And you thought you had it bad....

We all think we have the lock on the worst politicians and the most asinine party platforms in our respective countries. There would be considerable argument and heated debate if you were to ask a group of bloggers from different countries if they agreed with the positions taken by various political parties on the important issues in their countries.

Just when you thought you had the worst of the world to contend with, the Dutch (as is their wont) have gone one better (??). Reuters reports that a Dutch political party is forming to make pedophilia and bestiality legal and to represent its adherents in parliament.

I generally hold fairly liberal views, but when the matter involves those least able to represent themselves (i.e. children and animals) my views harden considerably. Thankfully 82 percent of the Dutch people felt that the government should do something to stop the formation of this party.

My question is, what about the other 18%? Did they think this was a good idea?

Under the general rubric of "you don't know how good you have it until.....", I promise to not complain ever again about the Democratic party accusing the Republicans of a culture of corruption, while the FBI finds wads of money wrapped in foil, hidden in Rep. William Jefferson's (D-LA) basement freezer.

William Jefferson
Corruption
Dutch
Politics

And so I decided to pimp my blog..

Regular readers of this blog (of which there are few, as Sitemeter depressingly informs me) will notice the fresh new look to the blog. Gone is the generic blogger-provided template and in its place is the new graphic header and color scheme.

The picture in the header is of my favorite chairs in our backyard on the hillside about 1000 feet above the city of Boulder. These chairs also form a sort of jungle-gym for the family of foxes that summers in our backyard each season. My recent post In appreciation of mothers everywhere about the foxes, features a picture of Flicka, one of the little fox kits, under one of the chairs.

The chairs are at about 6200 feet above sea-level and that's where I like to sit during the summer months and think big thoughts over a reassuring beer or two. It somehow seemed fitting that a blog about random thoughts should feature the chairs where much of such random thinking is done, at least when the weather allows.

While conceiving the graphic and the color scheme took some thinking, it was by no means the most difficult part of the exercise. Having found the picture I wanted to use, resizing it for use as a banner header was easy with Photoshop.

Editing the blogger template was another matter entirely. I first started by selecting a simple template and importing the HTML code it into an HTML editor - I used Nvu - so that I could make edits in a user-friendly WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) mode. While I am familiar with HTML and its use in websites, I had never edited HTML code before and thought having an HTML editor like Nvu would be much easier than editing raw HTML in a text editor like Wordpad or Notepad. I had not bargained on the further complexity of working with style sheets which control the way everything is represented on the site, independant of the content.

After a weekend of struggling with Nvu, it became obvious that while I was able to make the changes I wanted within Nvu, getting those changes to reflect in the blog when seen through the browser was something else entirely. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the tags to show the actual content of the site, and frustratingly, only the tags showed.

Eventually, out of despair, I painstakingly went through each line of HTML code in the template, made changes where I needed and arrived at the look that you see before you. I am reasonably pleased with the changes I have wrought, and I hope you will be too. Feel free to add a comment to let me know what you think about the new look.

The really interesting experiment will be to see if the new design has any effect on the vast readership I enjoy.

Blogger Template, Nvu, HTML editing, Custom Template, PhotoShop

Film vs. Digital...and Film won....almost

I have four nieces whom I adore. There is nothing in the world I would not do for any one of them. So when Niece #2 asked me if I would shoot pictures of her fiance and her, for the gifts table at their wedding I was naturally delighted and flattered.

Now, it should be noted that Niece #2 is very particular about how things should look, and had planned her wedding to the finest detail. I was therefore conscious of the exactitude that would be expected of my pictures.

We were in Toronto in January for the wedding. Arguably at least in that detail her planning had not been flawless - she could have chosen the Bahamas in January or Toronto in June, like her sister, but we digress.

We set off one cold morning to shoot the pictures and decided on the grounds of my son's old private boarding school as a suitable location. It offered plenty of old stone buildings, ivy covered walls, a beautiful chapel and wonderful wooded areas in which to shoot. Plus with school being out for the holidays we would not be bothered by anyone other than over-enthusiastic teachers anxious to prepare for the post-holiday term.

So as I posed and directed the young couple, I started with digital - my Nikon D70 with the excellent Sigma 70-210mm zoom. After a few shots, posing the couple in the lee of an evergreen with snow underfoot, I noticed that it was proving to be impossible to expose correctly for the shadows, the darker complexion of my niece; the snow and the lighter (the less politically correct would say 'white') complexion of her fiance. I either ended up blowing out the highlights on his face and the snow (not good at all) or getting deep shadows on her face (even worse). The dynamic range of the digital sensor just wasn't up to the challenge of this lighting situation.

So out came the trusty Nikon F5, loaded with Kodak Gold 400HD. After a brief pause to switch the lens from the digital body to the film body and another moment to slip on a warming filter, shooting resumed. I shot three rolls of film bracketing each shot with one stop under and one stop over the metered exposure for good measure. Going back to film, the thing I missed the most was being able to take a couple of test shots, study the histograms on the LCD, adjust exposure as appropriate and then blaze away until the scene or lighting changed.

So now with a productive morning's shooting in the bag, we dropped the film off for processing at a local mini-lab and repaired to the pub for a restorative pre-lunch drink. Picking up the processed film after lunch, the bride was suitably awed by the pictures and selecting the 'one' that would be used on the gifts table became the challenge.

She took the negatives and the 4x6 prints in their envelope and we left to show the rest of the family.

Later that evening the men (including the boys who could muster up the required fake ID) went off to host the groom at a bachelor party. Of course we all know that bachelor parties are like Vegas. What happens there stays there, even if the party in question was hosted by an uncle of the bride.

Before the festivities could turn really risque, the father of the bride rounded up the only young man under 21 and left the gala, pleading an early morning meeting. Whether this was to preserve plausible deniability or whether there really was an early morning meeting is unknown - and now unknowable.

When the partying contingent returned in the wee hours of the morning, we were greeted by a makeshift hand-lettered sign taped to the door that read "QUIET PLEASE. PEOPLE ARE SLEEPING". The sign made from a film envelope turned inside-out, and written in fastidious capitals was clearly the handiwork of the father of the bride.

The note struck the returning celebrants as somewhat churlish, and in their inebriation caused them to make more noise than they might have done otherwise. Amidst the muffled conversations and the shedding of shoes and coats in the hall, the note was forgotten.

The next morning, as the bride looked for the negatives to make prints, they were nowhere to be found. Whether they were lost when the sign was being made, or when the late night revelers got home, we shall never know. But lost they were. And lost they remain.

So, here's how film won over digital: The superior dynamic range of film over the digital sensor saved what could have been a day of less than pefect pictures. Since the ultimate output was going to be a print, the increased latitude of the print film over the digital sensor also helped to increase the percentage of acceptable pictures from the shoot.

And here's how film's victory over digital was pyrrhic: In the fact that film produced negatives which were left on a hall stand in an envelope, ready to be used for sign-making, probably caused them to be lost. Had I shot digitally, the memory card would have gone from the camera to a card reader and then straight back to the camera. Even if a CD bearing the images had been lost, I would still have the pictures on the memory card, since I hadn't had the time (or the need) to delete the pictures from the morning before we went out for our evening of revelry.

I don't quite know how to call this fight. But since the pictures are gone, I'd say we all lost.

Photography, Digital, Film, Dynamic Range

A cure for lens-envy?

Lens manufacturers spend billions of dollars in research to develop faster, sharper, more accurate lenses. The amount of money and time that goes into eliminating natural artifacts of bending light like chromatic aberration and distortion is absolutely mind-boggling.

With high refractive index glass making multi-element lenses extremely light, multi-coated lens surfaces eliminating the flightest bit of flare, ultra-sonic motors making auto-focus lenses exteremely quiet in operation, and vibration reduction technology rendering even long lenses stable enough to be hand-held in long exposures, the state of the art of lens design could be considered to have reached its zenith.

The arms race between lens manufacturers has ben escalating for some time now, with each trying to outdo the others with ever wider, faster, longer and sharper lenses - resulting in photographers coveting ever more exotic lenses at ever increasing prices.

Then along comes the Lensbaby. Turns the entire world of lens-snobbery on its ear. The lensbaby does not have multi-element lens groups. It has just two lenses. It does not have an auto-diaphragm. Heck it doesn't have a diaphragm at all. No iris. Just interchangeable aperture plates that you drop in behind the lens. So the aperture is adjustable, but only with a lot of effort. No multi-coating. No auto-focus. No focusing ring even. You adjust focus by pulling or pushing the slinky-like lens body either toward or away from the camera body.

Vibration reduction? Sure. Hold very still and stop breathing. Exposure control? Brush up on the Sunny 16 rule: No TTL metering is possible.

But the lensbaby has captured the hearts of photographers everywhere who are ordering the lens as fast as the company can make them. And the Lensbaby isn't cheap either. At $150 for the Lensbaby 2.0 (with the interchangeable aperture rings) it costs about the same as the Nikon 17-55mm zoom that comes packaged with the D70 and the D50.

The Lensbaby's use of chromatic aberration and flare, long the bane of every lens manufacturer, creates dreamy pictures that defy description. The ability to tilt and shift the lens barrel allows the user to move the sweet spot of focus around the frame to emphasise certain parts of the scene and not others.

The Lensbaby plays the meat-cleaver to the surgical laser of the modern CPU equipped auto-everything hypersonic lens. A curious mate to your $5,000 16MP DSLR! But it's flying off the shelves at a fantastic clip.

Its detractors claim that the same bendy effect caused by the Lightbaby can be re-created by PhotoShop in post-processing. But there's something elemental about the combination of relatively ordinary glass, intentional distortion caused by the tilt and shift of the lens and the flare caused by uncoated lens surfaces that it is extremely hard to intentionally set out create the same effect.

So am I saying all the billions of dollars poured into lens design is wasted, when a cheap lens with a bendy body would do? No. Hell no.

But it just goes to show, as in all things that cause envy, that the biggest, fastest, widest, longest or most expensive is not necessarily the best. That you can create wonderful pictures, achieve magnificent things without expensive equipment.

And so I offer you this Lensbaby picture for your delectation.

In appreciation of mothers everywhere

Just in time for Mothers' Day, I had the opportunity to witness who I think is perhaps the World's Most Dedicated Mother in her element.

Her dwelling is small and she has five boisterous children. Her day is spent working, but when she gets home she shares the meagre food she has earned during the day betweeen the kids and sometimes goes to bed hungry because there isn't enough for her. The kids are growing well and as each day passes, are becoming more independant. The mother of course continues to provide for the kids, expecting nothing by way of thanks. Her golden brown hair highlighted by the setting sun she gazes adoringly at her charges as they finish their evening meal.

I am referring to the brown fox that lives in our backyard and has just had a litter of five kits (which I believe is what fox cubs are called). As the kits play and explore the world around them we have come to know them and their idiosyncracies. They are Freddie, Flicka, Fidel, Frankie and Fiona.

Fearless Freddie is the black one with a little white patch on his back and a white tip to his tail. He derives great pleasure from taunting our Golden Retrievers from the other side of the patio door, secure in the knowledge that he is safe from the seething, foaming, 110 pounds of frustration that is Harley. He is wise to the ways of modern double-paned tempered glass, and knows that however hard Harley may throw himself at the door, all that is going to result is a wet print of a squashed snout on the inside of the glass. So he continues to stare in curious amusement at Harley.

Flicka is like her mother. Slight of build but with a rich russet gold pelt, she seems to prefer a quieter time. Not for Flicka the hurly burly of a chase down the mountain-side. She would rather curl up under the garden chair and watch the world go by with contemplative eyes.

All Foxie - the mother - needs to do, is to tilt her head and let out a high pitched call and they are all off - to gather around Mom to see what special treat she might have in store today. Like all mothers everywhere, Foxie's treat is nothing less than a mother's undying devotion to her children.

Happy Mothers Day Foxie.


Mothers Day
Foxes
Moms
Mums
Mothers Devotion

Of irrepressible spirit and immoderate vanity

First, the New York Times reports that work on the Freedom Tower, the building that is to rise to a height of 1776 feet where the twin World Trade Center towers stood before Sept 11, 2001, is continuing apace, some 65 feet below the surface. Construction began quietly some time ago and is expected to be completed in 2011.

The project, bedevilled by political wrangling and financial posturing, nonetheless is an excellent example of the indomitable spirit of the American people. I can think of no more moving and inspiring symbol of a nation giving a collective middle finger to the ranks of terrorists, than to build a bigger, bolder, stronger and more spectacular edifice to replace the one they tore down.

On the other end of the scale, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, or perhaps merely the ridiculously vain, the London Daily Telegraph reports that Mark Oaten, a married man with two children, and a British Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament confessed that he had an affair with a male prostitute, (a rent boy as the English so colorfully term it) because he was going bald.

Am I the only one who thinks that Mr. Oaten's reasoning is a little specious? When a man discovers he is going bald, membership to the Hair Club for Men and comb-overs probably occur to him as possible cures well before a homosexual fling.

Being gloriously bald myself, I can confess quite candidly that taking up with a 'rent boy' didn't cross my mind once.

And now, as the Monty Python crew used to say, for something completely different: Stephen Colbert is the toast of every Democratic get-together and the scourge of every Republican banquet, for his performance at the Annual White House Correspondent's dinner. He lampooned the President, but flubbed a joke of his own. If you're the only person in the free world who hasn't seen the video, check it out here.

The whole evening was covered by C-Span, that pre-eminent cure for insomnia, but realizing they had some hot material on their hands they have since allowed a number of sites to carry the video. I am prediciting a significant increase in C-Span viewership at least for a while.
[Colbert]
[Mark Oaten]
[Lib Dem]
[Freedom Tower]

Purity of purpose in Tequila

With Cinco de Mayo almost upon us, the Science Blog brings us great news. They report that German and Mexican scientists are identifying the chemical characteristics of pure Tequila and thereby helping to distinguish the pure and genuine article from adulterated versions that are entering the billion dollar a year Tequila market.

Read all about it here.