Miklb's Mindless Ramblings

I picked up a Canon SX-20 IS several months back, but due to a variety of reasons, I’d not really taken it out yet and started shooting pictures with it. Nor have I done much digital photography using manual settings, so today I set out to remedy that. I’m a complete novice when it comes to fully understanding aperture, shutter speed and ISO speeds, but I’m determined to learn. So far the Canon SX-20 seems to be the perfect place to start. With that said, this is by no means a review of the camera as I’m completely not qualified to comment on what is right or wrong with the camera. I chose it based on feedback from a couple of amateur photographers whose knowledge of photography I respect. They both had the SX-10, and based on the features and cost, the SX-20 seemed not to be too far from what the SX-10 offered.

Today I primarily tried to just get used to adjusting the f-stop and shutter speed to get a good balance. I primarily stuck with 400 and 800 for ISO. Having never used a digital camera to adjust these settings, it certainly seemed like a good starting point for getting familiar with the controls. All and all, by the end of the walk along the board walk at Lettuce Lake Park, I was feeling fairly comfortable with the controls and adjusting the two settings. I’m still getting familiar with finding objects in the viewer when trying to locate a specific object (like a certain flower or the Cuban Yellow Warbler). Certainly something with practice I’m sure I’ll get the hang of. I also need to pay more attention to my light source, but for having not picked up the camera in several months, I think I got a few good picks, which is probably more of a testament of the camera than my abilities at this point. I am however confident that this camera will be a great learning tool as well as have the ability to capture some nice images. Now I can’t wait to read up a little more on balancing ISO with shutter speed and f-stop, as well as just get out and take more pictures. Next time I’m thinking about a more urban setting like Ybor.

You can view a few more from the set of pics I took today.

Note: These are completely untouched with any post processing. I really want to see the original image so as to compare as I continue to learn.

I was a quasi punk teenager when I first traveled to Hyde Park to experience “art”. Sure, I’d done the Ybor thing, but this was high end stuff as far as I had experienced it. A live performance of actors was way more than seeing Black Flag do 3 songs then run off stage. This was School of Night. I honestly don’t remember the skits, but I do remember Jeff and another actor doing a scene from a Sam Shepard piece ( I think it was from True West).

As I grew older, I took advantage of the opportunities to experience Jeff’s larger performances with troupes like American Stage. During this time, I was introduced to Jeff through a mutual acquaintance. He was humble, brooding. Everything I had pictured an artist to be. I was jealous.

I thought him an older but kindred spirit, not a celebrity. He was an artist. I got a glimpse of a genius. Someone who was so comfortable with his art; perhaps tortured in the fact that he was such a craftsman of his art that he could perform it in a burgh such as Tampa. He trusted that there were like minded souls who also parked their tent in this god-forsaken mosquito ridden peninsula of peninsulas a genuine art scene would evolve. I know I cooked food with that same passion. I regret I didn’t stay true to my own passion…

I for one apologize for being so shortsighted I didn’t realize it sooner–yes, I wanted a dynamic, brilliant local scene. And there is one. Theatre, food, dance… it’s all there. Maybe not how I envisioned it because I wanted brilliance such as Jeff’s to be national news, and in my youth I lost my vision.

However, in the twilight of my own perspective, and in the sunset of the passing of Jeff Norton, I reflect on that first night in a little corner bistro at Howard and Azeele, and pray that the baton of pure passion and art will continued to be passed.

God speed Jeff Norton, god speed.

Austin: Why don’t you just try another neighborhood, all right?

Lee: What’sa’ matta with this neighborhood? This is a great neighborhood. Lush. Good class a’ people…”

From True West

Brilliance

I tweeted Monday “having a scratch text file to cut and paste stuff you want to think about before sending/posting/saying is one of my better ideas…”. This elicited a couple of responses, a bit to my surprise, as I was basically saying it out loud to myself as a reminder to use this principal. I have all too often fired off an email, tweet, forum response, or comment on a post full of knee jerk reaction, emotion and haste. Only to regret it as soon as I hit send, wishing I had thought through the ramifications of the response.

I wanted to clarify a bit on how/why I do this. As I’ve said, the main reason is if I have this unsaved text file already open, then I can quickly cut and paste the response to this file, move on to what ever it was I was doing before writing the response, and revisit later. This is different than crafting thought out responses in advance of posting or replying, which as Sean suggested in one of the responses to use Notational Velocity. I have well documented my love of Notational Velocity, and do indeed use it in this scenario. These are thoughts that I ruminate over, that I want to save even after posting or sending.

I also didn’t mean to suggest that this was some ground breaking idea or that it might be completely original. It is simply something that I have found works for me and prevents me from putting my foot in my mouth or worse. It allows me to get something off my chest and get the emotional element on paper, but move on without any ramifications. If after some period of time I still feel the need to respond to what ever it is, I can go back to this file, pull the relevant elements out the response, and temper the emotional aspects and pragmatically respond. However, if after some time, I feel the response is unwarranted or moot, I simply let it go. Having it as an unsaved file, I then figuratively “let it go” by closing the file without saving. For what ever reason, I feel if I save the file, I’m somehow hanging onto these thoughts which I’ve already deemed unworthy of sending. Hanging onto these thoughts, whether figuratively or literally, I find unhealthy for myself. They simply are added baggage to an already overfull luggage rack in my mind.

For those that don’t know me that well, I’m a Florida native, raised on the west coast my whole life. Much of my childhood and teen years were spent in or on the water - fishing, canoeing, hanging at the beach and everything in between. The Florida of my childhood is very much a distant memory due to the inevitable growth in population, however the beaches and bay still are very much special places. No matter how bad things seem to get, an afternoon wading the flats fishing or a day at the beach - watching porpoises bobbing along feeding in a channel, a manatee grazing on a grass bed a few feet away, seeing an osprey fly by with a whole mackerel clutched in its talons - and my day to day worries melt away and I’m reminded why I’ve never ventured far away from this part of the globe. (Note, I observed all three of those encounters just this past Friday and Saturday.

Now, all of this is in jeopardy due to an out of control oil rig out in the gulf, spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day with no end in sight. So far, luck has been on the people of the gulf’s side, with currents from the Mississippi keeping the oil stationary for the most part. However, we also know that this won’t last forever, and scientist warn that when, not if, the oil moves into the gulf currents, an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude will effect at least some portions of Florida, if not not the entire coast, possibly even getting caught in currents that move it all the way to the east coast. Even if this doesn’t directly impact the Tampa Bay area, the shear nature of the migratory aspect of many of the species of the gulf, the oil spill will ultimately have consequences on my beloved waters. And with hurricane season less than a month away, reports say the well might not be capped for several months, there’s no telling how a storm could effect things.

There has been much discussion the last few years about opening up Florida’s west coast to off shore drilling, including allowing rigs as close as 5 miles from shore. If this well had been that close, there wouldn’t even be discussion about where the effect would be felt. We’d be seeing scenes on the news very much like the ones from the Exxon Valdez accident - egrets and herons coated in oil, shores awash in dead fish and sea life bathed in globs of crude oil. That still very well may be played out somewhere along the coast. How in good conscience then could anyone support such a move? I think Bill Maher sums up my feelings on this the best.“Every asshole who ever chanted ‘Drill baby drill’ should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty”. The facts are clear about how much oil is even in the gulf and how little benefit the U.S. would experience from such drilling, not to mention how far off in the future we would even see this minute impact. In that amount of time I think we can find an alternate energy source that would have less environmental impact and provide the same amount of energy.

There’s a joke making the rounds on Twitter today,

“Large Air Spill at Wind Farm. No threats reported. Some claim to enjoy the breeze.”

I’d certainly trade a thousand windmills silhouetting one of our picturesque sunsets to avoid another catastrophe such as this one. I’d just want assurances that Halliburton doesn’t have anything to do with them.

Just wanted to jot down some thoughts on the news that came out Friday that Twitter had acquired Tweetie, the mobile/desktop Twitter client.

I’m not a developer, so I don’t have any skin in the game, but I do use the service, have paid for Tweetie for the iPhone, and am constantly looking for the perfect OS X desktop client. Thus far, Nambu has been my app of choice, suffering through the many iterations during beta testing to the point it’s a pretty damn good choice. I’d probably pay $15 for it if were to come to that.

My first thoughts on the matter is that Twitter is still looking to monetize, they can’t go on sucking up VC forever. Certainly selling mobile apps isn’t the way they’re going to go, they’ve already said as I understand it that they will release the next version as free (at least that’s what I think I read).

There’s been much debate in the past about how this would happen, and I genuinely think they are finally preparing for advertising. Certainly this deal had to be in the works prior to the iAds announcement, with Steve Jobs lambasting current mobile ads, and outlining that monetizing search on the mobile platform as being a poor business model, but it is what got me thinking this way. Why else would Twitter be buying up mobile/desktop clients to give away free if they weren’t preparing to have inline ads in time lines? Or offering a freemium model to have ad-free time lines? I’m not suggesting they would use iAds, rather their own inline advertising. Similar to how Twitteriffic does now in it’s free versions.

Certainly this is all just conjecture on my part, but not one that I’ve seen discussed in the fallout from Friday’s announcement. Simply wanted to put it down in writing so I would stop wandering off on the subject every time I read about the transaction.

UPDATE
Well, that didn’t take long to come true - NY Times - Twitter to Make Money with Ads. As I said last night in a tweet, it certainly wasn’t prophetic, as there had been much speculation on how Twitter would monetize and advertising was one way discussed, but calling it the morning of the announcement with little other speculation that I’m aware of, must earn me some kind of geek merit badge?

So it seems by snagging the best mobile clients for themselves, if they do wind up doing revenue sharing for inline ads, they cut out the middle man on a popular platform.