Category Archives: Insanity

Unwritten Rule of the Internet

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All questions asked must receive a bunch of completely pointless answers.

Most recent example: I discussed how my camera was massively overexposing pictures. I explained that I shot in aperture-priority mode, meaning that I set the camera’s aperture and the camera will select an appropriate shutter speed. Shooting a bright white sign in direct sunlight, with an f/4.5 aperture, it selected a 1/45 second shutter speed. This was wildly inaccurate. I also walked through a, “You might think what I first thought” thing where I debunked a few of the answers I knew I’d get: that I’d maybe shot at ISO1600 or something, and that I had maybe switched to Manual mode by accident. I explained that neither was the case. I also explained that I ended up switching over to full-manual mode, where I got some great shots, so that it seems to be a problem with metering.

A few people gave helpful answers. But I also got a lot of replies like, “Your shutter speed was far too low. It should have been 1/1,000th of a second.” (Thanks, Sherlock. Do you understand aperture-priority?) Someone else suggests that I was maybe in manual mode by accident. Despite having already stated that I wasn’t, I explained that I had last been doing night exposures, so manual mode was set for a 30-second exposure. “I’d definitely have noticed,” I explained. Another helpful person suggested that I could have just switched to manual mode and set an appropriate shutter speed myself.  Thanks for not answering the question of what was wrong and not even reading the whole thing, where I mention that I did just that in the end.

And I started a huge argument in another thread by pondering aloud why no one ever made a zoom lens faster than f/2.8. I wondered if it was some physical limit that I didn’t understand. People are now talking about how on the 5D you can use ISO6400 which offsets the need for a fast lens, and arguing over whether or not an f/2.0 zoom for a non-35mm body is the same as if it were for a 35mm body, and whether f/2 really means f/4. And then someone argues about, “What is ISO, really?”

Seriously, be careful about asking questions on the Internet. Most of the answers you get probably won’t answer your question at all.

Wung Fah

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We looked into the cost of hiring a coach bus for the day. $1,300.

Multiply that by 5 and you can buy a used coach bus. (Granted, they’re easily $200,000 new, but there are a ton of used ones, and they’re the type of things that are usually driven until 1,000,000 miles or so.)

Assume 200 miles. (This is actually way, way more than we need.) 8 miles to the gallon. (You may do better.) $3/gallon. That’s $75 in fuel.

Assume you pay the driver very well: $20 an hour, and that we have the bus for 8 hours. (He surely makes less, and we don’t need 8 hours.) $160 in labor.

I want to start my own bus company. (More for being hired out for the day than anything than being a Greyhound / Fung Wah, though.) I think I could do it for a lot less.

Buy something like this, spruce up the interior (carpeting?), and re-install the seats, and you’ve got one heck of a bus with 750,000 miles of life left. And, apparently, 100 gallons of fuel already in it…  $10-15,000 buys a nice, complete bus.

$750 a day… Assuming $20,000 fixed costs, you break even after 26 days. You have variable costs (fuel, labor, insurance), too, but really, I think that if you could book the bus regularly, you’d do well.

Oh, and there are lots of little “extras” you could do. Replace those huge old TVs with a few LCDs. Probably under $1,000 total cost if you do it yourself? And, in lieu of showing a movie / TV, you could always do an airplane-style display of where you are or something… Or show ads! No direct value, but I think it’d raise the perceived “value” of the bus.

You could invest your profits into a budget limo service. You compete in the taxi market, not the limo market. If I had the choice in riding in a 12-year-old limo (after removing the garbage from the floor?!) or riding in a taxi, I’d pick the limo. Although I wager most of the costs there are variable costs: labor, insurance, maintenance (probably big on a really old American car?), etc. But really, you’re paying less than it’d cost to buy a used taxi. And this one is even less!

A Plea to Camera Makers

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Dear camera makers,

Canon’s 1Ds Mark III is 21 megapixels. Please, acknowledge that Canon has won on the megapixel front, and move on. My camera’s resolution is 6 megapixels, and I have a flawless 20×30″ print from it. 21 megapixels is too many for most uses. Going further is wasteful.

Nikon has the right idea, though: improve things other than resolution. My camera maxes out at ISO3200, and the pictures are very bad there. Sometimes, though, ISO3200 isn’t enough. In a dimly-lit room, there are times when ISO3200 still gives me 1/8 of a second or slower shutter speeds. My lens is pretty slow, with f/3.5 as its widest, but even using something like Canon’s 50mm f/1.2 lens, I might not be able to get a useful shutter speed.

Nikon’s D3 goes up to ISO25,600. The images are practically useless at that point. But at least they’re trying. To you camera makers, I present a challenge: top them. I want to be able to shoot at ISO25600 (“25K?”) and get clean images. Can you do it? I bet you can, especially if you quit trying to one-up unnecessarily large resolutions.

Oh, and give us innovative new features, too. Or let us write our own apps! Why isn’t there “aperture bracketing?” Say I’m not sure whether f/4 is enough depth of field. Why can’t I take the picture at f/4, f/5.6, and f/8 and decide afterwards?

Why, on a camera body that cost $2,000 new, is there no “intervalometer” to let me, say, automatically take a picture every 5 seconds? I can buy a $150 accessory to do it, but is it really that hard to make it a software feature?

HDR photography is all the rage. Why not have an “HDR Composite” feature, that will meter for the darkest region, meter for the brightest region, and automatically bracket across the whole range? (Bracketing is not at all new, but it’s “dumb” bracketing — I can do +1/-1 or +2/-2. What if I want to go from +3 to -5 in 16 steps?)

Why do no cameras have an embedded GPS? It’s not the most useful feature, sure, but it’s cool. Make it a “module” people can upgrade to. I’d be awfully tempted to buy it.

It’s slowly becoming a reality, but why not have a USB2 port and let me plug in accessories? Currently USB2 ports are just for copying images to your computer. Why can’t I stick my thumb drive in and record to that? Or my external hard drive? And why can’t I just copy pictures over to my external hard drive right from the camera? Why do I need a computer?

Why are the LCDs on back such low-resolution? Play with an iPhone for a while, at 160ppi, and then look at any camera’s LCD. It looks like comparative crap. That LCD is important, too: I’m trying to see how my image out. Why would you give me a piece of crap for that? I’m yet to see a camera with an interface that doesn’t look like it predates Y2K, either. Again, play with the iPhone. It just looks cool. Don’t overdo it, but would it kill you to at least make the interface on your cameras look nice?

Some really high-end lenses have an IS/OS feature — basically, the lenses compensate for minor shake through the use of a gyro. This feature gets rave reviews from anyone able to afford the $2,000 lenses. Why not build an IS sensor into your camera instead, so that, regardless of lens, your sensor stabilizes for minor shake?

Please, camera makers of the world, quit it with megapixels. Let’s go for some innovation.

Car Cleaning

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Having spent at least a month in the parking garage, my trip home was a clear cry for help from my filthy car. And if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it well.

I found some stuff called Krud Kutter. It’s a strong cleaning product. So I used lots of it. There were a few spots (like my gas cap) that had lots of caked-on dirt. I also used it on the base of the car, which had gotten quite dirty. As had, not shockingly, some parts under the hood, and my wheels. I’m telling you, wheels are the secret to having your car clean.

I first sprayed it where needed, and then let it sit while I went and got the hose set up. About five minutes later, I hosed off the car. Already, it was looking much better.

Turtle Wax apparently makes a car wash solution that’s supposed to leave a ‘hard wax shell.’ I don’t believe that, because I cleaned my windows with it too, and there’s definitely no hard wax shell on my windows. Of course, while scrubbing the car clean, you’ve got to re-apply the Krud Kutter and scrub the dirty parts, which suddenly looked much cleaner.

When all was said and done, you dry it off with a Calfironia water blade. It makes quick work of drying your car. (If you don’t dry the car, you’ll get water spots everywhere and it’ll end up looking worse.)

Take a break to let everything dry completely, including the tires. (Actually, I cheated and used another cloth during this time to scrub the wheels with Krud Kutter and a rough sponge again: using the same cloth you’re cleaning the car with is just asking for trouble.)

With everything dry, there are some more steps:

  • Re-apply Rain-X to the windows. I find that you just need to do front and rear, the front side windows, and the mirrors.
  • Since it’d been a long time, I used a clear-coat safe polish. It was supposed to be a wax, too, but I was using it for the polish qualities. (In theory, a polish is slightly abrasive, so you’ll end up with a much shinier finish, and the extremely thin scratches that had been built up disappeared.)
  • As I waited for that to dry, I used Armor-All on the tires. It makes much more of a difference than I expected the first time. Over time your tires turn a dull gray, and your wheels go from silver to, well, dull gray too. Having just gotten the wheels shiny, the tires still looked their dull gray. After applying the Armor-All, they looked pretty much brand-new. But they don’t have that ridiculous shiny look that the tire-shine sprays do.
  • With that done, I now had the tell-tale white haze all over my car from the polish/wax. I took a cloth and wiped the car down. (Hint: for an SUV, you’ll really want more than one cloth.) It’s important to note that the car has to be spotlessly dry, or you’re wasting your time wiping it down: any moisture will just smear the white haze around and make it look even worse. It’s not a fatal mistake, you can wipe it down when again when it dries. It’s just a colossal waste of your time. The key is to dry your car prior to polishing/waxing, but there’ll inevitably be some little bits of moisture anyway: so you just get them as you’re waxing. You’re supposed to apply it with a damp cloth anyway.
  • You always follow up a polish with a wax. I’m a big fan of this wax, which smells so good that I want to bathe in it. Let that dry and then wipe the haze off.
  • Here’s a secret: when you’re done waxing the car and you need to wait a few minutes for it to dry, wax your wheels. No, really. Not only will they shine more, but it’ll make it harder for brake dust and tar and the like to stick to them. Even having scrubbed them super-clean, I do them last, to make sure any dirt on them doesn’t get transferred to my car, where it may scratch the paint.
  • While waiting in between steps, you can apply Armor-All to other plastic/rubber surfaces. (In my case, some trim around the engine, a plastic cover on the rear bumper, the rear windshield wiper, and the ‘knobs’ on my roof rack.)

You don’t want to go too crazy, but it’s worth mentioning that you can clean your engine, as long as you know what not to mess with. (E.g., I wouldn’t spray the battery with a hose, and I avoid certain things that don’t look like they should get wet; overall, an engine’s pretty well suited to getting hosed down. Just make sure it’s cool, or you risk enormous problems!) I’ve cleaned the engine before, so it wasn’t that dirty, but a little Krud Kutter in strategic places got it looking much better, and then Armor-All on some hoses and plastic covers that looked like they could use it. Just use common-sense when doing this: components that are greased probably shouldn’t be sprayed with a degreaser, for example, and steer clear of things like filters, although they’re covered most of the time anyway. While I’m in the engine, I give it a basic once-over: I’m no mechanic, but it’s simple to see if the liquid reservoirs need refilling. I just had to top off my windshield washer fluid, which I just did with water.

It makes sense to me to clean the inside of the car at the same time. I usually do it afterwards, as I usually end up standing inside the car to reach the roof. The steps here are pretty common sense: pick up garbage, vacuum, clean the windows, dust, and wipe down with Armor-All where appropriate. Oh, and make sure the clock is accurate. That’s a pet peeve of mine. Follow the advice on the Armor-All bottle and don’t apply it to your steering wheel or pedals, because they’ll become slippery.

Crazy

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This is really bizarre, but it still really cracks me up because it was so bizarre.

Some friends and I went to Margarita’s this weekend for dinner. It fills up fast, but I was able to get a reservation so we didn’t wait more than a couple minutes. But as we were waiting, this group got seated. They’d been waiting for a while, since they all had margaritas in hand. They left the waiting area to go to their table, but then one woman came back. There was a sort of display case with various Mexican art and handiwork in the wall. She rammed her margarita glass into it–I’m not sure how it didn’t break. And then she just left nonchalantly with margarita in hand.

We’re fairly certain that’s not what she was intending to do, but none of us can figure out what she was trying to do. I confess to not being up on all the issues surrounding drinking, since I don’t really drink, but I’m fairly certain that forcefully banging your margarita into windows isn’t a custom.

Zune

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The poor Zune has so much going against it. For one thing, they decided to make it brown; the most delicate way I’ve seen this put was something to the effect of, “The Zune team decided that brown was the hot new color. No other marketing team has reached this conclusion.”

I don’t like DRM, not even on my iPod, but the thing the iPod has going for it is that it’ll play that DRMed music. A lot of people complained that the Zune didn’t play half the formats of music they had.

And then there was the “orgasm screen,” a really bizarre screen during the installer that’s probably Not Safe for Work. Also probably NSFW is their logo upside-down, although that can be considered more bad luck than poor planning.

But I still gave them credit for trying. They have a terrible market share, but they tried.

Well! They just released the “Zune 2.0,” and, well, see for yourself. They did ditch the brown, although they also introduced “diarrhea green.” But I think this is even worse: the old one made me think, “Good for Microsoft, designing their own MP3 player.” Now I think, “Wow, it’s a bad clone of the iPod.” The looks are just too similar. They added some features, such as more video codecs, which is great. WiFi syncing to a computer? Awesome idea.

There is one thing that I think they got right, though. They failed the design, they failed the color choices (again), they failed having safe-for-work backgrounds in the installer screen, but they have a DRM-free music store now. I didn’t think Apple could lose its edge, but now Microsoft and Amazon are both offering DRM-free songs. And you know what? I don’t think I’m going to get my songs through iTunes anymore. Now that Linux is my primary OS, all the songs I bought from iTunes don’t play due to DRM. Apple’s got to do something, or it’s going to start losing, at least on music sales.

Mmm, bacon.

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It’s amazing what the Internet has unleashed. Today I stumbled across a mention of the Vosges Bacon Chocolate Bar. It was an amusing typo, I thought: it almost sounds like a chocolate bar with bacon in it. My roommates have long joked about my love for bacon. (A local pizza place offers a dish known as the “heart attack,” which is a calzone stuffed with mozzarella sticks and bacon–its name is well-deserved. But ohhhh is it good.)

But it turns out that I hadn’t misunderstood anything. It is a chocolate bar with bacon in it. Sitting on a hot tip like this, though, I knew I had to act fast, so I sent the link to the Snack Maniac. Barring the Maniac’s ghostwritten entry, the Internet had gone a whole month without any snack updates, so I’m proud to take credit for leading to the first update in a month. So proud, in fact, that I may have to take todays “Hero of the Day” designation away from [deep breath] the man suing to keep his amputated leg that he stored in a barbecue smoker in a storage shed but was inadvertently sold when he missed his rent payments and is now used by the guy who bought the smoker at an auction as some sort of bizarre exhibit in his backyard[deep breath], and instead give it to myself… (The Hero of the Day designation, not the amputated leg stored in a barbecue smoker in a self-rental shed.)

Having recently resolved that I need to focus on eating healthy, I was thrilled to learn that the Snack Maniac was sending me a bacon-chocolate bar of my own. And while I confess that I don’t have the experienced palate of the Snack Maniac, I’ll be sure to post an update on how it tastes.

News Article of the Day

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A man in South Carolina is in a desperate legal struggle to get custody of his amputated leg.

If the piques your interest… It’s not the strangest part of the story. You see, the man lost his leg years ago in a plane crash, and stored his leg in a barbecue smoker in a storage shed, but failed to make his rental payments, so they sold the smoker with the leg inside. The new owner charges people to see the leg inside the smoker, and refuses to give it back to the man from whence it came.

Today’s Hero of the Day secures a solid spot in my list of daily heroes.

Discoveries

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I’m eating some nuts right now. They’re unsalted, unroasted, so they’re really not even that good.

Which got me wondering… How did people discover nuts? Were they accustomed to ripping things off trees and eating them? Did they try acorns? All the trees with inedible berries?

But here are some other things I’ve always wondered about the discoveries of:

  • Smoking. I think I posted about this before, actually. I think that, even if I lived all by myself in the woods with nothing to do and nothing to eat and no basis for what was normal, I’d never think, “Let’s rip this leaf up, dry it, set it on fire, and inhale the smoke.” And why tobacco leaves? Did they try oak leaves? Grass? Cabbage? Corn? Poison Ivy?
  • Sex. No, really. What else did they try before their breakthrough discovery? I think a fair amount of what we hold as “intuitive” is really societal. Was it clear initially that it should be a male and a female, and what went where, or were there lots of other variations?
  • Beer. Who thought, “Let’s take these unappetizing ingredients, let them rot for months, and then drink it!”? Intuitively, wouldn’t you think, “This has been rotting for months, I don’t dare drink it?” What else did they let ferment before ingesting?
  • Cheese. Kind of the same concept. Spoiled milk is disgusting. But getting it to cheese? I don’t think I could ever even eat cheese if I really thought about its manufacture. And for the first, say, century after cheese was discovered, I’m fairly certain that there weren’t supermarkets that sold pre-packaged cheese.
  • Milk. Really thinking about where it comes from, what led us to drink that? Did we try drinking bodily fluids from other animals? Do I even want to know?
  • Meat. Seriously, who thought, “Let’s kill that cow, cut it up, and eat it?” Was cooking devised right away? I love my burgers, but I’d rather starve to death than go up and start gnawing on a cow. And cutting up a cow and then gnawing away sounds even more disgusting.
  • Contact lenses. I’m glad I got them long after the technology was perfected. I’m fairly certain that if someone came up to me and said, “I’m working on a revolutionary new technology that lets you stick ‘glasses’ directly to your eyeball,” I just would have laughed… Or run screaming. Depending on whether or not they wanted to try them on me.

Military Intelligence

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Rusty, who doesn’t actually use his own blog because he is a lazy slacker, sent me this link last night.

Apparently,

  • The architect never noticed that he had just designed an enormous swastika-shaped building for the U.S. Navy.
  • The U.S. Navy never noticed, until it was too late, that their architect had designed an enormous swastika-shaped building for them.
  • People on the ground were oblivious to the fact that the building was shaped like a swastika. (I, for one, notice the shape of buildings?)
  • There aren’t, say, fire exit plans posted everywhere in the building depicting the building as an enormous brick swastika.

That said, Hitler did forever destroy our ability to use what’s probably a good layout for an office complex.