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Wooho! So I checked the PBXT SVN repository this morning and was pleasantly surprised by seeing this in the ChangeLog:

RN146: Fixed a problem with TRUNCATE TABLE: a failed TRUNCATE TABLE could put the engine into an invalid state that later caused a crash

This has been sort of a mild issue I have had with PBXT and am very happy to see this get fixed! This implies, to me, that PBXT is starting to come together. After all, the bug really isn't necessarily critical. I would call it serious, but which takes a back seat to the architectural changes that are being made to PBXT. While this is rampant speculation, if Paul is starting to close bugs like these, maybe it means that Paul may be wrapping up the list of changes he has been making to PBXT (such as making it fully durable).

I have been following PBXT for quite some time and am excited to see it move closer to getting off the ground.

Natalie Norton, author of the widely popular mini-series of articles titled Moving Toward Manual Settings, has released another installment over at Digital Photography School.  The topic of this article:  ISO.  Many digital cameras have the ability to alter the ISO on the fly.  But many don’t fully understand its purpose.  Natalie does a great job of introducing young photographers to the concept of ISO and clearly outlines the trade-offs of using high and low ISO settings for your photos.

Read the Article:  Moving Toward Manual Settings:  Understanding ISO (A Beginner’s Guide)

Tags: equipment, progressive learning, Technique

I was wondering when they would get it done. Turns out that day was Saturday. Though it was not without its fair share of bumps (buckets of rain on the day of the wedding being one), it was a very nice ceremony and enjoyable reception, which included some awesome Karaoke woohoo! I wish them the best! It's not everyday you see two people with such a special relationship (read: they somehow put up with each other and enjoy it :) Really though, though I'm sure like any couple they will have their fare share of things that tests their relationship, I do think they have something very special and unique.

In response to yesterday’s syndication of Wired’s article, Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End, I did a lot of thinking.  Subconsciously, the topic is a soft spot for me.  I really believe that many people don’t really know what they have in their hands.

Professionally, I am a Landscape Architect (there’s a point here, don’t worry).  Those who don’t really understand what I do like to sum it up as best as they can.  They’re almost never on the mark unless they, themselves, are Landscape Architects or are married to one.  But humans try to quantify everything in order to understand.  So their minds will affix to one specific detail:  How many clients do I have?  What’s my favorite tree?  Public sector or private sector?  It does not matter how you look at it, you can’t understand the big picture from any of those details.  As far as they’re concerned, I might as well mow lawns.  I have yet to meet a Landscape Architect who mows lawns.  Those guys are Landscape Contractors.  Without the education, training and experience to back them, they will not be able to do what I do.  I refer to those guys as “Guys with Trucks”.  They can do some of what I do, and they may even be able to do some of that well.  But they will always just be guys with trucks.

Okay, Travis…how does this relate to the photography world?  Well, consumers are very much like anyone trying to assess my job.  They don’t fully understand the big picture so they affix their minds to one specific detail that can be quantified and compared - in the digital camera world,  the megapixel reigns as king.  But it does not tell the whole story.

If you are not willing to learn every aspect of a camera, then you cannot make a true assessment of the product.  If you cannot tell me without hesitation the crop factor of your camera’s sensor, then you haven’t done your research.  You may as well be just another “Guy with a Camera”.

Now I’m not saying that in order to be a photographer, you need to know all this stuff.  That would be unfair.  And frankly, I would be a pot calling the kettle black as I still have a ton to learn about photography.  What’s important is that you know what you don’t know.  If you don’t know what you need to learn, you can’t learn.

So, my challenge to you is to stop being a consumer and start being a photographer.  Lets start by focusing on your equipment.  It’s a very important aspect of photography.  Know this - you can have the cost of your equipment does not compare to knowing its limitations.  So lets start there.  Go to a site like Digital Camera Review, or browse the web for technical reviews, and find your camera or a camera you’re considering.  Look at every statistic and every technical detail about the camera.  If you don’t understand a category, look it up.  Understanding these details is important to evaluating a camera.

For example, Imentioned the crop factor of the sensor.  On my camera, a Nikon D80, my sensor has a crop factor of 1.5 whereas a professional quality camera may have a sensor with a crop factor of 1.  What this really means is that the focal length of your lens is actually shooting longer with this camera.  On a full-sized professional camera, a 50mm lens shoots at 50mm.  But on my camera, it’s actually shooting at 75mm.  It’s not that big a deal, but it’s something that will affect my photography.  If I really need a lens shorter than 50mm, I need something less than 33mm (24mm, perhaps).

But that’s what I’m talking about.  Many people are comparing apples to oranges.  Without understanding all of these details, you can’t really evaluate which camera is better for your needs.  I may pass up a higher resolution camera if, perhaps, one camera had a better crop factor.  Or I may favor a camera over the other because of the lenses available for that camera.  Or maybe one of the cameras has an ultra-low ISO (50 ISO) that would be useful for the still-shots you may favor.

My point is that you need to look at all angles and every aspect of your equipment.  The megapixel vs. megapixel discussion is fine for talks with your friends or in passing.  But you better mentally know more about your camera than that.

Don’t just be a guy with a camera.  Be a Photographer.

Tags: challenge, wisdom

Wired Gadget Lab has a really great post about the megapixel wars between camera manufacturers. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Megapixels, like megahertz before them, are the big consumer swindle of the camera world. The first thing anyone asks me when they see my Canon G9 is “How many megapixels does it have?” My answer, 12, causes a swoon. The trouble is, I neither want nor need that many. My Nikon D60, with just 10 megapixels, takes better pictures, especially in low light. In fact, when Nikon announced its new P6000 two weeks ago, I groaned when I read the sensor size: 13.5 megapixels. All those extra dots add up to one thing: noise. Here we take a look at the advantages of smaller pixel-counts, and what they mean for the future of photography.

Read the Article: Why the Megapixel Race Needs to End (blog.wired.com)

Unfortunately, megapixels are a bit of a bench mark that the consumers understand.  Key word:  consumers.  What separates consumers from the pros is that they don’t necessarily or always understand the big picture.  And the big picture is that the sensor’s size is only one aspect of the camera.  This article is one that really hits the nail on the head.

Tags: equipment, wisdom

The team at Pro Photo Life created an awesome video tutorial having to do with outdoor portrait photography.  Portrait photography is a challenging discipline as it is, and outdoor sessions can be even more complicated.  But the end results are stunning.  The tutorial and video linked below is a really simple and easy to understand tutorial that will help you get started.  It will outline the equipment you will need and how to use it effectively during your session.

Read and view the tutorial:  Outdoor Portraits #1 (prophotolife.com)

Tags: candids & portraits, Technique, wisdom

So I'm diggin' the Olympics this year. Granted, we haven't watched them as much as in the past, partly because this month is quite busy for us. Fortunately our Tivo has tried to help a bit but either way, when we do watch the Olympics, it's pretty awesome. My favorite events tend to be swimming, diving, and gymnastics, depending on my mood. One thing bothers me though. Why are the announcers for diving and gymnastics so damn mean?

It's one thing to criticize constructively, but it seems that they are extra hard on the US teams and really quite rude when it comes to pointing out peoples mistakes. I know they are trying to point things out that judges see, but, geez, you don't have to be a complete biatch when pointing out that someone messed up their dive. The same announcers have been doing that for years, and it's bugged me for years. Thought I would mention it :)

Do you see that picture on the right? I bought Windows XP when it came out. An actual legitimate copy of Windows XP Home Edition. It promised a lot of things that it eventually pretty much delivered after a couple of service packs. It's moved from machine to machine as I've updated hardware. I've gotten rid of basically all of my old PC hardware and now it lives on my Macbook Pro. I've been reasonably happy with it. Except...

With such a long history, I've long-since passed the time when Microsoft accepted my key without question through internet activation. Do you know what happens when you pass that time? Painful crushing phone activation.

Observe:

First, you have to call a number, and enter 9 sets of 6 digits (they're kind enough to let you use the touch-tone phone to do it, instead of braving their voice recognition system). Then, on the 9th set, it always complains that it didn't understand the last set of digits, until you're forced to tell it to forward you to a human without finishing the automated input.

Then, since it didn't actually record all of those numbers you put in, you get to read them again to the call-center person.

Then, they read a string of numbers back to you, that you have to type in, and finally, in true Microsoft fashion, you hit "Next", followed by "Finish", because it wouldn't be Windows without a wizard with a few extra unnecessary clicks. ;)

Have you seen what you have to do to activate a pirated version of of Windows XP? I did a quick Google search out of curiosity. You use a pre-made serial number, and then run a command that will do the activation for you, and one more command to trick Windows Genuine Advantage(TM). Voila!

It's sad that I find it so tempting to pirate something I legally own just because it's so frustrating to activate the damn thing.

The best part is, the only reason I had to re-activate at all was because the logic board went bad in my MacBook Pro, and Windows no longer recognized it as the hardware it was installed on.

Even better, now that it's done, I have to re-activate every time I switch from booting in VMware to booting natively through Boot Camp, or vice-versa.

Alternatively, you know what I had to do to register my copy of Mac OS X when I installed it? Nothing. Imagine that.

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In addition to digital downloads through Amazon MP3, iTunes, and a host of other services, my first album, Finally, is now available on CD.

Order now!

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Thanks to an awesome post at Pro Photo Life, I learned a really cool and interesting technique to do Extreme Macro Photography (you gotta watch the video on that post).  In short, if you have a telephoto or zoom lens and a shorter prime lens, you can place them face to face (zoom/telephoto mounted) and get really close-up.  You have to focus by moving the camera towards or away from the object, but it’s possible to do macro photography in this manner.  It’s very difficult to get used to and it’s hard to keep the camera steady, but the results are amazing.  Also, you have a very narrow depth of field (millimeters deep).

In my case, only the center of the image is often in focus because of the curvature of my prime lens (50mm).  And since my prime lens is significantly smaller than my zoom (the prime is a 52mm ring while the zoom is a 67mm ring), I get some really severe vignetting around the edge.  But I’m having a lot of fun with the technique.  One day, I’ll get a real macro lens…but for now, I just saved myself a couple of thousand dollars.

Here’s one of my first trials (I have more coming).

Tags: Black & White, Macro, Technique

[Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:50:44 GMT] - Think Outside the Flock: Duck (strategy game where you need to figure out the rules). (excerpt)

Philadelphia Zoo - Golden Tamarans are incredibly territorial creatures, and even at the zoo it’s not often you find them in a cage.  In fact, this is the first time tis summer I found one captive.  Even so, I’m not sure who’s watching who.  I spent a lot of time around this exhibit, and this Tamaran wouldn’t take her eyes off of me.

Tags: animals, nature

So I know Doom 3 is like a 4 year old game, but I never had the time nor a good computer to play it back then. Last weekend, while Amy and Corey were making candles the guys watched Doom (the movie) in -between playing WiiFit. It wasn't near as bad as people seemed to make it out to be. But it was a big advertisement to buy the game as that is exactly what I did last night. Corey and I have both been under the weather, so I opted to spend last night at home in my evening pants (it's a shame too because I wanted to go to Chad and Nancy's after party but we didn't feel up to it then either :( ). Grabbed it off Steam and, after a mere two hours worth of downloading, I was blowing away crazy Hellmans. I have to admit, Doom 3 is one creepy-assed game. I think Iwas doing fine , apart from Chaucer barking randomly when I would punch the zombies with my fists and Holly, Corey's cousin, talking to me loudly at in-opportune moments. That is, until I walked into the bathroom after all Hell broke loose (literally). When you go there the first time, you can hear whispering creepy noises in the stall closest to the far wall. So, stupid me, thought it would be a good idea to check it out after everything went crazy. I walk in and BLAM! Creepy noises, I can't move, and my character is starting at the mirror. Turn around and there's a crazy monster behind me. I had to stop playing after that.

I mean, I want to play it, but, wow. I'm thinking about picking it up again today, but it's going to have to been when it's light outside. No more playing in the dark for me! Call me a wuss if you want to, but do so only after you have played the game for yourself...

My new SID 6582A's came in today! All 8 of them! I remember it was quite an ordeal to get my 1st SID chip, and to have 8 is super awesome! Of course, this is for my ShoeSID project (the name I have coined my work-in-progress MidiBox-SID). These chips have, supposedly, never been installed in anything.


True new old stock. While I don't have enough parts yet to make use of them (I have parts in the mail to allow me to use 2 of them thus far), it's still pretty exciting!

They now be hitched, yo! Woohoo!

We have known both Chad and Nancy since my college days in UT and, like Oliver, I was wondering when they might tie the knot. I'm glad they finally have! Relationships like theirs do not come by everyday I don't think, and I am glad we got to be at the ceremony. It reminded me, in part, of how special Corey and my marriage is. Of course, I don't really need any big reminders - she puts up with me everyday :)

Congratulations to you both! Enjoy the honeymoon!

I remember having a conversation with my father when I was a kid about his company's employees. I was shocked to discover they were being paid by the hour. I remember following up with a question along the lines of "Wouldn't that encourage them to take lots of time to do their work?" He assured me that, although it was a possibility, it didn't happen very often. (and presumably he explained that people who did that could lose their job, so it was to their long-term advantage to not slack off)

Fast forward a few years later, when I'm in high-school and a student asks the teacher - after she explained a homework assignment - if any marks would be given for effort. I couldn't help but laugh out loud, thinking he was pulling the teacher's leg. He didn't join me in laughing or smiling (and probably shot me a dirty look). Uh oh. He was serious!?!?

Maybe I found that proposition silly because I figured there was no way for it to be reliably measured: it would have to be self-reported. How hard would it be to say "I spent 100 hours on this" when handing it in? And if I had completed the assignment in 10 hours and produced equivalent results to his, would that mean he would get more marks than I got because he spent more time?? Worse yet, even if it wasn't self-reported, how would it be measured??? And what about the difference between "brain time" and "body time"?

Nowadays, I understand why people are [usually] compensated by how much their skills are in demand and that it is possible to be 10 times better than someone else at what you do. Maybe I also did as a kid? That might explain my reaction in both instances. Could it also explain my drive for correctness? My passion for getting things done and done right?? Now here's a doozy for you: would this knowledge at a younger age have helped other students??? Or maybe I'm just being arrogant and that I should just shut up for being the nerd that didn't have any trouble with his assignments????

Discuss.

P.S.: Please go easy on me as I have been working on this blog post since November and it's only now that I have been able to finish it.

Today marks the day where Rackspace is now a publicly traded company, under the 'RAX' symbol for the New York Stock Exchange. Though I missed it live (I tuned into the wrong damn channel), we even rang the opening bell at the NYSE! It's pretty neat! I think it is an end of an era of sorts, but also a beginning of a newer, better one. Initially, there were some fears about how being public would change our culture. And while I think change should be expected, I am actually quite confident that Rackspace went public for the right reasons, with the right goals. I also think that our culture is going to be just fine, baring a few changes here and there.

Either way, it's a pretty cool day to be working at Rackspace!

Yes, so I’m a little behind on my workflow.  This was from Christmas, 2007.  Technically, it was my son’s second christmas, but he was only 11 month old for his first…so this was the first time that he really seemed to understand the holiday.  This isn’t one of my bet portraits, but it means a lot to me, and I feel that it certainly portrays the emotion I was aiming for.

Tags: Black & White, candids & portraits

So we watched the finale of Last Comic Standing, season 6. It was pretty good, but I definitely had a few gripes. First, why did they spend so many shows with the talent search, and compress the shows where they were in the house to like 2? The shenanigans in the house is half the reason I watch Last Comic Standing (and the reason I didn't really like season 3). More importantly, however, what the hell is up announcing commercials during the live elimination shows. It went something like "We have a very special guest! Howie Mandel!" and then BLAM...a crappy ad. You show ads during well defined breaks. It just how things work! You don't work them into a show and act like it's not an add!

I want more Last Comic Standing. The talent keeps getting better, but the show itself keeps trying to find its way, only the formula was damn near perfect with seasons 1 and 2. Why change it?

So I've been meaning to do a Dev-Jam 2008 summary since we got back last weekend, and I can put it off no longer.

In summary: Dev-Jam 2008 was a huge success!

Sunday, July 27th, SVN revision 9618

We loaded up in the Dev-Jam Express and started the drive from North Carolina to the Georgia Tech campus. After plenty of rest stops, food breaks, passing water towers that look like giant spanked butts, and picking up of supplies, we arrived.

We got settled in, got room keys, met with the other folks who had arrived, and recuperated from a long drive.

Monday, July 28th, SVN revision 9622

Tarus started out by welcoming everyone and doing a "State of OpenNMS." Since last year we blew away our goal, "2007: The Year of 4 Releases". Development has increased dramatically, despite the fact that off and on, OpenNMS regulars have been busier than ever with non-OpenNMS projects. Of course, new regulars have joined in the fray. (Does that make us "more regular"?) Anyways, OpenNMS has gotten easier to install, more robust, and just plain better in every way since the last Dev-Jam. Not only that -- we had 17 people come this year. Awesome!

Next, Matt talked about how things have progressed through the different Dev-Jams, and how we learned from each of them.

At Dev-Jam 2006, Spring was introduced, and while it was an educational experience, people spent too much time without really being able to dig their hands into the code, much less have fun with the other jammers.

Conversely, at Dev-Jam 007 (licensed to... er, GPL?), we had a very free-form conference. People hung around and worked on whatever took their fancy. Plenty of coding happened, but a number of things never wrapped up (and are still sitting in the devjam-007 branch waiting to be completed).

This year Matt proposed a hybrid of the two. Things were still free-form, people picked a project they felt like working on, and invited others to help out, but we were asked to spend a little time each morning talking about what we've done and getting input from the other folks. In the end, sometimes it was almost not morning by the time we did it (grin), but I think it helped add a little structure to the '007 style, and we all did better for it.

As for development, people were mostly just getting started.

• Matt had been preparing a RESTful framework so it would be ready (or at least, almost ready) for Dev-Jam.
• I had been meaning to work on cleaning up the remote poller code to not be different across the command-line and GUI interfaces, and to unify the webstart and jar-based versions of the remote poller startup code, so I started in on that.
• DJ and Mike started playing with turning snmp-graph.properties into XML (actually continuing some work DJ did along those lines some time ago).

Tuesday, July 29th, SVN revision 9633

Things started picking up on Tuesday, as people settled into what they were working on.

• Matt worked on upgrading our Spring code to Spring 2.5.
• Jonathan started the first of many commits finishing up his work on OTRS ticketing integration.
• Craig and DJ both committed some bugfixes and other updates to the 1.6 and trunk branches.
• Alejandro and Matt both worked on the RESTful interfaces some, in a new branch dubbed the Jersey branch.
• Joed started in on a new map based on OpenLaszlo that is shaping up to be pretty sweet! It features RESTful integration as well.
• Paul helped out fixing a bug or two, and also helped out on Debian packaging issues, which he's done a lot of great work on in the past months.
• I got the code pretty much finished on the webstart work, although I continued to hit strange Maven issues with bad plugins and the like.

Wednesday, July 30th, SVN revision 9804

Lots of commits, but mostly Joed setting up some directories for the OpenLaszlo maps. SourceForge was kind enough to announce Subversion downtime only 5 hours before it was scheduled to happen. Intermittent timeouts and other issues kept most people from doing much before the outage deadline.

• Joed worked on the OpenLaszlo maps.
• Jonathan spent more time on the OTRS integration, approaching completion.
• I continued to fight with Maven, finally getting things to work shortly after SourceForge shut off SVN. =)
• Alejandro did more good work on the RESTful interface, adding REST support for nodes, IP interfaces, SNMP interfaces, and services.

Thursday, July 31st, SVN revision 9889

Lots of progress in a number of areas, and with Subversion back up, people could actually... commit things. ;)

• Jonathan worked on wrapping up his OTRS integration.
• I was able to commit my webstart code that I finished on Wednesday. Usage is documented in the wiki. I spent the rest of the day splitting out the trouble ticketing API into it's own module, as well as brainstorming with Matt on what the future "perfect codebase module layout" would be when we've had time to refactor everything. (Hah!)
• Tarus worked on cleaning up bugs, in preparation for trying to get a 1.6 release candidate out the door.
• Jeff played around with something in trunk relating to Windows? I dunno what that's all about. :)

Friday, August 1st, SVN revision 9978

A few new projects were opened, and a few completed. By Friday, commits were chugging along pretty nicely.

• David (along with Walt from Hitachi, and a little help from Matt) spent the day working on a TL1 interface for OpenNMS.
• Craig merged the existing work from the Jersey branch into trunk.
• I spent some time cleaning house and merging useful work done in trunk back to the 1.6 branch.
• Joed continued to fill out the OpenLaszlo map support.
• Alejandro worked on the RESTful interface more, adding a few features and fixing bugs.
• Craig M. also handed Alejandro a keychain as door prize for making the 10,000th commit!

And, officially, Friday ended Dev-Jam. We had a nice dinner and people started traveling. On Saturday, we made our way back to North Carolina.

Thanks to everyone who made Dev-Jam possible. I had a great time, and we got a ton of stuff done!

Edit: It's important to pay more attention to your calendar when reconstructing the dates that things happened. Turns out Dev-Jam started July 27th, not August. ;)

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