterline instead of above it, but that wasn't possible in this case, and this modification was an afterthought. Maybe today at lunchtime I can get out and experiment with exposure lock for a few minutes.

Took this shot while in the (now public) portion of Devens, MA, and contemplating the sacrifices of our military for our nation. It's a sacrifice we should never squander. I feel so badly about supporting the Iraq war these days when I think of all the lives lost in it, considering what we've learned in the meantime. I refuse to "update my rhetoric" and take to heart all the new excuses for our presence there. I was lied to, but I refuse to lie to myself. I couldn't call myself a patriot if I did.

Do I, Really?

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

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

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.