More WoW Machinima

I love me some machinima. “The Device Has Been Modified” is very stylish, very cool, and I really like the music:

Baron Soosdon has done some super work here, and seems to have quite a few other pieces under his belt. Well done, sir!

Me != Teh Innernets

I don't hate John Scalzi. In spite of our political differences (and holy crap there's a bunch of those), I think he's a smart, funny, respectable human being. I also enjoy watching him whip out the ClueBat(tm) because I'm like that about private property and taking authority over maintaining same.

You go, John. Kick 'em twice. Fargin' kneebiters, all of 'em.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

I do. It was really pretty good; both Kathy and I gave it 3.5/5 stars. I'm not sure how much it will appeal to people who aren't comic book types, but Kathy and I both enjoyed it.

It's dark ... make no mistake about that.

But holy christ, Jackie Earle Haley did a phenomenal job. Whenever he was onscreen, you could feel the controlled anger from Rorschach, and he was a serious serious badass. Mad props.

All You Need Is Hot Chicks and iPhones

More Proof My Wife Is Smarter Than Me

I was resisting publishing my addon because it seemed more work than it was worth. Kathy, though, insisted I should put it up on Curse. I figured other people already had something to deal with the neverending influx of trash loot while questing; certainly I couldn’t be the first guy to keep having to throw crap away so I could loot the stupid mob so I could skin it.

So anyway, I published it: MakeRoom on Curse.com. To my complete astonishment, people downloaded it immediately without me even trying to market it. Then they started adding comments and suggesting good improvements.

As of right now, there are 463 downloads, and three people have marked it a favorite of theirs. Woo hoo! Go me!

As an aside, if you can translate the messages into other locales besides U.S. English, it’d be a big help: MakeRoom Localization. Thanks.

In Case You Find This Useful

Kathy was on me to put my addon up on Curse. So I did. It’s at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/makeroom.aspx. There is a bug with the release version that’s posted that I can’t fix until I get home tonight, so if you want to check it out, do that tomorrow.

One Down, 15 To Go

I just completed my first week of the “20/20 Lifestyles” weight management program. For the first week, my diet was restricted to meal replacement shakes (sold by them, ‘natch), berries, and very lean protein. I was really glad to finish that first week and get to add some vegetables back into my diet.

The good news is that I lost 7 1/2 pounds that first week. Woo hoo! Go me!

Looks Like Trent Gained Some Weight

Most realistic depiction ever.

Weight Loss Program Woes

So I’m on this weightloss program for (counts on his fingers) four days now; nothing but meal replacement shakes and lean protein. When do I get to go back to Fatburger? I’m dying here.

World of Warcraft addon development is teh suXor

I’m leveling up a whole passel of toons. Six of them to be exact, and many of them have skinning as a profession. You can’t skin a corpse until you have looted it. Put those two together and you get “inventory is full”. A lot.

So I started writing an addon to notice when my bags filled up and destroy the cheapest grey item in my bag to make room for the new crappy loot item. When it was just that (find the single cheapest thing and get rid of it), it was all easy: just a bit of Lua code and Bob’s your uncle. Then I ran into the situation where I needed to loot two things before I could skin the mob. My addon destroyed the first item okay, but I was irked that I had to manually run the addon again to make room for the second crappy loot.

My friend SeanK suggested I open a window with some number of crappy grey items so I could easily click-to-destroy several of them at once. “No problem” I thought, and continued to think that right up until I actually tried to write the damned thing.

The documentation for the API is okay, such as it is, at WoWWiki. Blizzard of course doesn’t publish the API docs although I’m completely sure they have docs. But at least somebody is publishing something.

The big pain is the actual UI work. The UI is written in their FrameXML dialect (rather like XAML except really really poorly documented). The only saving grace was you can download a tool from Blizzard to extract all of the Blizzard-authored UI crap so you can see how they did it because really that’s all the docs they’re willing to share. Hmph.

The second big fly in the ointment is when you try to test the code. Lua errors in-game pop up a nice debugger window with stack traces and everything (from the !Swatter package, I think .. some addon I got as part of some other addon I wanted). But XML errors and your addon silently vanishes. Nothing. Nada.

And is there a schema file so you can validate your XML? Well, there’s a local copy embedded into the game files that you can extract via the Blizzard download tool, but why in the world does anybody do XML development environments without putting their schemata online at the URI where their namespace lives? Seriously … are you short the bandwidth or something?

Bah.

Anyway, I finally got a release candidate after about two hours of honest effort embedded over two days of full-time cursing/researching/ReloadUI() iteration. Man, I wish we (MSFT) would take on addon development seriously because we would put out some serious motherf*@#!ing tools because THAT’S THE MICROSOFT WAY.

They Both Screwed Up

Kathy and I watched the inauguration on teevee, and had a quick discussion about which of them screwed up the oath of office. I think we agreed that Roberts dorked it up, but the Language Log says they're both guilty. For extra bonus points, there are even Constitutional references in there! Win!

Recruit-A-Friend: A Post Mortem

On Thursday, the 90 days of my triple XP from Recruit-A-Friend (RAF) expires. I didn’t make the best use of my time, and at this point I really wish I had gotten serious about using it sooner. I wanted to scribble down a few notes in case I can save somebody else a bit of trouble.

First, let me say that I was trying to level up alts via dual-boxing. My wife and oldest daughter were just normally questing (they’re also RAF linked), and they got up to the low 40’s without much difficulty, but also without really working on it. If you just want to level up normally but faster, then go right ahead. Have fun. If this is you, then the rest of this won’t really apply to you.

Fun With Dual-Boxing

Like I said, I was trying to level up multiple alts. My original plan was to play two characters at a time, and then do paid transfers to get them from the linked account to my account after it was all said and done. I set up my environment  as suggested by WoWWiki and rolled up my first pair: a warrior and a rogue. I set the rogue on autofollow and drove the warrior. When I got into combat, I’d click back and forth between the windows furiously clicking and typing. It sort of worked until I got up to about level 10, where I was overwhelmed by the complexity of playing two reactive melee classes.

I looked at what was making things difficult, and it was that the follower needed to stop following to start fighting. Clearly I needed a caster as a follower instead. I also wanted to reduce the workload in managing the follower, so I wanted him to have two or three useful things to do.

I got a key broadcaster, so that any buttons I pressed in the main window would be duplicated into the follower’s window. I setup a handful of macros (follow the leader, assist the leader, heal the leader, get on/off your mount), and rolled up a rogue with a priest follower.

That worked much better. I drove the rogue, and when I ran into combat I’d hit the “assist the leader” button and the priest would Smite. I’d hit the “heal the leader” button and the priest would heal me. That worked great until about level 20 or so, when occasionally the priest would pull healing aggro and then I couldn’t kill the mobs before the priest ate it.

I refined the macros a bit to use “[target=focustargettarget,nodead,help][target=focustarget,nodead,help][target=focus,nodead,help][]” and to set the leader as focus. That worked almost perfectly almost all the time. I still died occasionally, but it was rarely from not getting the priest to do what I wanted him to do.

Leveling Guides

I am a big fan of Jame's Leveling Guides. I fdllowed his guides to level up my main from about 20 to 74 and was very impressed with the speed of progress and with the completeness of the guides. I also liked the price (free).

When dual-boxing, of course, you have to complete the quests for both toons. I never found a good way to automate the quest turn-ins, or to automate the looting, so I would have to click back and forth between windows to turn in quests, loot kills, and get the occasional quest that couldn’t be shared.

Also, I didn’t do all of the quests. In fact, I skipped over a whole lot of them, and skipped entirely doing quite a few zones. That’s because collection quests with drop rates that aren’t close to 100% really suck, and with 3x XP I didn’t have to do them. So I didn’t. Even with skipping collection quests, I still hit the level cap for the 3x XP well before the end of the guides.

Near the end, I gave TourGuide a try. This is an in-game addon that automates a leveling guide. It has a very minimal display normally, automatically tracks your progress through the guide with per-toon records, and is generally a lovely tool. Jame hasn’t posted most of his guide in TourGuide format, so there’s that to consider, but where the TourGuide guide matched the quests I was doing, it made it significantly easier to do (I did all of Dustwallow Marsh using TourGuide).

Conclusions

I enjoyed this, and will enjoy my new alts. I wish I had started seriously leveling them up as soon as I started the RAF instead of waiting until it was almost over because then I would have had a full set of toons at level 60+ instead of just the seven I’ve got now.

The dual-boxing was a fun challenge, and I enjoyed using my followers to help level up. I am looking forward to not having to use them, though, as they still represent a certain amount of duplicate effort (getting two full sets of loot items, clicking over to get/turn in quests, etc).

I also really enjoyed skipping all the stupid collection quests since I didn’t have to do them. Yay!

If you’re considering dual-boxing to leverage your RAF bonus, then I say “go for it.” If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to try to answer them.

Exciting new audiophile technology

Check out these new products from the Intelligent Design Team at Elemental Voice. They’re spectacular.

There’s a word for that?

English is written left-to-right, or LTR in programmerese. Arabic (among others) is written right-to-left, or RTL. And, it turns out, some languages are (or more precisely “had been”) written both RTL and LTR on alternating lines.

There’s a word for that: boustrophedon.

So now I have inflicted YET ANOTHER worthless piece of trivia upon your poor unsuspecting brain. Ha ha. I win.

Tournament Scrabble(tm) players, you already knew this one because it’s supposedly on your list of acceptable words. But you know what isn’t? “Boustrophedonically,” which is a real word but won’t fit within the confines of a Scrabble(tm) board. Neener, neener.

How do you people FIND these things?

Elizabeth Bear points you to the Best! Amazon review! Evar!

I Never Thought I’d Miss Mary Murphy

I hate hate hate her incessant screaming and neverending quest for catchphrase immortality. That said, we watched the premiere of “Superstars of Dance” last night; it was fun seeing more dance on television, but I would really have liked to hear the judges explain their votes at least somewhat. I especially would have liked them all to explain why they gave the Russian soloist such low marks. At least on SYTYCD the judges have to provide some commentary whereas SoD just has them spit out a number and nobody knows why they rated the dancer 6/10. Bleah.

It also took me longer than it should have to realize that the judge from India wasn’t negating everything the Argentinian judge was saying, he was just prefacing his vote of 9/10 by saying “nine” in some-language-not-English. Sometimes I are a dope.

Rock Band 2 Is Teh Awesum!!!!

Holy crap, Rock Band 2 is awesome. I've been playing it, both solo as well as with my two daughters, and it's been a whole lot of fun. It's awesome, covered in awesome sauce. In addition to all of its merits as a solo game, the fact that I can play it with two kids, one of whom is only 6, and still have good results says a great deal about its family-friendliness.

I'll now be telling everybody I know to upgrade. So far, that means ... um ... you.

Happy New Year!

Have a happy New Year, and I hope this year finds you and yours healthy and prosperous, or at least as prosperous as you can manage given what the hell is going on in these United States.

Merry Christmas

Or, as we call it around my house to my mother's grave disappointment, "Atheist Kids Get Presents Day."

Cheesetastic video + Choose Your Own Adventure

Equals WIN!!!! Thank you, Megan Messinger and TOR.COM. I feel complete now.

Arrrgh!

I just walked through the living room where the teevee was on, and that minimal exposure to the D-bag Congresscritter from Missouri expounding on how the Big 3 automakers deserve huge piles of my money so that they don't reap the full benefit of their sh*tty decision- and car-making and go f*cking bankrupt was enough to make my head explodiate.

And now I am dead, with an explodiated head. Jebus farking christ on a stick.

I voted

Did you? It's important.

World of Warcraft: Zombie Edition

The zombie invasion has started. I had begun putting together a post about being a zombie and starting your own invasion, but after Blogger ate it, I found this thread on the official forums instead. It isn't a complete overlap, but there's lots of good info there.

It could be worse

I just finished reading Zoe's Tale. As I was sitting in two airports plus a short plane ride in between reading, and sniffling, and wiping my eyes to the point that a passer-by asked me if I was okay and I lied something stupid about an allergy, I took small comfort in knowing that no matter how girly my crying was, Scalzi is even more of a girl for having written it in the first place.

Anyway ... go get it and read for yourself. Most excellent.

DIY Wi-Fi Antenna

How did I miss this? The Ez-12 parabolic reflector antenna design, suitably simple to construct for kindergarten drop-outs such as m'self, is claimed to show up to 11dB gain in some cases. I'll have to try this out tonight and see how it works.

WANT! WANT! WANT

Well, to be honest, I don’t know that I want one $250 worth, but still … who wouldn’t want a 50 mph anti-gravity racecar?

WTF Is Up With England, Again?

I seriously do not understand what happened to these people. They used to be the forces of civilization, who carried the rule of law everywhere they carried their flag. Now, though, they sold their legacy for a mess of pottage.

I’m seriously disappointed. This is not the England that I knew.

Now That’s Novel

Blizzard got an injuction against MDY last week about MDY’s Glider bot. They have now followed that up with a request for an injunction preventing MDY from open-sourcing Glider, which is certainly a novel request.

On the one hand, I see Blizzard’s point. Once the bot source is out there and available for use, they will be unable (mostly) to detect all of the different ways that people could modify the core bot play. Sure, each person that used the bot would then be violating the terms of service, but Blizzard wouldn’t have much luck in identifying them all. And without identifying them, Blizzard can’t ban them from the game. And without banning them from the game, there’s almost no way to ensure that they don’t fix up the “super PvP” mode that Glider’s devs claim to be close to, which disrupts my game play.

On the other hand, I don’t think the courts should be able to prevent a person or company from open sourcing their software assets. MDY built their own product, and if they want to open source it, I think they have the right to do so.

SYTYCD: WTF again

There is no farking way that Courtney belongs in the finals. No way. She is teh suX0r. You people need to develop some judging ability and taste, for f*#$'s sake.

And another thing

This is quite old, I know, but I was reminded of it by the STOP sign video link I just posted. So as not to have to go spelunking for it again the next time I think about it: National Flags of the World, with client's comments.

What If ...

What would it look like if the stop sign hadn't been invented by the gummint, but had been outsourced to a private marketing firm? Let's imagine, shall we?

WTF Is Up With England, Part 2

Fox News is reporting more details about Christian Bale's arrest. He apparently is charged with a class 5 verbal assault, which, as far as I can tell, translates as "raised his voice in a surly or disrespectful manner." He's lucky he didn't "intend to cause alarm", because that would be a class 4 verbal assault, you see, and holy farking christ on a pogo stick we don't want to go there.

I Love Dr.Horrible

Kathy and I bought a season pass on iTunes last week and downloaded all three episodes, but we didn't get around to watching them until tonight. Holy crap, that was amazing. Get some.

Neil Patrick Harris was perfect. He made me laugh, and cry, and really feel what Dr.Horrible was going through. Also, Nathan Fillion was high-larious. Go watch it again.

WTF is England's Problem?

Taking a photograph of a collection of hoodlums disturbing the peace outside your apartment results in a warning to the photographer and might lead to his arrest on assult charges. I've long wanted to visit the U.K. but crap like this makes me wonder if maybe that isn't such a hot idea.

You Did What?

He might be the only movie reviewer that the average man-on-the-street could name, but ABC doesn't much care if he doesn't work for them any more: Ebert and Roper are both leaving "Ebert & Roeper".

Ewww!

Wow. I sux0r at Photoshop, and even so I'm pretty sure I could beat this lame effort.

Tattoos Are Forever

I'm really impressed by people who go to all the trouble to get themselves inked up but manage (somehow) to screw it up. Case in point: The 10 Greatest Misspelled Tattoos according to "The L Magazine." Also, I'm not entirely sure about "greatest ever", but they're still pretty funny.

That's Just Wrong

There's no way that Jaime and Rayven should have been eliminated last night. Who the (*@($* are these people voting for Gev and whatshername that did the disco routine? They were lame lame lame. Lame.

Geez, people. Think before you start dialing. I haven't forgiven your idiocy last season in not giving Danny the crown he so richly earned.

I Might Have to Change My Mind

I've never been a big fan of Weezer. Until now. This is super-dee-duper meme-alicious:


Pork and Beans by Weezer

And if you missed any of the pop culture references, Valleywag gathered them all together for you.

Cheese Levels Are Dangerously High

We watched the American Idol final performance last night, and we commented to each other how amazingly atrocious the songs from the "write a sappy song" contest were. I blame the producers; if they hadn't picked such saccharine dreck the first time, we wouldn't be drowning in the hyper-focused syrupy twaddle three years later.

Anyway, Defamer summarized it thusly: David Archuleta Stops Weep-Giggling Long Enough to Pound David Cook into a Fine, Grungemo Pulp which is technically wrong but oh-so-right anyway. I thought David Cook took it in a walk, and DialIdol seems to agree with me.

Catchier than playing catch with a packet of ketchup

Title stolen straight from Best Week Ever, who got it exactly right:

It's a FAIL-A-PALOOZA!

I now have a lifetime supply of "FAIL" pics: The FAIL Blog

Oh, My Aching Sides

I love it when poetic justice gets served, and I'm hoping that the courts are about to serve some up.

Warp Factor 3.6e-8, Mr. Sulu

Reactionless engines are a possibility? Cool! The Mad Rocket Scientist has the details, or some of them anyway.

The Disruptiveness of the iPhone

I got an iPhone, and it's now my indispensible portable device. I use it constantly. I can't wait until the 3G ships, so I can throw away my still-perfectly-usable $500 phone to buy a whole new $500 phone that does the Intertube faster. But here's the interesting thing: it's become indispensible in ways that I didn't expect it to before I got it.

Way back in the day, I used to compile all my sources with scripts. That lasted until I started doing Unix development, when I was introduced to "make". My first reaction was "why do I need that? I can write scripts to compile stuff." I was, of course, completely wrong. Completely, amazingly, agonizingly wrong. "make" was a whole different way of dealing with that particular underlying problem, and having once found "make", there was no way in hell I was going back to a non-"make"-having environment.

Same thing when we got always-on broadband connectivity (back in like '98 or '99). Up until then, we would occasionally go and dial-in to check email, but it was always a specific "go and check email" task. Once the broadband connection showed up, though, our network usage went way up. Not because we checked email all that much more often, but now the WWW was no longer unreasonable. And once again, having once found always-on connectivity, there was no way in hell we were ever going back to occasional dial-up access.

This pattern has repeated itself several times in just my personal experience: a technology comes along that beforehand I couldn't imagine why I'd want it, but afterwards became something that I couldn't imagine doing without it. "make", broadband, TiVo, and now an iPhone.

Kathy got the first iPhone in our house because she said I could take the birthday money she'd already gotten and just add the difference to get her one for her birthday. I did, because she deserves cool things in general, and whatever she wants I like to get her. I got one because I too deserve cool things, and she kept taunting me with "my phone's better than your phone."

Now that I have it, I find I use it constantly. Not for making phone calls, mind you. I probably don't use its "phoneness" more than I did my previous handsets. I use it all the freaking time as a portable Internet device. At this point I'm really glad that Steve and the Death Star made me get an unlimited data plan because I am sucking the bits out of the aether all the livelong day.

I can't even watch television anymore without my iPhone in hand (well, I'm watching TiVo, but you know what I mean). Previously I was unlikely to pause the show and wander off to the other room to look actors up on IMDB (one of the most common things we say while watching teevee is "I know that guy/girl/child from somewhere!"). Now that I have an iPhone in-hand, I do just that. All the time. I read my RSS feeds at the gym. I twitter. I facebook. I hardly even notice standing in line for random crap any more because I always have something to do while waiting to check out at the grocery store or whatever.

And I do all these things because they are now significantly more convenient for me to integrate them into the non-digital portion of my life. It isn't that they weren't there before, but they were previously walled off into their own domain. Now that they're everywhere that I am, I can use them to keep informed, to talk more loudly via twitter and blog, to research more deeply, to remember more broadly, and to listen more carefully.

I can't wait until The Steve invents an implantable iBrainPal so I can quit typing with my thumbs.

Wait ... what?

Japanese fertility festival, where you can worship the penis! Seriously ... I wouldn't lie about that! See for yourself if you haven't already over at The Jawa Report or AoSHQ.

No heaven, but plenty of hell

Saw this on io9.com: underground fires that burn for decades, complete with pictures of what hell-on-earth looks like. That's freaky-cool, and if I'm ever in PA I'm going to insist on taking a trip to what's left of Centralia.

Wooooo!

Woooo! Iron man! Wooooooo!

My experience so far

Day #2 of my doctor-suggested weight-loss and fitness program: making myself go to the gym in the morning is not the hardest part so far ... it's the "only one lunch per day" rule, the "no pastries" rule, and the "no pints of Ben&Jerry's after dinner" rules that are the hardest part(s).

Go forth and consume!

I just ordered my copy of "Outside the Wire" on DVD, and I seriously think you should too. Go forth and consume!

RPC == teh suXor

The more time I spend doing RPC, the more I realize that (a) it's the tool of the debbil, and (2) Indigo (a.k.a. Windows Communication Foundation) is an amazingly amazing piece of technology.

The one true lesson of software engineering

The one true lesson of software engineering is "engineers don't know jack sh*t about anything. At all."

Engineers are really bad at figuring out where their programs spend all their time. I don't know anybody ever who could accurately predict where the real bottlenecks in their systems were without using a profiler. I don't know anybody ever who could truly optimize their systems without profilers.

And engineers are super-duper especially bad at scheduling. I had always just assumed that it was due to a lack of interpersonal skills that caused developers to throw away their estimates because their managers said "I need it sooner than that." That's what I saw, anyway. No matter how much time the engineer spent coming up with an estimate, they would cheerfully throw it away in order to agree with their manager's schedule-oriented daydream (or their manager's manager's daydream).

It turns out that there's more to it than just an inability to say "I understand you don't like this schedule, but it is what it is": humans suck at planning.

I have no idea what to do about it, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an RPC traffic generator to finish writing; I said it would be finished on Monday and now I have even more concern than usual that it will be late.

The Moment It Clicks

I was going to say "Go right now and buy 'The Moment It Clicks' by Joe MacNally. Now. Right now right now." but you can't. It's out of stock at Amazon. Let me just add my voice to the chorus that this is an amazing amazing amazing book that you should have.

In any case, you should stick it in your shopping cart until they restock.

After-Action Report: Bogen Cafe with Steven Katzman

This past Saturday, February 9, I went to my first ever photography workshop. It was the Bogen Café with Steven Katzman event for Seattle, presented in partnership with Glazer's Camera. The speaker was Steven Katzman, whom I thought was a really nice guy and an excellent speaker.

The event started at 10:00, with Steven giving a short presentation about some of the lessons he learned over his career about how to be a better, or at least good, photographer. I took my notebook with me so I could write all this down, but the room lights had two settings ("off" and "OMFG that's bright") so I couldn't see well enough to record any thoughts during the presentation. I got the big point, which was to be empathetic and connected with your subjects but don't let that stop you from getting the picture.

The presentation included many shots from his new book, "Face of Forgiveness," as well as other photos from his catalog. He didn't lecture about any particular photo in terms of f-stop or exposure or even lighting setup. He mostly talked about the importance of feeling something, and connecting, and with telling the story. He showed photos from New Town and talked about how he got them, how the people in New Town and he came together, and how they were still affecting his life.

After the lecture portion of the program was over, the folks from Bogen and Glazer's led us back into a large studio space where they had set up three separate workshop areas with some serious high-dollar lighting gear and some models. Steven talked about the lights in general terms and named the equipment, but he wanted to talk about how to shoot a well-exposed shot with the gear, which quite frankly was far more interesting to me. His lesson here got me to use the histogram display on my camera far more than I've ever used it before, and I'm already applying the lesson there to the shots I'm taking at home. So yay! I got my money's worth! While we were ogling the lighting gear, and many of us were trying not to ogle the models, the Glazer's folk set up a fourth workshop area back in the lecture room with two more models.

Then they cut us loose and let us wander around taking turns being the photog at each station. All of the stations were set up with PocketWizards, so when it was your turn you just slapped the PW transmitter into your hot-shoe and off you went. Since I'd already shot a few hundred frames with my Cactus triggers, this was dead simple but a few other students hadn't seen wireless triggers and/or off-camera lighting, so the pace of the students through the process was quite uneven.

So here's station #1. You can see the ginormous softbox at camera right, and the edge of a big piece of white cardboard at camera left. The backdrop is just a cloth slung over a backdrop holder, and the models are members of the local Roller Derby team. The middle girl is holding a 90% white target so you can set the white balance in post-processing.

Here's what they look like when I was the photog and the light comes from that lovely lovely softbox and reflector instead of those nasty fluorescents. I managed to get each of the three girls with apparently completely different direction, so I apparently have a talent for something even if it isn't photography.

Station #2 had a single umbrella above eye-level at camera right and a second strobe about seven feet up at camera left. There was also a silver reflector in a frame handy, but I didn't use it (I'll come back to that shortly).

This was "Dirty 007." She tried so hard to look all tough and edgy. All of the roller derby girls tried very very hard to look tough and edgy. Maybe it's just that I'm old now or something, but they all looked as cute as kittens and about as ferocious. They were great. Anyway, I liked this shot because I got the specular highlight on the rollup door behind her head where I wanted it for a nice light-shadow duality thing.

I also got her to turn around so I could shoot her tattoos. She was all inked up and stuff, but still was just cute as a bug in a rug. My guess is that she's roughly the same age as the jeans I was wearing because I am just that much of an old curmudgeonly bastard.

Station #3 had one lightbox directly overhead, a white reflector angled up from beneath, and two lightstrips firing from behind the model angled in towards the center. In the setup shot, you can see the overhead lightbox and the two light strips (one facing you and one in profile). The reflector is there too, but it's in a frame and you're viewing it edge-on.

So this is what Marcus looks like when the lights fire. He looks great, and it's because the lighting setup was great so that I pretty much just had to be there to press the shutter release.

Station #4 had a beauty dish high at camera right, a white reflector at camera left, and a softbox firing into the backdrop. I forget the lighting ratio between main and backlight mostly because I failed to write it down in my notebook.

Megan and Lewis. These people are clearly aliens because no normal humans can be that gorgeous.

Don't believe me? Look at them. Tell me you're that good-looking. G'wan. That's what I thought you said.

So what did I learn?

1. Be the director
I was the photographer, certainly, but I provided almost no direction to the models. Consequently, the pictures I got were basically whatever they felt like doing. This might have been great, or it might have been slack, but in any case I wasn't controlling the outcome but was being swept along towards whatever happened. This is not the way to get good results, and I'll have to work harder at getting outside of the aim-fire-chimp mode next time.


2. Connect with the models
This is espeically ironic since this was one of the lessons that Steven was trying to get across in the lecture. I was taking photos, but I was treating the models as if they were still life objects instead of people. I didn't even get the names of most of the models. Next time I resolve to make sure I introduce myself, get their names and email addresses, and write them down. I'll also try to actually talk to them as people, but my small talk skills are somewhat limited so I don't know how well that part will work.


3. Do something different
Part of this is just the novelty of having models that aren't my children, but I just stood there right in front of them pushing the button on all of these shots. I didn't stand on anything, even though there were chairs and ladders to be had. I didn't squat down. I didn't sit down. I didn't really do anything except stand there like a spectator.

The other part of this ties back to #1 above: I didn't direct the lighting either. I didn't move a single light from where it was when I walked up to the station. I didn't use any reflectors that the Glazer's folk hadn't already set in place. I didn't make the lights brighter or dimmer. I didn't do any of that.

I did, however, have a really good time. I learned several things, some positive and some negative. I've been able to apply those lessons in my other shooting around the house, and I even think it's helping. In short, this was well worth the measly $25 I paid for the class.

I've got more frames up on my Flickr page, by the way, in case you aren't already bored beyond belief.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... what?

I'm reading through this short piece on the resurgence of 60's fashion crap and nodding my head and thinking "yep, yep, yep ... look at all of that dreck that the boomers are trying to bring back around." I'm not entirely sure that it's a bunch of twentysomethings trying to borrow this stuff to attract attention, so maybe we differ a bit there on the interpretation.

But then I get to this part: "Scared because on top of that, there’s a war going on that’s costing more than the military budget of the world…. combined." I don't want to pretend you're not afraid. Fear can be a real thing. But this doesn't even pass the laugh test.

First, it's very cheap to have legions of soldiers without equipment, so the lack of budget for the forces of the Sudan, for example, is hardly surprising. Add all of them up and you get a tiny dollar figure, but their troops are incapable of projecting power outside their own borders, and are occasionally incapable of projecting power to all parts within their own borders.

Second, most of the nations in the EU have approximately no armed forces because they don't need them; their expeditionary forces can handle small conflicts, and when large conflicts pop up they can always cry and wave for Uncle Sugar to come bail them out. We continue to have armed forces because (1) we don't really trust other people to guard ourselves and our posterity, and (2) it isn't all that expensive. In 2007, for example, our total military spending was 3.8% of our GDP ( National Defense Budget Estimates from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense).

Let me repeat that ... 3.8% in 2007. The most astonishing thing about the U.S. military machine isn't how expensive it is, but how cheap it is.

It's BACON!!!!

Mmmmm .... bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon. Bacon. Yummy yummy yummy bacon.

Phone Envy

Yesterday was Kathy's birthday. I had been thinking about all manner of things to get her as a birthday present, when she mentioned that she was thinking about pooling her "money for birthday present" presents towards an iPhone. "A ha!" I said, so I bundled her into the car and off we went to the Apple store. I of course didn't tell her that's where we were going, so it was still a surprise to her right up until we were about 100 feet from the Apple store.

We walked in and I announced in a large voice that "my sweetie wants an iPhone, and I want you to get one for her." The clerk produced an iPhone in a box, there was some jiggery-pokery with the credit card and the handheld laser scanner / card swipe device the Apple store retail clerks use now, and then we were out of there.

Got home, plugged it into her computer, and activated it on our existing AT&T account (replacing her old and busted Moto RAZR), and she was golden. No problems. Not one. The whole process worked just like companies wished it always did.

And the phone! OMG it's gorgeous. And shiny. She just giggles every now and then from the delight of dorking about with it. After a bit she let me touch it so I could type in the access key for our wireless network at home, but then she wanted it back.

Now, of course, I have phone envy.

P.S. I tried to photograph it, but couldn't get anything I liked. Most of the shots looked like this promo from Apple's website, so here's a shot from Apple's website.

Amazon + TiVo = SCORE!

We were so busy over the weekend that we totally forgot the Super Bowl was on. Normally we'd have TiVo'd it and then fast-forwarded through the boring parts to get to the commercials, but we were busy and didn't even do that much. Tivo noticed that there was a "House" on afterwards, so it recoded it. As always, though, the live event ran long and we didn't get the whole thing.

Our first stop was iTunes, but we didn't see any episodes of "House" there. So we checked Amazon and, sure enough, there they were. I had to sign for the "Unbox" service, but that was easily accomplished. Drill down to the missing episode, hit the "1 click" button, and bob's your uncle.

We didn't wait for it to download, but went off and did other things. When we sat down tonight, it was waiting for us. It was only standard definition, but it was a good encoding and still looked nice. It also came without commercials, which was an unexpected bonus. If only we could get a fatter pipe from Qwest, this would be super-dee-duper. As it is, though, it's a strong recommend. I imagine we'll be buying plenty more episodes from unbox now that we're sensitized to it.

All the new WCF features for the web

Not that everybody needs this, but it's useful to have it all gathered in one place: Steve Maine's TOC for the new WCF Web Programming Model stuff.

Which of us are you lying to?

Raymond Chen notices something disturbing on many levels. I wouldn't have been tricked because I whine until Kathy buys real avocados to make guacamole, which she does because she's super.

It's a cheeseburger. In a can.

I can't imagine this is good, but I've been wrong before: cheeseburger in a can. A can. Around a cheeseburger.

Yes, I know I'm repeating myself. I'm having kernel panics because now you can get canned cheeseburgers.

Amazing what you can do with consumer-level gear now

Mission: Restage the Omaha Beach invasion from D-Day.
Cast: Three actors
Time available: Four days.

Doomed?


I think not.

First flash photos

Here's my sweetie on the phone. This was taken with the flash on-camera, but bounced off the ceiling. The flash was in full auto everything mode ("yellow" on the zone dial which I don't fully get yet), so this is what the flash and camera do without me really being involved very much. I added a touch of edge sharpening in post, but otherwise this is what comes out of the box.

Here's Kyra being completely nuked by the flash in manual mode firing into a silver 43" umbrella from about 6' away. Clearly I have lots to learn.

And McKenna, not so completely nuked by the flash firing at half power into the umbrella. A little closer, but I'm going to have to spend some time working through the exercises on Strobist.

My birthday present arrived today!

My sweetie-pie of a wife ordered me a "Starving Student Wireless Kit" from Midwest Photo Exchange. It arrived today. I'm giddy!

Woo hoo! Strobaliciousness ensues!

I met John Scalvi

He was a cruel but interesting man.

Serious SF for the 21st century

"Kiosk," by Bruce Sterling.

Yep, that's about it

Tony Woodlief sums up the campaign. Go forth and consume.

You're kidding, right?

These electronic contact lenses sound freaky-cool, but if you're thinking "HUD like RoboCop" instead of "all pr0n, all the time" then you and I are competely different kinds of people.

Yet more "Liberal Fascism" talky-talk

Yesterday I wrote about John Scalzi sniping at Jonah Goldberg. Today, I'm going to follow up on it sort of tangentially. This is as a result of reading this essay about fascism in general from Michael Ledeen.

Part of what I want to talk about is why this irritated me so much that I had to write something about it when I so easily ignore the vast majority of the BDS political rhetoric that Mr. Scalzi occasionally poops out. It irritated me because I have noticed that progressives scream "fascist!" or "fascism!" when what they really mean is "I don't like that!"

Now, it's perfectly okay to not like things. In fact, there's lots of things I myself don't like, such as progressives and other self-selected elitists screaming "fascism!" when they really just mean "I dispprove of this good and/or service!"

So I believe that progressives are trying to demonize their opponents in order to avoid having to actually debate against opposing arguments. And here Mr. Scalzi does exactly that, by wandering off to wave a word, "right" in this case, while loudly sneering at Mr. Goldberg instead of dealing with the proposition. Sneering at the opponent instead of the opposing proposition is our old friend the ad hominem argument, and is just preaching to the choir; it may get your fellow progressives to whistle and high-five each other, but it doesn't convince me to take you or your position seriously.

If you think Mr. Goldberg is full of crap, and he might well be, then point out how he's full of crap by refuting his argument. In this case, that would probably entail showing how the good and/or service in question fits the "fascist" label by referring to the characteristics that "fascist" entails. If it turns out that your definition of "fascist" is "anything proposed by a conservative and/or Republican," then we have all learned that we really don't have to take your objections seriously since you aren't really thinking very much about what it is you're objecting to.

In contrast, Mr. Ledeen constructs a much more valid refutation, by taking the argument seriously and responding to it honestly. Well played, sir.

I'll have to read the book

So John Scalzi starts whapping Jonah Goldberg about fascism. As much as I like Scalzi's works, I disagree with him on almost everything political, and this is no exception.

If you want to claim that fascism is a right-wing practice, fine. Let's look at what that actually means and figure out to whom the label fits no matter where we sit in the assembly hall. Let's wander off to Wikipedia for a moment, mkay?

Wikipedia's entry on fascism includes these gems:

Anti-individualistic, the fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal will of man as a historic entity.... The fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.... Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number.... We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right', a Fascist century. If the nineteenth century was the century of the individual (liberalism implies individualism) we are free to believe that this is the 'collective' century, and therefore the century of the State.[10]

and

...a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."[12]

Wow, so in fascism, individuals are completely subsumed by the state. Which party does this sound more like? Deference to authoritative elites, presumably those that went to the best schools (JFK School of Government, perhaps?) and have proven their eliteness by professing the "correct" set of beliefs, is a hallmark of (a) Goldwater conservatives, or (b) progressives? Believing that your group is the victim, or in fact believing that you are properly described at all by inclusion in a group is a hallmark of (a) free-market capitalists, or (b) progressives? Depending on the authoritative leader to tell the great unwashed what to do based on his superior instincts is a hallmark of (a) anarcho-syndicalists, or (b) progressives?

Once more to Wikipedia:

Fascists opposed what they believe to be laissez-faire or quasi-laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression.[27] People of many different political stripes blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and Marxian socialism.[28] Their policies manifested as a radical extension of government control over the economy without wholesale expropriation of the means of production. Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments. They also introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic planning measures.[29] Fascist governments instituted state-regulated allocation of resources, especially in the financial and raw materials sectors.

Other than nationalization of certain industries, private property was allowed, but property rights and private initiative were contingent upon service to the state.[30] For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labor than he would find profitable."[31][32]

Blaming capitalism for society's ills? Nationalization of industry? Property rights contingent upon service to the state? Private land owners being compelled to use their land in ways suited to the demands of the ruling elites instead of how he chooses to use it himself? Which party does that sound like? Is that more like "It Takes A Village," or more like "The Automatic Millionaire"?

Also ... where else have I heard that "third way" rhetoric? Something other than capitalism or socialism. Clearly capitalism is bad, because we don't like it and it lets way too many people do whatever they feel will make them happy even if it doesn't fit our Kennedy School of Government-approved models. We don't want to go all the way to socialism, because we know Americans won't actually vote for anything that calls itself socialism. What could we possibly be about, then? Which party would that be?

Let's ask Wikipedia about that too:

The Third Way, or Radical center, is a centrist political philosophy of governance that embraces a mix of market and interventionist philosophies. The Third Way rejects both socialism and laissez-faire approaches to economic governance, but chiefly stresses technological development, education, and competitive mechanisms to pursue economic progress and governmental objectives.[1] Third way philosophies have been described as a synthesis of capitalism and socialism by its proponents.[2]

Past invocations of a political 'third way' have included the Fabian Socialism, Keynesian economics, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, and Harold Macmillan's 1950s One Nation Conservatism.[3] A "Third Way" approach has been adopted by some social democrats and social liberals in many Western liberal democracies.[4] The most recent prominent examples being the Clinton Administration in the United States, the Liberal Party government of Canada under Jean Chretien, the Labour Party governments of the United Kingdom under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and the Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd.

Cool! So Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Jean Chretien, and Kevin Ruud are fascists! Thanks, John! This has been great and greatly educational.

Yes, I know John wants to talk about how Mussolini wrote that he intended this to be a "right" movement, away from individual liberty. Once more at Wikipedia, this time for the French National Assembly, the usage of "left" and "right" for political position comes from when the aristocrats sat on the right-hand side of the hall. The other side was used by the bourgoisie, the middle class (note: not the working class, the traditional poster child for Democrats and others who would like to claim to speak for the population thusly).

So we have the middle class separated from the aristocracy, that being the original left v. right divide. Aristocracy assumes that there is a better class of person; aristocrats are presumed to know better than the rest of us, and should tell us what to do. We should then go do it gladly, because now we know our mommies and daddies are looking out for us. As you might guess from my oh-so-unbiased characterization, I'm a lifelong aristocrat supporter.

"Do what your betters tell you to do" is the essence of Democratic policy. Progressives and other nanny-staters continue to try to assert that the nation should do their bidding because they care more deeply, and feel more strongly that whatever they say is right. Just some blue-blooded wannabe aristo feels that he knows how all 300 million of us should live our lives doesn't mean I have a duty to play along. He can take his opinion and a large pile of sand and pound both right up his ass.

And by "he", I fully include Mrs. Clinton.

I was totally wrong

Way back when, I snickered at Sony for designing the PS3 around a Blu-Ray player. I pointed at their disappointing sales numbers as evidence that their quest to control the living room was off to an amazing (-ly bad) start. I also figured that HD-DVD would be the eventual winner because the players were more readily accessible and cost less.

I was wrong. Not only has Blu-Ray won, but because of the whole "profile" thing, it now appears that the PS3 is the Blu-Ray player of choice.

I'll have to buy one, I guess, right after I get an HD TiVo (priorities, after all).

Penn Says

From Crackle: Penn Says - Introduction to Penn Says

Penn Jillette certainly needed another outlet, right?

Not that I need this, but ...

It's still cool making little shiny bits: making iPhone style icons in Photoshop.

Joe McNally has a new book

He also now has a YouTube channel with videos like this. I can't wait for the book.

Now, See? That's good casting

Steve Carell IS Maxwell Smart.

In Stark Contrast to Seattle

Apparently the citizenry in Oslo can manage to get a fireworks display working. And how.

I Almost Built That One Myself

I built a backdrop frame out of PVC pipe myself not all that long ago. I suspect it's a rite of passage for budget-conscious photographers because I keep stumbling across other people's writings about how they built their frames.

For example, here's Jeff Geerling's page about his frame. I like the feet he built, and I like his solution for wrinkle-free material. When I rebuild my frame, I will cheerfully use those two design elements.

Why don't I just go buy some Autopoles and be done with it? I'm saving up my money for lighting gear and lenses. Duh.

Thanks, Mom!

My mother never knows what to get me for Christmas, so she always asks me what I want. This year, as usual, I said "nothing." And as usual, she insisted I give her a list of stuff. So I made a list of things from Amazon that I was probably going to buy at some point and sent it to her.

Just to be a smart-ass, I put a new 20" iMac in the list. Guess what she got me? That's right ... she got me the iMac.

So thanks, Mom. I can't really tell you how surprised and touched I am. It was a huge shock to see under the tree, and was really something else.

So there ... even grinches like me have moms who love them.

How To Unpack Your New Mac

Man, I knew there was something I was doing wrong: I skipped a bunch of intermediate steps.

Rejected Christmas Characters

My, you're looking lovely today, Mrs. Claus. Have you lost weight?

-- Randolph the brown-nosed reindeer

I want one!

Flying Humans. Damn, that looks fun/cool/stupid crazy.

Jules Crittendon on Josh Bolton on the NIE Briefing

Read the whole thing. There might be a quiz later.

The Origin of the Universe

It's funny 'cause it's true, and vice versa.

BRAKE! BRAKE! BRAKE!

Self-driving BMW

Snow Day

So I called my mom on the phone yesterday, because it's the weekend and that's when I telephone my extended family members to check in.
Mom: What are you doing?
Me: Sitting by the fire, watching the girls make snowmen. You?
Mom: Just got back from playing golf (it's 68 and sunny in SC, of course)

I'm still not adjusted to this whole "cold" winter idea. As far as I'm concerned, the proper way to see snow is to travel to the ski resort, where you attach skis or a snowboard to your feet for a day of amusement and exercise. Note that the snow stays on the mountain when you leave; it isn't actually hanging around the house when you get home.

Now with less suck!

Travis Barker makes "Crank That" less sucktastic.

Neat!

A fellow Microsoft-y came up with this: PixelWhimsy, a non-directed exploration toy for your PC.

Now THAT's a speed bump

No idea what they guy is saying, though: World's Most Effective Speed Bump.

I'm In The Wrong Line Of Work

Instead of writing messaging platform software, I should have stuck with robotics and feedback systems.

Yay! New Spanish Vocabulary!

I'm learning more and more Spanish every day, it seems. Today's phrase: "por que no te callas?"

I Need More Time

I have no idea who he is, but this does whet my appetite to read (yet another) person’s blog. He apparently did “Thing a Week” wherein he wrote and recorded an entirely new song each week for a year. I’m still very curious about the whole songwriting/composing process but I haven’t really pursued it because I’ve been concentrating on photography and the occasional super-short film (or screenplay thereof).

Anyway, Johnathan Coulton answers your questions.

Still Tastes Like Bleah

Coming up on a week in Shangri-La and so far it's working well for me. My biggest problem is trying to recalibrate my eyeballs; eating anywhere near as much food at one sitting as I did a week ago makes me feel bloated and overfull. It's obvious that I'm going to have to rethink my idea of what is a reasonable portion of food.

The amazing thing is how easily I've gotten to the point where I'm voluntarily eating less food, and eating it less often. I'm technically obese (BMI between 31 and 32, depending), but have always been unwilling to be hungry for long. The Zone diet worked well in terms of weight loss without hunger, but dag, there's a lot of measuring and other overhead there. Nowadays I just chug my olive oil and that's it.

So anyway, I'm currently working on taking less food so that I won't be wandering around an hour later holding my belly while saying "damn, I ate too much."

The Power of Miscellaneous

Information R/evolution

Note To Self

I haven't needed these directions for cleaning your camera sensor yet, but I'm sure I'm going to sooner or later, and this way I won't have to try to remember where I saw it. Yay for search engines!

Oh ... this too.

Bleah

Four tablespoons doesn't sound like much, but it's just weird drinking straight extra-light olive oil. It doesn't taste so much like bleah as like ... nothing.

Anyway, 232 lbs as of 2007-10-18.

Driving Home

I've been trying to be more diligent about taking photographs regularly, and not just pictures of my kids. I walk around campus most days for exercise, and I've been carrying my camera with me in case I see anything interesting. Most days I don't find anything amazing, so I've not been posting them.

Yesterday I was driving home and saw the light on the houses across the lake and was irked that I had forgotten my camera because it was a great shot. I scouted a few places where I thought I could get a good picture and resolved not to forget my camera today.

Most of the places didn't work out too well, but two of them did and I got three shots that were okay enough to share:

HOLY FARKING CRAP!

IED Near Miss

I'd just like to thank Dave in Texas from AOSHQ for finding this gem.

Short Course In Photography

I haven't had the time to go through all of this short course titled "Using Your Digital Camera: A Guide To Great Photographs" yet, but the parts I have been through look promising enough that I want to finish it out. Plus there are exercises I haven't tried yet.

It also reminds me that I need to get a pocket tripod.

Oooh! Shiny!

This sounds interesting: "Sapiens," a mouse-driven application launcher. Pretty pictures, too.

Cars? Seriously?

I didn't know we even had an actual auto division, but apparently we do. Today I saw a job posting where they're looking for senior developers. The posting included pointers to shipping products, too: Ford's Sync My Ride and Fiat's Blue & Me. So not only are we talking about putting our bits in cars, but we've done so a couple of times and are looking to do more of it.