Posts Tagged “geeking out”

If you have an eye for this sort of thing, you may have noticed that many of the photographs featured here on limeduck are square, having a width to height ratio of 1:1. Not all of them, but lots of them, and more recently, nearly all of them. We all know that I either take digital photos or scan them, so the aspect ratio is definitely under my control.

I’ve owned and used a variety of cameras over the years, most of them 35mm or digital, with occasional use of other film formats and polaroids. I’ve never used a Lomo or a Hassleblad. Each format has its own particular aspect ratio: 35mm is approximately 3:2 (1.5:1) and most digital cameras (including cellphone cams) are around 4:3 (1.33:1) like televisions and computer monitors used to be before the current craze for various forms of widescreen, mostly around 16:9 (1.78:1), closer to the 2:1 and more seen in some classic movies via cinemascope and related processes.

I’m not quite sure when I started cropping both digital photos and scans to square, but the first one on this blog looks to be from February 24, 2007 with a rectangular pic just a few days earlier on the 19th . Both are scans from 35mm film (Tri-X) shot with my trusty Ricoh GR-1.

When I used to make actual photographic prints in the darkroom from negatives, I was very particular about using the full frame. It’s a photo-geek thing, all about authenticity, since you’re printing everything you shot. There are several reasons why this logic is crap and all photographs are lies, but I won’t go into that here. I will say here that cropping to square from a rectangular shot is sometimes tough, since when you compose through the viewfinder (or screen) you’re seeing what you’re seeing, and leaving out what you’re leaving out.

I got to like the square thing, and it became a bit of distinguishing mark for the blog. Eventually, I was happy to discover a flickr group called squareFormat - with over 10,000 members and 180,000 photos as of this writing. The group rules are wonderful:

Alain Astruc (a group admin) says:
09 Apr 08 - THE THREE LEVELS OF SQUARENESS: ONLY SQUARE PHOTOS!

1/ SQUARE
Square photos taken with a square format camera.
• 6×6 square format rolleiflex, hasselblad etc.

2/ SQUARISH
Almost square photos or square photos taken with a non-square format camera
• 600 type polaroids, cropped 35mm or digital, etc.

3/ META SQUARE
Scans or compositions containing square photos.
• Polaroids scanned with the frame, dyptichs, mosaics of square photos etc…

On one of this group’s message boards, after lots of posts about $15k digital cameras and the merits of using different kinds of tape to mask a camera’s viewfinder, I read about a digital camera that had a square format shooting mode. Even better, the camera was the new digital version the Ricoh GR-1, appropriately named the Ricoh GR Digital II. This means I could compose square photos in the viewfinder and “print” them later without cropping and graduate from Squarish to Square in Alain’s hierarchy. I had to have one.

And a couple of months ago, I got one. It’s really really great, and not only because it shoots square. Sharp fast lens, good color, takes standard AAA batteries in a pinch, standard tripod mount, lots of manual control plus full auto, convenient size, RAW shooting, good no-nonsense mini-USB cable connection, interval shooting mode, level(!), unobtrusive size and color. I miss the lack of viewfinder and wish the lens were a little wider, but that’s about it. There’s no food mode or whiteboard mode, but I can work around that. At 10 megapixels, I find there’s plenty of information to work with when I do choose to crop or print. Of course, if you choose square shooting mode, you get only about 7 of those 10 megapixels. I can live with that.

If you want to own a piece of limeduck history, bid on my soon to be former digital camera, a Kodak V570 dual-lens. This is also a fantastic pocket digital camera, but a little dated with only 5 megapixels. It has two lenses, a very wide prime and a 5x zoom. Mention this blog and I’ll upgrade that 1GB SD card to 2. I don’t use it as much, but I’m not ready to give up my film Ricoh.

I’m not going to try and evangelize Twitter. I figure you’re probably already addicted to it, dead set against it, or blissfully ignorant of it. I don’t think it’s the be all and end all, but I’m rather enjoying it. If you’re so inclined, you can follow me there as limeduck.

But I am here to share some geek notes on consolidating your blogging and microblogging, if that’s the way you roll. Inspired by Sockington the cat who has over 200 followers on twitter, I set out to find a way to automate my twittering. I found TweetLater, which allows you to schedule some time-release tweets. More interesting was twitterfeed, which allows you push RSS feeds to your twitter stream.

Twitterfeed uses openID for authentication, a welcome change from having to create yet another user account. It has a number of useful options such as the ability to prefix RSS tweets with some text to identify them as robotweets. In an interesting twist on the usual “beg button,” the creator of Twitterfeed asks that you consider a donation to Burma Cyclone relief. I second that. You can go to Twitterfeed’s suggested charity, to my fundraising page, or to your favorite international relief charity.

So I’ve now set both this blog and my work blog to push their posts to my twitter stream. The complementary step, much more straignforward, was to add a WordPress widget of the RSS feed of my twitter stream. It’s a the bottom of the right sidebar now.

Next stop, figuring how to wire this all into and out of Facebook. I can see the dangerous potential for infinite loops or disturbing depths of self-absorption. Proceed with care.

I’m not sure that I’ve geeked out on this train thing quite fully enough. I’m no train otaku, but I did look up the details of the Acela’s speeds. It’s actually much faster than I thought, but only operates at its fullest potential in short stretches in the northeast corridor. According to wikipedia,

The highest speed attained by Acela Express is 150 mph (241 km/h) on two sections of track in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, which total 18 miles (29 km). There are also many miles of track, especially east of New Haven, that have been upgraded to 110 mph and 125 mph (177 km/h and 201 km/h). … The slowest section of the electrified NEC is the portion owned by Metro-North Railroad and the Connecticut Department of Transportation between New Haven and New Rochelle. Trains here are limited to only 90 mph (145 km/h) on a four mile (6 km) stretch in New York State, and to 75 mph (121 km/h) between the New York state line and New Haven. Additionally, tilting is not allowed anywhere on Metro-North or ConnDOT property. At maximum tilt, the built-too-wide Acela Express trainset would pass other trains on parallel tracks only 10 inches (25 cm) away. CONNDOT has a number of projects either planned or underway that will upgrade the catenary system, replace outdated bridges, and straighten certain sections of the New Haven Line to eventually enable the Acela trains to run at their 150 mph (240 km/h) top speed.

150 mph! Who knew? Now we do. I wonder what other services we pay good money for operate at full potential less than 10% of the time. Here’s a map snagged from the above wiki article and annotated (green lines) with the stretches covered in the photo projects in the previous chunks of this thread. See them on flickr, southbound and northbound. I wonder if the superfast section is included in those pictures.

Almost as interesting as the mechanics of high-speed train travel, here’s the contents of the first class menu on the 2166:

White Wine: Columbia Crest Sauvignon Blanc 2003
Red Wine: Avila Syrah 2004

Starter: savory cocktail snack [that's mixed nuts, folks]; cheese plate

Entrees:
Small bites [spinach & artichoke dip, hummus, cheese, crackers, olives]
72 hour braised short rib
Four cheese lasagna

Sweet: Ghirardelli chocolate [that's one square of milk with caramel]

The menu also notes, “Thank you for traveling with Amtrak, and remember that as a first class passenger, you are welcome to relax in Club Acela before or after your trip.” After your trip? Why would you ever want to hang out in the train station once you’ve arrived where you’re going?

It’s not just eruv Ides of March, it’s Pi (π) Day.  Some go so far as to mark Pi minute at a minute before two, as in 3/14 1:59.  Yeah, I know.  Not for everybody.  But for some, it’s a big deal.  I for one, plan to eat something that alters the ratio of my diameter to my circumference. Plus, March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday.  Somer observations of and on Pie Day:

The seemingly official Pi Day web site.

Not entirely clued in, The American Pie Council observes Pie Day on January 23.

The obligatory Pi Day wikipedia entry.

MIT sometimes mails out acceptance letters to arrive on Pi Day.  More Pijinx on the MIT Admissions Blog.

Pi the movie, Darren Aronofsky’s 1998 black & white opus that probably tipped off Madonna to the existence of the Gemmatria. Also, note the excellent soundrack by Clint Mansell and others.

Somebody took the trouble to register many digits of Pi as a domain name for the purpose of hosting a page with a million digits of Pi on it. http://3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592.com/ Gotta admire the effort here.

Pi Pie, more Pi Pie, a Pi Pie Plate and a much nicer Pi Pie Plate, but too late, it’s sold.

Any way you slice it, have a happy π day.

In case you haven’t got enough to occupy your brain cells, here’s a question for the moment:

Is this extra day of February profitable or not?

Here’s my thinking. Some revenues and expenses are monthly, so they’re the same in a regular February, a 29-day Feb, and in regular 30 and 31-day months. Other items are hourly or daily or usage-based, and therefore earn or cost more in leap Februaries than in regular ones. Let’s stipulate that February 29 does not fall on a weekend, or at least that it’s a business day.

For most people and businesses, rent and payroll are the biggest budget items. Rent is pretty much always monthly and the same every month. Ditto mortgage payments, assuming interest is compounded in equal months, which I think it is. That makes February, leap or not, more expensive on a daily basis, but makes a leap-Feb a little cheaper. For example, $1,000 in rent is $32.26/day in 31-day months, $33.33 in 30-day months, $34.48 in a leap-year February and $35.71 in a regular February.

Payroll is more interesting. Those on annual salaries see the same effect as rent - you earn a little more per day in February compared to other months, but a little less per day if there are 29 days in the month. If you work an hourly job, you earn one an additional day of pay in a leap year. Of course, you also work one more day. If you earn commission, you have one more selling day in February to make your number.

Back on the expense side, some monthly charges are constant - insurance, cable TV, tuition - but others are more use-based and will cost more in a leap-Feb - food, electricity, gas - although they should still be cheaper than in 30 and 31-day months.

So, as a business, should you open or close on 2/29, and as a worker, should you bother to go to work on leap day? We’ll restrict our analysis to comparing a leap-year February to a regular one, and not compare any February to any other month.

As a businessperson, my biggest expenses (rent and payroll) are monthly constants, and the leap day gives me an extra selling day, so I should be happy to open on 2/29. Even with hourly workers, the extra selling and constant rent should make the leap-Feb more profitable than a regular one. Unless, of course, the business is operating at a loss - in that case, the leap year February is more UNprofitable than the regular one.

As an hourly worker, the leap day is a small windfall. I get paid for another day’s work, maybe earn more tips or commission, and my biggest expense, rent, is constant for the month.

As a salaried worker, my calculus is trickier. If there’s commission at stake, I’m more like the hourly worker and should consider 2/29 a good deal. If not, then all my large expenses - and my monthly pay - are constant, and it goes to the small stuff to decide. For example, if I have a commute using expensive gas, the marginal profit on the day starts to slip away. On the other hand, staying home on a cold February day could run up your home heating bill compared to enjoying free heat at work.

On balance, I find that the leap day is marginally profitable and will not advocate for its abolition on economic grounds, nor will I incite leap-day strikes. In fact, I rather like the leap day. It’s an example of the uneasy truce between the human desire to put rational order to things and the universe’s insistence on being just the way it is, a reminder that our planet zips along at its own pace no matter what the pope or the IRS says.

Happy leap day.