I’m particularly fond of this one. (Yes, that is a real status code, although it is technically HTCPCP, not HTTP. See RFC 2324. Yes, there are documented implementations of this.)
Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
A quick one that kicked over my giggle box.
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012Nice, bright colors.
Sunday, January 15th, 2012I wanted to throw up a link to Zander Robin’s “Kodachrome 2010” documentary on Vimeo, but I felt like I should watch it first.
After watching it…well, there’s some interesting stuff in it about the chemistry involved in processing Kodachrome, and quite a few lovely images, but I really wish there was more to it. At less than 10 minutes, it seems like it is just the beginning of the story of Dwayne’s Photo and the final days of Kodachrome. I know it might have been a tough sell on the festival circuit, but I, for one, would have paid money to see a 90 minute version of this, or to download it from iTunes.
In any case, here’s “Kodachrome 2010” if you want to watch for yourself.
KODACHROME 2010 from Xander Robin on Vimeo.
(Hattip: PetaPixel.)
Holy cow.
Monday, January 9th, 2012Unless I win the lottery sometime soon (and that would require buying a ticket) I won’t be purchasing a Nikon D4.
However, the idea of a camera with built-in wired Ethernet boggles my mind. (The WiFi add-on seems kind of nifty too, especially for the automation it offers. But at $6,000 for the camera, it seems to me to be something that should have been included rather than an extra cost option.)
(Hattip: Les Jones.)
It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
(Click to embiggen.)
But it is much better not having to curse the darkness, or be afraid of it, because you have the tools to defend yourself and those you love.
(Smith & Wesson Model 36. Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Safariland speedloader. Federal 110 grain JHP. Spyderco Civilian
I’m no Oleg Volk, but I’m actually pretty happy with the way that photo came out. I didn’t use the flash; just the ambient light from the candles, and the normal background light from inside my apartment. This was a relatively long exposure: iPhoto says 1 second at f4.2, using the D40X, the 18-55 mm kit lens that I got with it, and a Dolica AX620B100 tripod
(Explanation of what’s behind this photo can be found over at Weer’d Beard’s place.)
The Old Bag.
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011Back many thousands of years ago, when I was just a wee lad shooting photos with a Pentax K1000 and reading Popular Photography (rest in peace, Herbert Keppler), I kept hoping that PP would do an article or a series of articles or a column or something on “what’s in your camera bag”; basically, I wanted to know what real pros like Walter Iooss Jr. (warning: some photos, especially one in particular, may not be safe for work) and Eddie Adams took with them when they went on the road. I had ideas about being a professional journalist, one who not only did his own writing but also took his own photos.
Getting to the point, this piece at PetaPixel, showing what Umit Bektas packed in his camera bag for his stint embedded with a US military unit in Afghanistan, made my day today. That, in turn, links to a first hand account by Bektas for the Reuters Photography Blog, which goes into a little more detail and has some amazing photos. (Not of battle. You’ll know the ones I’m talking about when you see them. My God, look at that sky.)
My one gripe about these articles is that I’d appreciate some annotation. It looks like his backup laptop is an eeePC (a fine choice indeed), but I’m curious about what his primary one is. I can’t tell what his cameras are, either; the logo kind of looks like Canon, but again, I find it hard to be sure. I’m glad to see that he packed a GoPro (also the official choice of the Park City Snowmamas). And I had to look up “Bgan” and “Thuraya“.
But I still think this is pretty interesting, as is “A Glimpse Inside the Camera Bag of a Newspaper Feature Photographer“. More like these, please.
(Hattip: his Jim-ness on the Twitter for the initial link, and PetaPixel for the ones after that.)
(And of course, the most important thing about photography, war or otherwise, is: have a camera with you. I was so wrapped up in getting Christmas presents together on Saturday that I completely forgot to bring my camera gear, which ticked me off. I ended up having to resort to the Evo camera for photo purposes. Granted, between my sister and mother it wasn’t like we didn’t have multi-camera capability, including the ability to deploy a digital SLR if we needed it, but I was still ticked at myself.)
In ancient times…
Friday, November 11th, 2011Hundreds of years before the dawn of history
Lived a strange race of people… the Druids
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
But their legacy remains
Hewn into the living rock… Of Stonehenge
Happy Nigel Tufnel Day, everyone.
Holy cow, this is the most hilarious thing I’ve seen in weeks.
Tuesday, September 13th, 2011The Atlantic‘s Vladimir Putin photo gallery.
See:
- Putin on a horse!
- Putin and the tiger!
- Putin’s personal photographer, Yana Lapikova, who’s really kind of cute!
- Putin on a boat!
- Putin cuddling a dog!
- Putin shirtless on a horse in Tuva!
- Putin shooting a whale with a crossbow!
- Putin playing the piano!
- Putin feeding a baby moose!
- And more!
Someone should have told this man, “Look. “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension” was not a documentary. And you’re not Peter Weller. Okay?”
TMQ watch: August 16, 2011.
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday! Nitro-burning Tuesday Morning Quarterback after the jump!
The people cry “Bread! Bread!”
Monday, July 4th, 2011
I encountered this at the local grocery store. In case you can’t tell by the label, this is a chocolate cake made in the shape of a hamburger (complete with little white icing dots for the sesame seeds on the bun). Those are “french fries” on the left: they appear to be made from bread cut into rectangles and darkly toasted. I believe the “ketchup” is actually red icing.
No, I didn’t buy one (they had several of these, in both chocolate and white flavors): it was $20, and not something I’d eat by myself. Frankly, it makes me kind of bilious.
Happy 4th of July.
Monday, July 4th, 2011As SayUncle puts it, make sure to buckle up and watch for state troopers while you’re illegally buying fireworks.
In our case, the fireworks are both illegal and not really all that good an idea, to be perfectly honest. I did do a lot of driving yesterday, and saw a fair number of state troopers, but no DWI checkpoints; I did 80 MPH much of the way without incident. Unfortunately, while I was driving this route, I was doing so fairly early in the morning, before Lawrence wrote this post, so I missed out on the best potato chips ever. (Surely someone in Austin sells them.)
So what else can you do to celebrate the 4th? Well, you can hit the gun store, provided you have one near you that’s open on 4th of July Monday. (All the good independent gun stores in Austin are closed Sunday and Monday, but Cabela’s in Buda is open today. Edited to add: And the Cabela’s in Buda was not the Mongolian fire drill I was expecting.)
Or you could go to the range. Provided you can get a slot on the firing line, given that everyone else and his brother has probably had the same idea.
If you have a veterans cemetery near you, you could also go pay your respects.
I don’t actually know Richard Johnson or his family, but I stumbled (almost literally) on that marker, and there’s something striking about it. He would have been roughly 28 years old when the United States entered the war. What was he doing before then? What was life like as a 2nd Lieutenant during World War I? Where did he serve? Did he see action? He lived for 58 more years after the end of the war: what did he do with the rest of his life?
I want to add a nice word here for the VA’s Nationwide Gravesite Locator, which was indispensable. (The gravesite locator at the Houston cemetery was broken when we were there.) It would be nice to have a version of this tool that’s optimized for smart phones, but the existing version did work on my Evo.
I’ve got a Nikon camera, I love to take photographs…
Monday, May 23rd, 2011Les Jones recently upgraded from a Nikon D40 to a D7000, and he’s done some posts I find particularly interesting.
This post actually predates his upgrade, but it contains an interesting link to SD card performance testing on the D7000. I’ve been swearing by Kingston SD cards in my D40X and other SD capable devices, but I may have to pick up at least one of the SanDisk Extreme III cards. This is a good companion post which summarizes what cards Nikon recommends, and breaks down the differences between Class 4, Class 6, Class 10, and UHS-1.
I haven’t had a chance to try StolenCameraFinder.com yet, but it’s good to know about.
I’ve been using the D40X in RAW+JPEG mode, and doing all of my work in iPhoto using just the RAW version of the file. I’m happy to know I have some support for this. (At least the shooting RAW part: see the linked piece from Thom Hogan about the drawbacks of shooting RAW+JPEG. In my case, I can’t count on iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom or Photoshop being part of my workflow, so I feel better sticking with RAW+JPEG.)
And I’ve been looking for a F1.8 50mm lens, so this is kind of exciting.
Sunday morning photo tinkering.
Sunday, May 15th, 2011Messing around a little, so I decided to catch up on a couple of things I’d been intending to blog.
That was my present to myself for maintaing a 4.0 average: a Ruger .22/45. This should make a nice practice gun, and I got a good deal at Tex-Guns. There’s already a older Mark II in the family gun safe, but I like the idea of having a Ruger .22 pistol of my own. Also, I understand the .22/45 is a very hackable gun…
Also pictured: two things to make liberals angry. Left front, a 22-round .40 S&W magazine for my Glock 35. Right front, a 33-round 9mm Glock magazine. I don’t have a 9mm Glock at the moment, but I decided to go ahead and pick up one of each after the unfortunate events earlier this year. I placed the order on January 12th. It shipped April 27th.
Speaking of timing: I’d been hearing horror stories about how long renewals take through DPS. I sent in the paperwork for my CHL renewal on April 11th. My new license was in my PO box when I checked it on May 12th. (I’d previously checked it the Saturday before.) So that’s right around a month to process the renewal. And, except for the actual class, the process was relatively painless. I filled out the renewal completely online, TX DPS sent me a receipt page with a barcode, a list of paperwork I’d need, and a note “Send this in with the paperwork.” That’s all there was to it (except, again, taking the renewal class). Nice job, DPS.
Roadtrip!
Saturday, May 14th, 2011Yesterday was the 2011 installment of the annual BBQ Road Trip. (Previously.) This year’s edition went out to Texas Pride Barbecue in Adkins, near San Antonio. (Sorry about the auto-play video on that website; I don’t like it any more than you do.) After the jump, photos and commentary.
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10.5 hour party people.
Monday, April 25th, 2011Because I’m old and can’t do 24 hours any longer.
This weekend was the combined birthday party/1970’s crime film fest.
No, the cake was not a lie, and I think that came out pretty well. I was impressed that the Sam’s bakery called me to tell me my dates didn’t add up. (They were misreading my handwriting.) Now that’s customer service.
The absinthe went over pretty well, though I think I need to work on proportions. At the recommendation of one of the liquor guys at Spec’s, I’ve been using an Irish coffee glass for absinthe, and my typical pour is two ounces of absinthe, topped off with cold water and one sugar cube. At that level, I can feel an effect. Not anything trippy, just a good solid knock (and that wears off in an hour or so). I think next time I make a glass, I may try two sugar cubes instead of one, but I tend to like things sweet.
The Kraken spiced rum also went over well, though I didn’t care much for it straight; I can see that it would go well with the right mixer (maybe some Dublin Dr. Pepper?). I still haven’t tried any of the Crystal Head. I was trying to be moderate in my drinking, since I had to drive, and as fun as it sounds, drinking Scotch whiskey all night long and dying behind the wheel is a sub-optimal evolutionary strategy.
We only got to two of the movies on our list. Possible spoilers follow.
Happy BAG Day!
Saturday, April 16th, 2011Yes, technically, Buy a Gun Day was yesterday. However, I can’t really get down to my local gunshop from work before 6 PM in crosstown Austin traffic. So I stretched things a little. Is that a crime?
Actually, this one has been on lawaway at Tex-Guns since the first part of the year, and it was just a happy coincidence the the payoff date corresponded to BAG Day.
That’s a Winchester Model 9422 Legacy. Tex-Guns sold it new to someone back in 1986 (if I remember the date correctly), and they came back in a few months ago and put it on consignment. It came with the original box and paperwork.
I need another .22 rifle like I need another 1911, or another hole in my head, but this one is beautiful; I’d put it at 99%+. I’m not even sure it has been fired. And it goes well with my pre-64 Model 94.
(Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that this one is going to end up in the hands of one of my nephews at some point, when his parents decide he’s ready for a real rifle. That is, if it suits him. If not, well, let’s just say my nephews have some choices.)
(Carlos Hathcock, call your office, please.)
Adding a little visual element to the photo are two books that I picked up recently: The Story of the Winchester 1 of 1000 and 1 of 100 Rifles
Edited to add 4/17:
Just for grins, and because I was killing some time before meeting folks for breakfast, I decided to do a second photo:
The 9422 is on the bottom: the top gun is my pre-’64 Model 94 in .30-30. One of my projects when school lets out for the summer is do some work on getting a proper setup for doing gun photos. My current setup is improvised and clunky.