Matt’s Blog > Living

Astute readers may remember my last trip to the dentist and how it was a less-than-enjoyable experience. I went for another filling today; at my cleaning a few weeks ago, they told me that my usual dentist was out, and asked if I’d mind if some other dentist did the final once-over for the cleaning. [...]

While looking at job postings on Craiglist, I somehow ended up at Craig Newmark’s personal blog. (He founded Craigslist.) He linked to this YouTube video.
For some reason I’m reminded of Hillary’s tall tale of ducking sniper fire. I respect McCain as a decorated soldier and a Senator who understands bipartanship, but after eight years of [...]

Last night we were unloading a shopping cart. When done, the place to put it away was pretty far away. But there were about ten other shopping carts littering the parking lot nearby, so I said, “Meh, what’s one more?”
As we got in the car, I proclaimed, “Broken Windows in action!” I think people were [...]

Ed.: Because the blogs have been slow, and because this is a hot topic, I’ve fudged the date on this to appear to have been published two days later, so it will stay on the main page a bit longer.
It looks like Obama is the Democratic nominee, while Hillary Clinton, the woman who has twice [...]

This comic was pretty funny, and the age/2 + 7 formula got tossed around a lot by my roommates.
Of course, it gives us the minimum age one can date without being creepy. At 22, it’s [(22/2) + 7], or 18. (I, however, maintain that this discrepancy would, in fact, be creepy.)
But what about the upper [...]

Rusty and I were just talking about the recent decision by the Democratic party and how we’re going to count delegates from the two states, which has left both sides somewhat unhappy.
But then we kind of realized that no one is talking about the real issues? I don’t particularly care how we seat delegates. The [...]

I was pleasantly surprised by what my little 55-200mm Sigma can do! I’ve noticed that if you’re not exacting in aligning the polarizer, you lose a lot of contrast, BUT it’s very easily fixed in Photoshop. I’ve also noticed that, short of focus problems, most everything is easily fixed in Photoshop. (I’ve stopped thinking of [...]

I think the best thing about SLRs isn’t their elimination (well, exponential reduction) of shutter lag, nor the support for high ISOs, or even advanced exposure and metering modes. It’s that even at relative high apertures (f/5.6), you can keep a shallow depth of field. Consider this photograph:

(Does anyone know what type of flower this [...]

…I’d try to arrange a meeting of all the major candidates, in front of the media, where we all pledge to stop this crap. (Obama himself commented that he knew Hillary meant nothing negative, but that after such intense campaigning, he knew exactly what it was like to slip up and say something that sounds [...]

I joined my family today in central/Northern New Hampshire. It was opening day at Clark’s Trading Post, a favorite of my brother. My brother encouraged me to go with them, and the forecast called for a decent day, so I figured I’d tag along. The area’s always been quite photogenic, and I figured it’d be [...]