Friday, July 28, 2006
War in piece
Sheila Lennon writes, In this hot, busy summer, I've been ducking the chaos called Middle East news. Me too. But then Sheila raises her head and presses on at some length, with reports from Beirut cafes and other places. She concludes, after pointing out that Newt Gingrich and others pushing for World War III find Condi Rice "not hawkish enough",
I never thought I'd see Condi as the last woman standing against those who would blow up the world.
Negatives and positives
I just added a the rest of the pictures in the two series pictured below. Much of today's blogging is in the notes below the pictures I posted, starting here.
Sadly, those shots are my last for awhile with the new Canon 30D. See the spots near the top of this picture here? And this one? And this one? Well, they're on the sensor, and won't come off. So the camera has to go back to Canon.
There is also dust in the pentaprism too, and the shop isn't allowed to take the camera apart to repair that.
Anyway, this is one upside of buying a camera from a store (in this case, Samy's), rather than online. They diagnosed the problem, looked me up, saw the camera was mine and under warranty, and sent it off.
Meanwhile, I still have the old Nikon Coolpix as a standby.
Oh, a trick. If you want to see how much dust is on your sensor, shoot the sky. If possible, stop down to the narrowest (highest) f stop. Look at the shot on your computer. If you have Photoshop, or the Gimp, or some other photo-manipulation software, do auto-enhancement of color levels — or otherwise maximize the contrast. If your sensor is as dirty as mine, the sky shot will look like this before...
And this after...
You may not notice it on many pictures. I did, but kept attributing it to dust on lenses or airplane windows. Now I know better.
A culprit, it seems, is zoom lenses that aren't sealed. If they get dust on the barrel that slides in and out, the dust finds its way inside the lens itself. There it redistributes over time to every surface, including the sensor.
This is why good lenses, like the Canon L series, are expensive but worth it.
Loose links
The Onion: Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years of American Independence.
Dr. Weinberger on The Scardy Cat Encyclopedia:
The Encyclopedia Britannica has refused my request to interview an editor for 15 minutes about the process by which it chooses authors. I explained that this is for a book. But, the head of the Britannica's communications group decided - based on what? - that they don't want to support people who are "cheerleading for the downfall of businesses that they deem to be part of an old regime."
All part of the command-and-control mentality at some of our great institutions of knowledge.
Go team! Sis boom bah!
Top level
Scott Rosenberg: Outliners then and now. I don't know if outlining software will ever take off, but to me it feels like a natural way to use a computer.
Wildfires in Oregon and California
I got a bunch of shots of wildfires in the Sisters region of Oregon and the Trinity Alps of California. Here's one news report. Here's another.
The fire photoset is a subset of the longer (and still unfinished) series of windowshots from Portland to San Francisco to Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon.
If any news organizations want to use any of these, feel free.