ramblings

The Sign Says It All

2009-05-01T03:04:00.002-04:00

See it for yourself:

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Lottery

2009-04-29T13:42:00.004-04:00

So I''ve been MIA on here for a while. Not that I think that anybody noticed, but just in case you were wondering what I've been up to I thought I'd give you an update on what's been keeping me so busy. I spent most of March working on a set of commercials for the Kentucky Lottery. These are the alternate cuts that are slightly different than the ones on air. Here they are:

This one looks like continuous shot, but it's actually 4 different takes. Can you tell?

The actor in this spot kept looking around. It looked kinda odd, so we put a fly in.

Seriously?

2009-04-03T11:32:00.002-04:00

Even though this article on CNNMoney was posted on April 1st, it doesn't appear to be an April fools day joke. Am I missing something? Some woman seriously asked the question:

The man I love is married to another woman. He wants to leave her, but he says that he can’t afford to get a divorce - that he’ll lose his house and end up with huge child support payments. I have the resources to help him out. But I’m wondering, is it ethical for me, his girlfriend, to subsidize Danny’s divorce?

If this woman were a bank robber, she'd probably loose sleep at night wondering if it was ethical to waste gas by leaving the getaway car running during her heists.

Sound Doctrine

2009-03-25T15:27:00.002-04:00

From WKRC:

A Maineville woman says she's lucky after finding some divine inspiration while shoveling her mulch.
Mary Meyers moved to Maineville from Chicago, and she doesn't know many people out here. She says she was surprised when she found this statue of a saint in her mulch. She's not sure how it got there, but she says it's a sign things are going to turn around for her.
We did a little research, and it looks like it's Joseph, the patron saint of carpentry and workers. People have been known to bury statues of Joseph in their yards. The gesture is said to speed up the sale of a home.

I'm sorry, but how is this any different than witchcraft?

Irreverent But Funny

2009-02-20T22:48:00.004-05:00

OK, if you're easily offended don't continue reading. If you're cynical enough to like Mike's blog, then you'll enjoy this.

For those of you who don't know, my dad died of cancer almost 9 years ago. His name was Henry. A week ago I got this letter in the mail:

The Real Victims

2009-02-02T14:50:00.002-05:00

In all the chaos of the global economic downturn, it's easy to forget the real victims: fashion models.

For Krissy

2009-01-16T15:05:00.001-05:00

A few days ago Krissy asked a photography question:

"How do you take great night pictures? I will be doing some photography for a wedding in two weeks and the bride would like an outdoor picture of herself with Cincinnati in the back ground, at night."

My first suggestion was to have them stand really still and take a long exposure (like maybe 5 seconds). People used to have to hold still for much longer times in the early days of photography, but to keep the subject still they would use a clamp on their head - I recommend you don't try that with the bride. Anyway, I think the long exposure would look the most natural, maybe with a little bit of a bounced flash (probably using either the slow-sync or the rear-sync modes) to make her stand out.

That's a tricky shot though, and may be tough to pull off when you're under the gun. If the person moves at all or even blinks, the shot will be blurry. As a backup method, I recommended shooting two pictures and Photoshopping them together. After I suggested this, I wondered how it would work in real life, so I gave it a try. Here's a recap of what I did in my test. While not a full-blown tutorial, it should give you an idea of how to recreate the effect.

Below is a picture I took of myself (using the Nikon ML-L3 remote) a few nights ago while I was out getting groceries. Clicking on any of the photos to see it full-size. (apparently when I'm doing photography tests my mouth hangs open)

Flash Used: Yes - Nikon SB-400 (Auto, return light not detected)
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 0.0050 s (1/200)
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO equiv: 900
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

Yeah, it's pretty awful lighting, but I didn't want to spend too much time on this so it will have to do. The NKU campus is behind me, but because I used a flash to light myself up the background falls off almost completely into the blacks.

I then took a long-exposure (5 sec) background plate, in which you can actually see the campus in the background and even some texture in the sky.

Flash Used: No
Focal Length: 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 27mm)
Exposure Time: 5.000 s
Aperture: f/7.1
ISO equiv: 200
White Balance: Auto
Exposure: shutter priority (semi-auto)

I dropped both layers in Photoshop (I wasn't using a tripod, so I had to align them a little) . I added a layer mask (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All) to the layer of me, and used the paintbrush to paint the mask you see below:

The initial result is pretty bad because of the difference in lighting:

I did a little color correction to my layer to match the look of the background, although if I had spent a little more time lighting myself better this may not have been necessary. While I'm at it let's close my mouth a little:

And finally I'll blend in a little of my layer back into the foreground to make the difference in lighting a little more gradual and make the picture a little more believable:

If I had to do this again and wanted to make it look nice, here's what I'd do different:

Use a tripod.
Take several shots with the person in the frame at several speeds, maybe 5 sec, 3 sec, 1 sec, 1/10 sec & 1/60 sec. In each of these make sure the aperture is open all the way.
On the shorter exposures I'd use a flash bounced off a white card, and on the longer exposures I'd either rear-sync bounce flash or use some constant lighting source. That would give me several options, and I'd pick the longest exposure that wasn't blurry (from the person moving).

Let me know if you try this, or if you have any alternative methods. I'd love to see your results.

Backing Up

2009-01-16T01:00:00.003-05:00

All three of my regular readers here use Blogger for their own blogs, so you might not be aware about the recent JournalSpace fiasco. Basically the folks at JournalSpace had a rather lousy backup procedure and lost all their users' data. Rather than trying to recover from this, they are simply shutting their doors (probably a wise move) and thousands of users are left without a trace of their blog.. Now I don't want to sound like your mom, but it might be a good time to learn from the misfortune of others and backup your own blog. I trust the integrity of the data I have stored with Google, but you just never know.

Fortunately making a backup of your Blogger blog is a pretty simple process. The first step is to export your blog itself. From your Blogger dashboard click on Settings which will automatically put you on the Basic settings tab. The first item on that page is Blog Tools and you will see three options: Import Blog - Export Blog - Delete Blog. Click on Export Blog. It may take a minute for this request to process, but after it does you will see a page with a button that says Download Blog. Click on that button ans save the file to you hard drive. The file it saves will be an XML file, and if you try to open it you'll just see a bunch of code, so the only way to use this file is to import it into Blogger should something ever happen to your blog. You may want to consider doing this every month or so.

The process above backs up all your posts and comments, but not your pictures. To back up your pictures you must have Picasa installed. Fortunately for you Mac users out there Picasa recently became available for OSX. After you have Picasa installed, make sure you're signed in to Blogger and then go to your Picasa Web Album. You may not have even known that you had one, but if you have a Blogger blog then you do. You should see an album with the name of your blog (it will have the little Blogger icon by it too). Click on the album and you'll see all the pictures you've ever posted to your blog. Above the pictures click on Download, then Download to Picasa.

That's it! Now you have all the elements of your blog saved to your computer. Hopefully you'll never need to use them, but it's nice to know you have everything just in case.

Buying a DSLR Part 4: Accessories

2009-01-15T01:00:00.007-05:00

Memory - The camera doesn't come with a memory card, so be sure to get one. It takes SD memory, which is just about the least expensive and most readily available type of memory out there right now. A decent quality 2GB card can be had for as little as $5, and will hold about 1000 pictures in Normal quality mode (see the chart below). If you're going to be shooting a lot of RAW/NEF images then you'll probably want to go with a faster card for about $15 (although keep in mind that since NEF images are a lot bigger, you'll only get about 260 pictures on a 2GB card, so you may want to consider a 4GB card). I almost always shoot in Normal mode. With memory as cheap as it is today I could certainly shoot in Fine mode, but the quality is imperceptible and so I see no reason to create files that are almost twice the size.

Quality	Image Size	Pictures per GB*
Basic	0.7MB	1000
Normal	1.4MB	500
Fine	2.6MB	270
RAW	5.7MB	130
RAW+Basic	6.5MB	115

*The actual number of pictures depends on what you're shooting, so these numbers may vary.

Flash - The flash we have is the Nikon SB-400 - it's $100. It's a great little flash that I use constantly. If you're trying to decide between a second lens and a flash, I'd get the flash. The best part about the flash is that it rotates up 90°. This may sound odd, but when used indoors it bounces off the ceiling, creating the effect of lighting your subject with a 10' x 10' softbox from above. The results are amazing - bright, warm and natural. They don't look like they were taken with a flash. Nikon has a pretty nice page that shows some example shots (apparently using the SB-400 also magically makes people smile too). You can also turn the camera 90° and take a vertical shot (the flash will not be pointing sideways). This works best when the flash is pointing at a wall that is between 3 and As long as the batteries have a decent charge on them the flash is very quick to refresh. On a fresh set you can usually take 3 pictures in a row (in burst mode) before the flash fails to keep up (missing the 4^th one), and even then it will usually fire again on the 5^th one.

The flash takes 2 AA batteries, and lasts for at least 100 pictures. I recommend getting a set of NiMH rechargeables and a charger. I got a set similar to this, but if I were buying today I'd get a set of Sanyo Eneloops. Those chargers take about 8 hours to charge a set of batteries. You could also get a quick-charger, but that shortens the life of the batteries. The batteries come 4 to a pack, so as long as you charge 2 while you're using 2, you should never be without a good set.

Remote - Probably not necessary, but fun and potentially useful, the ML-L3 remote does what you'd expect a camera remote to do for about $17.

Camera Bag - We got the Tamrac 5533 which holds the D40, 2 lenses, SB-400 flash, cables adapters and chargers just fine.

Well, that's about all I have to say on the subject of DSLR's for now. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll pretend to know the answer.

Buying a DSLR Part 3: The Lenses

2009-01-14T01:00:00.007-05:00

With DSLR's, the cameras isn't tied to a certain lens. This is nice because you have a little more flexibility when you go to buy. In this post and the ones to follow, I'm going to assume you're going with a Nikon D40. There are several things to consider with a lens:

Focal Length - Focal Length is the distance in mm from the optical center of the lens to the focal point, which is located on the sensor. A more simplistic definition is that smaller numbers produce wider images, while higher numbers produce closer images. A zoom lens is also known as a variable focal length lens because by moving the optical elements in the lens you change the focal length of the lens (zooming in or out). The lens in the picture above has a focal length range of 18-55mm, and the lens is currently set to 35mm. 18-55mm is a common zoom lens that covers the range from wide (18mm) to medium (55mm). A 55-200mm lens picks up where the 18-55mm leaves off and provides a much closer shot.
As a side note I should mention focal length multipliers and 35mm equivalent. I'm not going to go into detail on these terms, but rather point you to an article that explains them. You don't need to know about these to buy a DSLR, but if you like to soak up all the information you can then it's good reading.

VR - Nikon lenses with VR in the name have Vibration Reducing technology which compensates for camera movement when taking a picture resulting in less blurry pictures, especially when taking pictures in low light without a flash (where the shutter is opened for longer). Keep in mind that this does not prevent blur resulting from a moving subject (like someone moving thier head during a shot). These lenses cost a little more, but I've heard they're worth it. None of my lenses are VR and I have not used one so I can't comment, except to say that if I were buying new equipment now I'd probably spring for at least one VR lens. (the lens in the picture above is not a VR lens)

AF-S - Since the Nikon D40 does not have an internal focus motor, you'll want to make sure the lenses you get are AF-S lenses, which actually have the motor built into the lens itself. Other Nikon lenses will work, but you will have to manually focus. (the lens in the picture above is an AF-S lens)

Below are some common lenses for the D40, the current price at B&H and my recommendations. For each lens I have a picture of the lens, along with two images taken at both extremes of the zoom range. Click on them to see a larger view.

Basic Lens $119 - 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED II AF-S DX or $149 -18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR AF-S DX If you can only afford one lens at first, then it should be an 18-55mm. This will be the best lens for indoor shots and is suitable for most outdoor shots. There is a VR and a non-VR version, although I have not seen the D-40 bundled with the VR lens, so you may be better off going with the non-VR.

Telephoto Lens $169 - 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED AF-S DX or $198 - 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED VR AF-S DX Your second lens should probably be a 55-200mm "telephoto". This will give you much more zoom power, which is great for several things:

(Obviously) shooting things that are far away that you can't physically move closer to.
Candid close-ups of people. People look the most natural when they don't know they're being photographed (if they know they usually look annoyed).
Narrow depth of field (DOF) shots. There are a couple of ways to accomplish the classic portrait look with the background thrown out of focus, but using a telephoto lens is perhaps one of the most practical.

Again, it is available both with and without VR, and you should be able to find both versions bundled with the camera. I would recommend going with the VR version. (If you decide not to get the VR because you don't want to spend the extre $30, go ahead and get it anyway and I'll give you my non-VR lens + $30 in exchange for it)

The Ultimate Lens $619 - 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S DX VR II If you have a ton of money to burn, get the 18-200mm VR lens. It costs quite a bit more than the camera itself, but it's a great lens and you can shoot both wide & telephoto without swapping lenses.

Prime Lens $439 - 50mm f/1.4G AF-S The 50mm f/1.4 is a great lens for shooting people. f/1.4 means is needs very little light to shoot. It's also the best way to take shots with very narrow DOF. It doesn't zoom, so you just have to move closer or further away to get the framing you want. Unfortunately it's fairly expensive. Personally I'm waiting and hoping they come out with an AF-S version of their f/1.8 lens which isn't quite as nice but should be under $150.

Used Lenses - There are tons of quality used Nikon lenses out there. There are two problems with them. First is that if you're not an experienced photographer (I'm not) you probably don't know how to check the lens to see if there are any problems with it. Secondly, the D40 needs AF-S lenses, which are newer and therefore harder to find.

Other Brands - There are a few lens manufacturers out there that make Nikon compatible lenses. They can save you quite a bit of money, but I've heard a lot of photographers complain about the quality. I don't have any, so you'll have to decide this on for yourself.

Although you can buy everything a la carte, you'll get the best deal by buying a bundle or kit with the camera and one or two lenses. Right now B&H has 4 kits ranging from $450 (camera & 18-55mm lens) to $650 (camera, 18-55mm lens & 55-200mm VR lens). For every lens you have I highly recommend getting a UV filter. This will protect the actual lens from getting scratched or broken while in the line of duty. It's a very cheap insurance policy.

I'll leave you with one final thought on lenses. Consider that while your camera will become old and obsolete in a matter of a few years, your lens will most likely remain relevant for at least a decade. The next generation of Nikon cameras will work just fine with the lenses you buy today. It is not uncommon for photographers to upgrade thier camera body but keep thier collection of lenses, some of which may be literally decades old. This, combined with the fact that your lens has more to do with the quality of your images than your camera, and you have a very good case to spend less on a camera and more on a lens.

Tomorrow: Accessories

Buying a DSLR Part 2: The Camera

2009-01-13T01:00:00.005-05:00

In May of 2007 I started looking for a digital SLR. We were expecting our second child in a few months, and the little Canon S230 point & shoot that had served me well for several years just wasn't cutting it anymore. Also, we had tried a couple of professional portrait places and for the cost and hassle we weren't satisfied with the results. We figured that with a good camera we could do our own portraits and have great everyday shots at the same time. After quite a bit of research I settled on the Nikon D40. Since then Nikon has come out with the D40x and the D60 (among others). They both cost quite a bit more and the only significant difference is that they're 10 megapixels whereas the D40 is 6 megapixels. As I pointed out in Part 1 though, megapixels don't matter much.

I also looked at the Canon Digital Rebel XT and XTi, but they were quite a bit more expensive and didn't really offer anything that the D40 didn't except a few more megapixels (see below). In my opinion the most formidable opponent to the D40 is the Sony DSLR-A200. It's close in price to the D40, and although there are a few advantages to each, the big advantage of the A200 is that it has in-camera image stabilization which eliminates the need for having lenses with image stabilization. If you decide to go int this direction, B&H has a great package on the A-200 and 2 lenses.

Since I bought the Nikon D40 and still recommend it, that's what I'll be focusing on for the rest of this series of posts

The D40 is actually pretty small light as far as SLR's go, and is natural and comfortable to shoot with. I used Ken Rockwell's D40 User's Guide to learn about all the buttons and menus and make some adjustments to the default settings. If you're used to using a point & shoot, the first thing you'll probably notice is that you have to look through the viewfinder, as there's no real-time image displayed on the LCD screen. This has always been the case with DSLR's, although they are starting to make models that offer what's called live view. In my opinion it isn't worth the cost to step up to those models, and using live view typically adversely affects the speed of the camera.

The D40 comes with a battery and external charger. I usually only charge the battery every month or so (unless we're taking a ton of pictures, like on vacation), which equates to maybe 500 pictures. It will last less if you use the built-in flash, but you're still good for a couple/few hundred pictures. I could go on forever about all the different features, but I'll stop here and let you ask questions about anything that I didn't cover here.

Drawbacks - The camera obviously isn't perfect, so I'll let you know about the few things I've found to nit-pick about it:

There's no auto-focus motor built into the camera, so you won't be able to auto-focus with older lenses, only the newer AF-S(or AF-I) lenses.
No Auto Bracketing. This is a more advanced feature and it's not like I'd use it every day, but it would be nice to have.
Most of the time the internal color correction is great, but occasionally the images come out a little dark. It's a simple fix in any image editing program like Picasa, but it's an extra step.

Here are a couple of professional, in-depth reviews of the D40 that I used before making my decision:

We bought ours online from from B&H. B&H has been around forever, I've bought from them many times before and will continue to buy from them. They have a great website, good prices, they're reliable and have good customer service (and no, I don't get kickbacks from them, although if they're reading this they should know that I would certainly accept). They occasionally have used or demos available for a reduced price. Typically I wouldn't be crazy about buying a product like this used online, but I would recommend it with B&H. That's actually how we got our D40 and lenses. Having said all that, don't hesitate to shop around, but beware of places that offer a ridiculously low price and then try to sell you overpriced add-ons.

After using the D40 for over a year and a half now and taking about 8,000 pictures with it, I'm ~~completely~~ extremely satisfied. Sure there are a few high-end features it doesn't have (see below), but I don't really need them and I'm not willing to pay twice as much or more to upgrade to something like the D90 or D300. If for whatever reason I were in the market for a DSLR today, I'd pause to look at the Sony A200, but probably end up with a Nikon D40.

That's it for the camera. If you have any questions about anything I covered or something I didn't, ask in the comments.

Tomorrow I'll talk about lenses.

Buying a DSLR Part 1: Why a DSLR

2009-01-12T01:00:00.003-05:00

This is the first in a series of posts about what I've learned from buying a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR). I'll start with the reasons why some people might not want one, but also give my reasons for ignoring these reasons.

They're big and heavy - yes, but we have kids and are already carying around several extra pounds of accessories anyway, so what's a few more.
They're expensive - yes, but they're not as expensive as they used to be, and if you can cut out a couple of trips to a professional studio by taking your own pictures, it'll pay for itself quickly.
They're too confusing to operate - this is actually a myth. While DSLR's have the ability to manually override just about any setting you can think of, they almost all come with "point-and-shoot" modes that are pretty fool-proof.

Got any other hang-ups about buying a DSLR that I forgot? Post them in the comments.

Now for the reasons why DSLR's are so nice.

Speed - Shutter lag is the delay from the time you press the button to the picture actually being taken. For most compact point & shoot digital cameras this can be quite a long time, and can be quite a problem when you're trying to take pictures of kids (your kids). Another factor is the delay after picture is taken but before the camera is ready to take another picture. Combining these two delays mean that most point & shoots can only take one picture every several seconds. Most DSLR's have almost no shutter lag, and can take multiple pictures per second. This really helps when shooting fast-moving subjects like kids.
Image Sensor Size - Below you can see the difference in the sizes of the image sensors from a Nikon D40 SLR and an Olympus Stylus 1200 compact. As you can see, there's a huge difference in size. Why does this matter?
- Image Quality - Point & shoot digital cameras often boast seemingly amazing numbers like 10 or 12 megapixels, but in reality that doesn't mean a whole lot (and don't let the salesman at the store try to tell you otherwise). For an in depth technical explanation of why megapixels don't matter that much, read "The Megapixel Myth" by Ken Rockwell (a professional photographer). Much more important is the actual size of the image sensor. Notice that while the Olympus has twice as many megapixels, the Nikon's sensor has almost 9 times the surface area. I guarantee that the D40 takes much clearer pictures than the $250 compact.
- Depth of Field (DOF) - Volumes could be (and have been) written on this subject, but I'll keep it short & sweet, so stay with me here. Depth of field refers to the part of the photograph that is in focus. In many cases (such as portraits) it is actually preferable to have part of the picture be out of focus, so that your attention is drawn to the subject (example - notice the out-of-focus christmas tree & lights in the background). There are many factors that affect DOF, but one of them is the sensor size. Larger sensors provide a narrower DOF and produce images that just look more professional.
Lenses
- Quality - The quality of the lenses on SLR's are almost always superior to the lenses on compacts. They are much larger and have more glass (and usually higher quality glass) than compacts. Lenses are arguably the most import element of your camera. If the incoming light is distorted at all by a low quality lens, it doesn't matter how nice the sensor is or anything else, it will simply be capturing a blurry, distorted image. Because of this truth, most professional photographers spend much more on their lenses than they do on their cameras.
- Variety - One of the nicest features of DSLR's is the ability to change lenses. Wide angle, telephoto, macro, prime, etc. While this can get expensive it's nice to have the flexibility, and you can add to your collection of lenses slowly as your budget allows.
Accessories - In addition to additional lenses, SLR's are typically compatible with a larger range of accessories including remote controls, filters, external flashes and many others.

Questions? Post them in the comments and I'll answer as best I can.

Continue to Part 2

Image Editing Tools

2009-01-08T08:00:00.001-05:00

For those of you out there interested in image editing, I thought I'd pass along what I know about the best tools available. A few weeks ago friend asked me for recommendations on an image editing tool, so I thought I'd share what I compiled with the world.

The best photo editing tool out there is Adobe Photoshop. If you're looking for the short answer you can stop reading and go buy it. I've been using it for a long time and I highly recommend it. It's not just another program, it's a tool that's been the industry standard for about 15 years so there's a lot of information available online.

The current version is Photoshop CS4 and it's $700. If you can find the previous version (CS3) you may be able to get it for cheaper. If you find it for a lot cheaper check to see if it's an "Educational Version". Educational Versions are pretty much the same as the regular version, except that you're not allowed to use it for profit. If you're ok with that you can probably get CS4 for a lot less.

Photoshop also comes with an application called Adobe Camera Raw. It enables you to do amazing things with pictures from your digital SLR, especially when you shoot in NEF mode (Nikon's RAW image format). Boosting certain colors, changing the hue of certain colors, altering the way color photos are converted to black and white and all sorts of other stuff. If you do a lot of photography this feature alone might be worth a couple hundred dollars.

Photoshop is great, but it'll take some time to learn. Here are a couple of resources:

Here's a crash-course in Photoshop
Lynda.com - this is a subscription service. $25/month, but it has a wealth of information. There's well over 100 hours of training materials specific to CS3 and over 40 hours of material specific to CS4. If you subscribed for only a month or two and "crammed" it would be a great value.
Me - post your Photoshop questions in the comments of this post, and if I know how to do it I'll do another post on it.

If you're looking for something more economical, there are a couple of free choices. I haven't used any of these myself so I can't vouch for them, but they're free so you have nothing to loose (except of course your time) by trying them out.

GIMP is a popular image editing application that's been around for a while.
Artweaver is supposed not only have a lot of the same features as Photoshop, but also has the same layout.
SumoPaint is a web based Photoshop clone. It certainly doesn't offer anywhere near the functionality of the real thing, but for a simple little project it might be worth a try.

Picasa on a Mac

2009-01-07T09:20:00.000-05:00

For a few years now I've been using Google's free application Picasa to keep track of all our digital pictures. I used to be an image-editing snob who did everything in Photoshop, but since we've had kids I have a lot more pictures and a lot less time, and I just can't keep up using Photoshop. Luckily Picasa does 99% of what I need to do and makes it all easier and more efficient. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.

And the really good news is that for those of you on a Mac, they finally released a version for OSX! Here's a little preview for you.

If you give it a try (Mac or PC) let me know what you think.

Christmas Pictures

2009-01-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

Christmas pictures of the girls.

Taken with our Nikon D-40 with the 55-200mm lens and SB-400 flash.

Private Blogging

2009-01-05T15:23:00.002-05:00

A couple of you out there have recently made your blogs private due to concerns about perverts finding your blog and leaving inappropriate comments about your kids. While making your blog private (viewable by invitation only) is the most fool-proof method of keeping the creeps out, I just wanted to let everyone know (in case you didn't already know) about a few things you can do to increase the security of your blog without making it completely private. (This applies to Blogger blogs only, but most other blogging products should have similar functionality)

After logging into your blog, go to "Settings", which should put you on the default sub-section of "Basic". The fourth entry down is "Add your blog to our listings?" Make sure it is set to . Right under that is "Let search engines find your blog?" Make sure that is set to also. Be sure to click on "Save Settings".

These steps don't actually prevent anyone from seeing your blog, they just make it so that your blog is not being listed in the search engines, which is the way that creeps find stuff 99% of the time. This will also keep harmless people from finding your blog, but that's the trade off you make. Happy blogging!

Headlines

2009-01-02T12:10:00.003-05:00

The Cincinnati Business Courier had a story a few days ago titled "Macy’s surges, Cincinnati stocks jump in finale to bad year". Nothing particularly funny about that all by itself, but about a half-hour before that they had a story titled "Macy's customers might be overcharged" - apparently Macy's had been accidentally double-charging some purchases.

The Not-So-Easy Button

2008-12-30T11:44:00.006-05:00

Yeah, so I realize it's been ~~a while~~ a really, really, really long time since I've blogged about anything, but it's not like I'm going to feel guilty about it or anything like that.

For Christmas I got a gift certificate to Staples from my siblings-in-law (which was cool because I wanted a paper shredder). I went to Staples.com and found one that I liked. There was no option online to check availability at the local stores, so I called around and found that that model was on clearance and is only available online. No problem, I'll just order it online (shipping was free).

I went through the checkout process, but at the point where I'm supposed to pay, there's no option for gift certificates. After searching for quite a while, I figured I was doing something wrong and called customer service - nope, I wasn't doing anything wrong.

Yes, that's right: Staples.com does not accept Staples gift certificates! So to get the paper shredder I had to drive to the nearest Staples store just to give them my gift certificate and have them order it for me (they actually ordered it off of their own website) and then go back home and wait for it to be delivered.

I don't think they really get this whole easy thing. If you're going to have an online store, you should accept your own gift certificates. Hopefully someone searching online for "how to use a Staples gift certificate on the Staples.com website" will find this post and it will save them a small bit of frustration.

The good news is that it arrived today, although it was delivered by an un-uniformed man in an unmarked white van.

A Bit Ironic

2008-10-04T19:56:00.000-04:00

And this one takes the cake. Apparently Microsoft is whining to the Justice Department about an advertising partnership between Google & Yahoo because together they control 80% of the search market. Yes, this is the same Microsoft who dominates 90-95% of the PC Operating System market. What's next, congress lecturing us about not being in debt?

Me Too!

2008-10-03T12:01:00.004-04:00

Katie started it, so I figured I'd tag along too.

Have You Ever…

gone on a blind date? No, the closest to that was someone I'd never met face-to-face, but we had talked on the phone.
skipped school? If so, it wasn't very memorable.
been on the opposite side of your country? I suppose that would be California or Washington or something, so not really. The furthest I've been in each direction... New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, Canada.
swam in the ocean? Yes, in the Atlantic & the Gulf of Mexico.
had your booze taken away by the cops? Nope, I don't think I ever had any for them to take.
lettered in a high school sport? I Think I got a C most of the time, does that count?
cried yourself to sleep? Ahem... No, of course not! How dare you imply that!
played a musical instrument? What's the difference between playing and attempting to play? I mean, if you attempt to play the guitar and sound comes out, no matter how awful that sounds is, does it still count as playing?
sung karaoke? No.
cheated on an exam? Yes, in high-school. Virtually my entire class did, and I got caught with the questions ahead of time. There was an inquisition of the entire class. It was not fun. It was complete dumb-luck chance that I caught. I remember my youth pastor later telling me that when he prayed for us he prayed that we would get caught if we ever did anything wrong, so I figure the whole thing was his fault.
played spin-the-bottle? No.
laughed until some sort of beverage came out of your nose? I think so, but I don't recall the specifics.
watched the sun rise with someone you care about? When we were in New Mexico a few years ago Katie & I got up early and drove about an hour into the mountains outside of Santa Fe to watch the sun rise. We were on the west side of the mountain, so we really didn't get to see the sun rise, but it was really cool to watch the Santa Fe Valley as the sunlight spilled over the mountain to fill it.
ever been arrested? No. I was put into the back of a police car once after being pulled over for speeding, (not really sure why) but not arrested.
gone ice skating? Yes, a couple of times.
been skinny dipping? No.
been on television? Yes, The Uncle Al Show.
thrown up in front of a date? No, not that I recall.
been out of the country? Belize, Cozumel, Canada, Kenya, The Netherlands.
had sushi? No, and I have no desire to.

Google Analytics

2008-09-30T19:24:00.003-04:00

This is for Tate and anyone else out there wondering how they can learn a little more about who visits their blog. I'd like to suggest Google Analytics. GA is a free tool provided by Google that can not only tell you how many people are visiting your site, it can tell you where your visitors are from, if they found your site from another site or if they found you through a search engine (and if so what words they were searching on).

You can determine what posts are the most popular. You may find that most of you visitors find you from another blog that you didn't even know linked to you. You may find that you have a secret following of readers from Wisconsin or Switzerland. And for the other geeky people out there, it also gives you information like browser usage, OS and a ton of other stuff. It's all pretty interesting, and you'll probably find that you have a lot more people reading your blog than you thought. (Keep in mind that it won't give you the names of the people visiting your site or any other identifying information.)

Google has a comprehensive guide to setting everything up that covers everything, but I'm going to offer a reader's digest version here. Don't be intimidated, it's really quite simple and only takes a few minutes to set up.

The first step is to create a GA account. If you're using blogger for you blog, or if you already have a Google account for anything else like Gmail, you can use that user name and password to log in. Follow the instructions to set up your account.
Once everything's set up, from the main page in the "Settings" column, click "Edit". Then on the next page, click "Check Status" (it's towards the upper right hand corner of the page). On the next page you'll find a box with a bunch of code in it. It will look pretty scary, but don't worry about it, just select it all and copy it. This is your tracking code.
Pasting the code
- Sign into you blogger account, and select the "Layout" tab.
- On the next page, select "Edit HTML".
- You may want to follow the instructions at the top of the page for backing up your template, because if you mess up the next few steps your blog may not display correctly.
- In the box of code, scroll down to the very bottom. You're looking for the "body end tag", which is usually in the second to last line of code and looks like this: </body>
- Place your cursor just to the left of the body end tag, and paste the tracking code you copied in step 2.
- The last part of you code should now look something like this:
  <script type="text/javascript">
  var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
  document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
  </script>
  <script type="text/javascript">
  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-0000000-1");
  pageTracker._trackPageview();
  </script></body>
  </html>
- Hit "Preview" to make sure everything looks ok, then hit "Save Template"
Go back to your Google Analytics page, in the "Settings" column, click "Edit", then on the next page, click "Check Status" (just like in step 2). In the yellow box it should say
Tracking Status: Receiving Data
At this point you're done, but you'll have to wait about 24 hours for results to start showing up. To view the reports, just sign into Google Analytics and click on "View Reports".

As a side note, if you ever change your template it will erase the tracking code, so you'll have to repeat steps 2-5 to get everything working again.

There are all sorts of other things you can do, like have it not count when you visit your blog (seriously, who cares if you blog was visited 20 times yesterday if 19 of them were you checking to see if anybody left any comments?), but that's another post. Good luck, and feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Flawed Logic

2008-09-29T10:53:00.006-04:00

I found this while reading and found it very interesting.

Recently, a number of Catholic bishops have criticized Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, a Catholic, for his position on abortion. Biden has said, "I'm prepared as a matter of faith, to accept that life begins at conception," but, he said, "for me to impose that judgment on others is inappropriate in a pluralistic society."

Archbishop Donald Wuerl disagreed. "When life begins is not a matter of faith, but a matter of science," he said. "Defense of innocent human life is not an imposition of personal religious conviction but an act of justice."

I especially love the quote from Wuerl. I've always thought the same thing, but he puts it so eloquently. It brings up the interesting point that the Pro-Life position, although it often coincides with religious faith, is not necessarily arrived at through question of faith.

In regard to a fetus, the first question is: "Is this entity a human being?" This question is a scientific question, and even the most basic understanding of science tells us that at conception a new being is formed in the likeness of it's parents. So I don't simply believe that life begins at conception because my religion indicates that I should (and while that would be sufficient for me, it would not be sufficient for those who did not share my faith), I also understand that this is the case as has been demonstrated by scientific observation.

So if science answers yes to the first question, a second question needs to be posed: "How are we to handle this life?" This is not a question of science, but of morality. Although this may seem a little more difficult since there is not a universal accepted standard of morality, that fact has not stopped our society from making universal decisions about similar situations. Murder, rape, theft and many other actions have been deemed crimes by our society on the basis of morality, not faith (even though faith in many cases would answer the same).

So to say that abortion is only an isue of faith, and that "to impose that judgment on others is inappropriate in a pluralistic society" is as logically absurd as to say the same of murder, rape, theft or any other number of crimes. The fact that faith has an opinion on the matter should not prevent us from discussing the issue in the shared arenas of science and common morality.

The Bailout

2008-09-27T10:11:00.002-04:00

Please contact your Senators & Representatives about the proposed $700 billion bailout. This is what I wrote:

This is in regards to the proposed $700 bailout plan being discussed right now. Please do not make the mistake of throwing billions of dollars of taxpayer money to the banking industry in a desperate hope that it will cause more good than harm. I am against any plan that uses taxpayer money, or puts us in to debt to relieve these financial institutions of the unmarketable securities. I am livid that this type of irresponsible action is even being considered.

I understand that standing back may seem to be to ignore the problem, but taking the course of action proposed by the President will have consequences that will haunt us far beyond those we are currently facing. I do not want to be forced to pay for the mistakes of those greedy individuals who should have known better.

I would be in support of government backed insurance of these securities as a tool to free up the lending market. I believe there are some Republicans in the House that have presented this as an option. I would also be in support of temporary modification of the Sarbanes-Oxley mark-to-market rules.

I have voted for you in the past because I believed you had the wisdom to handle situations like this in a responsible matter. I hope that I can vote for you again.

Reason of the week to use Firefox: FxIF

2008-09-17T15:54:00.001-04:00

I know a lot of you dabble in photography, so I think you'll find this little tool very fun. Here's how it works: Say you come across a photograph you really like, and you'd like to know how they got the shot. What camera did they use? Is it a long exposure? What was the aperture setting? A lot of times that information is embedded in the picture as EXIF data. With the Firefox add-on FxIF, all you have to do is right-click on the image and select Properties and you get a little window like the one below.

To install FxIF, click here.
If you haven't installed Firefox yet you'll need to do that first: click here.

Elise's Date With Daddy

2008-09-16T11:08:00.007-04:00

We got the idea of doing "Dates with Daddy" with our girls from Brad's parenting series. I haven't been the best at being consistent with these, but this past weekend Elise & I went on a date.

Ever since Labor Day when she saw the planes flying around with advertisements in tow, she's been asking to see "planes go fast". So we went to Lunken Airport. We couldn't find a great view there, so we headed up to Alms Park, which overlooks the airport.

Elise liked to wave at the planes and say hi to them. Apparently "Hi" in plane language is a high-pitched shriek.

In between yelling at planes, she enjoyed walking around, and I enjoyed taking pictures.

It was pretty, but not that pretty. (I made the sky a little bluer and the grass a little greener.)

After looking at planes we walked over to the park and she played on the playground.

After that we went to UDF for some ice cream, then headed home for a much-needed nap. I think Elise slept too.

Michigan: Part 4

2008-09-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

OK, one more picture of Michigan. I hadn't really noticed this one until I was showing some pictures to Brad Spence, and he liked this one. It's pretty simple, and I guess it never really stood out against the other 400 or so pictures I took that week, but the more I look at it the more I like it. It's a 10 second exposure (with a tripod of course) taken after the sun had been down for a while, so it looked a lot darker to the naked eye than it looks here. The water was pretty calm anyway, but the long exposure makes it look even smoother.

ISO: 200
Exposure: 10.0 sec
Aperture: f/14.0
Focal Length: 18mm (35mm equivalent = 27mm)

The Firefox One Week Test Drive

2008-09-09T11:01:00.004-04:00

If you're reading this, I'm going to jump to the conclusion that you use the internet. I also know that statistically, most of you (about 66% at the time of this writing) are using one version or another of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE for short). You're probably using IE because you simply are not aware that there's a browser out there that's faster, safer, more useful and just plain better. It's called Firefox.

Until a few weeks ago, my wife was an IE user, and despite my best arguments for her to use Firefox, she stuck with IE. Then one day (after getting rid of a virus that we had gotten while using IE) she said she would give Firefox a try for one week. Now I realized that this was probably just to get me to stop bugging her about it, but that was OK. I set up a profile for her, so she could have her own set of bookmarks and features, and the trial began. The first day or two was the break-in period, getting used to the different layout and features. By the third or fourth day she announced that she was starting to like it better. A week or so later, and she is a convert.

"So what about me?" you ask. "I don't have a nerdy husband bugging me about what browser I use, so why should I switch?" [sorry about that; I've been reading Lou Priolo] That's a great question, but there are so many great answers that I can't fit them all in here. So I''ll be doing as series of posts highlighting the advantages of Firefox over IE. If at any time you want to give Firefox a try, just go to firefox.com.

Follow Me

2008-09-08T13:45:00.002-04:00

Google is always introducing new things, and they're usually pretty good. Recently they came out with this thing called Following for blogs. It lets people keep up do date with your blog, and lets you know who's interested in your blog. So if you really love me, you'll click the Follow this blog link to the right.

Michigan: Part 3

2008-09-04T13:17:00.002-04:00

While on the lake I had some fun with fire and long exposures.

We built a fire on the beach one night.

When you throw balsam branches on the fire, you get a lot of sparks.

Here's a shot of those sparks flying through the air.
1.6 second exposure

More flying sparks. Click on the picture to get a closer look and you can see large "ribbons" of light from some larger pieces of ash that flew from the fire.
1 second exposure

My brother waving a burning branch in the air. (don't blame him, I told him to do it)
5 second esposure

This is a shot of the dock illuminated by the fire. I used a tripod and did a 10 second exposure. I used automatic ISO so it was taken at ISO-560. I should have manually set it to 200 (the lowest setting on the D40) which would have resulted in less noise in the image.

Picture of the sky. Click on it to see the large version, and you'll be able to see the stars.
30 second exposure

Michigan: Part 2

2008-08-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

Here are some pictures from our trip to Michigan.
I'll try not to post any that Katie's already posted.

This is the view of Wilderness Bay from the end of the dock.
You can see the Sheppard's dock that I mentioned in my last post.

The view of the bay from the base of our dock.

Thought this was a cool picture of the sun glistening across the water.

The american flag at the base of our dock.
This is an un-retouched photo. The sky really was that blue.

The sun setting across the bay.

Another shot of the sunset from the end of the dock.

The afterglow.

Michigan: Part 1

2008-08-27T12:19:00.009-04:00

These are the Les Cheneaux Islands, where we went on vacation last week. It's a group of islands on Lake Huron in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, part of the towns of Hessel & Cedarville. I've been going up there since I was six months old (and lived there for a year and a half then). The biggest island is Marquette, which is where we stayed. If you look real close you'll see a white box drawn around part of the island - the next picture is a close-up of that area.

As you can see from the satellite images, there's not a lot of development on the island, which is really nice if you like natural stuff. There are no roads, just walking trails through the woods You may be able to make out a few lines running through the island that look like roads, but those are the clearings cut for the electrical power lines. Again, we're going to zoom into the liitle white box to have a closer look.

The only access is by boat, so most every cabin has a dock. In this picture you can see our cabin, named Foxfire after the glowing wood that can be found in the surrounding woods. In the upper left of the image is the Sheppard's dock & boathouse, which can be seen in a lot of the sunset pictures I'll post later. As a point of reference, the docks are roughly 400 ft apart. It this image you can also clearly see the distinct drop-off in the water. So that's the background info, soon I'll post some more interesting pictures.

Another Biking Milestone

2008-08-06T14:44:00.003-04:00

Monday, on the ride home of my 16th day of commuting, I experienced a biking milestone: I passed another biker. He was not stopped to take a brake or fix a flat, he was not hauling a huge pack, (and no, he wasn't going the other way) he was just another bike rider that was going slightly slower than I was. This has never happened before. I am now officially not the slowest biker in Cincinnati!

Fun with Photoshop

2008-07-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

About a year and a half ago, we took this cute picture of Elise sitting on our bed. When she got excited she would wave her arms about wildly and yell.

Although it was a pretty cute picture to begin with, I thought it could use a little something.

Pictures of the Kids

2008-07-28T15:08:00.006-04:00

Last year, after having mixed results taking Elise to the portrait studio, we decided to buy a better camera and do photos ourselves. After using Kara & Ben's Nikon, we bought a Nikon D40 from B&H. We also got the Nikon SB-400 flash, both of which are absolutely wonderful. We've gotten a ton of great candid photos of the kids, but we also wanted to get some posed shots too.

So last week Katie & I went outside to take some pictures of the girls. It was a nice sunny day, and I had the flash one the camera to provide some fill light. We started out with Elise in the sun, until a helpful neighbor (who happened to be a professional photographer) suggested we put her in the shade. This turned out to be very good advice. Below is one of the pictures of Elise.

That's the original image as captured by the camera without any processing. Nice, but a little flat and washed out. Below is the same picture with the default processing by the camera. Better, but still leavs a little to be desired.

I shot the photos in RAW mode, which means the file is a .NEF instead of a .JPG. It's sort of like shooting on film and having access to the the negative - it has more detail than a print.
I opened the RAW file in Adobe Camera Raw, part of Photoshop. This gave me all kinds of tools for correcting exposure & white balance, boosting saturation, and adjusting individual colors. This let me do things like fix the blue ribbons on her dress that had previously been washed out. Anyway, below is the finished picture. Isn't she cute?

And here's a split of all three pictures:

Biking to Work - Day 13

2008-07-25T10:33:00.003-04:00

Here are some notes from biking to work for 13 days. I'm writing this partly for me to look back on and partly for any other bikers that might stumble onto this and be interested it someone else's experience.

It feels like a lot longer than 13 days. (12½ days actually, I still have to bike home tonight.) I feel like I've been doing this for a long time
It's a lot easier than when I started. Still a lot of work, but more manageable.
I'm taking Memorial Parkway home instead of Waterworks. I like it much better.
I still drive to work on Tuesdays & Thursdays, but every time I get in my car it feels like it's been about a couple of weeks since I drove.
Even on a fairly mild morning, a water bottle full of ice cubes will melt in under 30 minutes.
Most cars are pretty tolerant and courteous of bikes, but every once in a while there's some guy who thinks 6 inches is plenty of space to leave between us, even though there's an empty lane right next to him.
Sometimes it's safer to take up a whole lane than to stay all the way to the right.
For the first two weeks, my leg muscles weren't sore, stiff or anything. My lungs and heart couldn't keep enough to give them a real workout. The past two weeks, my heart & lungs have caught up enough allow my legs to start getting workout.
I've lost about 10 pounds.
I'm still making some progress on my times, but it has definitely started to slow. Here's a graph:

Go Get Some Friends

2008-07-21T08:26:00.004-04:00

Katie is working at Grace's VBS this week, so the girls will be spending the week in the nursery. Last night at dinner we were telling Elise about it, mentioning the fact that she would be spending a lot of time this week playing with other little boys & girls, which she refers to as: "Go get some friends."

Knowing that it would be a big day, we put her to bed early. Katie got stuff ready for the next morning and I did some work, and three hours later she still wasn't asleep - we could hear her in her room talking and singing and making noise. Katie got a sippie-cup of milk, hoping that would help her go to sleep. The moment I opened the door to go in and give it to her, out of the dark I hear her tiny, excited and very awake little voice: "Go get some friends?" Like a kid on Christmas morning, at 10pm she was hoping it was time to get up and play with friends.

7 Days of Commuting

2008-07-11T08:52:00.004-04:00

I guess it's time for an update on the commuting thing. For starters, at the suggestion of my biking friend I decided that rather than going from no exercise at all to biking 15 miles per day in traffic, I would start out doing it every other day - so that I wouldn't die. So I and am doing Monday Wednesday & Friday.

Because I'm a geek, I keep track of how long it takes me and calculate my average overall speed. And I make graphs. Pastor Steve would be proud. What the graph doesn't show is the fact that my times have decreased every day with one exception (the obvious dip in the blue line). The slight dips in the red line is were I took a shortcut which decreased my overall time, but also decreased my average speed.

I's also getting easier. Not easy, but easier. Here's a few things I've noticed:

The first few days all I could think about was "What have I gotten myself into?" Then when I would arrive I would collapse on the floor for 15 minutes to recover and wonder if I could return the bike. Now I don't even have to collapse on the floor at all.
On my first commute it took 43 minutes to get in. This morning it took just under 29.
The first ride I stopped about 5 times on the way in to rest, this morning I didn't stop at all. (the rests alone probably account for the time difference)

I say all this not to brag, because I realize that a 7½ mile bike trip is not a huge deal. I thank God for giving me the discipline to do this, because it doesn't come naturally to me - I'm not an extremely physically disciplined person by nature. I know a lot of people who are, and I think you're all weird :) Anyway, I'll keep you posted.

Open Office

2008-07-08T15:39:00.004-04:00

This post of the first of many that probably won't be entertaining, but hopefully useful.

Microsoft Office is a great tool, but fairly expensive. It's goes right now for just under $400. That pretty steep for a lot of people. If you're one of those people, you might want to check out OpenOffice.org, or OOo as it's commonly referred to. OOo is free, open source (that's generally a good thing), can read and write MS Office files, and contains most of the functionality of Microsoft Office. In some cases, OOo has a step up on Microsoft. For example: Excel hasn't yet figured out that time began before Jan 1st, 1900. Yup, so if you're making a list of historical events or birthdates of ancestors and want to sort them, Excel won't help much. Calc (the spreadsheet tool in OOo) handles that just fine. Enjoy!

Tagging Spots

2008-07-07T09:24:00.006-04:00

A couple of weeks ago I did a post about a TV spot I do for the Cincinnati Zoo. Lest you think my job is always that exciting, I thought I'd tell you about what I did last week: I tagged spots for Fazoli's. What is "tagging" you ask? Well, someone else edited a commercial, and at the end they left some empty space on the screen. It looked like this:

My job is to "tag" that commercial with special text for about 40 different markets that are running the commercial. So if you live in Lexington, KY you'll see this:

I know it's exciting, but please try to contain yourselves, folks. After that, we send them out and the TV stations air them, and people all around the country say "Hey, it's 10:30 and I'm hungry, but Fazoli's is still open so let's go find one of their 15 area locations locations and get some food!"

Tickle, Tickle.

2008-06-28T09:51:00.003-04:00

"Evie likes a tickle from Elise"

My First Commute

2008-06-26T14:31:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was my first commute to work. All things considered it went fairly well. I rode the 7.4 miles in 43 minutes. The ride back was a little tougher, due to the fact that it is more uphill, and I did that (7.5 miles) in 1 hour even. This morning I did the ride in to work in 39 minutes. I'm going to take an alternate route home tonight which should shave 0.3 miles off of the uphill part of the trip. Of course that will also probably mean that the climb will be that much steeper, but I'll just have to try it and see.

I bought a bike

2008-06-24T12:31:00.005-04:00

OK, as Katie hinted about, it's time for an update on my plans to bike to work. I bought a bike! After riding a low-end Scott, a Rocky Mountain Metro 30, a Rocky Mountain RC 30 DISC and a Scott Sub 10. I finally settled on a Rocky Mountain RC 50 DISC from Reser Bicycle Outfitters in Newport. The picture to the left is a stock picture of the RC 50 from Rocky Mountain's website. Mine is pretty much the same, but it's black.

If you're ever in the market for a bike, I highly recommend Reser. They are very knowledgeable, helpful, and encourage you to test ride a lot of bikes so you can get a feel of what you're comfortable with. As an added bonus, they don't make fun of you when you're so out of shape that after your first test ride you're so worn out that you have to go home and take a break and come back a few hours later - or so I've heard.

Anyway, I've taken it on a ride around the neighborhood and around town. Both rides confirmed that I am very out of shape (as if there was a doubt after my test ride). Tomorrow morning is my first commute to work, about 7.4 miles. Going to work will be bad enough, but at least it's a lot of downhill (300 ft decrease in elevation), and it'll be relatively cool. What I'm really dreading is the ride home, uphill in the afternoon. If I make it, I'll let you know how it went.

Biking to Work

2008-06-17T12:05:00.001-04:00

A guy I work with started biking to work recently, and I thought I should give it a try. My commute would only be about 6 miles, which is about a third of my friend's commute. Biking would save me money on gas & parking, and would also be good exercise. I was actually discussing all this with Katie right before we saw this on The Office:

I haven't started yet because I don't have a bike, but I'm going to buy a Motobecane Elite from bikesdirect.com, so hopefully I'll be able to start in a week or two. It's been about 15 years since I've really done any biking, so this should be interesting. I'll keep you posted. If anybody has any pointers for me, I'd be interested in hearing them.

Building a Playhouse

2008-06-15T20:03:00.006-04:00

Some of you may remember Katie's post a few months ago about our search for a playhouse, then finally buying one, but now you finally get to see the construction process. As a video geek, I of course insisted that we document the entire process, and our camcorder (a Sony DCR-HC90 for the other video geeks out there) has a very nice time lapse function.

You'll notice that we were almost done with the roof when we stopped for the night, then there's a slight pause before the video resumes. That's because we realized that we were putting the roof on upside down, and at that point it was about 11:30pm so we decided to stop and finish it the next evening.

For those of you interested in the Woodridge Playhouse Leisure Time Products (Item #1150), it was fairly easy to assemble, and the instructions were actually fairly good. The materials seem to be of fairly decent quality, so hopefully it will hold up for quite a while.

Giraffes at the Zoo

2008-06-11T09:55:00.008-04:00

I was going to make my first post be all about how it was my first post, but that seemed kinda boring, so I'm making it about something - what I worked on last week.

For those of you who don't know, I'm an editor at red echo post, a video post production company in Cincinnati. Last week I worked on a spot for the Cincinnati Zoo to promote their new giraffes. It was a challenging but very interesting spot to work on.

The giraffe in the first and last shots was originally in front of a clear sky background. I keyed it out, applied an effect that creates the outlines, then composited all 3 back onto the new background.

The middle shot was composited from 2 different scenes in much the same way, except that the platform and the people had to be motion tracked to the background so that it looked like it was part of the scene. For that I had to enlist the help of Scott, our 3D animator - he has better tools and a better brain for tracking that sort of scene. He tracked the separate elements, then I composited them back together.