My Turn

A couple of textures, à la Tracy - but these are mine:


We washed and waxed our cars over the weekend - a brief cloudburst showered Tracy's car with water droplets. It seemed an interesting texture, so I took a couple of pictures.


This last one is heavily cropped - yet another time I wish I had a good macro.

Short Hike

With the longer days, it's easier now to go on short hikes in the evenings after work. On Tuesday, Tracy and I went over to Chris Green to walk the border of the lake. We'd seen the trail from the boats, but never actually hiked over there. It was more a stroll than a hike, really, but was pretty. I borrowed David's camera and she borrowed mine - here are a few of the pictures we took.


Something's missing in this picture, sadly. It lacks the dreaminess of the spot and doesn't quite capture my original interest in the way the stream bed seemed to make a figure 8 - perhaps because you can only really see the bottom of the 8 here in the photo. It's even worse in black and white - too little contrast and too much uniformity of light.


Both of us like to look for small things - a reason we both would like to have a good macro lens. The lichen on the sticks caught our fancy - both of us shot several pictures of it. I ended up liking Tracy's pictures far more than mine - one of hers is shown above.


I shot this with David's camera. It has a feature called "Color Accent" that renders a scene in black and white except for one color value (plus or minus some built-in tolerance). It's surprisingly fun to use - fun especially because it's simple. It is, of course, the sort of thing one could do in post-processing using Photoshop, but having it right there on the camera means that you don't have to wait and don't have to wonder (as much) what the effect will be. I cranked the contrast and the saturation on this one. I like the boldness of the sudden green amidst the black and white.


This, surprisingly, is a beaver-gnawed stump - not some crude, unfinished sculpture (which it rather looks like to me). Again, Tracy's shots of this were much better than mine: the angle she chose makes the stump more dramatic and mysterious.


Something drew me to these seed pods - I took many pictures of them. The light was low and to get the aperture I wanted (for depth of field), I had to work pretty hard at keeping the camera steady. Overall, I managed to keep the sharpness good, but I suspect between asking the camera to focus and actually releasing the shutter, I frequently moved toward or away from my subject: the focal plane isn't ever quite where I would have liked it to be. Perhaps I'll go back with a tripod and try again.

Winter Flowers

In case the post below didn't do much for you, here are a couple of pictures of winter "flowers" we took on a hike a few weeks ago.

New Markers

This is old news, really, but until this week (when the laptop came), I was still really slow to post pictures. Things are moving a little faster, now.

A couple of weeks ago, Tracy and I bid on a whole slew of paintball markers on eBay. We had it in mind that bidding on used markers would be a cost-effective way to get our own equipment - so we could stop renting.

Here's what we got: 3 Spyders, all of them a couple of generations old: a Flash, an Xtra, and a Shutter. Here's the Flash:

The pity was, the Flash and the Shutter both leaked when we got them. A couple of trips to the paintball store fixed that (I tore them down, but couldn't identify any certain problems - all they really needed was replaced O-rings). It didn't cost much, either, except in effort and time. Here's the Xtra:

But effort and time do mean something, and, at the end of the day, they're not super markers. We only spent $50 on each of them (cost plus repairs), but still.... I won't buy any more used paintball equipment. Now that I have what I have, it's worth more to save up and buy new, I figure. Of course, at the moment, I need to improve my game enough to warrant a new marker - and I've a feeling that's a long way off. Here's the Shutter:

So what do I have my eyes set on right now? This guy, with a Freak barrel and the Full Freak kit:

Replacing the Old Jalopy

At last, I've replaced my Hackintosh - which in many ways is exactly like an old jalopy - with a shiny new MacBook Pro. All I can say is that it's been well worth the wait. The new machine is fast, quiet, cool, has excellent battery life, and a breathtaking screen. Here are some pictures of the "unpacking ceremony" I shot with David's camera. The machine arrived on Monday morning.


The box. I didn't notice that the flash was set to fire before I took the picture, or I'd have turned it off. I'm glad I didn't, though - I like the effect. I also like the barreling effect from the small lens at close distance to the subject. Both technical flaws that I think improve the overall effect.


Inside the box. The styrofoam Apple uses to pack the machines looks cool, I think. Too bad there isn't something useful that could be done with it. For the time being, I've saved the box and the shipping carton in case I decide to sell the machine in a year.


Under the styrofoam. It's a bit like peeling an onion - layer after layer. Especially since there was yet another box surrounding the one in the first picture....


The laptop, on top of the box.


And opened, on the bar. I got the glossy screen, after liking the same on David and Tracy's MacBooks. I feared at first, when Tracy bought hers nearly two years ago, that the glare would be horrible.... But it's not, and the color saturation and the deepness of the blacks makes any small glare completely worth it - for me, anyway. My 24" panel has the normal matte finish, so if color precision is required, I'll just hook the laptop up to that, rather than proofing on the built-in display.

That's all for now. I installed Windows XP Home (I've not yet convinced myself it's worth it to buy Professional for $199, since I already had a copy of XP Home) this morning using Boot Camp and will try out VMWare Fusion later today. I will say this, though: the I/O performance of the machine compared to my desktop is staggering. Aperture loads up photos at least twice as fast from the Apple-provided 5400 rpm disk.

The Demise of Big-Box Brick & Mortar

Permit me to rant for a bit - I don't do it very often on my blog.

Big-box brick and mortar is dead. Not for everyone, perhaps, but for me, at least. With soaring gas prices and the convenience, selection, and price available on the Internet, there's no longer any clear mission for big-box brick and mortar. It has failed in the four business areas that previously validated its existence.

First of all, convenience (or the "now" factor). Here's what I mean: why would you buy something in the store, rather than online? Well, perhaps because you need it soon. Like now, for instance. You can't wait to have the thing shipped overnight, or could, but don't want to pay the exorbitant cost of overnight shipping. So you drive to the store to get what you want. It's sensible. Moreover, what you want is a little less common than a box of Kleenex, so you head to a big-box retailer to look for it. The trouble is, of course, that they don't have it either. In fact, none of the big boxes in your town do. So after wasting nearly an hour hitting up several big stores, you end up at home, discouraged, buying the thing off the Internet after all.

This has happened to me numerous times. I wanted, on two separate occasions, a 2.5 inch SATA hard-disk drive enclosure and a 3.5 inch, 250GB hard disk. Best Buy would sell me a PATA enclosure or a 500GB or 750GB hard disk, but not the SATA enclosure or the smaller disk - and I had no reason for another massive disk for my purpose. It would have been a waste of space and money. Circuit City, after declaring when I checked their inventory on the 'Net that they carried the disk, didn't have it after all. WalMart came up short - I didn't even bother with Kmart. All four have permanently lost my business for electronic goods: why bother shopping there, when they don't have the selection that should mark big box retail?

So not only have they failed in convenience, but also in selection (which, along with price, is what typically differentiates big-box retail from smaller outfits). That's two business areas down. How about the other two?

For a while, we've been trying to get our hands on a copy of National Treasure (the first one) to rent and watch (I'll buy the Blu-ray boxed set when Disney completes the series - more cost effective). Blockbuster in town (there are four of them) is worthless. Their selection is so poor, it's effectively limited to games and new releases. They don't even stock up on movies that have a sequel in the theater - which is a pretty obvious thing to do, really. So in desperation, I checked out Hollywood Video. To my surprise, they had it in stock! So I grabbed the movie and got in line to check it out. It was Friday night - there were lots of people in the store.... And only two people working registers.

After standing in line for 15 minutes (no joke) while one of the sales clerks failed to check out a single customer (he called his supervisor - who was on the other register - over for no fewer than three overrides and rebooted his machine once in the middle of the transaction), I gave up and left. I wanted to turn around and shout "Not only did you lose my business tonight, but I will never, ever walk into another Hollywood Video to rent a movie. Ever."

And why should I? After seeing a lack of service like that? And considering their lack of price competitiveness against online services like Netflix? People might complain that on the Internet the service is poor - but it sure beats the lack of service one finds in big-box retail. Rarely have I run into a truly knowledgeable salesperson. Rarely - if ever - have I seen prices that compete with those on the 'Net. It's insanity.

Contrast those experiences with the experience we've had at our local paintball store. It's a small shop. There's not a lot of selection and rarely are there other customers in the store. But the guy behind the counter knows his stuff. He's passionate about the sport. He'll give advice, suggest products, and tell you when you don't need to buy something. He can order whatever you need or want that he doesn't have, and his prices are competitive with those on the 'Net. Perhaps slightly higher, but it's worth it to continue the business relationship with someone who offers free labor fixing damaged equipment.

Big-box brick and mortar may have squeezed out a lot of local, small shops, but the Internet may largely do the same to big-box brick and mortar. And, who knows? When the impersonal shopping experience afforded by the Internet is contrasted against the "good old days" of local stores, we may just see them reemerge. I could handle that.