A last look back at 2010

A quick review of 2010 (and some history that leads into it, too)

I’ve been trying to summarize 2010; it’s really the first year in a while I give a passing grade (so to speak). I think the bottom line is that 2010 is the first year in the last few that I am kinda sad to see go, as opposed to wishing it a fond farewell and that the door not hit it on the butt on the way out. The last few years have brought some challenges, but for the most past, they either seem in the past, or things I now have under control and I can move forward from to other, more fun things. So if I have to grade 2010, I’ll give it a B, and life in general a B+.

2010 was a year of transition and starting the process of moving forward after years of stasis. A body at rest really wants to stay on the damn couch, so it takes some time and energy to get everything going again. 2010 was about figuring out what the priorities are and getting the motion going in those directions, and I’m hoping that translates into momentum on a number of projects I’m trying to get off the ground.

I entered 2010 recently diagnosed with Diabetes — a bit of high blood pressure, triglycerides above 500, A1C about 13% and a blood glucose above 400. For those not versed in medical geek speak, those are numbers that are getting dangerously close to a diabetic coma or some other health crisis. Today, my A1C is normal, my cholsterol and triglycerides are normal, my blood sugar is well controlled and rarely hits 160 after meals, and is more typically 145 or below. My doctor is happy, I’m pretty happy, and I feel great. 2010 was about learning to manage and thrive as a diabetic, because for the rest of my life, no matter what I do, that’ll be part of my life.

There are some challenges remaining; so far, the best I’ve done is battle my weight to a tie. Taking that next step, getting the weight off, is a key goal for 2011. The good news is that my weight is what it was before the diabetes hit, back in 2007; the bad news is that this number needs to be a lot smaller than it is. I’ll be talking about that down the road — one of the things I’ve been doing is figuring out what changes I need to make to make this happen. Now, I actually need to do it.

I feel like I took some positive steps forward in my photography, and I’m quite happy with my work. I still have work to do and areas where I need to grow; I have some ideas on what I want to do in 2011 to move in those directions. I was able to revamp the blog, and I’ve gotten my writing going again on a pretty consistent basis — and I expect to continue that and move it into some new directions in 2011 as well.

Work’s taken up a lot of hours, a lot of energy and created a lot of challenges. The good news is that we did well enough that HP put a billion dollars into us and said “now, go do it better”; in 2011, you’ll see what that means, and I’m looking forward to when we can show that off. Still a lot of work to do, and in reality, that job is just starting, but I like what’s happening and the direction we’re taking, even if I can’t talk about it yet.

So overall, it’s been a good year. More important to me, it’s been a gateway from some pretty sucky years into what I hope and expect to be an even better year. Because of the apnea things started grinding to a halt in 2005; with the apnea and diabetes dealt with, I feel like we put the jumper cables on the battery and we have the bandwagon in gear; we’ll see in 2011 how far we can drive it.

And so, a last look back at 2010, and then we’ll turn the page, and start making 2011 happen. And thanks to all of you for being here and being part of it with me, with your thoughts and ideas and feedback and help. It’s appreciated, and I’m looking forward to seeing 2011 unfold for all of us, together.

2010 Photography highlights

You can find what I consider to be my best 2010 images in their own blog post.

2010 Blog Highlights

• January 29: in The Apple TV has not failed, I argued against the geek-echo-chamber-pundits who were writing off the Apple TV as a failure. Since that time, Apple has released the new generation of Apple TV (which many of those same geek-echo-chamber-pundits declared a failure, because it’s not geek-worthy hackable) and of course, they were seriously wrong, since Apple’s noted they sold a million units so far. Ring up another one for the geek community not realizing the consumer device market is very different than the geek market (and much larger) and declaring anything not geeky enough for them a failure. Secondary note — I got my new Apple TV for christmas and installed it today, and it rocks. Not because it’s geeky, but because it sits there and works when I ask it to.
• January 29: I also wrote A few thoughts on lenses, which I still think hits the mark with some interesting ideas on how to decide what lenses you need. Laurie decided she wanted a new lens for her camera for christmas, and I ended up getting her the Sigma 18-125mm f/3.8-5.6, which I decided was the best of the moderately priced wide angle “street” zooms. I ended up choosing that instead of 18-200 because while it doesn’t have quite the zoom power, it’s sharper across the range. I’ve come to think that the superzoom lenses have their place and are growing in prominence in the field, but aren’t always the best option. In my case, I’m rarely using my Tamron superzoom in those zoom ranges, so for me today, the sharpness factor is more important than getting the extra magnification.
• March 14: It turns out my vacation this year was a couple of days in Yosemite in March. Fortunately, they were some really kick-butt days, as you can see from the photos that came out of it.
• March 31: I hosted I and the Bird. For that, I wrote The Bird(ing) and Me.
• May 27: I fell down and go boom, sprained the left side of my body, and put myself on the shelf for about six weeks.
• June 19: I talk about online images and watermarking.
• July 4: My new design for chuqui.com finally ships. and here, six months later, I still like it (but I intend to do some tweaking).
• July 29: I bought a new laptop. And for the first time in forever, didn’t feel a need to buy the top of the line beastie from Apple (and then talked about it after I settled in and used it a bit. months later, I’m thrilled at the decision I made, I love this unit).
• August 12: Vacation part deux (and part two): two days photographing on the central coast. Man, I gotta stop being so slackworthy at work and slow down at taking so much time off.
• August 14: I write about my photographic mentors and inspirations. These are the folks who really pushed me into where I am as a photographer, and are pushing me towards where I want to be.
• August 18: and then I talked a bit about why I decided to hold off on going pro with the camera. Something I need to explore further here in the blog. soon.
• October 18: I wrote up my thoughts on defining and using keywords in Lightroom. By far my most popular piece of writing in 2010 — thank you for the links and feedback.
• October 21: I announced I was making available images for use as desktop wallpapers. You can find the entire set here on my smugmug site. They have been very well received (thank you!) and I intend to expand on this in 2011. Stay tuned.
• October 27: I made it out for a birding and photo shoot at Merced National Wildlife Refuge.
• October 29: I write about what it takes to do effective bird photography.
• December 22: To HDR? Or not HDR? is that really still the question?
• December 23: I wander back into hockey writing with the intiation of my Notes from the Commish series.
• December 25: A special gift from me to you, the story Downtime; a previously unpublished piece of fiction from me. Expect to see more of my older writing, and more talk about writing, in 2011.

notes from the commish – no-touch icing

Welcome to the latest ruling in “Notes from the Commish” where I as the Commish of the NHL (in my universe) and my Vice President of Disclipine Barfy will pontificate upon the state of the game and what I think needs to be changed. The fact is, NHL hockey is in pretty damn good shape overall, not that you’d believe that reading some of the pundits out there.  But the reality is, a business the size of the NHL can never be perfect, and there are always things that can be improved, and there will always be things that need to be fixed. Unlike, say, a large Canadian hockey broadcaster that’s absolutely perfect and can cast stones at all around it without fear of retribution. But I digress.

Remember, kiddos, in the NHL, it’s not a game. It’s a business built around a game. And that makes a huge difference. And people who play the “it’s just a game” card are either stupid, or are being incredibly disingenuous, and for either reason, deserve to be ignored by you, the discerning fan that can actually think.

Tonight’s Note from the Commish is on the no-touch icing rule.

We recently had a situation where Jody Shelley was suspended for two games for a hit on an icing, which has created a situation where some of the hockey pundits have woken up and remembered they used to rag on the NHL for not implementing no-touch icing. So they ragged on the NHL for implementing no-touch icing, and I guess went back to sleep.

After being in the arena and maybe 25′ away when Curtis Foster went down with a broken pelvis, and watching when Marco Sturm was seriously injured on an icing play, you might think I’d be in favor of the no-touch icing rule. And for a long time, I was.

But the NHL has adopted a rule to limit the chance of injury on icing — it’s part of rule 81:

Any contact between opposing players while pursuing the puck on an icing must be for the sole purpose of playing the puck and not for eliminating the opponent from playing the puck. Unnecessary or dangerous contact could result in penalties being assessed to the offending player.

Agree? Disagree? drop a comment with your opinion.

Got a rule or some aspect of hockey you want the Commish or — Colin —  to rule on? drop us an email or a comment with the question. And we’ll be back soon with another Note from the Commish.

 

 

which hockey writers do I follow?

Recently I made some comments about hockey media that were interepreted as being negative, because, well, they were. There are some members of the hockey media family, especially in Canada, that seem to come from the “if you can’t say something negative, you aren’t trying hard enough” school of writing, taking the idea that good news doesn’t sell newspapers to the illogical extreme of believing that you simply shouldn’t say anything positive. And it drives me nuts. I’m a believer in being  balanced, and I know I’m hitting my mark when I’m getting yelled at for being both a suck-up and trashing a team at the same time…

There are some members of the hockey family that I believe are so negative that they are in fact a detriment to the league, because some fans actually pay attention to them and believe their viewpoint that everything sucks. My view? If I really felt that way about something, I’d drop it out of my life and go do something that doesn’t leave me miserable. To some of these guys, I strongly recommend that option.

But in an attempt to be balanced… Here’s my naughty and nice lists, the folks I tend to go to for information and pay attention to when they give an opinion — and the guys I’ve come to feel over the years aren’t worth wasting electrons or oxygen on, and so try to avoid as much as possible.  The nice list are balanced, call it like they see it, take time to study an issue and report on it, and generally try to inform. The naughty list tend to take on simplistic, negative, kneejerk positions and hype things as loud as possible, and in many cases turn themselves into the story rather than the event or the sport. If you read them, take them with a grain of salt, IMHO. Or better yet, stop.

A few notes on my personal biases and choices here. I’m focusing primarily on writers and broadcasters with a national audience; I don’t spend a lot of time reading beat guys not in my local market any more, and I’m not commenting on play by play or color guys on TV or Radio, but I am covering the analysts and commentary guys who are more opinion based.

I do this as a fan of the sport; San Jose is my local town and we’ve been going to games since the first year they’ve been in the league, but I consider myself a hockey fan in San Jose, not a Sharks fan. Now, I’m a fan of the Sharks, too — but I’m a fan of hockey and the league first. Your mileage will probably vary.

And I decided not to link to anyone, naughty or nice. If you’re curious, it’ll be easy to find them. It seemed too much like a cheap linkbait, and I felt that was the wrong thing to do in this case. I”m not trying to get in people’s faces, just express my opinion. Unlike most of the guys on my naughty list. And I’m sorting them by first name to avoid any hint that I’m ranking them in any way…

NICE

• Bob McKenzie, TSN
• Chris Botta, Slap Shot
• Damian Cox, Toronto Star (most of the time)
• David Pollak, San Jose Mercury News
• Elliotte Friedman, CBC
• Eric Duhatschek, Toronto Globe and Mail (one of my favorite writers, period).
• Gary Greene, NHL Network
• Jim Matheson, Edmonton Journal
• Mike Chen, From the Rink
• Mike Heika, Dallas Morning News
• Pierre Lebrun, ESPN (one of the most balanced, quiet and intelligent voices out there. How did he get stuck at ESPN, anyway?)
• Pierre McGuire, TSN (okay. I KNOW I”m going to get yelled at for this. But once you get past his sometimes over the top attitude, he knows his stuff. And I’ve come to appreciate his willingness to go over the top on something he feels strongly about, even though sometimes he doe sit too often and turns himself into a self-parody drama queen. His depth of knowledge makes me forgive him for that. Most of the time)
• PJ Swenson, Sharkspage
• Red Fischer, Montreal Gazette
• Roy MacGregor, Toronto Globe and Mail (and the only other writer that competes with Duhatschek as favorite writer, period).

NAUGHTY

• Adam Proteau, The Hockey News
• Adrian Dater, All Things Avs
• Al Strachan, increasingly irrelevant publications. (Just look at his CV and see how the quality of the publications he’s represented over there years has dropped. Why isn’t he retired out to pasture, where he belongs? When CBC brought him back for Satellite Hotstove, I lost all respect for that broadcast. And then they added Mike Milbury.)
• Bruce Garrioch, Ottawa Sun (look “how not to be a good writer” up in the dictionary, and you’ll find his picture. The epitomy of negativism and kneejerk writing)
• Don  Cherry, CBC (for all Don Cherry has done for hockey — and what he’s done for hockey is huge — he stopped being interesting to me after Rose died. He got more bombastic, angrier and less interesting to listen to. Today, I find him mostly painful to tune in on, and I’m sad to say that. But honestly, Don, it’s time to retire. It was three or four years ago.)
• Ken Campbell, The Hockey News (Ken, get over the fighting thing already)
• Larry Brooks, New York Post (look “it’s about me! it’s about me!” up in the dictionary, and you’ll find his picture. And as far as I can tell, everything about hockey sucks, because that’s how he writes it. The joy of tabloid journalism. Unfortunately, some people take him seriously. Fortunately, I don’t).
• Mike Milbury, NESN, CBC (his attitude and opinions on CBC make me wish someone would be stupid enough to hire him as GM again…)
• Ron MacLean, CBC (has gone from my nice list to my naughty list over the last few years; he increasingly makes himself the story and injects himself into reporting in ways I find inappropriate. He uses the “get to the guts of the story” as an excuse to jump on some people, but where his biases are more favorable, he’s great at the softball interview. He didn’t used to be that way.)
• Steve Simmons, Toronto Sun (and most writers from most of the Sun papers; The Sun papers are the canadian tabloids, and give the new york post a run for the money)
• Tony Gallagher, Vancouver Province (most of the time)
• oh, hell, The Hockey News in general because it stopped being readable years ago.

So, where am I right? Why am I wrong? Who did I miss? One I’ll note here is Paul Kukla, who I don’t mention because he is more curator than journalist, so I don’t think he qualifies for these lists, but he’d be on my nice list if he did. He does a fine job of what he does. And of course, there’s the guys from that buzzy site, which I won’t mention even indirectly, and which I won’t comment on because nothing they do remotely represents journalism, unless you see Entertainment Tonight as legitimate journalism. And Entertainment Tonight is more accurate.

 

A special Christmas gift: downtime

Merry Christmas!

Here’s a little christmas surprise — the story is called Downtime, and I wrote it in the early 90′s. It was at one point going to be published by Pulphouse but never made it into print. This is the first time it’s been published.

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

A bit of history — I wrote a number of stories about your typical IT type contractor, who got into doing work for an unusual clientele;  other stories in this series that got published including being hired by God to hack Satan’s databases and working for a witch to fix her spell database on Halloween. The series was about your typical middle class normal working stiff finding out that things we consider fantasy elements were in fact true. I enjoyed twisting the standards of the field in different ways, just to see what happened, and treating fantasy as SF (or vice versa) was a writing hack I liked. These stories also tended to feature Apple computers and cockatoos, just because I could….

The intent was to write a continuing series of these stories, other future clients included an embezzling Tooth Fairy that wanted the evidence deleted, A leprechaun who lost his pot of gold at the track, Elvis and the Easter Bunny. Ultimately I thought I might tie it all together into a novel.

For now, though, it’s just a fun remnant of my writing life, and I hope you enjoy it.

Downtime

The phone rang just as I taped my finger to Kevin’s present.  I didn’t want to spend Christmas Eve working, but when you run a business like mine, you do what you have to do.  You can’t ignore your customers.  Emergencies don’t take holidays off, and nobody would be calling me tonight for anything else.  I ran and grabbed it on the third ring.

“Jason Chilson?  My name is William Shields.  My apologies for calling so late, but we have an emergency and you come highly recommended.”

“Mr. Shields, if you need me tonight I’m available, but it is Christmas Eve.  You would save a lot of money by waiting until the 26th.”

“I realize this is an imposition, but we have a critical deadline and the entire operation is at a standstill.  If we don’t get things finished up tonight, we’ll lose a major contract.”

There went my hope for spending the evening with my family.

“If you’ll let me know where to meet you, Mr. Shields, I’ll see what I can do.  With any luck we can resolve this quickly and get everyone home for Christmas.”

The streets were almost empty, most people already home with their families and the rest jamming the malls.  The jeweler who had the earrings that Gina wanted had already closed, not that I could afford them, but the bike shop was staying open late.  Maybe, just maybe, I could get there before they closed and buy Kevin that bike he longed for.  That I could squeeze in knowing the money was coming, so maybe this job wouldn’t be a complete loss.

I drove past that travel agency with the Bermuda posters. Sigh. We went to Bermuda on our honeymoon.  Kevin would love Bermuda.  I haven’t had a vacation since I started this damn business.  Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.

My destination was on the outskirts of the financial district, a company called Toyland Imports.  A bored guard signed me in and escorted me to the elevator, which took me to the 15th floor.  The elevator door slid open and I stepped out into the snow.

Snow?  I looked around. The floor of the 15th floor was covered with snow.  The elevator door closed behind me. I glance behind me, to see the elevator door firmly attached to a large, granite rock. In front of me, across the snow-covered ground, stood a small cottage.  Behind it I saw another building the must have been a barn, since there was a corral attached to it.  The animals in the corral were definitely not horses. Elk? On the 15th floor?

I decided I must be hallucinating. I’m on the 15th floor of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. It doesn’t snow in buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

Does it?

“Mr. Chilson! Glad you could make it.  Let’s go inside where it’s warm and we can get started.”

I shook myself out of my reverie, and bent down to shake the outstretched hand.  That was when I noticed that the hand was attached to a four-foot tall man wearing Spock ears. I decided I was definitely hallucinating. I must be.

“Mr. Shields?”

He must have noticed my confusion, because he smiled and wiggled his ears.  ”Call me Bill.  My elven name is Hëathflig, but I don’t use it with humans.  Welcome to North Pole Station.  C’mon into the workshop and I’ll explain.  We’ve got some wonderful mulled cider on the stove.”

I followed him down the path, around the cottage and past the barn to a large, square building.  I wished I had a jacket, but I hadn’t realized it was going to be snowing.

The cider was as good as he’d claimed, but it didn’t make me less confused.  ”Bill, how did I get to the North Pole?”

“Not the North Pole, North Pole Station.  We’re currently somewhere outside the orbit of Mars.  We had to abandon the Pole itself in the ’30s when airplanes and scientists got too close for comfort.  The elevator is a teleportation unit.  Toyland Imports is a front operation for my employer, Santa Claus.  We like to keep a low profile.”

“You work for Santa Claus?”

“Jolly old man, wears red clothes, laughs a lot, needs to go on a diet.  Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

“I’ve heard of him.  I just stopped believing in him about thirty years ago.  I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, either.”

“If this project works out, I can arrange for you to meet him.  The rabbit could use a good consultant.”

I choked on my cider.  As he handed me a napkin, he was trying hard not to laugh and doing a rotten job of it.  ”I’m sorry about that, but I couldn’t resist.  No, the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, but I hate passing up a good straight line.”

His ears twitched when he laughed.  I tried really hard to hate him, but I found myself grinning along with him.  Well, if I had to hallucinate, I guess I could do a lot worse than this. I haven’t had cider this good since grandmom died. “Remind me to wear a bib before I ask about the Tooth Fairy. You probably realize this is a bit tough to accept right away but given that the alternatives is that I’ve gone stark, raving mad and I don’t believe even Roger would try to pull off a practical joke this, um, enthusiastic, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for now, and I’ll worry about my sanity once your computer is back on-line.” I took another sip. “Damn, but this is good cider.”

“If you want, I’ll get the recipe from Mrs. Claus for you. How about we get you a refill and go check out the disaster zone? We wouldn’t want Kevin to wake up to a missing dad on Christmas.  The machine’s in the over here.”

“How did you know his name?”

He stood up.  ”I work for Santa, remember?  Making a list and checking it twice and all that stuff. Good kid, but he needs to cut back on sweets.  Too many cavities in his last checkup. What do you think the computer is for? Oh, and the Tooth Fairy is real. Pays in cash, if you don’t mind quarters.”

He laughed and grabbed my cup and took it into the back room. When he re-appeared, the cup was steaming. He waved me over, and I followed him. I realized I was smiling.

We ended up on what was  obviously a manufacturing floor. Manufacturing is the same everywhere, even if the line workers are three feet tall with orange skin and beards, even on the women.  However, a healthy floor is alive with noise and chaos and the silence was deafening.  There were at least a dozen production lines building, boxing, or wrapping what seemed to be every possible toy in existence, from dolls and tapes to bikes and stereos.  Nothing was moving.

“Jesus.  You’re completely shut down?”

“Our entire system is computerized now.  Fully relational database, with cross-references into the good/bad lists, the wish lists and the need lists.  We didn’t realize we had a problem until the Quality group noticed we were sending a subscription for Organic Gardening to Rush Limbaugh.  We started checking, and we found the entire database was corrupted.  We had to shut down because.”

“Let me guess, Bill.  If we don’t fix it tonight, there’ll be no Christmas, right?”

“This isn’t a TV show, Jason.  You’ve done your Christmas shopping, right? Will those presents magically disappear at midnight?” He shook his head. “No, we don’t own Christmas, but there are thousands of people out there — kids and adults — who will wake up tomorrow and be disappointed if we don’t pull this off. We don’t do major miracles up here, but thousands of minor miracles can be just as satisfying.”

We walked past a workbench where a couple of computers were being assembled.

“Bill, you build computers, too?”

“Yeah — those are Apple II’s.  We worked out a special deal with Wozniak years back.  He thought it was great idea.  We’ve been trying to do the same for the Macintosh for three years, but the contract is stuck somewhere in Legal.  The Brownies are a pain when negotiating a contract, but we haven’t lost a suit yet.  IBM won’t return our calls though, and we can’t work with the Asian clone manufacturers. So while we do some clones, our mainstay is still the Apple II.” He sighed.

“Seems like easy money for them. Why won’t they cut a deal?”

“They don’t believe in Santa Claus.  They say they won’t do business with ghosts.”

“You contract with the toy companies for this, then?  This stuff is legit?”

“Sure.  We have contracts with everyone.  We don’t want to steal their product or cut into their income, so we get samples, build our version here and then deposit funds into the company’s account to cover what we built.  As far as their accountants are concerned, we’re just another third world sub-contractor that builds their product off-shore and ships directly to the retail outlets.  To the kids, it’s as good as the originals.  Sometimes better.  Our failure rate is a lot lower than most companies.”

We walked through another door into an office filled with computer terminals, and then into the computer room, filled almost to overflowing with a collection of machines that would make the most jaded techno-nerd drool.  He sat me down in front of a terminal and logged me onto the machine.

While their hardware was exotic, the software was pretty vanilla. When one thinks of Santa Claus, if you think of him at all, it’s a man with a parchment book and a quill pen scribbling notes, not a couple of mini-computers with an Accounts Payable program and a relational database, but the reality is that down below the facade, even the most romantic and exotic industries are pretty mundane. The bills have to get paid, the orders have to get shipped. Right now, however, that wasn’t happening. Time to get to work.

I pulled up a few sample records to see what happens.  They definitely were having some problems, but nothing that some time and sweat wouldn’t fix.  Fortunately, their system was based on a program I’d worked with, which makes things easier for me. Going into software cold is scary.

I started a couple of background procedures to re-initialize the table indexes.

“I think you’re in luck, Bill.  As far as I can tell, nothing’s lost, and I should be able to get things patched together. Did the system crash recently?”

He nodded. “Three days ago. Rudolph was practicing landings and put a sled into a powerline. Diagnostics showed it was clean, so we thought everything was fine. We noticed the problems this morning.”

“He’s okay, isn’t he?” I suddenly realized I was worried about the health of a deer with a light bulb for a nose. When did I decide this was for real? I mentally shrugged.

“Rudolph is fine. No injuries, just short enough power failure to kill the computers. It happens once in a while. This is the first problem we’ve had.”

“Normally, you shouldn’t have a problem. Unfortunately, there’s a bug in this version of your database where under some circumstances, if it crashes it doesn’t realize that the index files weren’t completely updated. Very small window of exposure, and it doesn’t happen very often. I found this out the hard way with a different client. The database manufacturer has fixed it, but decided to sit on reporting the bug to customers rather than have to deal with updating everyone. Saves them money, they say, since so few customers were going to be affected. Idiot beancounters forget that customers lose money and have deadlines. I’ll give you the name of the patch to ask for after the holiday.

“Fortunately, there’s a fairly easy way to patch things up. If it works, you should be back in about ninety minutes.”

“Great!  If we prioritize based on time zone, we might still make it.  It’ll be a long night, though.”

I’ll do what I can. Maybe I can isolate out the corrupted records and let you work on the rest, then do those on a separate batch. Would that work for you?”

He brightened. “Perfect!”

“Great. Let me pound on this for a bit, and you can go alert the troops that they’ll be back on the job in, oh, twenty minutes with the first batches. I almost hate to ask, though: does Mrs. Claus have any more of that cider?”

He smiled. “I’ll check. Back in a few.”

I started isolating out the problem records and clearing access to the rest so he could get his people back to work. People? Are three foot tall, pointy-eared beings people? Well, why wouldn’t they be?

He returned about 15 minutes later, carrying a large Thermos. “So, Doctor, how is the patient?” He set the Thermos down on the console. “I thought I’d save myself a few trips.”

I smiled. “Good thinking, because you’re ready for the first batch. There are only about 5,000 corrupted records, so you’re lucky you even noticed them in time. I’ve got them locked out, so I can update them manually. The rest are yours. I’ll merge these in as I get them fixed.”

“Yippee!” he yelled, and, I swear, he jumped up and clicked his heels. The toes on the tips of his shoes jingled merrily. He yippee-d his way out the door, and I sat and listened to the floor come back to life as I tracked down and eliminated the bitrot.

I continued plugging away, completely losing track of time. Suddenly I realized Bill was standing over my shoulder, watching.

“By George, we’re going to make it. Not only that, your cider is getting cold.”

“Well, I’m never going to finish this cider in time alone. Go find a cup grab a chair. I’m on the last batch.” I looked at my watch. “Whoof. I’ve been here that long?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

“Or in the company of good friends.”

We clinked mugs, and I leaned back in the chair. “I was thinking. If we’re in space, why aren’t we floating?  There shouldn’t be any gravity here.”

“Our technology is advanced compared to what you have on Earth, Jason.  We have the ability to transport people and material long distances instantaneously.  Remember the transporters on Star Trek?  Ours actually work.”

“And the snow?”

“The boss is a traditionalist.  The reindeer like it, too, and the gnomes and dwarves come from the colder lands, and it reminds them of home.”

“Reindeer.  That explains why you have a stable.  I was wondering about that..”

“You know, if you have contracts with all these large companies, how have you kept your operation a secret?  What’s to keep me from spilling the beans on you?  Elven hit-men?”

He laughed so hard his shoes tinkled.  ”Nothing that baroque.  What person in the world is going to admit publicly to working with Santa Claus?  Would anyone believe you?  If the president of Sega announced he was dealing with Santa Claus, what would happen?  What sane person would take that chance?” He took a sip from his mug. “Besides, we investigated you before calling, and your customers appreciate your judgment and discretion.  We don’t believe you’d do anything stupid, either to us or to yourself.”

He had a point.  Maybe the National Enquirer would buy the story, but would I want to have my name attached? “You know, this isn’t exactly a small operation.  How do you pay for all this?  Royalties on the Santa Claus name?”

The elf laughed again.  ”No, that’s in the public domain.  Our funding comes from strategic minerals.  We mine the asteroid belt, transfer the raw materials down to Earth and sell on the open market.  With our technology, the mining is dirt cheap, so to speak.  We make enough to support ourselves and carry on our operation.  Everyone wins.”

“If you really have all this high tech stuff — teleportation, space stations, advanced manufacturing concepts and I don’t know what else, why are you selling raw materials and not technology or engineering?”

“We do. Not all at once, and we don’t sell technology that is so advanced it’ll raise questions Earthside. It’s impossible right now for us to make, say, teleportation available because it requires too many technology advances for people to accept it without wondering about the source. We don’t want to start those UFO rumors again, do we? Besides, technology is a tool that can be used for both good and evil, and if society is given something before it’s ready to cope with the implications, you run the risk of it destroying itself. We learned the hard way to be careful.”

He had a point. We decided to go take a look at how the floor was going, a decision made easier because we’d run out of cider. I wonder if that stuff’s addicting?

Conveyor belts carried the gifts to one wall where a set of machines was installed.  An elf or a gnome would grab the gift and stick it inside one of the booths, load some data from the invoice with a bar-code reader and push a button.  When he opened the door, the booth was empty.

Movement at the front door suddenly caught my eye.  A few elves were running out with packages, then re-appearing empty–handed.

He caught where I was looking.  ”Hey, you should see this!  Come on.” We followed one of the elves out the door, where I could see a sleigh was rapidly filling up with presents.  The reindeer — including Rudolph, who blinked his nose at me when I scratched him behind the ears — had already been hitched up.

Bill stifled a sniff.  ”The Boss can’t cover the entire territory any more, but he loves the traditions, so he does one city a year the old fashioned way.  This year it’s Cleveland.  It was going to be Miami, but with hurricane Tim popping up so late in the year, we had to change.”

We stood in the snow and watched the loading go on, until the sleigh was full.  Then he came out of the house, red clothes, beard, belly and all. Santa. Father Christmas. Kris Kringle. The Big Kahuna himself. I’ve never run face to face with one of my cultural icons before, so I didn’t know what to do? Do you shake hands? Bow? Collapse in a heap in the snow in a faint? I settled for standing there grinning madly and trying to keep my knees from wobbling.

Santa settled the problem for me. He strode over and grabbed me on the shoulder with one of his hands. “Thank you, Jason, for what you’ve done tonight. Thousands of children will awaken to happiness tomorrow because of you. You have my gratitude.”

With that, he hopped into the sleigh, and then double-checked the anti-gravity pads, verified the radar cloaking field, keyed in the recall alarm and finally called to the reindeers, who pulled the sleigh to a huge teleport booth to the side of the corral.  Just as they were about to close the door, he looked over to me and waved.  ”Merry Christmas, Jason! Ho! Ho! Ho!” He then put his finger aside of his nose, winked, and pushed a button on the sleigh’s console. With a pop, Santa, the sleigh, and all of the reindeer disappeared.

Bill grabbed my arm. “Thank you for everything. It’s time you got out of here and started your own Christmas.”

I realized he was crying. I realized I was crying, too.

In the lobby, the guard got a strange look on his face as I went by.  It wasn’t until I got out to the car that I realized that I had fresh snow on my shoulders.  I made a mental note to warn them.

It wasn’t until I had the key in the lock at home that I realized I’d forgotten to get the cider recipe. Damn. I opened the door just as the clock in the hall started chiming ten.  Gina was asleep so I quietly wished her a Merry Christmas and crawled into bed next to her.  As I was drifting off, I kept imagining I heard sleigh bells.

As happens every Christmas, Kevin woke us up far too early.  I couldn’t blame him this time, though, since the bicycle was gorgeous.  It was all we could do to keep him from running outside with it immediately, even before the rest of the presents were opened.  Gina smiled at me and she squeezed my hand.

It was going to be tough explaining the diamond earrings, since Gina knew the store was closed last night, and we’d both agreed to wait on them until business got better.

But I knew I was in trouble when Kevin brought over that last package, a small envelope marked as from Santa.   I started looking through my mental excuse file for something she might accept. Without opening them I knew that inside I’d find three tickets to Bermuda, and I better have a better excuse than Santa Claus for them.  Maybe if I told her my new client was a travel agent?  I couldn’t convince her that Santa brought them, could I?

But inside the envelope was nothing more than a three by five card, with a few lines of text penciled on it. I smiled, and realized I’d gotten the best Christmas present ever.

Ten thousand little miracles, and I was blessed with one. I got up to see if we had any cinnamon in the kitchen.

# END #

This work is not public domain. It is copyright 1994 by Charles Von Rospach. Please do not republish or post it anywhere else without my explicit approval.

 

San Jose Sharks vs. Edmonton Oilers Ice Hockey

Jeff Cable’s Blog: San Jose Sharks vs. Edmonton Oilers Ice Hockey:

A funny thing happened when I was shooting this game. I shot most of these images with the Canon 1D Mark IV (which shoots 10 pictures per second) but also decided to use the Canon 5D Mark II with a Fisheye lens, like I did at the Winter Olympics. At the beginning of the second break, a gentleman came up to me, a little perplexed, and asked which lens I was using for the close-up shots. I told him about my setup with the Fisheye lens and he told me that he saw and liked my previous wide shots from the Olympics. As I explained to him, there are times when the athletes are right in front of me and I can not photograph them with a long lens (I was using the 70-200mm), so it is fun to try the wide lens to see what I get with that focal length. As you can tell from the image above, it really can pay off. This wide view really makes you feel like you are on the ice with them!

That person was me. I’d seen Jeff’s photography at the Vancouver Olympics and knew he was a bay area photographer, so I’d been quietly not stalking him via his work and his blog, so when I realized he’d shown up at the photo hole at the game, I thought I’d say hi if he wasn’t busy and I had a chance.

Then I saw the lens.

Since Laurie and I are both photo geeks to some degree or another, and we’ve sat down by the tunnel near one of the main photo holes for many years, we tend to keep an eye on who’s down there, and we’ve gotten to know some of the photographers over the years (on the other hand, we know many of them are running on deadline, and we try to leave them alone). When a  new face catches our attention we (obviously) check out the gear and try to figure out who they are and where the publish (if they do).

In all the years I’ve been sitting there, I’ve never seen a photographer shoot out the hole with a fisheye. Honestly, I couldn’t believe that’s what it was, which is why I made sure I went and verified that’s what he was doing. It was a great chat, and it’s a fascinating technique. Mostly you see white lenses (or the Nikon equivalent), mostly things like the 200mm or a 70-200, which is to me the sweet spot shooting from a hole in hockey. A lot of photographers will carry a second wider body, but it’s typically something like a 24-70. And most of them can’t focus on the action right out of the hole; most of them are actually bailing if the action comes at them that close — and I don’t blame them, I’ve seen a couple of lenses dinged and we know one of the photogs who got dinged for stitches a few seasons ago.

But a fisheye? That’s not a sports lens! But in fact, it is, What Jeff said he did was set the focus to be about 2 feet out, and then he gaffer taped the focus in place so it wouldn’t move, and if the action comes near him, he can just aim at it and spray shots. it’s a fascinating technique and a great use of that lens, and if you go look at some of his olympic work, it’s quite successful. I never would have guessed how he did it, either, without having that chat.

And it’s a technique I’m already thinking about how to translate back into my nature photography. There’s some interesting concepts there.

Thanks for the chat, Jeff! And it’s always fun to actually say hi to another one of the local photographers….

 

Welcome to Notes From the Commish – kicking the puck into the net

Welcome to an occasional series of postings I’ve decided to start here — “Notes from the Commish”.  These will show up once in a while when something comes up in hockey I feel like pontificating upon.

The fact is, NHL hockey is in pretty damn good shape overall, not that you’d believe that reading some of the pundits out there. Of course, my opinion is that a number of those pundits you shouldn’t waste oxygen on — I do not, in a rational, sane universe, see how Chris Botta could be without a press pass while Larry Brooks, Al Strachan and Mike Milbury are allowed to pontificate at will. Grr. but I digress.

Here in my universe, I’ve just been hired to be the new Commissioner of the NHL, and I’ve been given wide power to fix things I think need fixing. And so I will.

I won’t be doing this alone. I’ve brought on board, after a long retirement from hockey, my new Vice President of Discipline:

Long-time residents of the San Jose Arena might remember Barfy for his days of team building and encouragement of the referees that visited that hockey haven. He finally got sick and tired of the whole shebang and retired to Cancun and swore he’d never return until Rob Shick called an entire game correctly — but since Rob has retired, I’ve convinced him to come back and help me improve the game. But please, he no longer wants to be known by his playing days nickname, so from now on, we’ll call him by his given name — Colin.

Tonight’s Note from the Commish is on the kicking the puck into the net rule.

I hate it. I hate it for a couple of reasons:

First, it creates an unnecessary ambiguity in interpretation; it requires the referee on the ice to make a judgement call on the fly about the intent of the player, and that subjectivity affects the call and whether the goal is counted.

Second, it is impossible for this rule to be judged without going to instant replay, taking the final say away from the on-ice refs. No matter what, this play is going to replay, causing a delay, and causing everyone to second-guess the refs (including themselves). this undermines the ref’s control of the game, since the ultimate decision is made far, far away in the war room. Which, I note for the record, the members of the war room in Toronto hate it being called that. So I will.

By definition, half the people watching the game are going to hate the decision and consider the ref biased — no matter how they rule. That’s bad. And it doesn’t add significant scoring, and it doesn’t make the game better. It just creates a situation where the game has to stop while everyone looks at the super-slo-mo in toronto (in twelve angles) and tries to decide if the player intended to move the foot at the puck, or if the puck just hit the skate as part of the play. whoo. pee. doo. Hey, war room guys, your pizza is here. tip the guy this time.

I hereby, as Commiss, declare this rule to be changed. As of today, the ambiguity and subjectivity is gone. A puck that enters the net when the last touch by an offensive player is the player’s skate or boot is no goal. Period. I don’t care about kicking, I don’t care about intent to kick, or directing, or whether there were kicking motions or not. You can’t put the puck in the net with your foot. This isn’t soccer, and it’s not about intent. If the puck hits the skate or the boot, it’s no goal. You can’t kick it and bounce it off the goalie. If you can’t control it and get a stick on it, it’s no goal. the only thing the war room needs to worry about is whether it hit high enough to miss the boot and hit the shinpads instead, and that shouldn’t take 15 minutes and a trip to the Ouija board.

And it’s one less thing for the refs to look over their shoulder over, and one less thing for the fans to think the refs are biased against their team on. And it simplifies the game call on the ice by removing some subjectivity that really doesn’t matter or positively change the game. It’s a stupid rule.

Agree? Disagree? drop a comment with your opinion.

Got a rule or some aspect of hockey you want the Commish or — Colin —  to rule on? drop us an email or a comment with the question. And we’ll be back soon with another Note from the Commish.

 

 

State of the Sharks 2010-2011

I’ve had a few people ask me my thoughts on the Sharks this year, so here are a few thoughts about them so far.

Overall, I’m satisfied with what i see.  There are some rough edges, but name me a team in the NHL that doesn’t have them? We’ve been hit with some injuries, especially on defense, and that’s both shown that we have impressive depth in the organization, but that some of that depth is young. Justin Braun has been a real eye opener to me, he has a very rare ability to get a point shot through traffic and on goal, and isn’t afraid to do so — but he’s taken some time adjusting to the speed of the NHL, and he’s made some mistakes along the way. He pretty much singlehandedly gave up all of the goals in that bad Detroit loss, where the Wings schooled him and fed him his jock (but they do that to a lot of good players); he and the Sharks dealt with it appropriately, and he ratcheted back his pinching and played more conservatively, and he’s progressed very quickly. I expect he’ll go back to Worcester at some point, but he’s shown he’s got a good future as he continues to mature.

The two questions I seem to get asked more frequently are — what about our defense? and what about Nabby?

Nabby first. As big a supporter of Nabokov as I was, I felt the Sharks made the right move. Nabby wasn’t going to get better, and we’d seen what he brought to the team. With what his contract was going to require, I agreed with us moving on to another option, because goaltending that good was available elsewhere, and for less money, allowing us to spend more of the cap space on other needs. I’m not as convinced as some pundits that Nabby will end up back in the league this year, but he well could. Nittymaki was an adequate replacement for Nabokov, and when the Sharks got Niemi as well, I was thrilled. Niemi had a rough start, but he’s found his game, and he’s showing why he beat the Sharks in the playoffs last year. This is definitely an upgrade.

And on defense? we miss Blake, although I don’t miss his once-a-game 2 minute penalty for “I’m old” (usually a hook). While I wouldn’t mind an upgrade, I think the crew we have is good, when healthy. Wallin and Huskins as our 5-6 dmen is pretty good, but when we have injuries and they need to bump those two up to 3-4, it shows. Overall, though, I’m not worried. I like Jason Demers and he’s maturing nicely, and our top four D (Boyle, Vlasic, Murray, Demers) is pretty darn good. I don’t see much need to do anything, but if Wilson finds the right fit, I wouldn’t complain if he upgraded Huskins onto the black aces. the big thing is being healthy in the playoffs, and not depending much on the depth. Joslin is good as a physical body, Braun is a bit of a wildcard but in a year or so, watch out. I’m really impressed overall.

The player the Sharks really miss right now is Manny Malhotra, but I don’t blame them for not matching Vancouver’s money. Nicholl fills part of it and Jamal Mayers isn’t much of a downgrade on ice, but we miss Malhotra’s and Blake’s leadership and work ethic. The team is still figuring out who the new leaders are, and I think that shows in some of the inconsistency. I see no reason to panic, and I expect it to be sorted out by the playoffs.

Marleau is in one of his “enigmatic” phases, but I’ve come to realize at some point in every season we seem to wonder about Marleau, and at the end of the year, his numbers and contribution are there. He’ll kick it in and the questions will stop. Again. I expect that’ll be the way he is the rest of his career. Given the numbers end up being there and he shows up in the playoffs, I’ll live with it and not worry about it so much.

Thornton/Heatley is a great pair, and speaking as someone who was against the Heatley trade, I’m happy to say I’ve been proven very wrong on that deal, and I say that with great enthusiasm for what he’s done since coming to San Jose. Coture is a great pairing with Ryan Clowe, and ought to win rookie of the year. More amazingly, he actually might, despite playing out west were the eastern hockey media doesn’t see hi, regularly because the sharks games are up past their bedtime.

All in all, I give this team a B right now. I expect more, but this team will figure it out and bring it as the season progresses. I don’t see any glaring holes, I don’t see any significant problems that need to be fixed — but this isn’t a team beyond tweaking, and I expect at some point Wilson will. Most likely to not be in teal come the end of the season? Maybe Setoguchi, although I’m in no hurry to move him.

Final question: cheechoo? I think it’s great the Sharks have given him an opportunity in Worcester, but people who think this indicates Cheech might return to San Jose are thinking with their hearts and memory, not their heads and Cheechoo’s current abilities. The best Cheech could be in san jose is a part time player and black ace, if that. If he makes it back to the NHL, it’ll be with a lower tier team, and god help him, I hope it’s not the Islanders.

 

 

Best Photos 2010

As I did at the end of 2009, it’s time to collect and discuss what I consider to be my best photos of 2010 (and once again, Jim Goldstein is collecting and listing the photographers who are also taking on this project; be sure to check them out, there is going to be a lot of really great photography displayed if last year is any indication).

Overall, I added about 900 new images to my library, but with my increasing use of HDR, a raw count of images isn’t as useful as it was in previous years; I’ll need to think of a way of tracking final images vs. pieces used to construct images (via HDR or pano, another form I experimented with more in 2010). Looking at flickr, I uploaded 880 images taken in 2010, vs. 230 in 2009.

That 2009 number is somewhat misleading, however, because like I did in 2008, I completely re-edited my library, and as part of that, I retired about 1/3 of the library as no longer being something I considered up to my standard to use or display. That’s a good thing — it means I’m continuing to improve as a photographer and I continue to push my standards higher, so images I used to think are good are no longer good enough.

I think I did rather well this year, given that my longest vacation from work was three days in Yosemite — I was able to get there in time for a winter storm, and the results of shooting the morning after were, in my mind, stunning. I could have filled this best of JUST with images from that trip and been satisfied. As it is, four images from that trip made the cut, all very different types of images. I seem to be continuing my trend of not taking any significant time off, my longest vacation since leaving Apple is five days (plus weekends) for the yellowstone and grand teton trip in 2008 after dad died; my total vacation time the last four years is about two weeks total. That’s something I have to change in 2011 (and now that Palm is owned by HP, we aren’t at serious risk of running out of money, so it’ll be easier to do, I think). Still, I committed time to shooting when I could, and I tried to commit to shooting outside my comfort zone as often as possible, and I’m quite happy with the results. The acquisition of a Canon 7d didn’t hurt, either. That body has the ability to generate some really kick-ass images.

2010 was the year I finally set up a second photo site, on smugmug. This gave me a place to create a portfolio of my best images, so I could be very selective and use flickr more casually and for purposes other than my “not really professional” photography. I’ve uploaded about 300 images to smugmug, including a library of free wallpapers that are available for you to use. I’ve been quite humbled by the response to this and how many of you have downloaded them and emailed me about them. Thank you. I’ve also set up smugmug so you can buy prints if you see one you want, but it’s not something I’m marketing or promoting right now (outside of this paragraph). It’s there if you want it, though, but for now, that’s not something I’m putting time or energy into.

Without further ado…

Last year, I started with #10 and counted down. This year, let’s start at the top…

This image has to be consensus the best image of 2010; it’s my top image on flickr interestingness, has the most comments and favorites, made Flickr’s explore pages, and generally got amazing response from people. And I love it myself. It happens to be one of my favorite locations in Yosemite, and it was part of my March trip to Yosemite that turned out so well. I was lucky enough to get into Yosemite and stay at the lodge when a storm rolled in overnight and dumped a few inches of snow; by the time I’d gotten up and eaten breakfast, the roads were plowed and the place was simply magical, with photo ops everywhere. This lasted about four hours, until it warmed up enough for much of the snow to melt off and drop out of the trees, at which point the park looked rather grimy and muddy — but in the meantime, wow. Even better, that was exactly what I’d planned the trip for and hoped to run into.

This shot is from tunnel view, and I shot it in about three inches of slush as melt water ran through the area, shortly before the clouds moved in and obscured things again. Amazingly enough, I was the only person in tunnel view for most of the stay. it’s a 3 image HDR.

2: The Patriarch

I love photographing at zoos. One of the fun challenges of shooting at zoos is to try to not make it obvious you’re at a zoo. Sometimes you can be very successful at that, other times, you take what’s available. With the gorilla enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo, I don’t think it’s possible to make images look “native”, and so I focus more on trying to bring out the personalities of the gorillas (and FWIW, I would never present a zoo-shot image as anything but a captive animal, ethically, that’s scummy and I would never do it). I find the lowland gorillas to be majestic animals, and at times rather sad; they’re very human in a way, and in their native lands their populations are under serious threat.

Here’s the Patriarch of the clan. For some reason he seemed pensive and retrospective. He wandered the enclosure a bit, and then went to a rock and sat down on it. It honestly looks like he’s posing for me (what you don’t see is me half buried in a bush while staying in bounds with feed firmly on the path to get an unobscured angle of him for these shots (other shots of him are here); many times he sits back and watches the rest of his group, for some reason, on this visit he seemed lost in his thoughts. The humanity in his eyes, the intelligence behind those eyes, really struck me for some reason and left me with a powerful reaction to him, which I tried to capture in these images.

3: Incoming!

One perch. Two swallows. As I was finishing a lunchtime walk at Don Edwards EEC in Alviso, I noticed a barn swallow perching on a snag. Another swallow made repeated passes, trying to dislodge it so it could perch instead. Ultimately, it failed and gave up, but in the meantime it gave me a chance to watch one of life’s little mini-dramas unfold.

4: Cute as a button

Back to the gorilla enclosure at San Francisco Zoo. This is the baby of the family, and she’s cute as a button. What you don’t see is that this is the only shot where the baby isn’t hiding its face, turning its back to me, crawling behind the tree, and generally being as uncooperative as possible. And after five minutes of that, she got bored and hauled herself offstage into the gorilla house for a nap.

But the one usable image I got? Worth every minute chasing it.

5: Forster’s Tern

The Forster’s Tern is a common bird here in the Bay Area, and fairly easy to photograph in flight because they have a tendency to do repeated passes across the same territory while hunting for fish, so you can set yourself up and wait for them to come by again. I particularly like this show for how the light shows off the bird and for how well the feather definition came out.

6: Pigeon Point Lighthouse

My favorite “postcard” shot of the year. This is a 3 shot HDR of Pigeon Point Lighthouse taken from an area just south of the building. I would have liked a slightly more dramatic sky, but I think this composition does a good job of making the lighthouse pop out as the focal point, with enough visual interest to accentuate it but not distract. Even better, this was what I was trying to get out of the camera when I took it…. As my photography has matured, I find myself working more for this kind of shot, and take fewer “senior portrait” type images, because I want to put the bird in context of what it does, as a way of explaining what it is.

7: Brown Pelican

8: Ibis Silhouette

One thing I’ve been experimenting with more over the last year or so is nature abstractions and using silhouette and shape as a way to express the animal (for instance, see this); when I was out at San Luis Reserve I came across a large flock of White-Faced Ibis along the access road to the preserve, it was a good opportunity to get some nice images of the bird, except they were horribly backlit and there was no way to get behind them for better light. The solution was to shoot for silhouette and look for abstration opportunities.

And sometimes you get lucky. I think what makes this shot is not JUST catching the bird repositioning the worm so it can swallow it, but that small highlight on the back of the neck that turns this from a black blog outline into a three dimensional silhouette. I wish I could say I planned for that — well, I did, a bit, because I was trying to get the exposure to give me some texture in the silhouette form rather than pure, total black, but when I did the post processing, what looked best was just that bit of a catch light, and the fully lit worm in process of becoming dinner. This may be my most popular bird image of the year based on number of views.

9: Western Bluebird

I love photographing bluebirds when I can, and they’re a bird that’s not afraid to show a little personality. I caught this male near his nest — this is actually up where I view the bald eagle nest near Calaveras Reservoir. He decided to stop and check me out, even though I was keeping my distance (why is his head cocked that way? The one negative of this image is that because of distance, it’s cropped more than I like, but honestly, he’s just too cute to ignore. Others thought so, too. The Cornell Labs asked for permission to use this in Birdscope.

10: El Capitan after a Winter Storm

Back to Yosemite for another shot. Another 3 image HDR, this was taken the morning after the storm as it was moving out, and the combination of the storm clouds and the fresh snow on the pines and just a hint of glow on the rocks just blew me away. If there’s a shot that convinces you to give HDR a try, this is it — there’s none of the “grunge” that some people react to negatively in HDR photography, and this isn’t a shot you could reproduce via graduated ND filters in a more traditional way; it really was the ability to widen the dynamic range in a natural way that made this image possible.

11: Pigeon Guillemot in flight

Yes, I couldn’t limit myself to ten. I tried, but this year I just loved too many images. Shot near Pigeon Point, where the Guillemot’s nest, this is one of the adults returning to the nest. I love the juxtaposition of the bird and the water, and I think it shows the plumage and coloration very well. It amuses the heck out of me that the bird is clearly looking at me while flying in — but that’s also a quiet reminder that even when you keep your distance and aren’t encroaching on the birds, they tend to be very aware of you and you are interacting with them. Even though I was on a public path and well away from the nest, after noticing in this shot that the bird was reacting to me on flying into the nest, I pulled out and left them to their chick. No image is worth potentially disrupting a nest or ruining a breeding cycle, and you can never be too careful about respecting a nesting bird’s territory — and there’s no reason to hang around once you do get the shot, because even at a distance, you could be stressing the bird and potentially impacting the success of the nest.

12: Anna’s Hummingbird

This shot was taken near Shoreline Lake in Mountain View. I ran into this hummingbird, who put on a major show for the camera (you can see more of this bird over on flickr); very outgoing, it sat on a branch for about ten minutes gesturing and showing off, giving me a good opportunity to get some nice shots of him. The bird turns out to need a good agent, since I’ve talked to three other photographers who also spent good time with it during the summer — just a precocious little extrovert, he was. This shot it my favorite because of the sharp focus on the eye and the good lighting on the facial coloring and the detail in the feathering, along with the almost clownlike posture (but if you want to see how light and posture can change how a bird looks dramatically, look at this shot).

13: Western Kingbird

One of my favorite birds, they’re summer residents here in the Bay Area, and they hang out on things like fences and catch bugs. They’re also rather tolerant of people with cameras in general. This one was shot out on Marsh Road in the Calaveras area, and it let me slide up in the car and get a good shot of it while it hung out on the barbed wire waiting for a bug to come by…

14: Mountain Chickadee

There’s a story to this image…..

It’s another image from the Yosemite trip. Going to Yosemite that time of year, I had three birds on my list to try to find to add to my birding list; golden-crowned kinglet, White-headed Woodpecker, and Mountain Chickadee. As is traditional for me, as soon as I hit the valley, I went up to tunnel view to hang out and take in the valley floor. In the trees nearby I heard the clear call of some mountain chickadees, so I went looking. And the birds spent the next 15 minutes hiding among the pine branches and refusing to come out to be seen or photographed (although they did get me good looks at a Golden-Crowned Kinglet, so I forgave them).

That set the stages for the next few days; wherever I went on the valley floor, I heard mountain chickadees calling; wherever I heard mountain chickadees, I saw small blobs deep in shadow mocking me. The life of a  birder some days. I kept at it, and the birds actually turned me onto some interesting birds, including a couple of brown creepers. But they still refused to come out and be seen (or counted).

Finally, towards the end of the second day, my last full day in the park, I was exploring down around the trails of lower yosemite falls. The storm was moving in, and the weather was changing for the worse, temperature falling, light failing. I’d seen a female coyote wander through the area and I’d heard sounds that indicated she had a den nearby — and while I wasn’t looking for it, I was keeping my ears out (if only because I didn’t want a surprised and unhappy momma coyote mad at me). I was photographing the lower falls and about to call it when the chickadee flock moved in. For the next 15 minutes, a flock of about 20 birds rummaged the trees around me. I got good enough looks to confirm them for my birding list, but a photographic image? They were too smart for that.

Finally, more or less in desperation, I just started shooting images of whatever moved in the trees around me, and when I got back to the room that night, this is what I got. It’s very clearly a mountain chickadee — in outline — having just taken off and on the run away from the idiot photographer. I loved it as a wallpaper immediately, and it’s been one of my more popular downloads, and I like it for the crispness of the outline (that foot hanging out just makes it for me) while still being very abstract. And it’s the best shot I got of the damn birds the entire trip. It’s a great example of how you should look at your “dings” and see what possibilities might exist for them — rather than try to “save” it in post processing to recover the details of the bird, I went the other direction and accentuated the black and white and silhouette aspects to maximize the abstract aspect, and I think it works nicely.

By the way, the chickadees won. They kept me chasing them JUST long enough that I didn’t quite make it back to the car before the sleet kicked in. Almost, but I got a bit damp (and cold) getting back to the room. But I didn’t mind, either….

15: Yosemite Falls in a Winter Storm

The last night I was in Yosemite, the storm moved in and dropped snow; the next morning, the park crew plowed and I ate breakfast, and then I packed up, cleared the snow off the car, and went exploring. I started with a loop around the valley floor just to see what might be interesting, and as I stopped at Yosemite Falls, I ran into a small group of mule deer, and then the momma coyote wandered through again and headed back into the brush to her den. The storm clouds were still thick and were obscuring most of the cliffs, but were starting to break up a bit. Suddenly, upper Yosemite Falls peeked out, and I was lucky enough to get some shots of it, just visible and with a fair bit of ice around the falls.

Why they want your email address…

Gawker Hacked: Seeing Past Your Nose | Jeff Nolan – Venture Chronicles:

However, did you ever wonder why media sites force you to register in order to comment? They want your email address and identity information for driving marketing and promotions as well as enabling data services businesses. They provide no real utility in exchange for getting you to hand over a piece of personal information… unless you consider their email products useful.

Two words — trolls and griefers.

I’m actually a little disappointed to see people still don’t understand this — and I’m not pretending that the marketing aspects don’t exist (they do), but if you don’t have some way of managing access, then at some point, the trolls and griefers WILL move in, and you have a problem because you can’t stop them. So you need some form of identification, and the most reliable (but low-friction) way of that is by email address. Part of the reason that succeeds is because the free email services have all had to deal with the spammers and trolls and griefers and are fairly effective and limiting their ability to do high volume email address creation, and you can hide behind their shoulders to a degree by using email as an identifier. For these kinds of situations you don’t need to know who a person is, but you do need to know that this person IS a specific person, so you can block further access by them.

Take a look at just about any site that doesn’t have registration, and you see a commenting/discussion area that’s useless because it’s been taken over by trolls, griefers, porn spammers and people who believe the way to win an argument is to be the last person screaming.

Bottom line, if you run a nice sports bar where people gather to talk about football or hockey, and a band of bikers drive up and wander in and start demanding beers, you have two choices; you either kick the bikers out, or you turn into a biker bar, because they’re going to cause everyone in your primary audience to stop coming and go somewhere else. And today, online, the most effective limiter for these situations is the email address. The occasional really motivated troll that’ll continually reinvent identities to come back and keep abusing your site can usually be handled as a special case, and msot of the bikers can be kept out by choosing which addresses you can block and prevent further abuse of your system. Don’t have that, and you’ve lost.

 

Writing about Hockey

Every so often I get an email from someone asking why I don’t write about hockey anymore. I figure it’s probably time to talk about it here, if only so I can point to it later and stop writing it multiple times…

Short answer: I haven’t. But I have taken an extended break. I’m starting to write a bit this season, and I have some stuff I plan on writing when I get the time and motivation.

The primary reason I took a break is pretty simple — writing about hockey stopped being fun. I’ve come to believe that some things in your life need to be reserved for fun — if you turn everything into work, then you’re never NOT working. When writing about hockey started feeling more like work than fun, it was time to step back and get back to what hockey really should be — a diversion from real life and something to just relax and enjoy.

A second reason I felt like it was time to step away for a while is that so much hockey and sports writing is really negative; there are writers and bloggers that seem unable to write anything but rip pieces — this is especially true in much of the Canadian press, where it seems if you actually say something nice about a team you cover, you get fired. it seems a lot of writers have taken the “good news doesn’t sell newspapers” concept seriously, to a fault. I find many of them unreadable.

But worse, since I always wanted to try to show both sides of the situation, to write with a balance (and promote what’s good about the sport as well), I tended to end up a target for fans who respond to things they disagree with using abuse. After a while, I just got really tired of the trolls, to be honest, whether those trolls are bloggers who can’t handle someone saying something doesn’t suck, fans who see anything they disagree with as something to be attacked, or professional trolls like Bruce Garrioch. It seemed impossible to try to hold an intelligent conversation without attracting the reactionaries, and so I decided to stop. There didn’t seem to be much of an audience for someone who wasn’t reinforcing the “it all sucks” motif. I’m still not convinced there is, although there are some writers out there (like David Pollak at the Merc) who still have that balance (although, god, read the comment section on just about any posting on his blog, and you’ll see why I stopped)

And finally… there are some really good writers out there, which allows me the ability to sit back and let them write instead. If we’d invented the blogosphere 15 years earlier, maybe I’d have done things differently, but today, with folks like Pollak, Mike Chen over on SB Nation and Jon Swenson over at Sharkspage, I don’t feel a great need to wade in and have my say these days. I much prefer sitting back and watching and having a good time and not worrying so much about whether they’re using a left wing lock or a modified trap.

And here’s a hint: if you hate everything going on about the sport, why are you watching it? If you’ve hit that point where hockey (or sports in general) is nothing but a reason to complain about stuff, go do something else. If it’s not fun any more, why do you inflict it on your eyeballs? And then inflict yourself on us?

That’s a rhetorical question. Please don’t answer it in the comments. I already know the answer….

 

Modano and Skate Cuts in Hockey.

Modano undergoes surgery to repair injury on right wrist

Mike Modano has undergone surgery after suffering a laceration from a skate blade on his right wrist during a game against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday night. The veteran will be out of the lineup indefinitely depending on the progress of his recovery.

This is a sad situation, and probably ends his career. It’s not the way Modano wanted to leave the game, and not the way he deserved to go.

But what really worries me is the increasing incidence of skate cuts in hockey. When Clint Malarchuk almost died 20 some years ago, it was horrific not just because of the cut, but because of how rare skate cuts were in the game.

Even five years ago, skate cuts were fairly rare. The last couple of seasons, however, have seen multiple cuts each season, some of them quite serious. Achilles tendons severed, significant cuts to the quads — this seems to be a growing problem in the NHL and one that NHL has a chance to grapple with before it becomes a crisis.

What isn’t well known is that this is the second skate cut on an arm this season. The Sharks Jason Demers is currently on injured reserve, and while the Sharks have been typically quiet about the cause (all we know is “day to day”, not even which body half), the incident happened in front of us at the game in a scrum around the crease, and Demers immediately skated off holding his arm near the glove cuff — it looked to me like a skate blade came up and nicked him in the same general area that Modano was cut. Fortunately, though, the damage seems much less serious to Demers.

Why is this happening? I’ve thought about this a while, and I think I understand what’s going on. Players are now big enough, fast enough and strong enough that hits are becoming violent enough that they no longer are able to control what happens when they get hit — so body parts flail and legs are starting to kick up more frequently, with those razor sharp blades on the end.

This implies that this isn’t a situation calling for rule changes or a fix to enforcement, but we need to improve safety equipment.  More and more players are wearing kevlar sleeves in the socks, which prevents the blade from penetrating the flesh. Many levels of amateur hockey are requiring similar protection for the neck.

My hope is that the NHL sees this as the problem it’s becoming and the union doesn’t get stupid about making this a “personal choice” issue they way they’ve fought visors, and that the league starts mandating kevlar protective sleeves on the legs and arms. I’d love to see manufacturers look into whether this protection can we woven into hockey pants to protect the quads and hamstrings.

This really shouldn’t be a hassle for players or a controvesial safety call (but I bet it will be) — I’ve seen no sign that players adopting these leg sleeves have complained about it impacting their performance the way they kvetch about visors. And since we seem to be up to 4-6 incidents a year causing an injury that causes a player to lose at least one game — it’s in the league’s best interest to get on this before someone gets their career terminated or they die from a cut to a sensitive location.

(and for what it’s worth, I’m in favor of the league making neck protection encouraged but optional — injuries to that location are exceptionally rare (twice in 25 years), but when they happen, they’re catastrophic, but the hockey players I’ve talked to that use those protectors invariably hate them as uncomfortable. Perhaps this is another place manufacturers and research, but as nasty as Malarchuk’s injury was, I’m more worried about the more common skate cuts we’re seeing on arms and legs and protecting players from those — unless you’re a goalie, and if you are, I hope you’re smart enough to already be wearing throat protection….

 

 

The TSA and pat-downs.

Over on Daring Fireball –

Here’s the question for Pistole, and anyone else who argues that these new TSA procedures are an appropriate response to that incident: What happens if the next guy hides his bomb up his ass?

Even more basic. the TSA security points now create spaces filled with people queued up. So what’s going to be the reaction when someone walks into a security area and sets off the bomb in their carry on? The purpose of terror is to disrupt and instill fear; in the Middle East car bombers and suicide bombers find large groups of people and blow them up. How will the TSA respond when they shift to that tactic here, because these security checkpoints are perfect places to use that tactic.

Personally, I decided to opt out of plane flying after my first trip through the TSA many years ago; to date, since 9/11 I’ve flown once, on business. I’ll continue to fly on business as it requires me to, but otherwise, I won’t get on a plane. Not just because of the TSA, but because I intensely dislike how they’ve turned flying into a painful experience on par with a badly driven Greyhound bus. I hate being treated like a sardine, and I really dislike how painful it is to just get on a plane.

Besides, most of what I need to do I can do by car — it is, literally, as fast to drive to SoCal than it is to deal with everything you need to deal with to fly there from here, once you factor in travel to the airport, security delays, luggage pickup, car rentals and travel from the airport to final destination. And I don’t need to disrobe to get in my car…

I can live without a trip to Disney World for now. And honestly, I’d love to drive there some day, just me, Laurie and our cameras…

(don’t EVEN get me started about the security fiasco of checked luggage and my tendency to carry stuff that is worth more than a Kit-Kat Bar…)

Debate continues over hit that brought Sharks’ Joe Thornton a 2-game suspension – San Jose Mercury News

Debate continues over hit that brought Sharks’ Joe Thornton a 2-game suspension – San Jose Mercury News:

Sharks radio analyst Jamie Baker wrote in his blog on the team’s website that the Blues themselves had some responsibility, citing among other things the pass from defenseman Alex Pietrangelo through the neutral zone that put Perron at risk. Baker, as well as several Sharks players, also accused Perron of embellishing the damage by lying prone on the ice, noting he quickly returned to action once penalties were determined. The Blues forward, however, missed his next two games because of headaches.

 

There is a continuing controversy over the ejection and suspension of Thornton after his hit on Perron. It’s devolved somewhat into a lot of sub-arguments, including whether Perron embellished the injury and whether the Blues erred in letting him play later in the game.

My feeling was that given the hit to the head rule and that referees don’t have instant replay or slow motion to evaluate a hit with that the penalty and ejection were fine. The speed and angle of the hit was such I don’t blame a referee at all for making that call. I was convinced, however, that there wouldn’t be a suspension. I don’t understand the two games off. Still don’t.

There is a legitimate issue involving larger players hitting smaller players, and the larger player has to work harder to not hit the smaller player in the head. Player safety should be a priority, my recommendation on this is that larger players get used to it. Believe it or not, they’re not stupid, and they’ll figure out how to make the hit without hitting the head once players realize they’re going to get penalized for it. A few hits will end up called — but I’ll take healthy players here over a few unfortunate hits.

The whole diving/embellishment thing is a thorny problem. How do you solve it? the league hasn’t figured it out yet. But — combine it with the question of whether Perron should have been allowed back into the game, and I think you have an angle towards a solution.

It’s simple. If a player is injured on the ice to the degree that a trainer has to go out an attend to them, that player is not allowed back into the game until seen by a doctor and the doctor clears them to play. That means they have to go to the locker room and be seen. Period. That prevents a player from going back to the bench and convincing a non-doctor he’s okay. It also is a strong disincentive for that player to — embellish. No more “he’s dead! he missed a shift!” and the trained personnel has a chance to evaluate the injury and make sure he really is okay before coming back. In the case of an injury where a player goes down to a hit to the head — the player can’t come back until the doctor and referee talk and the referee approves him back into play (in other words, in between periods). That way, hits to the head have time to be carefully evaluated AND the referee has a chance to be sure proper procedures were followed in evaluating.

The one exception to this rule are goaltenders, but the referee in that case should be given the authority to send the goalie off for evaluation if he goes down and has to be attended to.

Player safety becomes a higher priority, and in a way that discourages diving. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

 

A couple of quick birding notes

A couple of quick birding items –

First, California birders got themselves in a huge twitch this weekend when an Ivory Gull appeared in Pismo Beach munching on an ex-seal. The Ivory Gull is an arctic bird, and only once has it been seen in California before this weekend. Many birders made the emergency migration to Pismo to see the bird, not knowing how long it’d remain in that location (at last report, it stuck around until around noon sunday and hasn’t been seen since). The previous sighting in California was the 70′s. Many birders have published pictures and video of the bird, here’s a nice one from Ashok Khosla:

Now, I don’t twitch, and I was tempted. I finally decided that 9 hours of driving into bad weather just wasn’t worth it; I was thinking if it stuck around I might have tried next weekend, however. The pictures I’ve seen of the flocks of birders seem to indicated that they were averaging 30ish birders on site, not a bad little party.

There’s a nice overview of the bird and this weekend’s kerfluffle on ebird I recommend you check out. I was doing some other reading on the Ivory Gull this weekend as well, and what’s interesting is that while this bird is extremely rare in the states, in the last decade visitations have gone from almost never to annual, and the bird seems to be moving south of its traditional grounds. Welcome to global warming, this bird’s adapting to the changing conditions in the arctic by shifting to new grounds.

Second, on a note so pleasant note — we have an abusive jerk in our midst. That’s probably not a surprise, but this one is stuffing beer cans onto the necks of sea gulls. If you are wandering the beaches here in northern california and you happen to see one of these poor birds, please contact the rangers at that location or call the animal rescue, since they’re trying to catch and help those birds.

I first saw a report of this on the birding lists five or six months ago. about the third time a report came in, it was clear this wasn’t an accident. These birds have been seen widely across the northern california coast, and it’s clear someone is doing it to them. Why? well, we’ll have to catch him to find out, I guess. More important, we want to make sure it stops, and the birds that are affected need to be caught and the can removed before it kills them, which it will.

Why would a person do such a thing? I dunno, but we see animal abuse by a few sick people on a regular basis…

Santa Clara Valley Audubon Bird Photography Workshop

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the upcoming Bird Photography Workshop sponsored by Santa Clara Valley Audubon and their Bird Photography SIG. It’s going to happen November 10 and November 13, with an evening of classroom discussion and a day in the field.

it’s being taught by a couple of local photographers, Ashok Khosla and Bill Walker, who are both people who have been strong inspirations and teachers to me over the years, and this is going to be a great class for those trying to improve their skills. highly recommended (even though I can’t be there because I have a previous committment. sigh).

There’s still room in the classes, so if you’re going to be in the area and are interested, pop by the web site and sign up before the class fills.

oops!

If you follow me on twitter the other day, you probably saw that I had an “oops!” moment.  It’s a great example of “best laid plans….” situation.

I was doing some work on the server we host our sites on, and I ended up in a different location than the one I thought I was in, and did a “rm -rf *” in it. And as soon as I did, I went — “oops!” because I realized I wasn’t in the right place.

The NEXT thing I realized was I hadn’t synced up my backup before starting work. So that’s “oops!^^2″, I guess.

And yes, the folder I deleted was the one with all of the web site files in it.

Now, the good news. The blogs are all database driven and the database wasn’t touched. the backup existed, it just wasn’t 100% up to date. So it was a minor annoyance instead of a major catastrophe. I had pretty much everything restored and the sites back online in about 20 minutes, and I spent the evening looking at things and cleaning up. My blog lost some patches (which I put back in tonight) and as it turns out, the graphics for two of my postings went poof, and I’m going to have to recreate them.

So all things considered, it becomes a teachable moment instead of a gut-wrenching disaster. And I love teachable moments.

This is the classic reason why people use say things like “I don’t need to wear seat belts, I’m a careful driver” are fooling themselves. “careful driver” doesn’t save you from being rear-ended by the guy on a conference call with the sales team in Cleveland, “careful driver” doesn’t save you from the bee that flies in through your open window and stings you at a stop light, and “careful driver” doesn’t prevent that carefully timed sneeze just as you’re reaching for the brake pedal.

In other words — “careful” is no protection from Lord Murphy, and Murphy’s Law will win, sooner or later. In this case, I made two mistakes that cascaded. One was I skipped a step in my safety process for working on the hosted server (“step 1: back it up. Step 2: BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN YOU HAVE NO NET”), and then I made a simple mistake, which I realized just after doing it. Nobody’s perfect. I’ve spent more years dealing with servers as a root-capable geek than many of you have been programming — and I still make mistakes. Rarely, but I make them.

Which is why I love backups. And because I wasn’t pristine in doing them, this went from being a 20 minute pain in the neck to being about a six hour cleanup, and I have about two more hours rebuilding the missing graphics. That’s a hell of a lot better than “oh my god, it’s gone”, so even though the backup wasn’t perfect, it saved me major troubles.

How are your backups?

Well, mine are now pristine. Both copies (because I immediately made the old one read-only and set it aside, just in case i need a file in a week or a month. Don’t you?)

Ooops.

 

Projects I may do someday — Crowdsourced Birding Guide

Here’s another project I’ve been chewing on that I’d like to do some day.

There are a number of good birding guides being made available on mobile devices. I use iBird now instead of carrying a paper guide when I’m birding (yes, it’s on the wrong platform, but it’s a major reason why I still carry a 2nd device). On my iPad, I find I use the Audubon guides most of the time.

As good as these guides are becoming, they aren’t quite what I’m looking for.

There’s a huge amount of data out there, whether it’s eBird, or the Cornell Birds of North America reference, or individual birding sites put on by local groups — take a look at this major awesome San Mateo County Birding Reference from Sequoia Audobon, for instance.

There really isn’t a place that ties all of this data together — and to me, that means something like Wikipedia for birding, where users can help build and manage the combined data collaboratively. But the Wikipedia model has its own flaws — beyond the obvious political challenges that the site continues to work to solve — and a huge one for me is that the wiki model tends to encourage moving data ONTO the wiki site, rather than creating a resource that brings all of these resources into view. I don’t want to suck these sites into a single common site, I want a site that promotes them and makes them easy to find, but without “content creep” away from the site that created and hosts that content.

Beyond that — these sites need to be mobile friendly and platform agnostic. And since birders have this bad tendency to go hiking out into places where cell towers are few and far apart, the content needs to be usable even if there’s not an active data circuit.

In chewing on a site architecture for this, I realize I’ve created a bit of a monster, and as far as I can find, nobody’s really solved the problem well. Here, then, is a laundry list and some thoughts on what a site like this needs to be to succeed:

• The site needs a central database that is oriented towards describing and linking out to content rather than hosting it. That’s a fairly significant shift from the pure wiki model.
• Users need to be enabled to create, modify and maintain these references, from something as simple as linking a bird photo onto a species page to creating a reference guide to birding, say, a local refuge, with links out to other resources on that refuge.
• The site needs a public API that allows the content of the site and the content it links to to be downloaded to a mobile device. By doing this as a centrally hosted service with a standardized API, what we do is enable people to create an application for any mobile platform that can access this data, or integrate this data into other applications; allowing it to be leveraged across all mobile devices.
• Users should have some way of flagging pages and references to be downloaded onto their mobile device for offline use, so they can choose which pieces of the site need to be on the phone for when they’re out in that marsh and away from any data connection.  App authors can use that info to preload and stage content for later use, without overloading the phone with storage of data they don’t need or want in the field.
• There needs to be a collaboration API that other sites can choose to implement that allows this central site to access data for transfer to mobile devices in a standardized way. That way, a site like Cornell could create hooks to enable this central site to use and share Cornell’s data, while not encouraging that data to be “repurposed”  and in a way that allows Cornell to manage access and usage to protect it’s data. But if we can figure out this collaboration API, we can create new ways for sites to tie their data sets together without needing to somehow make copies in more than one place — take advantage of being in the cloud.
• For sites that don’t implement the collaboration API, we’d need a way to scrape a site to pull content off for sending to the mobile device.  Since not everyone will implement the collaboration, we still need ways to pull that data off — unless they tell us not to, of course.

Here’s my idea of the use case I’m trying to create:

I’m going to go birding at, say, Merced National Wildlife Refuge. I go to the Merced NWR page on this site. That page gives me access to:

• Driving instructions to the refuge
• It pulls the species list from eBird so I know what species can be found there. It also creates my birding form so I can fill it in and easily sync it back to eBird later.
• It pulls lists of recent sitings from the location and creates a list of species being seen at the location, with (as available) lat/long indicators and other info for finding them.
• It flags special finds at that location so I know to target those birds.
• it uses that species list to customize a field guide with information on the local species from Cornell, including images and audio and descriptions and stages that for download to the mobile device.
• If the page has links to things like birding guides to the location, recent reports, special images for species identification, etc, etc — that all gets flagged as well.
• then, I log into the site with my mobile device, and it all gets downloaded into a customized resource for my visit to that site by the mobile app.
• When I’m done birding, the app uploads my eBird report to the site for me, and I have the opportunity to flag specific content that was most useful or not really useful, which goes back into the site’s rating database, which helps us better understand which data in the site is most useful under most circumstances, which means the next person going to Merced gets a better set of data for their trip. And over time, we can build optimized data sets for pretty much anything through this method.

This is a lot of work, but I think if I ever get around to trying it, it’ll be worth it. It’s dealing with a lot of emerging technologies — the growth of mobile space and smart phones and ubiquitous computing, taking advantage of the cloud computing environment,  the emergence of collaboration via data sharing through structured APIs, a different take on the wiki model emphasizing collaboration over data collection.

What you get out of it is a single place to help locate all of the awesome data sources out on the net, with a way to help a non-expert user find the most useful pieces of data for a given situation, and a structured way to help them get that data onto their mobile device for use when they need it in a simple and standardized form.

At least, in theory. still need a lot of work to flesh this one out, but I really think it has a lot of potential if it’s done well…

 

 

 

 

A gift passed on

Some days people give you a gift without even realizing it. Here is a gift I am pleased to pass along to you.

This gift started out as a tweet from Vonda McIntyre, noting that Ursula K. Le Guin is now blogging. That in itself was enough to make my day; back in the ancient of days when I was involved with SFWA and writing a bit I got to know many of the authors in the field, but Le Guin is one of those rare writers that changed how I viewed the field, and through her non-fiction and criticism also changed how I thought about life. She is one of those rare people that I bestow the “I will happily read your shopping lists” honor on (the others I’ve given that award to being Ray Bradbury, Gene Wolfe, Terry Carr, and Damon Knight — each of which deserves its own discussion point at some point in the future). She is also one of the most gracious and nice people you’ll ever meet.

It turns out that Le Guin is blogging at a site called “Book View Cafe“, which describes itself as an online consortium of writers; effectively, it’s a shared blog and publicity resource that somehow I hadn’t discovered before today. That’s my loss, because there are a group of really interesting people involved with that site, and the blog looks to be chock full of Interesting Stuff You Probably Want To Read. A quick glance at the authors involved with the site shows a long list of names I can recommend to you as well worth your time, including not only McIntyre and Le Guin, but Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Brenda Clough, Katherine Kerr, Laura Anne Gilman, Phyllis Radford, Judith Tarr (and her horse), Sarah Zettel, and Sherwood Smith.  All of which are extremely nice and interesting people to spend time with as well as writers worthy of your time.

So please consider wandering on over to the Book View Cafe blog, and attach your eyeballs to it for a while. Your eyeballs will likely thank you and ask for a return visit.

An audience of one….

I got this in an email today. Since I’ve been thinking about similar things over the last week or so, I figured I’d continue mulling it over here in public for the amusment and horror of all…

I am finding that the volume of your personal tweets that seem to be replicated on LinkedIn keeps me from seeing updates from other contacts on LinkedIn.

I figured it was better to ask you first. How would you handle this situation?

There is, of course, an implied “and if you don’t fix this, I’ll have to unsubscribe from reading you” in the sub-text.

Which is understandable. Managing the firehose of information that is the internet is a challenge. So much to follow, and there’s always that implied worry that you’re missing something, so there’s a quiet pressure to keep broadening your reading, which means if you don’t keep an eye on it, it becomes an infinite time sink and then nothing useful gets done.

I’ve struggled with this over the years. I think we all have. It’s nothing new here, either — one of the challenges we always faced with mailing lists is that whenever a mailing list got onto a topic that the group was motivated to talk about, message volume would spike, and that would shortly be followed by people clamoring for QUIET because the volume of messages was bothering them. Imagine that — the best mailing lists were ones that weren’t used, because if you use them for things that the group was interested in, you got told to shut up.

And I say that somewhat facetiously, but it was a serious issue in using email for one to many communication, one that we never really solved well. Digests for mailing lists were at best a nasty hack, one I always hated. client filters solved the problem better if users took the time to learn them and use them, and too few did. It was easier just to complain that people were actually enthusiastic about a topic and that was bad, because it generated too much content. This was ultimately a key reason I gave up on mailing lists — they were from the “well, all I have is a hammer, so this must be a nail” era of the internet, and I’ve been exploring alternatives to mailing lists for group communication since my first painful attempts to use forums in about 1998.

The web and RSS changes the equations but to some degree doesn’t solve it; there’s still way too much content out there and the challenge is how to edit and filter it so you get what you want and need without drowning.

The tools to do this are still pretty young and immature, but we’re getting there, slowly. Here’s how I do it these days, and in that is the answer to my friend’s question.

I allocate a chunk of time to following the news, much as my mom and dad allocated time every day to read a newspaper. I don’t do it at the morning table — I tend to browse throughout the day, lots of the time comes while I’m waiting for “stuff” to happen or finish. Since I’m constantly exploring and finding new stuff to follow, it’s safe to say I’m always bumping up against the “credit limit” for my time budget here. When I find myself doing that, I look at what is in the feeds and I delete feeds that are least interesting (or more correctly, ones for whom the time it takes to process those feeds outweighs the content or enjoyment of processing them). Quiet feeds have a lower barrier of entry; busy feeds need to more consistently bring in useful information for me to keep following them.

I typically find having about 400-425 feeds in my Google Reader fits in my time budget. When it gets over 450, I find myself feeling like I’m wasting too much time on it; if I drop it below that, I feel like I’m not reading widely enough. So that’s my comfort level.

Ditto things like facebook and twitter and all of the other places that have streams of data passing through. They all get a time budget; that budget is a subset of the overall time budget I allocate to following “stuff” out there.

You get into my feeds if I find you interesting. You leave my feeds if there are other feeds more interesting  than you and I run out of time consistently before getting to your stuff.  And, of course, my interests are constantly evolving — I used to read a LOT of Apple-oriented feeds (for obvious reason); today, it’s about four. Those feeds didn’t become uninteresting — my interests changed. it’s not you, it’s me. Honest.

I don’t play the “I’ll follow you if you follow me” game. Most of the people doing that, in reality, are doing the “I’ll pretend to follow you to get you to follow me” game, and I have no time or interest in playing that game. I find it disingenuous, but not as disingenous as getting the notification of someone following me on twitter, only to see they’ve already unfollowed me by the time I go and look at whether I might want to follow them (which I do). Amusingly enough, that is a very common occurence among “social media experts” who follow 10,000 or more people. I’m sure they read those feeds religiously, too.

I post stuff to the various services for a very specific audience: me. I have an audience of one. I put it out there because it’s the stuff I find interesting enough to be the stuff I want out there when I’m looking. To the degree that what you find interesting is the same as what I find interesting is what makes reading my postings worth time in your browsing time budget. Or not.

I am sensitive to the time issue. That’s one reason why I consciously keep the blog relatively low-volume and focussed, and have shifted the more casual link-love and the chattering conversational stuff over to twitter. It gives people some options to subset what I do to fit their interests if they want. I long ago gave up the presumption that my every word is to be studied and cherished. Please, god, don’t archive me and turn me into a PhD thesis in 30 years, okay? I really wonder sometimes about people who feel everything they say has to go to every channel and be archived forever, and why they would even want that. But that’s just me…

The twitter to linkedin bridge is one I’ve wondered about. It seems to me Linkedin might better be served as a tighter, more formal communication channel. But right now, I think the balance and volume is okay, and to date, I’ve gotten, well, one complaint about it. So I’m leaving it alone, but I might decide it warrants a smaller firehose than facebook gets down the road. This is all new, and we’re figuring it all out as we go along…

Which is my long-winded answer to the question: if what I do has enough value to you to read and follow, great. If not, that’s great, too. If you feel you want subsets of the material, I’ve set up ways to do that in various ways (blog only, photos only, etc) or you can build your own filters if you care. Or you can choose not to follow it and use your time on something better fitting your interests. That’s the joy of this; nobody’s forcing you to do anything, there are always options.

I do hope you find me interesting and choose to read what I put out there. But if you don’t — life goes on. For me, what’s important is that what I put out there is what I find interesting. Too many people go into this trying to create content for an audience they hope to attract, and far too often, turn out uninteresting or commercial stuff. Me, I’m just trying to do what’s fun and interesting for me, and to the degree that there are those out there that also find it fun and interesting I’ll have an audience. I try not to pay much attention to “the numbers”,  but I will say they’re growing slowly and I’m quite satisfied that the time I put into creating content is a good investment of my time.

And that’s all that matters. If it’s a good investment of time, do it. If if it’s, do something else. to view it any other way is to overcomplicate things. …

 

 

Projects I may do some day — tablet-based image keywording

Here’s another project that is on my “wanna do” list. This is one I really am interested in pursuing (but it’s not quite at the top of the list yet).

I’ve really become fascinated by the tablet as a productivity device. There are some tasks that it enables where hauling around your laptop isn’t nearly as convenient, and the task itself is something that lends it self to the mode of doing incrementally — fire up an app for five minutes, do a few things in it, and then exit.

A task that seems a natural for that is editing metadata on images. Instead of sitting at the computer and staring at Lightroom (or Aperture), imagine sitting on the couch in the evening with your spouse and hauling out a tablet, and using that to browse a set of photos and do your caption and title editing and assigning keywords and other metadata, then having those changes synced back into your master library automatically. You could carry a set of images with you (literally), and do them 2 or three at a time during periods that are otherwise downtime — between meetings, waiting for someone to arrive for a shoot,  during commercials while watching TV with the family instead of having to sit in the office at the computer. It’d make doing this less painful and more convenient — so you’re more likely to actually do it and do it better.

Here’s a general idea of how I’m considering doing this:

A plug-in in Lightroom (or Aperture) is used to export images you want to edit the metadata on, as well as a copy of your keyword database. These can be put into a a collaboration service like Dropbox which will auto-magically make them available onto your tablet, so you don’t have to write the sharing/syncing code.

On the tablet side, there’s an App that knows what folder to look for images in in the Dropbox; it displays a thumbnail browser similar to what you’d see in an image browser for a site like Flickr or Smugmug. it also reads the exported version of your keyword database so it can present that to you so that your keywords are kept in sync and consistent with your master set.

you pick an image and it reads the EXIF out of it and displays the image and the EXIF data, and you can then choose EXIF fields you want to modify and make those chagnes, you can bring up the keywords and assign them as well. When you’re done, the updated EXIF including keywords are written back into the image.

Back in Lightroom, when the plug-in is activated again, it looks at the images exported for updating and finds the ones that have been updated; confirms you want to import those changes into your catalog and does so for you, and then rmoves those images from the dropbox.

For an individual photographer, this creates a way to work on your meta-data without having to chain yourself to your desk and computer. If you’re a photographer who contracts out keywording and metadata, this system would also work for you, because it crates a structured way to export those images to a place you can share with your contractor and bring the changes back in via an automated set of tools. No more exporting images and hoping when they come back they aren’t screwed up adn that when you import them you don’t mess up and lose other data that didn’t go with them when you sent them out for work…

This would require building a couple of pieces — the plug-in interface for Lightroom (or Aperture), and the tablet app to do the browsing and editing. The “hard” part of migrating images back and forth between devices and keeping things in sync is done for you by a known off-the-shelf tool like Dropbox. you could almost do this patching together existing pieces — Jeffrey Friedl’s export plug-ins do about 70% of what you need in Lightroom, and a tool like Fraser Speir’s Viewfinder for iPad does much of what the tablet app needs to do. There’s not a lot of “inventing” needed to make this happen, it’s more about sweating the details and making the process bulletproof and the interface easy and effective.

This is one I think will get built some day — if not by me, by others. There are complications in my life (ahem) that preclude me building commercial tablet applications right now, but maybe at some point I’ll build it as an open source app or as sample code or something…