Time for a Blog Vacation

Just a heads up on this. For various reasons, it’s time for a vacation from the blog. I won’t be going out of town, but for the next [redacted period of time] the blog is going to go on a hiatus while I work on some things. Nothing’s wrong, just busy, and there won’t be time for both. 

Regular blogging will return once I get past this short interregnum.

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 13, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• What Kind of Fear Owns You?
• Photographic reality
• The Sandbox’s Big Red Button
• An interesting job with mixed light sources. On the stage.

Predicting the conference finals..

Well if there’s ever need of proof of why I don’t make a living betting on hockey, the second round can be used. I was 4-4 in the first round (and happy to get there, given how unpredictable the playoffs have been). Luck wasn’t so kind to me in the 2nd round. 

In the West, I predicted the Blues and the Predators. Please stop snickering. 

In the east, I thought it would be the Flyers and Rangers. 

So I’m 1-3 in the second, and 5-7 for the playoffs. 

I don’t feel too bad. I expect whoever wins the major hockey fantasy pools this year is doing so with a dartboard. So it goes…

So now, we’re down to four teams, and the conference finals. Let me place the kiss of death on a couple of teams and predict them to win:

In the west: Phoenix and Los Angeles. Goalie Smith and the mission from god squad, vs. Goalie Quick and the Lombardi mob. Much as I’d love to see the Coyotes continue to confound the critics who wish they’d shut up and fail already, I have to give this one to the Kings, primarily because I think Quick is on a mission from god just like Smith is, but I think the Kings are playing better hockey. We’ll find out starting in about 30 minutes…  Call it six games.

And in the east? The more I watch the Rangers, the more I believe in them. More importantly, they believe in themselves. And the more I watch New Jersey, I won’t take them lightly, but I just think Lundquist can and will out duel Brodeur, and the Rangers are playing better hockey. So Rangers in five. 

So my call for stanley cup final: Rangers/Kings. Which should make NBC happy, and generate some really good (and low scoring) hockey. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 12, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• My personal take: 3 reasons I don’t like newspaper paywalls
• Thoughts About ‘Backup Cameras’
• Driving the Dalton Highway in Winter
• How To Stop The Shot-Blocking
• → Critical Photoshop CS5 security vulnerability won’t be patched
• Are you really getting ripped off on printer ink? | Ars Technica
• Legal Fallout of Dave Duerson’s suicide

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter and her pup

Oh, heck. too cute. Here’s one more of this sea otter and her pup…. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 11, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• AAR Fail
• Prismatic’s Global Newsfeed
• Kudos to Culver City
• British Birds Made of LEGO | Colossal
• Winter, Still Coming
• PKD in OC
• The reinvention of the bookseller
• Why I think the Olympus OM-D, EM-5 is making so many waves.
• 1859′s "Great Auroral Storm"—the week the Sun touched the earth

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter and her pup

While nursing the pup will hang onto the mom. She doesn’t let it go far, but in this case, the two were playing “you practice your floating”, but every time it got a little distance away, she hauled it back in where she could keep a paw on it… 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 10, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• My role in the Groupon story
• Speaking on the TED@Tunis Stage
• What’s is Peru’s dolphin and pelican die-off telling us? | Deep Sea News
• HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS
• Quenneville uses leverage, plus 30 Thoughts | Hockey | CBC Sports

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter Snacking

Here, the otter has cracked open lunch and is enjoying it. This gives you a nice shot of her cradling her rock. The otter will hold onto the rock through multiple dives for snacks.

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 9, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Art is a Popularity Contest, Not a Democracy
• Full Moon Rising
• Edie’s Trip Report: Tioga Road
• Notes From Chad: Funding Etsy’s Future | Etsy News
• Prismatic Goes Public
• Tonal Adjustments in the Age of Lightroom 4
• The Big Idea: Mark Teppo
• Giving the Velocity website a performance makeover
• The future of media on mobile and iPads isn’t about web beating apps, but better planning and implementation | Revert to Saved: A blog about design, gaming and technology
• Tempo, and bird song identification
• A Behind The Scenes Look at the Making of a Lee Filter
• Digital Darkroom Techniques with Carl Caylor
• AppleInsider: “Apple says lack of multi-user support on iPad is a ‘known issue,’ ‘being investigated’” – Marco.org
• How Hewlett-Packard lost its way – Fortune Tech

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter Napping

Sea Otter week continues… Sea Otters don’t come onto shore much, so they sleep in the water. One of the things they will do is wrap themselves in a kelp plan before napping, so that it keeps them in place so they don’t float off in the current. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 8, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• John Sheehan : The API Developer Experience Baseline
• How air freshener research led to a new fuel-cell charger for phones
• Birding the Owens Lake Big Day
• Returning to the scene of the crime
• Kirk’s Take: Electronic Viewfinders
• TUAW Bookshelf — The Business of iPhone and iPad Development: Making and Marketing Apps
• Mediacurrent: Webinar: The Drupal Media Initiative

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter feeding

Sea Otters will feed on shellfish and mussels, but they need a bit of help getting the shells opened. What they’ll do is bring a rock up from the bottom and put it on their bellies, and then beat the crap out of whatever it is they want to eat to crack the shell. It’s effective, if a bit splashy….

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 7, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Felicia Day goes Neo-Victorian in a Steampunk Photoshoot – YouTube
• The Most Overrated Social Media Metric | Social Media Metrics | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert
• Why Scott Thompson’s “inadvertent error” is a big deal
• Supermoon in Seattle
• Why Publishers Don’t Like Apps – Technology Review
• Did your parents have a Chevy when you were growing up?
• Broken Promises and Stock Photography
• Is It Photography?
• Whisky Advocate Blog
• Style Guides, Mood Boards, And Style Tiles: 3 Tools To Keep Design Projects On Track
• This Is All Your App Is: a Collection of Tiny Details
• Why I write about bathroom fans and pillowcasing strategies
• What Photographers Must Know About Using Extreme Wide Angle Lenses

Photo of the Day: Sea Otter at Dawn

Sea Otter week continues. This shot was taken just as dawn was starting to break, bathing morro bay harbor with this fascinating golden light. three minutes later? gone…. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 6, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Today’s Video Link
• Young women are (still) the best internet bait and 5 other lessons from ESPN’s blogger scandal
• Is the 1% rule dead? The BBC thinks so, but it’s wrong
• Tom the Dancing Bug’s Inner Hive
• The No Future League
• What Would the End of Football Look Like?
• Football, Dogfighting, and Brain Damage
• Lasting value
• The death of genre
• A Few Thoughts for the Weekend:-)
• BYOD and the security fun-sponge
• Why geeks (and other lean machines) need high-intensity workouts

Photo of the Day: Sea Otters

It is sea otter week here on Photo of the day. Why? Because they’re cute, that’s why. But look at those teeth. they have claws, too. Cute is not the same as tame. Or safe. So keep your distance…. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 5, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The death of genre
• Tolerance and Prosperity
• Modern pharmaceuticals becoming part of the culture in the NHL – The Globe and Mail
• Kris’s Post – Spread the Word
• Photography: It’s a Marathon | Nicolesy

Photo of the Day: Harbor Seal

A harbor seal practicing for the Harbor Seal Olympics in the high jump. He’s about as graceful on the sand as I am. 

The printer’s here….

The Epson 2880 printer has arrived, and setup is beginning. With wide format printers, you have to remember they’re big, they’re heavy, and with art paper, it’s fed flat, so you need to be able to clear space on both sides for the paper to be put through. this weekend, I’ll start with the test prints and see how things go… 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 4, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Success as a Photographer | Nature and Photography
• 3 iPad Photography Solutions For Going On The Road
• Amanda Palmer, Kickstarter, and Everything
• Today’s Video Link – News From ME
• Why ESPN doesn’t cover hockey | Puck Daddy – Yahoo! Sports
• You Can Call Clint Malarchuk A Survivor
• Disqus overhauls commenting system to improve quality of conversations
• Prismatic wants to be the newspaper for a digital age

Leaders and followers…

Retooling the sharks part 1: management @ Chuqui 3.0:

The one criticism I’ve had of Sharks ownership and business team is that they are followers, not innovators. This has been true pretty much since day one. I’ve always wanted this team to drive innovation in the league; it is silicon valley’s team, after all, where a lot of this innovation happens in the world. But the  organization has never taken a league leadership role and always seems to wait for other teams to drive innovations — not surprisingly, given its owner, one of the more innovative teams is the Capitals. Maybe someday this will change, but I’m not holding my breath, and I don’t see the new ownership making this change.

The Sharks were one of the first league teams to have an internet presence, for instance (I know this, because Laurie and I were demoing this funky thing called a browser to them back around 1994 and telling them that this was going to be important to get in front of) — yet after being one of the early (maybe the first) teams to have a web site, they have pretty much followed what the league does rather than led the league forward. There are so many things happening here in the valley where the organization could potentially bring the partnership into the league and foster it through to the other teams, but that’s just not their mindset. They’re followers. Which is okay, but I always hoped for more. 

In my comments on the Sharks, I noted my disappointment that they were followers, not innovators in the league, especially in areas where their residence in Silicon Valley might give them networking opportunities to drive technology innovation into the league. Instead, other teams do that.

Caps and Wizards on Pinterest | Ted’s Take:

Click here. We are starting to build out a series of community of interests on this new social network. We will evolve it and make them better day by day. Pin away.

 

Which is why I thought I’d note that the Capitals are at it again, under the leadership of Ted Leonsis, and have added Pinterest into their social media mix for the teams. Pinterest, based in Palo Alto, about 30 minutes from Sharks world headquarters. And who’s doing the innovation with them?

The team in Washington D.C. 

Well done to the Caps for continuing to innovate and evangelize those innovations into the league. And it’s too bad the Sharks aren’t taking advantage of living in Silicon Valley to build the networks around the Valley that would both make the team a visible leader around the league, but help build the networking connections around their home region that would likely lead to future partnerships and sponsorships as the companies they work with grow and mature… 

(it just seems to me that there are opportunities here in business development, sponsorships, foundation and fundraising work, PR and Marketing, and in increasing the organization’s influence within the league power structure. Except none of it seems to be a priority…)

NHLPA files appeal of Torres’ 25-game suspension

NHLPA files appeal of Torres’ 25-game suspension – NHL.com – News:

The National Hockey League Players’ Association has filed an appeal of the 25-game suspension handed to Phoenix forward Raffi Torres last month.

Torres was penalized during the Western Conference Quarterfinals for a late hit to the head of Chicago Blackhawks forward Marian Hossa in Game 3 of the series. Hossa did not return to the game or the series, which Phoenix won in six games.

As I thought they would, the League came down hard and heavy on Torres. 25 games is a massive suspension. After thinking about it for a fews days, Torres and the Players Association have decided to appeal. 

There are really two reasons for this appeal. One is that this suspension is too heavy; nobody is suggesting that Torres should not be suspended, but even the more rabid “nuke him until he glows” believers seem to have trouble supporting this length of a ban. I’d suggested that the league would see Torres as a convenient target to make a statement, and it seems they did exactly that. I have trouble with 25 games off, even given Torres’ history of this kind of nasty hit. 

The other reason to appeal this is Donald Fehr, the head of the players association. the CBA negotiations are coming up. Bargaining chips are useful. And what’s the appeal process here? It’s heard by Commissioner Bettman, who happens to be Brendan Shanahan’s boss. In baseball, it’s fairly common for an appeal to get a bit of time shaved off by Bud Selig. In the NHL, to my knowledge an appeal has never been upheld or a suspension modified. (and in baseball, appeals are routine; in the NHL, they are exceptionally rare. coincidence? no). 

One can only imagine that the players association would love to see appeals be changed so it’s not strictly up to Bettman. A few media types suggested this should all go to arbitration, but there are reasons (a big one being need for timeliness) where that’s not a good option, but this suspension gives Fehr a chance to rattle the cage a bit and generate some talking points for the negotiation — even if it’s a demand for different appeal processes that gets given up as a concession along the way (which I’d say is likely if this is tried). So at the least, Shanahan has given the players association a small bargaining chip for the CBA talks. 

And it’s possible this could turn into a headache for the league later if the PA chooses to make it one. I hope Shanahan and Bettman don’t regret making a statement here down the road.

And having said that — I’m troubled by this suspension. it’s excessive. I’m making no apologies for Torres, but given how Shanahan has been ruling this season, I’d say it really should have been 10-15 games, not 25. I expect the appeal to go nowhere. I expect the union to make noises about that. Torres will be unhappy (but I don’t care, he made this bed, and now gets to sleep in it for a long time, and so it’s hard to find any sympathy for him. 

But what I want to see are clear deterrents to this kind of headhunting behavior, and the one thing this suspension is NOT is a deterrent, because unless you’re a player like Torres, you can see that this kind of ban hammer won’t happen to you. It does nothing to deal with the larger problem of players headhunting, and I think that’s a mistake. There was a middle ground they could have taken that would have made players take notice of the suspension. this isn’t that middle ground. 

And that disappoints me, because the league punished a serious offender, but still isn’t doing enough to solve the problem. 

I hate to be in Torres’ camp for this one, but I think the league over-reacted. And I don’t feel better for having predicted it… 

Photo of the Day: Jellyfish, Monterey Bay Aquarium

If you ever get a chance to visit this exhibit, do so. It’s awesome. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 3, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• 13 Years Ago, I Became the Accordion Guy
• m.e.driscoll: data utopian • the secret guild of silicon valley
• iPad productivity apps
• What’s missing from the current practice of photography.
• I’m going to get geeky and talk about an actual job.
• Hey Google — your G+ desperation is showing
• 5 Tips for Long Exposure Photography — by Nicole S. Young « CanvasPop Blog

Working on the web site…

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog recently, partly because work’s kept me pretty busy (in very good, but you-can’t-see-it-yet ways) and partly because I’ve been digging more into the guts of a few things, and while that’s fun, it’s not necessarily interesting blog fodder. 

Back around the start of the year, I did my annual plan to try to focus my time and energy on the things I thought were most important. What I found, much to my amusement, was that when I started digging in, my “streamlined and focussed action plan” was still rather big and complicated. I ended up thinking through how to streamline it further, and decided on simply looking at two things: my photography, and that it was finally time to stop playing the “some day I’ll have time to do this right” game with chuqui.com. 

The fact is, most of the other stuff I want to do is going to depend on a professional looking, quality site as a foundation to build on. I talked a bit about that when I started working on the new photo gallery, and the more I looked at it, the more I realized I just needed to tear it completely apart and deal with all of the things I’ve patched around or played the “someday I’ll get around to…” game about. 

So I am. The above is a structure diagram of what is going to become the new chuqui.com — unless I change it some more, which I probably will. The pieces in red are done; I’ve added two specialty sub-domains (photos.chuqui.com and files.chuqui.com), and loaded my new photo gallery in one, and a whole bunch of “stuff” in the other — my OtherRealms archive and the mailing list archives from the years Laurie and I ran all of those mailing lists about all of those various things.

The mailing list archives are a fascinating blob of data waiting to be analyzed — about 100,000 files and about 2 gigabytes of email spanning something like 40 mailing lists and about 12 years. I have it back in a usable form, which took some massaging (and trust me, Dropbox does NOT like having 100,000 files dumped on it, and in fact, I have TWO copies of it, one with the email addresses purged, and a private one unaltered).

I’m also using the files subdomain for other stuff, like storing full sized panoramas, and when i get my updated wallpaper download area going, it’ll go in there. So it’s just a big static web site for stuff that will have low usage and doesn’t need much but a big pipe behind it. Both live on Amazon S3, FWIW. 

The two orange boxes are the things I’m currently working on. It was time to rethinking the wallpaper downloads, especially given the new iPad with Retina display (which I don’t have yet, I bought a printer instead…). One thing I’ve found in researching best practices for how to format and distribute wallpapers is this: there are none. Because of this, I’m trying to decide what makes sense, and how to explain the decisions I make (when I make them), in hopes of maybe helping along creating some. 

The other orange box has turned into one of those proverbial “big hairy beasts”. For a while I’ve been posting my “shared links” every night; originally using Google Reader as the host, and when Google did away with that functionality (grrrr. grump), I experimented with some options, and finally decided to implement it through Instapaper — for now — because I could get equivalent functionality. 

Quick digression. Early on, I called them “Shared links”, and enough people read it that I kept doing it. While I was figuring out the “post Google” version of this, for a while I fed all of the links to Twitter, and then did a nightly link of my Twitter activity. My analytics show that my readership of those postings fairly quickly went to ZERO. None. NADA. It was an easy decision to nuke that idea. Those of you who feel strongly that every word you utter needs to be permanently archived and who capture and archive all of that stuff to your blog? check your analytics. Just sayin’. What the universe was sayin’ to me was “dude, that’s a waste of electrons”, and their right. (but the whole “we must archive every word we say forever and ever” thing is its whole own essay, which I need to get to some day).

So I finally went back to the old model, using a new database and capture setup around Instapaper. It’s simply, it works, and it’s reliable. But I decided to try framing it differently, so instead of calling it “shared links”, I now call it “Things you’ll find interesting”. Daily readership of those items is consistently about 30% higher than the old “shared links” postings. Those geeks out there that pooh-pooh marketing and branding of things, well, check your analytics. A little quiet positioning can do interesting things.

But simply posting links isn’t what I want to do in the long term. Some links only warrant a link. Some  I want to comment on to some degree or another. Others end up becoming jumping off points for entire blog posts. the problem is managing all of that without huge amounts of manual work, because, frankly, the more hassle it is to do, the less I’m likely to actually do it. So it has to be easy.

And this has turned into what I’m now calling the “collect, curate and comment” project. The current setup handles the first two well, and the third not at all. I’ve got an idea where this is going, but it’s not fleshed out yet. When it is, I’ll talk about it further. I will put a couple of sticks in the sand and say that both Duncan Davidson’s blog, and John Gruber at Daring Fireball have a better handle on this than most, but it’s still not what I think it could be. Ultimately I think having too many “link posts” clutter up the blog stream, which is why I like the one-post-a-day setup I’m using. The question is how to integrate commentary into it, and the answer is “I’m not sure yet”. 

I am considering doing a separate link blog that I suck in as a daily post. I think using WordPress and make each one its own post, and use the excerpts for the commentary, I can come close (maybe); use Marsedit as the front end, and perhaps a link posting bookmarklet or something. Lots of moving parts, and integration might be painful. 

The alternative is to go full monty, and build a custom web app with a database in the back that I feed stuff out to, with some automated way to suck it back out. Full customized interface,  plus easy (for me) posting hookups. The questions I’m grappling with here are complicated: is this way overkill for what I want to do? Am i re-inventing Delicious or Magnolia (remember them?) and is that what I really want? And if I do this, is the blog post really the final result, or should this be a web-visible, query-able database that people can poke at, and if I do that, what the hell am I getting myself into?  It seems like a fun hack, but.. is that really where I want to go? 

So I’m down a rathole, and I’m trying to refine the idea so I can build it and move on. I’m enjoying the process, but… well, I can do it easy, or I can do it right. and I’m tired of easy-but-sloppy. I’m just trying to decide what right is. (and, well, there’s an entire philosophy of signal vs. noise and creating value in your content, and the philosophy of curation and how that all relates to blogs and this internet thingie, but that’s another essay, too). And then there are times when I think I’m in “thinking too hard” mode again… 

What are the other colored blocks? The purple block is the “this is silicon valley” project I talked about back in January. It has, of course, blossomed and grown in scope since then, but I also put it on hold to focus. Assuming it doesn’t mutate further, it’ll eventually become it’s own site, and it’s now clearly a multi-year project, even if I don’t grow the damn thing to include other contributors, which I’m considering. For now, though, it’s a purple box that I’m ignoring until I get some other things done…

The green blocks are parts of the site redesign I can’t do until I upgrade to a new WordPress theme. I’ve chosen a theme — Photocrati is the core I’ll be designing around — but there’s a whole lot of work to do before it sees the light of day. The lavender is the rest of the site, various bits and pieces that need to be shampooed, walls painted, maybe some new trim, metadata and content refreshed (and the crap thrown out), etc. Lots of deferred maintenance and a re-thinking of the writing and content areas.  I’m working on some of that now, and unless you’re looking closely, you won’t notice those changes because that’s all being worked in quietly and gradually. 

One aspect of that is that I am going back through and editing out the crap from the site and postings. So far, I’ve deleted about 90 blog posts, and I’m probably going to find another 50 or so worthy of termination. For those of you who who think that words should never disappear into the ether, tough. There’s a lot of crap on the internet, and some of it is on my blog. I’d rather it not be there. This brings me down below 2000 blog postings again, and since I’ve gone through these purges in the past, I know I’ve nuked probably 1/3 of the entries I’ve written oner the last 12 years or so. Which is fine, I’m not trying to win the “he wrote more entries than anyone else longer than anyone else” award. 

I do wish WordPress would implement a “termination date” option for blog postings. There are any number of things I post that I know that two or three months from now nobody will ever care about again, and I wish I could just pre-set the system to make them go away. But I seem to be the only person who worries about things like that, so instead, every so often I wander the site looking for crap, and when I find it, I haul out the shovel and start mucking… 

Oh, and that last color on the diagram? the teal? That’s the next piece to come, when I figure out the curation and commenting. If you know my past and you’ve watched the blog over time, you can probably figure out what I’m thinking of here. I’m still noodling on the concept, though, so we’ll defer detailed discussion for now… But yeah, it’s about reviews and reviewing, just like OtherRealms was. 

Well, right now it is. It may mutate further… 

Photo of the Day: Calaveras Bald Eagle Nest

The other thing I did on Sunday was check up on the bald eagle’s nest on Calaveras Reservoir. Because of work and life, I haven’t gotten out there for about six weeks, and since my last visit, the eggs have hatched and the chicks are growing. 

This is just a status shot, I didn’t stay long and they weren’t cooperating. I missed the male by about ten minutes, but both parents are busy rearing the kids again this year. I try to take photos of the nest when I visit so I can compare the nest over time — the photos of the nest over time are on my gallery, and this is the fourth out of the last five years I’ve taken images there (last year, they moved nests and work precluded me visiting more than once). 

You can (mostly) see mom behind the struts, and the brown blob on the left side of the nest is one of the kids laying down. The other chick is down in the nest and I never got a shot of it flapping its wings, which was about all I saw of it. 2009 was the first year they successfully fledged, and they seem to be on the way to two fledges  this year. My (unofficial) count for this nest is 0, 1, 2, N/A, and 2-in-progress, so this has been a very successful nest. There are a couple of first year nests we’ve found, one at Crystal Springs reservoir in San Mateo County (first confirmed bald eagle nesting in the county in a  year), and one down at Pinto Lake in Santa Cruz County — both with younger females and it looks like both failed to hatch this year, but that’s not unusual from what I’ve been told. We’re hoping they’ll both try again next year. 

From what I saw, the chicks  seemed healthy, although they mostly slept when I was watching. One chick is getting close to the size of mom, and both are showing signs of feather growth including primaries. If the eggs were laid around the first week of February, they seem on track for fledging in around the start of June. Again this year, it looks like two chicks are growing to fledging. Mom is hiding behind the stanchion. The brown lump to the left is one (sleeping) chick. the other is down in the nest in front of mom, but was flapping its wings occasionally and did pop a head up once. Both look healthy to me, at least as far as I can tell from this distance.

I’ll try to get out there a couple more times before they fledge and move out for the year, if I can…

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 2, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• USDA’s Wildlife Services program kills 50,000 harmless animals
• You’ll never believe how LinkedIn built its new iPad app (exclusive)
• Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email: ‘I see email being used, by and large, exactly the way I envisioned’ | The Verge
• Yes, you can shoot at midday!
• Killdeer – Wash, Fluff and Dry
• The process of gently breaking in new cameras.
• Why Yelp is the Digg of local
• Me and Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson and Felicia Day Talk About Characters For Roughly an Hour
• The Joy of Prints
• What Now: Board Meeting or Bullsh*t?
• FINALISTS: 2012 Locus Awards
• Familiar is not a design – Matt Gemmell
• The Horse-Human Interface
• The annual plumage cycle of a male American Goldfinch
• Syntax-K – Know-How für Ihr Projekt – The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

Do you need a printer in the house?

Back in 2010, when I retired my HP9180, I wrote a blog piece asking the semi-rhetorical question Do do you really need a printer — and here it is 2012, and I have a definitive answer for that question.

For me, at least, the answer is a definite yes. I’d been considering buying one for a while, when Mark’s new Epson 3880 convinced me it was time to get serious about this. The 3880 was beyond what I wanted to spend, but I’d been arguing with myself about it’s slightly littler brother, the Epson 2880. Much to my surprise, Adorama had a few as manufacturer refurbished for about $90 off the new price, and that was enough to convince me to grab one (that deal is no longer available, however).

Personally, I wouldn’t buy a used printer (your mileage may vary), given the usage and wear printers go through, and if this was a revenue generating printer I wouldn’t buy refurb, either, but as a low-volume, primarily hobby device, I’m comfortable with this choice. It comes with a warranty, so if I run into issues, I have options.

Why the 2880? I wanted something from a good manufacturer (which, for photo printers, IMHO, means Epson, Canon or HP); I ruled out HP because I find their inks brutally expensive (I don’t work there any more, I can say that now) and their low and medium end devices don’t tickle my toes (and I’m unwilling to pay $3500 or more for a printer yet).  I wanted a wide format printer, this one will do up to 13×19, which is great, as my favorite print sizes are 11×14 and 11×17. And it supports roll paper, which allows for panorama prints, something I really want to explore, and which can be cheaper than pre-cut paper. And the print costs seem reasonable. I really like the Epson UltraChrom Inks, too, and as I explore black and white printing, the Epson inks seemed to be a better choice.

Having said all of that, it  was primarily lack of roll paper support at this price point that made the difference between Epson and Canon, FWIW. Canon has some nice models, too.

The printer is on a truck, trundling this way. I’ll probably be unpacking this weekend and starting to explore.

What do I plan on doing with this? Make prints. Put them up on my wall. Give them away. Expect to see some opportunities on this site for prints once I get settled in.

Why do this? Why not lab prints?

Well, it’s complicated. Maybe for some people lab prints are an option, but one thing I fell in love with using the 8190 were art papers. Big, thick, textured hunks of paper that bring a different look and life to an image. I miss that, and using a lab to print on Hahnemuele German Etching or Photo Rag Pearl is between impossible and unaffordable.

Besides, I enjoy geeking the printer and working to make my prints better.

And that’s the other, bigger aspect of this — I lost an aspect of the quality of my images when I stopped printing. I got comfortable with a “good enough for Flickr”. Over the last few months, I’ve bent taking a close look at what I’m doing and why, and why I haven’t been as happy with the results as I want to be — and I came to realize that when I stopped printing, I stopped getting better, and in fact, my photography regressed. When you only look at your images online — you can get satisfied with the quality a lot sooner in the production process. Putting it on paper, especially at larger sizes, means you can’t tolerate the flaws.

So I came to the decision that to drive my imagery forward again, I had to start putting it on paper again, and I needed to do it myself and not depend on a lab to do it.

Besides, I like giving prints away… (and maybe selling the occasional one).

And the first image I’m going to print on this puppy is this one:

Why?

Well, there’s a story to that…

Photo of the day: Lawrence’s Goldfinch

I’ve been doing a lot of photography work recently, but without a camera. Sunday, though, I was able to get out for a couple of hours, and visit an infrequent visitor to the coastal part of Santa Clara County. A few Lawrence’s Goldfinches wandered into the Ed Levin Park area near Milpitas from farther inland and have been hanging out — typically, I need to get out to the Mines road or Anderson Valley areas out beyond Mount Hamilton for a chance to see them. 

They were easy to find — I just wandered over to where they’d been seen and looked for the flock of 500mm lenses. This one was sitting on a branch for a good ten minutes, watching us and evidently amused at all the bother. (you can find more images of this bird over on my gallery). Some days, its’ just easy to add a bird to the year list… 

Things You’ll Find Interesting May 1, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Wildlife Services under the microscope
• May Desktop Wallpaper
• Completing Your Vision with Nik Software by Piper Mackay
• The Window is Closing
• Ben Combee’s screencast of his talk at the Austin…
• You Don’t Own Anything Anymore: Copyright Law in an Internet Age
• Lunar Rainbow Season, and a Dogwood Update
• Trigger Your Camera 12 Different Ways With TriggerTrap’s New App
• My Approach to Photography
• Star Wars Party with My Friends | Video | Gear

Photo of the Day: Marsh Wren

A small and precocious bird, this one was clearly checking out my camera gear… 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 30, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Dear United Airlines
• My weekend with Sophos Anti-Virus for OS X
• Why Luongo, without your no-trade clause, you’re beautiful!
• Week 15: Detail Extractor Filter in Color Efex Pro 4
• Minimalism in Photography and Life
• BEM: The Block, Element, Modifier Approach To Decoupling HTML And CSS | Van SEO Design
• How Am I Doing Now?
• Monday morning observations from a (still) working photographer.
• The "Bubble" and What’s Really Going on with Startups
• KuklasKorner : KK Hockey : Video- Just Bloopers All the Time
• Think Like a Publisher: Chapter 3: Projected Income

Refs who didn’t make the 2nd round

Just to carry forward the “who got cut” thread into the second round, here are the refs and linesmen who were in the first round and are now watching from home. You are welcome to speculate why in the comments if you wish…

Referees:

• Paul Devorski
• Tom Kowal
• Mike Leggo
• Brad Meier
• Tim Peel
• Brian Pochmara
• Francois St. Laurent
• Ian Walsh
• Stand-by’s — Greg Kimmerly and Frederick E’Cuyer

Linesmen

• David Brisebois
• Lonnie Cameron
• Scott Cherrey
• Brad Lazarowich
• Derek Nansen
• Tim Nowak
• Anthony Sericolo
• Mark Wheler
• Stand-bys — Darren Gibbs, Mark Shewchyk

Retooling the Sharks part 2: tweaking the roster

Time to put the roster under a microscope. Before I do, however, a quick summary of major roster changes leading to and during the season, plus some of the post-season paperwork realities:

Key transactions

• Brent Burns for Devin Setoguchi
• Martin Havlat for Dany Heatley

Free Agent additions:

• Michal Handzus
• Brad Winchester
• Colin White
• Jim Vandermeer

Free Agent Losses

• Scott Nichol
• Kent Huskins
• Jamal Mayers
• Ben Eager
• Kyle Wellwood
• Niclas Wallin
• Ian White

Key trades during the season:

• Jamie McGinn for Daniel winnik and TJ Galiardi

Injuries disclosed at the end of the season: 

• Couture (shoulder, surgery)
• Pavelski (foot, injected, thumb and knee ligaments)
• Burns (ab straing)
• Ryane Clowe (groin strain)
• TJ Galliardi (lower back)
• Michal Handzus (groin strain)
• Doug Murray (groin strain)
• Colin White (Shoulder)
• Tom Wingels (Shoulder)

Looking into the offseason

Restricted Free Agents:

• Tom Wingels
• TJ Galliardi
• Benn Ferriero
• Andrew DesJardins
• Justin Braun

Unrestricted Free Agents:

• Dan Winnik
• Torrey Mitchell
• Dominick Moore
• Brad Winchester
• Jim Vandermeer
• Colin White

Key no trade clauses:

• Patrick Marleau
• Dan Boyle (with a window where it goes on vacation)

So, now what?

In recent seasons, it seemed that the Sharks top six forwards played well — and the playoff series was lost by substandard play in the third and fourth lines. Fixing the third and fourth lines was a big focus of Doug Wilson and Coach McClellan — just look at the lists above and you can see the tinkering going on. And this playoff, to me, our third and fourth lines consistently outplayed the Blues, and this year, it was our first and second lines that got outplayed. 

It’s always something.

Lets start with goaltending. The Sharks brought Greiss back into the organization; to the surprise of almost everyone, he took Nitimaki’s job away, sending him away to purgatory, or Limbo, or wherever he ended up. When Greiss played, he played pretty well; his numbers in the regular season were comparable with Niemi’s. I liked what I saw, and I wish the Sharks had played him more when Niemi was struggling in the regular season. They didn’t, and Niemi played every minute of the playoffs, as expected. 

Niemi’s save percentage in the playoff matched his regular season. He was solid. His GAA was 2.45 — and he lost the series. On a “by the numbers” basis, there’s no complaint here. I felt there were a couple of key situations where Niemi could have made a difference and perhaps turned a game around — and didn’t. But goaltending wasn’t why the Sharks lost the series, and it’s a stretch to say it’s Niemi’s fault for not stealing a series the Sharks didn’t deserve to win. 

I suppose we could get involved in the Luongo sweepstakes; we could potentially upgrade our goaltending. Goaltenders don’t score and a different goalie wouldn’t fix the penalty kill. I would want to see the Sharks focus resources and energy elsewhere in the offseason, but I want Niemi both better and more reliable next season. He had some rough spots, and he has to be more consistently good. 

Defense. I like our defense. I think Brent Burns struggled early and looked good when it really mattered; criticism of him by some is overblown. And bluntly, getting him for Setoguchi (who I’d trade for a back of pucks and consider it addition by subtraction — look at his season in Minnesota) even a weak Brent Burns improved our team. 

Boyle, Murray, Vlasic are untouchables. Burns is almost untouchable. That foursome is a group of D most teams would kill for, with Vlasic hitting his prime and Murray hitting anything stupid enough to be caught. I like Justin Braun and Jason Demers as young and up and coming; Braun matured wonderfully this year and still has more improvement coming; Demers as less reliable but shows a lot. 

this is a damn good D corps. I’d leave it alone. 

Colin White was brought in, more or less replacing Ian white, who went to Detroit. All in all, that wasn’t an improvement. Colin White never really impressed me. he’s unrestricted, he won’t be back. I wouldn’t bring him back. The Sharks do need 2 Dmen to fill out this group and give us some depth. Jim Vandermeer (also unrestricted) isn’t the right solution for that, so the Sharks need to address this elsewhere. 

Third and Fourth lines. Okay, let me get this out of the way first. I miss Jamie McGinn. I understand why the Sharks traded him. He auditioned for a 2nd line role, and honestly, he wasn’t up to it. When  the Sharks needed to add depth to the roster, he was a player Colorado wanted, and he was expendable in San Jose. Anyone who puts him on a fantasy team based on his post trade “hey! I’m a scoring god now” time will live to regret it. What McGinn is is a pretty good third or fourth line banger who’s found a way to get a few goals in the net. He reminds me a lot of Jeff Odgers but with better hands, and that’s a real compliment coming from me, but he’s not a game breaker, and Im’ not convinced he’s going to have a long and fruitful career — but he will have a good and solid one. 

Having said all of that, the Sharks could have used him in these playoffs. But I don’t think trading him was a mistake. We’ll see. I’d like to see the Sharks bring back both Winnik and Galiardi, because I like what they bring to the team, too. 

For the 3-4 lines, I like Andrew Desjardins. he’s going to improve, but I don’t think he’s more than a 3-4 liner. I like Tommy Wingels. I’d like to see Galiardi and Winnik back. Michal Handzus should be in the mix, also. 

Martin Havlat. If he can stay healthy, that will really help this team. Will he? That’s the risk. You solve that risk by having depth to cover the times when he’s out.  One thing the Sharks struggled with was that the depth wasn’t there when they needed it. 

Torrey Mitchell? Disappointing year. I think his star had faded. He’s unrestricted. Bring him back? no. 

Brad Winchester? also unrestricted. Good soldier, aging vet. I think he’s near, or at, the end of the line. Sharks need to look elsewhere. 

Dominic Moore? Thanks, but no. 

Benn Ferriero? Good, not good enough to consistently crack the roster. I think he’ll play in the NHL, just not a top tier team like the Sharks. 

So the Sharks have three bodies under contract and two more i want to see come back in the bottom six. That leaves a couple of roster spots to fill, plus depth. Some work to do here, but I like the core. 

And that leaves — our top six forwards. 

The first two lines.

Joe Thornton. Logan Couture. Joe Pavelski. Ryane Clowe. These four are untouchable. 

And then there’s Patrick Marleau. He has a no-trade clause, but the war drums are out in the local media and among the fans and pundits around the league that it’s time to move him elsewhere. 

For the first time, I’m not saying “no, don’t do it”. but I’m not calling for it, either. I’m conflicted. 

Marleau has, since his first year as a Shark, had periods of the season where his play was — enigmatic. And every time that happened, someone grabbed the war drums and started beating them to do something about him. And every season, Marleau ended up with really good numbers and was a playoff performer, at which point the war drums got pointed at Joe Thornton instead. 

This year,  Joe Thornton carried this team through the playoffs, and even his detractors admit that — and Marleau had an enigmatic playoff. 64 points, 30 goals and +10 in the regular season, he was a non factor against the Blues. Is he the problem? Or the scapegoat? 

I’m conflicted. I think reality is “some of both”. What I’m unsure of is whether what we saw was the “new, real Marleau”, or whether it was an aberration. Is this the start of Marleau’s decline? Or will “mr enigmatic” be there for the playoffs next year? 

The biggest challenge Marleau has with the fans is he seems too — mellow. Fans would like him to be Owen Nolan. That’s not going to happen. I honestly don’t see his level-headedness as a weakness. It’s what he is, but the segment of fans who aren’t happy unless players are putting opponents through the glass at every opportunity take any weakness in play as a chance to  beat the war drum of “everyone must be maniacs”. 

That said, I’m just unsure what Patrick Marleau we’ll see next season, and whether we’ll be happy with the results. He has a lot to prove, and I don’t know if, at this point in his career, whether he can. 

Those doubts are going to affect his trade value. That, and the fact that he has a no trade clause, makes me think the Sharks will decide to ride it with him. I don’t think the Sharks want the same kind of criticism aimed at them that Tampa got when they forced Boyle out (for which we Sharks fans still thank the Lightning). If the no-trade didn’t exist, I bet the Sharks would at least explore options. With the no-trade in place, I think the Sharks will stand pat unless Marleau privately asks them to look at options and volunteers to waive the no-trade. I don’t expect the Sharks to force the issue, which will upset some fans and annoy some media pundits. But treating their players well is part of the Sharks management philosophy, and that’s one reason why free agents want to come play here. Screwing around with Marleau’s no-trade clause can hurt that reputation — and leaving it alone might upset some in the short term, but in the long run will be seen as a positive by players considering coming to the Sharks. 

So I think Marleau will be in teal come opening night. Is that the right call? I think so.

I also believe the Sharks need to commit to putting Marleau in as the 2nd line center, and leave him there. I don’t think he’s’ as comfortable or as effective at wing, and that’s part of the problem with Marleau. His speed and his vision make him a really good center, and his speed is somewhat negated playing at wing, so going into next season, put thornton at center on the first line, Marleau at forward on the 2nd, and don’t mess around with it very much. 

The top six forwards were the big weakness in the playoffs, our scoring simple disappeared. three goals in five games from our top six? Not acceptable. But five of the spots are defined out, and the players we can can be, and need to be, better. 

So, my priorities going into next season?

• Priority one, as I mentioned yesterday, replace Trent Yawney’s experience behind the bench.
• We have to figure out who is the sixth (and seventh) players covering the top six forward spots.
• We have to make sure we have more defensive depth, but we don’t need impact-type (top 2, top 4) defensemen. A couple of good, solid veterans, stay at home times, would be nice.
• And we need to fill out the rest of the roster, 2-3 bottom-six forwards and black ace depth guys. 

What we don’t need to do is panic, over-react, and start tearing up this roster and rebuilding it. 

Yet. 

I think this roster can pull it together and be better next year. If that doesn’t happen for some reason? Then we’ll have a different discussion…. 

Photo of the Day: No Trespassing

I don’t think they were really paying attention to the sign. It was hung right next to the “No Hunting” sign. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 29, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The Dark Side of Free
• Newer Technology Guardian MAXimus mini portable RAID solution

Retooling the sharks part 1: management

2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Changing of the guard in Western Conference – ESPN:

The Sharks? It’s a little more complicated than Detroit. For starters, they don’t have anything coming off their cap that’s really that noteworthy. The likes of Torrey Mitchell, Dominic Moore and Daniel Winnik are UFAs July 1, but all of the high-paid, core players remain signed.

Longtime Shark Patrick Marleau was a huge disappointment in the five-game loss to St. Louis, going pointless. He’s got two more years at $6.9 million a year and a no-trade clause to boot. Martin Havlat had a disappointing, injury-filled year. After scoring twice in Game 1, he was barely noticeable in the rest of the series. He’s got three more years at $5 million per season. Defenseman Brent Burns didn’t have the impact this season the Sharks had hoped they were getting after dealing for him last summer. He’s got five more years at $5.76 million per season.

The decisions won’t be easy for GM Doug Wilson. But this team needs a core shakeup. Aside from Joe Thornton (who was easily San Jose’s best player against the Blues), Logan Couture, Ryane Clowe and Dan Boyle, I’d be ready to trade almost anyone else on this roster.

Easier said than done, of course. But Wilson has a track record of making bold moves. He’s not scared of change. He spoke with Columbus about Rick Nash before the trade deadline. Maybe he revisits that.

Either way, Wilson is on the clock this summer. His Sharks need retooling if they want to hang with the new class in the West.

Pierre LeBrun gets to the core. Standing pat’s not an option. Getting better isn’t easy. How do we deconstruct these Sharks and make changes to move them forward? Or is it time to tear it apart and move on?

One quick dose of reality: the better a team is, the harder it is to keep getting better. It’s relatively easy for a team struggling to make the playoffs to improve enough to challenge for a division. It’s very difficult for a team that’s a President’s Cup contender to find a next step to take in improvement. The closer you are to that point in the curve where it flattens out, the more expensive it gets to keep pushing the performance curve upward — or the more risky the move you have to make to do so. And risky moves are, well, risky, which means sometimes they don’t work, or backfire. 

That’s part of the Sharks problem this year; Doug Wilson made a couple of moves of the “if this works, it’ll help us — but it’s risky”, and I think in this case, the Sharks didn’t roll craps but the moves didn’t work as hoped. that’s especially true with Marty Havlat and his weird hamstring injury that had him out of the lineup for an extended time. And his injury meant key players were out of position much of the season, and the “hoped for’ lineups and lines never really happened. 

Id on’t think, however, that this means the trades were failures or that the Sharks would have been better off without the moves. The reality is the Sharks last year needed to be pushed further up the performance curve, but doing so isn’t easy. And in this case, the things they tried were risky, and the risks came back to hamper the Sharks. Sometimes, that happens. But safe moves, lower-risk moves, weren’t going to move the needle.

So now what?

Let’s start from the top and work down, see which parts of the organization need work. The fact is, standing pat is not an option (it never is), because there set of the conference has worked hard to get better, and this year’s performance, I think, is tied as much to who the teams around the sharks got better as much, or more, than the Sharks under-performing. 

First, the ownership group. Greg Jamison is gone (and still seems to be sniffing around the Coyotes, although that continues to be a heap of complicated and taking forever to resolve). He’s been replaced by people who really want to stay out of view and run the business, but not make headlines. They’ve left hockey to the hockey people (i.e. Doug Wilson), which I like, and I don’t see much change in philosophy between what the Jamison group did and what they’re doing: there’s been some significant focus on the business side of the organization, but that seems to be a good thing overall. 

Overall, the Sharks ownership group has been supportive of the team, willing to try to bring in good hockey people and let them run things without interference, and willing to invest money to create a winning team. They have a good building and they’ve invested in keeping the building working well and looking good. They’ve been cautious about pricing and haven’t over-inflated ticket prices, and they’ve been involved in the community and invested in charitable endeavors. In other words, the Sharks ownership group has always been a pretty good one, and I think that continues. 

What they haven’t been, and this of course upsets some fans, is a “win at any price” group, ala the Yankees. That’s because the Sharks ownership group isn’t so rich that they can afford to subsidize that kind of spending and not care. The Sharks are not a rich man’s hobby, but a business that has to at least be close to supporting itself, and the pocket books have never been (and likely never will be) infinite. I don’t have a problem with this. To the fans that expect it, sorry. the days of a Steinbrenner spending huge amounts of money are waning — fewer owners exist that are willing to treat teams as an expensive hobby, and the Sharks have never been that kind of team.

The one criticism I’ve had of Sharks ownership and business team is that they are followers, not innovators. This has been true pretty much since day one. I’ve always wanted this team to drive innovation in the league; it is silicon valley’s team, after all, where a lot of this innovation happens in the world. But the  organization has never taken a league leadership role and always seems to wait for other teams to drive innovations — not surprisingly, given its owner, one of the more innovative teams is the Capitals. Maybe someday this will change, but I’m not holding my breath, and I don’t see the new ownership making this change.

The Sharks were one of the first league teams to have an internet presence, for instance (I know this, because Laurie and I were demoing this funky thing called a browser to them back around 1994 and telling them that this was going to be important to get in front of) — yet after being one of the early (maybe the first) teams to have a web site, they have pretty much followed what the league does rather than led the league forward. There are so many things happening here in the valley where the organization could potentially bring the partnership into the league and foster it through to the other teams, but that’s just not their mindset. They’re followers. Which is okay, but I always hoped for more. 

So Sharks ownership passes my test pretty well. If the greatest complaint I can find is that they aren’t taking a leadership position among the league owners or driving the league forward through innovation, well, those are ancillary issues. They don’t have to do that to succeed. Their support and investment in the team and hockey is fine. 

What about hockey management? And by that, I mean GM Doug Wilson?

I was a big fan of Dean Lombardi in San Jose. I am a big fan of Dean Lombardi in Los Angeles. I also felt at the time the Sharks fired Lombardi that ti was necessary, because he’d gotten too emotionally tied into the situation and he needed a change of scenery, and the Sharks needed a difference voice leading the charge. At the time, my first choice for GM was Doug Wilson (my second choice was Dave Nonis). 

I’ve been a strong supporter of Wilson with the Sharks — and I continue to be. As I said above, as you get better, it gets harder to keep getting better, and to keep pushing the curve you either need to throw more money at the problem (and do it wisely), or you have to take calculated risks and have those risks pan out. More money is not an easy option in San Jose, and Wilson has never been afraid to take those calculated risks. 

this year, those risks didn’t pan out. Does that mean he’s suddenly an idiot and needs to be fired? Not to me. It means some years, you roll the dice and they don’t come up 7. I don’t think that means he or his strategy is a failure. 

So Wilson gets a passing grade from me. One should not assume that a second year where the changes he makes don’t pan out will get the same result; one down year in his years of organizational growth and success isn’t a failure. Two years becomes a trend, and if that happens, you have to take a harder look at things. But this year? I like what Wilson tried, it just didn’t work as well as hoped.  I expect he’ll make more changes this off-season and next year will work out better. 

What about the coaching staff?

Todd McClellan impresses the hell out of me. End of discussion. Well, not quite. He gets a strong passing grade from me. I think he’s got the potential to be one of those coaches who can avoid the “short shelf life” problem where after 3-4 years, the team stops responding to his message. He wasn’t the problem. He’s part of the solution. So he stays, and I am looking forward to seeing how he adapts to this year’s challenges.

What about the coaching staff?

Well, here’s where it gets interesting. One of the big changes that happened before this season was that assistant coach Trent Yawney, who went off to be a head coach in the minors in his search to become an NHL head coach. To replace him, the sharks promoted Jay Woodcroft into a bench role. 

One of the big struggles the Sharks had this year was penalty kill and special teams. One of the things Yawney worked on with the Sharks was penalty kill and special teams. So the question I keep coming back to looking at least season is this: is one of the key problems the Sharks had because Trent Yawney left the organization?

Evaluating assistant coaches from a keyboard is somewhere between “almost impossible” and “are you kidding?” — so I admit up front that not being in on meetings and not being at practices and etc on a regular basis means I’m not qualified to answer this question. I also won’t let that stop me from doing so anyway, but the reality is, I expect this is something Doug Wilson and Coach McClellan will spend some time discussing, and however they decide to address it — I expect their decision to be the right one, while what I suggest here is one blogger babbling… Unless, of course, they end up agreeing with me. Then I’m a genius. 

Let me phrase this this way: I keep coming back to the loss of Trent Yawney as being a key problem this season. It just looks like the Sharks special teams struggled without his advice on special teams coaching. the talent was there, the focus and details weren’t there consistently. 

And I think it’s important to look at it as “we lost Trent Yawney” and not “Jay Woodcroft didn’t get the job done” because everything I’ve seen indicates Woodcroft is a good, young, up and coming coach and a positive to the organization. But he’s not Trent Yawney. When the Sharks lost Yawney, they felt it was time to promote Woodcroft — and I think the organization missed Yawney’s talent and experience. 

So here’s my first recommendation for the Sharks this off-season: they need to find someone to join the coaching staff who can bring back the experience and coaching that they lost when Yawney left the organization, especially on special teams. That means they should be looking for an experienced assistant coach, preferably an ex-player, and someone who can both bring these skills to the players AND work to mentor Woodcroft. Because I don’t believe Woodcroft deserves to be let go or demoted — but I do think the Sharks coaching staff needs to find a way to better fill the void they have from losing Yawney out of the organization. 

And if Wilson made a mistake last off-season, it wasn’t the trades he tried, it was in not bringing in a more experienced replacement for Yawney. If you look at where the Sharks faltered this season, that may have been the biggest mistake Wilson has made as a GM to date. 

I will be watching to see how Wilson resolves this one closely, because I believe strongly this is the one key thing he needs to do to put the Sharks back on track next season. 

Next up — the roster. And no, the players won’t be left blameless…

Photo of the Day: Acorn Woodpecker working on its granary

This family of acorn woodpeckers has been keeping a granary in the trees here for a number of years; you can see the long-term damage done to the trees.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 28, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Myself, quantified | Extenuating Circumstances
• Yahoo!’s Doug Crockford On JavaScript
• Apple is Not Sony
• It Isn’t That Hard
• Steve Jobs on Focus
• The Business Rusch: One Phone Call From Our Knees
• Shorting Apple Long-Term

Photo of the Day: coming in for a landing

A Ross’s Goose comes in for a landing at Merced National Wildlife Refuge. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 27, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The New World of Publishing: Respect
• Plan to crop
• An Evening of Dick
• Never, Ever Promote From Within
• Apple is Not Sony
• Dumping ebook DRM: It’s good for everyone (except Amazon)
• Is the removal of DRM really significant?
• Everything has changed. Including the way we interface with our gear.
• Shutterfly Stock Jumps As No Competing Bid for Kodak Gallery is Made
• Stunning Time-Lapse Portrait of Portland Created with 300,000+ Photos
• When the Cameras Go Dark
• Five Faves: Awesome Photography Blog Posts | This Week in Photo
• Mophie juice pack powerstation PRO: A big gas tank for your gizmos
• Targus Plug-N-Power Charging Station keeps peace in the family

Photo of the Day: Black-Necked Stilt

This is a very common bird in the bay area wetlands year-round, nesting here in the Spring but easily found any at any time. it’s a small, fun bird that I’ve come to nickname the “Marsh Poodle”, because it’s the wetland’s early warning alarm system. They are typically the first bird to strike up warning calls when things move or predators arrive, and they call insistently when flying — and the call is a loud, raspy one that’s hard to ignore.  A flock of stilts and an arriving Peregrine is a fascinating situation, but one that leaves you considering ear plugs…. 

As you can see in this image, these look to be basic black and white birds, but in the right light, they glow with this fascinating sheen….

On to the second round!

First round of the playoffs is (finally) done, no thanks to a record number of overtime games, including the final of multiple game 7 games that went to a 2nd OT. It’s almost as if they didn’t want to stop playing hockey at all. 

Which, effectively, they aren’t, since round 2 starts in about 12 hours with no night off for the league. 

I thought there was some pretty darn good hockey in the first round, and this round really proves that the league has found strong parity among most of the teams. There are no runaway favorites, and there aren’t any teams in the playoffs in the “don’t deserve to be here” or “just happy to be here” categories. It was eight sets of hard-fought, close series. 

So now, on to round two. But first, how did I do in my predictions on round 1?

Hey, look! A puppy!

Darn. didn’t work. Okay. Worth a shot. 

In the West, round two is the Los Angeles Kings (#8) vs. the St. Louis Blues (#2), and the Nashville Predators (#4) and the Phoenix Coyotes (#3). If you want to talk about how there’s a changing of the guard, this is the first time the Predators have been in the second round ever, the Kings and Blues are back in the playoffs after years of struggles, and the Coyotes are making a run as the league-owned franchise with a limited budget that everyone has been telling to just shut up and go into a corner and die (and then move to a new city) — except the players have paid no attention to the experts who knew they were going to fold on the ice given the challenges in the owners office… 

I am so damn proud of the Coyotes — and impressed with all three of these teams. Detroit, after over a decade of dominance, finally seems to be getting old and struggling to reload, perhaps heading into rebuild mode. The Sharks? Well, stay tuned. And the Canucks, I think played better than you might think if you listen to the Vancouver sports pundits (but why would anyone do that? seriously. the only thing the Vancouver whiners have going for them is that they’re not the Toronto whiners). Luongo is a scapegoat, not a problem, but that won’t stop them. (that said, the canucks really do need to sort out their goaltending, because Schneider deserves to start — somewhere. And hey, Roberto, if someone tries to convince you to go to Toronto, run like hell. If you thought the media was fun in Vancouver….)

I got three of these right — the one I missed was Vancouver. for all I am supportive of Luongo, he was outplayed by Jonathan Quick, and that was really the difference. That and the missing Sedin factor; the Canucks are just a different team with only one in the lineup. 

Over in the east? 

It’s Washington (#7) and the Rangers (#1), and it’s New Jersey (#6) and Philadelphia (#5). 

If everyone in the west are the “who are these guys?” chorus, it seems to be the same old same old in the east. I’m not complaining — these are going to be two very interesting series to watch.

And yes, there are no canadian teams in the second round. Time for someone in the Canadian media to blame this on Bettman, somehow. Maybe, instead Canadians should take a look at how the Vancouver media is treating Luongo, the Toronto media is treating everyone, and the Montreal media is treating anyone who isn’t French native speaking — and ask themselves why so many Canadian players move to American teams whenever an opportunity arises…. Nah. Can’t be that. 

I didn’t do so well in the east. I guessed the Rangers, but guessed wrong on Boston, Florida, and Pittsburgh. Florida came very close (so did Boston, actually), and Pittsburgh, well, it just flamed out badly. But in the east, I’m 1-3, because close doesn’t count.

So overall, in the first round, I’m 4-4, and a couple of overtime bounces from being 6-2. oh well. And my overall pick to win the cup went out. Other than that, I was perfect. 

So on to round 2:

In the west, much as I love the Coyotes “mission from god” run, I think the Predators are doing the same, and a better team. I like the Coyotes goaltending better, but I think the Predators will prevail. Nashville in 5. 

And LA and St. Louis? Man, I’m conflicted. I’m a big fan of Dean Lombardi. I think he made a gutsy move bringing in Darrell Sutter to coach; Sutter is a coach who can get the most out a team, but not for too long; he has a somewhat short shelf life. The move worked, this team is clicking, and Jonathan Quick is playing outstanding hockey. But I like the Blues, too. And the Blues were my pick to go out of the West. But… I’m not so sure they can beat the Kings the way the Kings are playing. I’ll stick with the Blues — in seven — but I won’t be surprised if the Kings take them out. And I’m kinda rooting for both teams. 

So, Nashville and St. Louis to the western final.

In the East?

I can’t see Washington beating the Rangers. Rangers are playing well, Lundquist is playing well, and the Capitals kinda squeaked out of the first round. So Rangers in 5. 

Philly and New Jersey? the Devils barely beat Florida. Florida is a good team, but the Flyers are a dominant team. I can’t see New Jersey getting through them here, so Philly in 5, also. 

So, Philly and the Rangers for the eastern final.

And starting later today, we’ll see how that goes….

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 26, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Racism and the NHL | Ian Bell
• Mophie juice pack powerstation PRO: A big gas tank for your gizmos
• Update: The American Drive-In Movie Theater
• Think Like a Publisher 2012: Chapter 2: Expected Costs
• 40+ Essential Items Every Photography Assistant Needs Now
• 5 Cornerstones of a Fine Art Portrait – “Fine Art: an activity requiring a fine skill” « Education Blog
• (Digital) Darkroom Confessions, part II
• Welcome to the TechHive Beta Blog! – TechHive Beta Blog
• WordPress Is Now A ~$50 Million Business, But It Still Won’t Take My Money

Photo of the Day: Yellowstone National Park

Some days, you drive around and an iconic image reached out and slaps you. And sometimes, you’re lucky enough to capture it so others can enjoy it, too. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 25, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• INDURO | Press Room | Webinar on Demand
• Osprey Love in Northern California
• 1000 Words About Images
• VIDEO: 56 Episodes of Star Trek. All at The Same Time. With Sound.
• Gear Doesn’t Matter — Except When It Does
• Bully For You
• Change aversion: why users hate what you just launched (and what to do about it)
• Canon Defends 5D Mark III, Claims “Light Leak” Doesn’t Affect the Captured Image
• Beautiful Time-Lapse of Outer Space Created Using NASA Probe Photos
• More on DRM and ebooks
• Valve’s new pricing will charge players based on how much of a jerk they are | VentureBeat
• Fitness for Geeks
• DISQUS API Recipes | Disqus: The Official Blog
• Rationalizing the Irrational
• My Cancer Journey | design mind
• Cartoon Shading in Photoshop – Cartooning Tutorial
• Might upgrade to the paid version someday
• Tor Books DRM Free. Whither Author?
• What Now: Deal or No Deal?

Photo of the Day: Farm Building on a hill

The last time I birded Panoche Valley, I tried to also look for landscape opportunities. This building stood out as an interesting subject. I tried a couple of different presentations, both in color and in monochrome. I found I preferred the black and white versions — take a look at this building in color, and decide which you prefer (I’d love to hear your opinions, too). 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 24, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• New eBook: Shoot + Share
• Photography: What’s real, what’s not and does it matter? | The Digital Trekker Blog
• An observation about the increasing importance of raw conversion software in critical photography.
• Why that corn-syrup-and-autism study leaves such a sour taste | Grist
• Erik’s Weblog – The Death of RIM
• More details emerge on how Andreessen Horowitz lost $100M on principle | VentureBeat
• Jay Yarow: ‘Android Is Suddenly in a Lot of Trouble’
• The Board Of Directors: Guest Post From Matt Blumberg
• Gary Crabbe / Enlightened Images » Blog Archive » Warning: Gov’t Rights Grab – NPS Photo Contest
• Apple’s additional security steps could be better

perl, UTF-8, and photo EXIF data…

A comment on a previous post deserves a followup:

If you’re interested in writing it up, I would certainly be interested in reading about the details of the utf-8 data issues you experienced (and how you fixed it).

It’s a fair question, and easy to answer once you know what to look for, but not entirely obvious. The symptom I had was that my copyrights, which have the © symbol in them, were showing spurious characters in them; it was clearly a weird UTF-8 issue (I love the “I’ve dealt with this before, now I just have to remember how” problems).

My first thought was that I just needed to convert the character into an HTML entity. I loaded up “HTML::Entities” and ran the string through it encode_entities(); that’s the right thing to do in general, but, well, didn’t fix the problem.

The not quite so obvious answer: Perl’s internals predate UTF, so there’s been a lot of whacking it with a stick to make it work with international character sets. One side effect of that is that unless it knows you’re using UTF-8, or you tell it you are, it assumes everything is 8bit ascii. If you’re doing unicode type things within the code itself, Perl will figure it out and it’s (mostly) transparent to the programmer.

Not so with external data; typically, this is a problem when reading in from a database, but EXIF data loaded from an image is handled the same way. Unless you tell Perl that data may have UTF-8 data in it, it treats it as 8bit data.

There are a couple of ways of doing this. What I ended up doing was loading in the Encode library (“use Encode;”) and then running the string through decode_utf8(). That tells Perl to treat the string as unicode and does the necessary internal conversions. After that — it’ll handle things behind the scenes for you (mostly).

$s .= '<div class="piccopy">' . encode_entities(decode_utf8($$picinfo{'Copyright'})) . '</div>' . "\n";

You can also tell perl and any data coming from an incoming stream is unicode when using open() and etc. Google is your friend here.

So the answer is fairly simple, the causes somewhat baroque, and frankly, I’m probably being a bad person by not building unicode support into my scripts automatically (but I’ve been coding Perl a long, long time, and habits die hard). This is a place where I need to update my best practices, probably.

And I still need to clean up this script so that all of the incoming EXIF data is properly decoded. I solved this problem, but I haven’t yet updated the script to solve this issue generally for all of the data. And yes, that is in the TODO list…

Photo of the Day: Photographer Pondering Eternity (and Sea Otters)

While out at Pigeon Point one day, I noticed a sea otter had wrapped itself in kelp and decided to take a nap in the bay near the lighthouse (see him here). While looking for an interesting image to take of the otter, I noticed this photographer doing the same. I liked the way he was set off against the waves and shore behind him, and his shirt gave the image a nice shot of color. this shot works for me on a number of levels, including (perhaps especially because of) the photographer being just slightly out of focus where the scene behind him is sharp — to me, that emphasizes that he is there to frame the subject of the shot, not the subject of the shot himself. Which is what we as photographers are. 

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 23, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Some Practical Guidelines For Writing CSS
• Tab Trick
• AmazonSupply now sells lab gear, bearings, and DIY hardware
• Arrive alive
• Extruded Books: a cautionary tale
• Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’: A Lovecraftian ’2001′?
• That’s a lot of water
• All changed, changed utterly… « LB’s BLOG
• Lawrence Block Says It Perfectly
• Earth Day
• 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Changing of the guard in Western Conference – ESPN
• Swimming with a Jet Pack on…. | The Visual Science Lab / Kirk Tuck

The Ban Hammer descends on Raffie Torres

The Ban Hammer has descended on Raffi Torres, and the result is a 25 game suspension. 

That’s a lot. A lot more than I expected and I don’t know of a pundit that predicted that big a ban, but when you watch the league’s explanation, it makes sense. 

Note that “makes sense” is not the same as “is correct”. I have mixed feelings about this. I expected the league to over-react, but even my thought of what “over-react” might be didn’t reach 25 games. 

And yet the reality is that Torres is an unrepentant cement head who’s thrown elbows at heads for years, been yelled at for that for years, suspended for that more than once, and still does it and wonders why people get upset. 

So out comes the league equivalent of the “three strikes” rule. 

I don’t have a problem with that. Torres was a problem that needed to be taken off ice until the league is convinced he’s actually figured out why pulping people’s heads is a bad idea. If he can’t figure that out, he needs to be removed from the league permanently. 

I guess my mixed feelings aren’t so much about this decision (good riddance), but that it’s decision that won’t inhibit this behavior with other players. This is clearly a strategic strike at an individual that’s proven themselves to be harmful to the game. It won’t be a deterrent to anyone else.

So I guess my response to this is to look back at the larger issue; we still need ways to convince players to take the safety of opponents seriously — the “R”expect factor — and this doesn’t move that forward. My core  feeling on that is simple: current penalties aren’t severe enough, and if it were up to me, they’d all be doubled effective tomorrow. Taking care of this acute problem was necessary. The League hasn’t gone far enough in addressing the chronic problem that leads to players like Torres getting stupid enough to earn such a lengthy vacation… 

Will they? I think they will, over time. Too slowly for my taste, but the politics of this problem are severe and complex, because while the people of influence who belong to the Church of Don Cherry are not as influential as they once were, they still impact these decisions. And we can’t forget the core of it all: we can’t screw up the game of hockey in the name of improving it. 

I can’t build any sympathy for Torres here, as severe as the penalty is. He ultimately earned this. 

I just don’t think it solves the real problem. Just scratches the itch.

A common thought popped up in the comments when I posted about this a few days ago: should the NHL use how long an injured player is out as the basis for the length of a suspension? 

This one’s a bit of a tough call. I’m firmly in the camp that feels intent should be the primary piece of evidence, not the severity of the injury. The NHL has made it clear, however, that injury (or lack of it) and severity of the injury are factored into the suspension now. (let me make this clear: I feel this is a big mistake, and the NHL will regret it). Having taken that step, do you take the next and tie it to how long a player is out?

I hate that idea. There are so many factors out of the control of the player causing the injury — simple ones, like “does this player heal more quickly than that player?” to really complex ones like a player’s injury history; ignoring heads for a second, if I were a defenseman who low-bridges a player and tears his ACL, should I be suspended longer if that player had previously torn that ACL three times and was now facing major reconstructive surgery and seven months of rehab instead of a scope and six weeks?

That is, at its core, the argument why factoring in injury (instead of intent)? Should I, as a player, get a lighter suspension because the player I attacked was good at ducking and only hurt a little instead of as badly as I intended? but that’s what the NHL is doing. 

Let’s not even get started on the issue of team doctors fudging the data or a team quietly holding a player out longer because it impacts a key player on the opposition? (if you don’t think that would happen, you’re wonderfully naive). This opens up a can of worms nobody should want the league fighting with itself over. 

With concussions, the more a player gets concussed, the more severe future concussions tend to be and the longer they take to go away. Is that something a suspended player should be held accountable for?

My answer is no. But then, my answer is that the rules and suspensions need to be crafted so that we shouldn’t be having this discussion in the first place, that second and third concussions are incredibly rare in the league. we’re not there yet. 

I wrote my general philosophy on this topic about five years ago, and it hasn’t changed: 

At some point, we DO have to remember that hockey is a physical and violent sport. Injuries are part of the game, and they’re going to happen. You have to legislate and referee the game for the safety of the players. You also have to realize that if you legislate and referee the game to GUARANTEE no injuries, what you have isn’t the hockey game we know and love today (you have rec-league no-touch hockey, or ringette or curling). A player who’s had concussions has to understand the risks of going out and playing again, and take on responsibility for some of that risk. it’s the League’s responsibility to make sure that players play in a safe environment for the typical player; it’s an individual’s responsibility to know whether their personal situation is safe enough under those conditions. [….] The one person who has no responsibility there is the person doing the hitting. If it’s a clean hit by the rules of the league, he shouldn’t have to worry about what players he should hold back on. It’s up to the player to be able and willing to take that kind of hit (and/or risk the side effects of it happening…).

 It is critical that the league set rules that make sure legal hits are not dangerous hits. they’ve made progress here, but it’s still far from perfect (because it’s a complex, difficult set of tradeoffs, and in some cases, we don’t know — the amount of knowledge we’ve gained on concussions in the last ten years is both stunning and scary; what do we still don’t know?). It is also critical to remember that the things we’re dealing with — the big, physical plays and hits — are a core aspect of hockey, and we run the risk of screwing up or destroying the game if the rules aren’t thought through carefully and implemented well. Fans don’t stop to think about that aspect, but fortunately, the league does. That’s why I continue to cut them slack as they struggle to find the right set of compromises here.

Photo of the Day: American Bittern in Flight

I looked up and saw the bird in the air flying right at me. This was literally a point and pray shot where I had to depend on autofocus and autoeverything to get it. On top of that, I was seriously worried the bird was going to come through the open window of the car, so the camera was at least partly an attempt to protect my face. As if was, it cleared my car roof by maybe two feet. I will, of course, take full credit for my massive photographic skills in making this shot. Merced National Wildlife Refuge

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 22, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Saturday is restaurant day. Photographing food. Celebrating new beginnings.
• → I wish I discovered this LED bulb before my review
• VoodooPad from Flying Meat
• KuklasKorner : 23 Intently Staring Goalies : No Ma’am, we’re Goalies
• The Online Photographer: Does DxOMark Matter?

And the Sharks go golfing….

 Trying to put this loss in context. It didn’t hit me as hard as some years, because I fully expected it, but still, this Sharks team shouldn’t be going out in the first round.

Dave Pollak at the Merc has an interesting perspective:

Aftermath of a record-early elimination: Sharks waiting till Tuesday to pack things up for the season | Working the Corners:

Five games. Every other first-round exit lasted six. Until Saturday night’s 3-1 loss to the St. Louis Blues, who won their first playoff series since 2002.

Think about that for a second. Since St. Louis last won a series, the Sharks — a franchise 25 years younger — have won nine.

That isn’t a defense of the team’s management in the wake of a very disappointing 2011-12 season. Just a statement of fact to put things in context.

The reality is, every year one team wins the Stanley Cup and twenty-nine do not. the Sharks are in their twenties, but if you stop and think about it, if the Cup were rotated to each team one per year (like the All-Star game is), the Sharks wouldn’t have had their time with it. Objectively, there’s still a few years to go before they are “late” to the Cup. 

Sports and sports fandom, however, are not objective things. That’s not how fans think. Nor should they. So when a team falls short, it hurts. When you look at a team and you wonder if it’s peaked and the window is closing, it hurts. But in sports, sometimes you do your best, and it’s not enough. 

Was this season this team’s best? Honestly, no. It struggled to get on a roll all year. But this first round against the Blues? I don’t have many complaints. I don’t think the Sharks lost this series, they were beaten. 

I also don’t think the Sharks “fell back” much, either. I think what we’re seeing is a league where many teams are making strong positive moves in their talent and execution. This is parity, and I like it. there are 25 teams capable of making the playoffs and not being embarrassed being there. 

Take a step back and think about it. Which team would you rather be a fan of: the Sharks, who haven’t won a Cup yet, but have been in the playoffs consistently and played deep into the playoffs a number of times — or the Florida Panthers, who ran to the Stanley Cup in 1996, and didn’t make the playoffs again for a decade? or the Blues, another team that’s been out of the playoffs for years that’s now back in the mix?

Would you really put up with a decade of cheering on the Islanders for one Cup? 

Not me. 

Of course, I want both. But honestly, if I can’t have both, the Sharks have done a good job of keeping me entertained. 

So for me, I’m disappointed, but life moves on. I know some fans and media types like to whine about parity) and those whines get louder and more insistent the closer you get to cities like New York or Detroit where there’s this sense of entitlement that of course they should win every year) — but it’s good for hockey, good for the league, and fun to watch. 

That doesn’t mean the Sharks can or should stand pat. I’m thinking through what changes I think are necessary, and a post mortem is coming. But I own’t be burning my jersey in protest. Instead, I think I’ll sit down and watch the Bruins game… 

Photo of the Day: Evening Commute

A lazy summer day in Palo Alto, the last light of the day fading into the warmth of evening, and the swallows see that it’s time to return to the roost and get ready for the night.

This is one of my favorite images in my portfolio.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 21, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Skeumorphism & Storytelling / Tobias Bjerrome Ahlin
• What If Web And Mobile Apps Are Like TV Shows?
• American White Pelicans of the Great Basin
• Amazon’s Knock-Off Problem
• It has Sprung
• Lightroom 4: Working With the New Process
• Lightroom 4: Part 2—Working With the New Process – YouTube

Bud Selig says A’s must get new stadium

Bud Selig says A’s must get new stadium – San Jose Mercury News:

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig says the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays must have new ballparks to be able to compete.

Speaking Thursday to the Associated Press Sports Editors, Selig provided no timetable for deciding the Bay Area dispute between the A’s, who would like to build a ballpark in San Jose, and the Giants, who won’t give up their territorial rights there. Asked whether there could be a solution that wouldn’t anger one of the Bay Area teams, Selig responded: “Time will tell. I’m always hopeful. I’m an optimist, and I really believe that every problem has a solution to it.

There are two very interesting subtexts in Selig’s statements.

First, consider this Selig’s first public statement floating the idea of contraction in major league baseball. Two teams need new stadiums (or else). Oakland, where the chances of a new stadium seem rather bleak at best right now, and Tampa, a team where the league was rather reluctantly going to let the Giants move until the last minute ability of Peter Magowan to pull a new stadium out of his hat and keep them here in San Francisco — and where the Devil Rays were partially a consolation prize for having he Giants taken away, and partially a way to stop a potential lawsuit MLB was likely going to lose when they did take away the Giants.

Interestingly enough, while it seems like the Tampa stadium would be fairly new, there are only 10 stadiums older than it, and some of those are special cases — Fenway and Wrigley, for instance, and Yankee stadium, which has been extensively modified, leaving it only ahead of parks like Oakland and Toronto and Kansas City, and it wasn’t well thought of even when the Giants were moving there.

So given the next few years (say 3-5), when a new ballpark for Oakland goes nowhere (and I expect it will do exactly that), and the chances Tampa will replace it’s 20 year old facility would seem fairly remote, that we’ll start hearing talk about simply contracting the teams and buying the franchises back into the league and shutting them down. Because the reality is — there is not a single unused major-league baseball caliber stadium available to move a team to, and in current financial prospects, I doubt seriously cities will be falling over themselves to start building them. Unless, of course, you want to move teams to places like San Juan, Monterey or Mexico City. Which might actually be viable options at some point. but if you ask me, the league over-expanded, and reducing by two teams would both strengthen it and reduce some of the losses teams are having to fund via revenue sharing, and contraction might well make economic sense.

And why is a new stadium going to go nowhere for Oakland?

There’s a reason why Selig has buried this in some nameless committee. That reason is simple: he has no interest or intention of taking territorial rights for San Jose away from the Giants. the politics of a decision like that make no sense if you’re Bud Selig, and I don’t see how many owners would push for it or support it.

Lew Wolff has been pushing to have the city of San Jose and the region put pressure on MLB to try to force them to give him this territory, or force the Giants to sell it to him at a market discount. Selig has sidestepped this, because from a business view, it’s both bad business and a lousy precedent to set. And in this case, Selig is right (sorry, San Jose baseball fans).

By “putting this in committee”, Selig has been telling Wolff he isn’t’ interested in forcing the issue. He’s waiting for the two sides to come to a deal, and if you read between the lines of what he’s been saying (and not saying) for the last few years, he’s made it clear he’s not interested in intervening. He’d like to see this deal made; he won’t force the deal on the Giants.

So it’s up to Wolff. And frankly, the problem is that moving to San Jose isn’t an economically viable deal IF wolff has to pay “list price” for that territory. So he tried to create pressure to force the Giants and baseball to give it to him at a discount (or free). that didn’t work. My guess is if Wolff could get it for $25million, he’d happily pay off the Giants. Maybe $50m. But I’m also estimating that the territory would probably cost him $75m to $100m. He’s clearly not willing to go there, and the Giants aren’t really interested in giving him a discount (why should they? Think how much more money they could make if the bay area was a one team market).

So — stalemate. I can’t see Wolff paying what the Giants want for the territory. I can’t see MLB forcing the giants to hand it over. Wolff walked away from a good deal in Fremont, I can’t see Fremont being too interested in resurrecting it. And Oakland’s plan to revitalize the coliseum area? It seems like a pipe dream. I can’t see it being financed or financially viable if they try — and I have no confidence Oakland is competent as an entity to make it happen. So Wolff is out of options, and worse, has no leverage. He tried public pressure, it failed. there’s no stadium he can threaten to move the team to.

Wolff’s best bet right now is, frankly, to convince baseball to contract and buy him out. That will be an interesting scenario to watch for. good luck with that, Lew. You should have stayed with the Fremont deal, the opposition you walked away from was minor and could have been dealt with. Instead, you played a hand for a big play hoping San Jose could force baseball on the territorial issue — and lost. And now you have no options.

Oops.

Infoblox Surges on First Day of Trading After IPO

Infoblox Surges on First Day of Trading After IPO – Bloomberg:

Infoblox Inc. (BLOX), a network and data- services provider, surged on its first day of trading after pricing its shares above the proposed range in an initial public offering. The shares, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol BLOX, climbed 33 percent to $21.30 at the close in New York. Santa Clara, California-based Infoblox raised $120 million in its IPO, selling 7.5 million shares at $16 apiece, the company said in a statement. Infoblox’s services allow companies to automate certain processes on their computer networks. It counts Barclays Plc, Wells Fargo & Co., Boeing Co. (BA), International Business Machines Corp. and the Federal Aviation Administration among its customers, according to a regulatory filing.

Well, hey, look at that. It looks like we went public, and they like us. 

This is actually the second time I’ve been with a company when it went public. The last one was a small computer company that went public, did some things for a while, and then got bought by Oracle. You might have heard of them… it’s name was Sun Microsystems.

it’s been a fun ride the last few months; I expect it’s going to be a fun ride moving forward. Still not much to say about what I’m actually doing, but at least now we’re out of quiet time so the side effects of blogging aren’t quite so — complex.  Busy time, in a really good way, but still out of public view… 

Photo of the Day: White-Crowned Sparrow

One of my favorite birds, these little sparrows arrive in the fall and winter here in California, Easily found wandering bushy areas eating seeds, they’re arrival is a sign winter is coming, and their leaving tells us Spring is here.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 20, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Review: Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad makes the right compromises
• Red Sweater Blog – MarsEdit 3.5: Formatting Macros, Full-Screen Mode, Tumblr Tweaks
• Phil Borges » Blog Archive » Charging Equipment in Remote Areas with Solar
• Creative Sharpening With NIK’s Viveza and ColorEfex Pro : John Paul Caponigro – Digital Photography Workshops, DVDs, eBooks
• Mac OS X invulnerability to malware is a myth, says security firm
• The Argument That Apple Can Keep Growing
• Empty. Gone. Measured and prodded. We lost the patient when we did the exploratory surgery to find out where the magic lived.
• The Idea is That People Should Look A Certain Way in the Face of Tragedy

Making Sense of the Playoffs, the story so far edition

The Sharks played the best game of the playoffs tonight in game 4 — and still lost. The Sharks broadcasters tried to put what positive spin they could on it, but this is not the time of year for moral victories, and you don’t get an extra game in the series for a well-played loss. You lose.

It was good to see Marleau back at center. My suggestion to coach McLellan: leave him there. it leverages his speed, and it gets him in the game, and I always feel he’s more effective there than at wing. I won’t complain about Niemi — he’s been doing his part. is it enough? no. Is it his fault? no.

Down 3-1, the reality is that the Blues are a better team than the Sharks, or at least as they match up, the Blues can control the game and keep the Sharks from playing Sharks hockey. And their goaltending has been lights out, even the goalie who’s lights went out for a bit.

San Jose might take this five, but the Blues are moving on, and deserve to. The Sharks are going down fighting, and i’ll give them that, but they’re still going to lose this series. At least game 4 was a lot of fun to watch.

One of the nice things about not having playoff tickets is we can sit home and watch more of the playoffs if we want (or put it in the background and pretend to watch while doing other things if it’s boring). I’ve been enjoying the Kings/Canucks series, and it looked like the Kings might sweep until Daniel Sedin came back. His addition made the Canucks a much different team. Enough to come back from a 3-1 deficit? Probably not. But where I’m sure the Sharks won’t make it, if the difference I saw in game 4 carries forward to game 5 that intensely, the Kings might have to worry a bit. Still, maybe six for LA to carry this one through.

Chicago/Phoenix? Even before Hossa went down, I thought Phoenix would carry this series. I don’t see anything in the Hawks telling me it’s going to change. Game 5 is probably it. Ditto Nashville, where Detroit looks tired, and its goaltending just isn’t good enough.

Over in the east? I tried watching ottawa and the rangers and almost fell asleep. Who’s going to win the series? who cares? not me. I’m still rooting for the Panthers, but Brodeur is doing what he can to prove he still has it. SEries too close to call. Right now, the Capitals are tied to the Bruins 2-2 for only one reason: their 13th string goalie, some kid nobody’s heard of named Holtby. Who’s good. Some goalies come up from the minors and win some games because nobody’s scouted him. Holtby is winning because he’s that good. As laurie noted tonight, it’s going to be an interesting off-season and training camp in Washington while they sort this out, because this kid seems for real. As poorly as the rest of the Caps seem to be playing through stretches, Boston should be in command of this series, and they’re not.

And finally, the Philly/Pittsburgh series, the series where goalies are optional. One win does not get the Pens back in the series, no matter how lopsided. I expect Philly will bear down and finish this one in game 5. If not, watch out.

And while I talked at some length about the suspensions and how we got into this mess yesterday, let me touch it one more time. The Sharks broadcasters talked about the Torres suspension and suggested a suspension that not only carried the rest of this playoffs, but suggested a suspension of the next ten playoff games for Torres — in other words, if he doesn’t sit out ten games THIS year, the suspension carries on to whenever Torres is next in the playoffs, wether it’s next season or in some later year. I wonder if the CBA is set up to let that happen; it’s an interesting concept. My big worry would be that Torres might never get back in the playoffs, so why bother? Also, would the upcoming end of the current CBA create problems? Logistics aside, I figured I’d mention it as an idea worth being considered.

But my view is this; I want to see him suspended the rest of this playoffs, and at least 5 games (preferably ten) of next season’s regular season. That hits him in the pocketbook, where playoff suspensions merely cost him game time (to a player, put “merely” in air quotes, but trust me, the money matters, too). I would also like the NHL to make it clear that if his team win’s the Stanley Cup, Torres would not have his name engraved in it, and announce a rule that any player suspended 3 or more games in the playoffs would similarly be banned from being played on the Cup with a winning team that year. That may sound silly, but the way players think, it’ll get their attention. Imagine being a guy who’s one shot at that immortality being lost to a stupid play…

I’d like to also make it clear that while I said yesterday that I felt the league was going to come down TOO hard on Torres as an over-reaction, don’t take that to think I don’t think he deserves one, or doesn’t deserve a lengthy one. He does. but in the context of how the league has been handling suspensions, his suspension will be out of character in comparison.

Also remember that I’ve said more than once that the first thing I’d do if I were hired into the job Shanahan has would be to announce that all suspensions moving forward would be immediately doubled in length.. so my view is that the kind of suspension I expect Torres will get will be more in line with what I’d want to see handed out routinely, not because the league is reacting to the controversy (which they are). But that won’t happen, because Shanahan’s bosses (the board of governors) don’t want to see their players taken off the roster that long, and Shanahan has to play within the bounds of the politics of his position in the league, or the league will find someone who will.

(I am also, for what it’s worth, of the belief that teams should not be allowed to replace a suspended player on the roster, or make a call up from the minors to cover a suspended player. Make them play those games a guy short, and let it hurt the team, too).

photo of the day: Baby Lowland Gorilla

Isn’t it cute? Shot at the San Francisco Zoo, here’s a nice “awwwwww, CUTE!” shot. What isn’t seen here is the 20 minutes I spent chasing for a position to get any shot at all of the kid, and two minutes after getting this one, it took off into the sleeping area in the keeper’s building and out of sight completely.

But for that one short minute, we have cute on a stick.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 19, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• A Portrait of Doha, Qatar – Duncan Davidson
• Behaving Badly On Antelope Island
• Lightroom 4: The New Tone Controls
• Understanding Focus
• On the Eve of Game Four
• The Business Rusch: The Changing Definition of Publishing
• On Writing A Best-Seller (Shhh, There’s a Formula)
• In 140: I’m moving back to Galiano Island and joining Etsy to form a new, distributed team to…
• "Lost" Jobs interviews add dimension, perspective to his life story
• eBook covers
• Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad hands-on: a typing tool that blends right into Apple’s tablet
• ‘Living With a Computer’ — Shawn Blanc
• The agony and the ecstasy of ecosystems: an in-depth comparison | The Verge
• Fotopedia offers National Parks iOS app for free
• When Someone Points the Finger At Someone Else for an Infringement. . .

Photo of the Day: Half Dome in a Winter Storm

Yosemite National Park’s Iconic Half Dome, taken as a Winter storm is clearing out of the valley, from  Tunnel View.

Making sense of the playoffs, the suspension edition

KuklasKorner : KK Hockey : What Is The Difference Between Perception And Misperception?:

This was a sin so egregious Shanahan, the NHL senior vice president of player safety, will have no choice but to act swiftly to suspend Torres, right Commissioner Bettman?

“You’re asking me to prejudge something,’’ Bettman answered. “I’m certain it was observed by hockey operations and in particular player safety and to the extent it requires review or action, they will do it. But let’s not jump the gun.’‘

Bettman believes too many people have done just that during an ugly postseason when the quantity of scuffles has overshadowed the quality of play. Where I see a dangerous trend, Bettman sees tradition, citing the rough-and-tumble game he heard old-timers reminiscing about on the radio.

“A lot of it is perception and misperception,’’ Bettman said. “The game is physical, the game is emotional. These games are hard-fought. Having said that, I’d say player safety is monitored closely and being dealt with in an appropriate way.’‘

When I mentioned that the league had been inconsistent with penalties — contrasting Shaw’s three-game suspension with Predators defenseman Shea Weber’s $2,500 fine for slamming Red Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg’s head into the glass — Bettman scoffed.

And so the winter of discontent continues.

No, it’s more the winter of “oh my god, what the hell is going on?”

I’ve been, frankly, trying to get my head around why hockey decided to turn into a gang war this playoffs.

I’m coming to believe the core of the answer is in something Brad Stuart of the Wings said:

KuklasKorner : The Malik Report : Red Wings defenseman Brad Stuart says players need to crank up the respect factor:

Wings defenseman Brad Stuart not only called out Brendan Shanahan and the NHL’s department of player safety for their inconsistencies…

“I did read a comment right from Shanahan that mentioned discipline in the playoffs might be different than it was during the regular season because playoff games are more important to guys,” Stuart said. “They might take a one-game suspension in the playoffs that might be worth three or four during the regular season, which kind of sends mixed signals. If you can go after a superstar and get one game for it, knock him out for three or four games, whose got the advantage there? It does send a mixed message.”

Stuart said the only way the league is going to get a handle on this problem is by consistent enforcement.

And that ties closely into the first quote. It really does.

First, Bettman is in a no win situation here. Of  course he’s going to evade answering any question on the Torres hit. He is the judge of any appeal that may come from Shanahan’s suspension, and is involved in the discussions leading up to that. He’s smart enough to know better than to give the NHLPA any ammunition that might undermine that authority, or give them material to change that role in the next CBA. You think the current system is inconsistent? Imagine if it was handled by a committee that included both league and  voting on issues, or where appeals were heard by a shared board.

But the seeds of this year’s set of hits and injuries were sewn earlier this season. they were sewn by the players, coaches, GMs and especially the Board of Governors. Shanahan came into the role and early on, was issuing suspensions at a fair clip.

Pretty clearly, his bosses (eventually, the Board of Governors), decided that was too many, and so he was quietly encouraged to pull it back. The league explained it as “the players are getting it”, but I don’t see that from the games I’m watching. And then after the GM meetings, the word clearly was sent to the refs to “let the boys play” and have the reffing get out of the way of the players. So they did. And the players have been taking advantage of it.

And exactly what Shanahan was trying to prevent has been happening. Give the players an inch, and they’ll take a mile. And then some. And keep taking risks until someone pushes too hard, someone else ends up in the hospital, and everyone starts going “how did we get to this place?”

We got to this place as the result of a set of decisions that everyone agreed to, and people that should have known what the end result would be.

And then comes out the “R” word (Stuart again):

“In the end, we’re all in this thing together as players,” Stuart said. “Guys are so much faster and stronger. Those things you’ve seen in the past are devastating. The game is so fast, if you don’t have respect for a guy, you can really injure him.”

Stuart added it’s too easy to blame the league for this ongoing issue and players have to start really pondering what they’re doing on the ice.

“We as players have to decide are we going to keep that level of respect for each other or are we going to throw it out the window and let the guys upstairs try to figure out what to do?” Stuart said. “We, as players, have to take responsibility as well. Let’s not blame the guy making the decisions because he’s a little bit unsure of what to do. Let’s take it upon ourselves to have

Here’s the reality:

Players aren’t paid to be respectful. Players are played to win. They are trained from well before puberty to win at whatever cost necessary, and to compete until that point where further action will hurt the team more than help it.

Even the players admit that the Lady Byng is sort of a booby prize, and nobody plays to win it, nobody remembers who won it. You’re remembered for the Stanley Cup, the Conn Smythe, the Jennings. Not the Lady Byng.

So every time I hear someone call for the players to respect each other, I laugh. Quietly, sadly.

Players aren’t paid to respect. They’re paid to win. And they will win, because that’s what their entire lives have been built around. And if that means pushing the rules? they will.

I admit to (somewhat grudging) respect of Raffi Torres. he’s like Matt Cooke, and before him Claude Lemieux, and Matt Barnby, and Darius Kasparitius, and going back to guys like Dale Hunter and Essa Tikkanen. Torres has driven the Sharks batty over the years, and left his share of bruises. He’s a dirty player, in a league that doesn’t just tolerate dirty players, but puts them up on a bit of a pedestal. And at the same time, feels a bit guilty about that. Except for Don Cherry.

Fact: telling players to respect each other fails from the start. they aren’t paid to respect each other. They’re paid to win. Respect ends where it gets in the way of winning. And it always will. And frankly, it SHOULD. because what ultimately matters is winning.

So if you want to make sure the players respect each other, it’s simple: the rules must penalize players when they forget and cross that line. If the rules don’t enforce that respect, then the players won’t do it. and where the rules fail to do this — that’s where the injuries happen.

Now Torres has crossed that line hard and fast — and against a key player — and the press is up in arms, and so the league is going to react (over react, probably) because Torres is a useful target, and slap Torres silly for this. He deserves to be slapped, but he’s also going to be slapped to make up for the slaps that the league withheld, now that “it’s gone too far”

I don’t envy Shanahan’s job. Or Bettman’s. Blame them all you want, but they’re treading a political minefield — if the press aren’t yelling at them the fans are, or the coaches, or the GMs, or the Board. The board of governors being their bosses, when they get on the phone, you can bet it gets answered.

Shanahan’s trying to come up with where that line needs to be drawn. and behind the scenes, he’s got meddlers telling him to move it around. And when it gets moved around, he takes the blame. I’ll bet he didn’t think it would be this complicated. But it is.

I’ve also come to think he and the league are doing themselves a big disfavor here. They try very hard to be “fair” and “objective” here. counting video frames from pass to hit to see if it’s late, looking at a hit that starts on the shoulder differently than one goes right to the chin. And they’re right — those nuances matter.

the problem is, nobody WANTS those nuances. Not the coaches. not the owners. not the players. not the press, not the fans. And so the nuances get lost, and everyone bitches about the end result, even if objectively they can show why all of these nuanced differences matter.

So here’s my suggestion: throw all that nuance crap out. That is the core problem seems to come from. Simplify the justice system. If the owners and players are more comfortable with “hit to the head, first offense, two games”, then give it to them.

Come up with some relatively simple, straight-forward metrics on hit severity. Label them “grade 1″ through “grade 5″. publish them, and enforce them. Grade 1 might be a hit to the head that glances off some other part of the body. Grade 5 is a hit directly to the head leading to a player leaving the game with an injury. Every grade is escalated for repeat violations; a repeat of a grade 1 hit is punished as a grade 2, a grade 1 and a grade two is punished as a 3. Once you get to grade 5, you simply double the penalty every time until the player gets the message or is too old to return from a suspension.  Fine, one game, two games, three games, five games. then double each time.

Simple. and it also tends to prevent the BoG from behind the scenes “encouraging” changes in the standards, because there’s much less wiggle room. And the players know exactly what’s coming, as long as it’s enforced. (if it’s not, then we’re back to playing Rollerball, folks. I’m not sure I’m interested in watching that — and there was a shot taken in the Philly/Pittsburgh series where the last time I saw someone do that, it was IN the damn movie. I don’t see that as a good thing).

The league wants to install a culture change in the players — but is unwilling to actually put the leash on until the players learn the new limits. By taking the leash off mid-season, the players adjusted back, and then some. Taht’s the league’s fault. Now they’re trying to put this particular genie back in whatever bottle is handy — and Raffi Torres is going to pay for that, big time. He deserves it, but probably not to the degree they’ll hit him.

The ultimate problem is that Colin Campbell and now Shanahan have worked very hard at solving the wrong problem: they wanted suspensions to be based in fact and “fair”, because the situations are so situational. And the reality is, nobody else wants it that way; they want it easy and understandable, not something that requires a PhD to decipher.

So it’s time to rethink what they’re doing with suspensions, and simplify it. And IMHO, once they do, double the length of all suspensions (not that they will).

Because the reality is, until you make it painful for the player and the team to cross that line, they will. And these are guys who get root canals between periods and come back out without missing a shift. Slaps on the wrist won’t slow them down.

So what the league really needs to do is ramp up the pain. that’s what it’ll take to put respect back in the game, not lecturing. Unfortunately, it looks like the Board of Governors doesn’t really want that.

So instead, I’m guessing the league will under-react to these kind of hits until something really bad happens, and then over-react to that one situation and hope that solves the problem.

And I think we all know that it won’t.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 18, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Larry Page: Android isn’t critical, it’s a delivery vehicle for Google services | The Verge
• Content Focused Design: Type Edition
• → The risks of backing game development on Kickstarter
• End Game
• The Twitter "Patent Hack"
• Make Your Email Hacker Proof
• The Twitter IPA: What does defensive really mean? « Startups and IP Strategy
• NAB 2012: Timescapes Premier Tonight in Las Vegas
• Do The Right Thing
• VIDEO: David Brin Talks at Google TechTalks – SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog
• VIDEO: Chip Kidd on Designing Books – SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog

Photo of the Day: Morro Bay and Rock at Sunset

Taken during one of my trips to Morro Bay, this is an HDR processed image. I hadn’t actually planned on doing sunset photography that evening, but as I was sitting at dinner at the Great American Fish House on the harbor, I saw the sun line up and the clouds build, so when I was finished, I wandered out to the car, grabbed the gear, and walked out onto the pier next to the restaurant. If only all shoots were this easy. Image is hand held, no tripod.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 17, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• VIDEO: Chip Kidd on Designing Books – SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog
• Ten Reasons You Should Be Using a CSS Preprocessor | Urban Insight Blog
• Spring Break Birding
• Fighting Curlews And This Photographer’s Rookie Mistake
• Sierra Foothills, Evening
• Physical media is dead — long live the app
• Let us now praise editors – Writers and Writing – Salon.com
• Watch the TEDxSummit introduction video
• Week 13: Dark Contrasts Filter in Color Efex Pro 4
• What Do You Carry: Photographer and Tech Journalist David Cardinal | PCMag.com
• DRM On My Books
• Scrivener’s Error
• Things Get More Interesting
• Bright + shiny = We need a strategy!

Photo of the Day: White-Faced Ibis with lunch

At a glance, the white-faced ibis looks like a fairly unremarkable, brown bird. Let the light hit them right, though, and they show a fascinating set of iridescent colors that make them truly beautiful. This one, seen at the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, just grabbed a snack. Life is good.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 16, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Securosis Blog | The Myth of the Security-Smug Mac User
• WSJ: Why Airport Security Is Broken and How to Fix It
• The One-Gig Card Challenge
• Why do I bother to write when others think so well? Style? Read this !!!

Photo of the Day: Coyote on the Prowl

Taken during a christmas vacation to Yosemite, this coyote was wandering the main meadow near Yosemite Falls. After spending some time looking cute and hunting mice under the snow, the coyote proved itself to be habituated by wandering up to the line of cars looking for a handout. We declined.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 15, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The Mummy’s Curse
• Maintainable JavaScript
• Just The Facts, Jack. Just The Facts.
• Two short product reviews with random thoughts.
• What Amazon’s ebook strategy means
• MySQL in 2012: Report from Percona Live
• My Cartoon Process – Cartooning | Andertoons Cartoon Blog

Photo of the Day: Brown Pelican

This brown pelican was hanging out on a boat in Dana Point harbor, this is a standard behavior of pelicans; not a frequent one, but if you hang around long enough, you’ll usually see it. Then it’s just a matter of being ready for the shot.

Ditching AIM (and Yahoo chat)

Mitch Wagner – Google+ – RIP AIM: For me at least. I’ve been getting spam messages…:

I’ve been getting spam messages on AIM lately, which made me realize that’s all I ever get on AIM. So I’ve decided to stop using it. I’ve been running AIM (and its ancestor, ICQ) since the late 90s.

Mitch reminds me that I meant to mention this as well. About three weeks ago, I checked my logs and transcripts and realized there was only one (non-spam) person I’d talked to on AIM that I didn’t also have a Gtalk connection with. That was quickly remedied, and so I turned off AIM. I also removed my Yahoo chat setup because I hadn’t talked to anyone via Yahoo since leaving HP (where it was the chat service of choice in engineering for some odd reason).

So if people want to IM me, the only way now is to use my Gtalk account, which shouldn’t be hard to find if you know where I live on Gmail. And in fact, I’m finding I’m using IM less and less in general, and there are days when I wonder why I leave it running at all. But it’s still intermittently useful, and now that AIM is turned off, non-annoying again…

win one, lose one

Sharks lost game 2 in St. Louis, and deserved to. St. Louis generally outworked them. Tempers are flaring between the teams, and the referees did a poor job of maintaining control of the game, which caused it to boil over late. That was completely avoidable if they’d not chosen to not-see some earlier obvious penalties. Both teams were escalating it, so I’m not calling out the Blues here for cheap shots.

This is the classic “let the boys play” problem. Once you start letting things go, it escalates, and if you then start trying to haul the game back under control, the referees get heat for inconsistent game calling (appropriately, too). And then at some point it stops being boys playing and bad things can happen. Word is Dominick Moore has a broken nose from a sucker punch.

But in any event, the Sharks split in St. Louis and come home. Halak may or may not be ready to play, but Elliot is no slouch. Right now, the series is split, but the Blues still look to me to be the better (and faster) team, and the sharks are struggling to maintain momentum. We’ll see Monday if home ice is friendlier to them.

Consistency and head hits in hockey…

There was an interesting set of events in the games tonight surrounding the concussion protocol in the NHL. In the Sharks/Blues game, St. Louis goaltender Halak was run over and hit in the head by one of his own guys, requiring some time to get his bearings. Even though he ultimately wanted to continue, the trainer convinced him to go off the ice, and he was replaced by Elliot. The original report on him was that Halak was going to return, but evidently something tightened up, because later, he was reported as having a lower body injury and day to day. Elliot finished the game (and won), and the Blues have said they’ll take their third goalie with them to San jose just in case.

Then later, Phoenix goalie Mike Smith got run over (and the blackhawks player got a game misconduct for it) and went to the ice clutching his face and head and stayed down an extended period. It was serious enough that the team doctor went onto the ice. Ultimately, unlike Halak, Smith was allowed to continue and finish the game.

My question is — WHY? That clearly seems to fall under the “go to the quiet room” protocol, but that wasn’t invoked on him. IMHO, the hit on Smith was a harder head hit than Halak got. The Blues trainer did the correct thing by insisting Halak go get checked out. The only possible explanation for Phoenix was the doctor on the ice checked Smith out on ice and cleared him — but even so, as I understand the protocol, he still should have been sent to the quiet room.

This seems like a mistake by the Phoenix medical staff. I understand why they’d want Smith in there, and why he’d want to continue — but I do hope the league looks into this and explains why both medical teams made the right decision, or if not, how they plan to make sure the right thing happens in the future. I think smith was allowed to put his head at risk for more serious injury by not going off for evaluation, and I don’t understand why the medical staff and referees didn’t force this issue, when it seems they should have.

(FWIW, it looks like the hit by the Chicago player was unintentional to me, not on purpose. But the major penalty was still the correct call. And it may be that Smith took the brunt of the hit to his jaw and possibly bit his tongue (which HURTS), but even so, I’d really like to hear why he wasn’t sent to the quiet room. “it’s the playoffs” is not an acceptable answer.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 14, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Apple slams Amazon for behaving just like Apple
• Opinion: Debating ebook pricing
• Hacked
• Why you should have comments, even when they are bad
• Coding Horror: Regular Expressions: Now You Have Two Problems

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 13, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Don’t Forget to Have Fun
• My Thoughts on Book Tours
• If you do photography because you love photography you may be on the wrong track.
• Dear Consumers Who Apparently Think the Current Drama Surrounding eBooks is Like a Football Game
• Hockey – Sharks/Blues Game 1
• Hacked

Wading into the Pink Slime

Wading into the Pink Slime | Venture Chronicles:

you might find it surprising that in the debate about processed meat treated with anhydrous ammonia (aka Pink Slime) I come down on the side of pink. This product has been defamed by a hysteria driven media campaign that presupposes this food product (and that’s what it is, a product) is unsafe in the absence of evidence suggesting safety issues, and fails to address the substantive issues of how society provides a food supply to a large population.

This is a core problem with fashionable foodies and other well-intentioned people who on even days declare we should let science be a defining force while on odd days rejecting science because it can’t prove the negative. The science is overwhelming, pink slime is nutrient providing but critics are demanding the impossible, which is to prove that it is not unsafe.

A good analysis of this entire farce. Suffice it to say, I agree with him (including not being particularly interested in eating the stuff, but then, i don’t eat spam, either. much).

It is another sad example of the “emotions over science” that seems trendy in society today; this made about as much sense, and had as much science behind it, as the “vaccines cause autism” farce. And please, don’t even both commenting on that…

Who didn’t make the NHL playoffs?

While everyone else talks about the teams that did (and didn’t) make the NHL playoffs, one thing I do every year is take a look at the officials and see  who is in and who isn’t, and follow that through the playoffs rounds (and so did Kerry Fraser). Who makes the playoffs and how far they get is a rough indicator of what the league thinks of their overall performance (with a dose of seniority tossed in), so it’s a way of comparing who you think are the top refs with what the league thinks.

And no, my list never matches up with the leagues… not completely, at least.

So first, referees…

Here’s the list of those that made the playoffs. I use this list of officials as the basis, as these are the guys who are far enough into the system to have made it into the union.

• Development refs: David Banfield (2007),  Jean Hebert (2010), Ghislain Hebert (2008), Marcus Vinnerborg (2010).
• Stephan Auger (1994)
• Gord Dwyer (2003)
• Mike Hasenfratz (2000)
• Dave Jackson (1989)
• Dennis LaRue (1989)
• Rob Martell (1992)
• Dean Morton (1999)
• Justin St.Pierre (2003)
• Don VanMassenhoven (1992)

These refs made the first round:

• Paul Devorski
• Eric Furlatt
• Marc Joannette
• Tom Kowal
• Steve Kozari
• Mike Leggo
• Chris Lee
• Wes McCauley
• Brad Meier
• Dan O’Halloran
• Dan O’Rourke
• Tim Peel
• Brian Pochmara
• Kevin Pollock
• Chris Rooney
• Kelly Sutherland
• Francois St. Laurent
• Stephen Walkom
• Ian Walsh
• Brad Watson
• Stand-by’s — Greg Kimmerly and Frederick E’Cuyer

When senior refs miss the first round, it’s notable. this year, Dave Jackson, Dennis LaRue, Rob Martell, Don VanMassenhoven are all missing from the second season. Sometimes this is due to injury, and it’s become somewhat of a tradition for retiring officials to bow out of the playoffs, which gives them a chance to schedule in their final game and bring the family in for it (Dan Schachte did that this year, for instance). I don’t know the status of the refs as far as injuries, but to be honest, other than VanMassenhoven, nobody on the “golfing” list strikes me as a major surprise, but I don’t see any of them missing from the end of season games. I must admit I’ve never been a big Dave Jackson fan, something that has put me in disagreement with the NHL officiating office, given how they’ve rewarded on him in past years.

The crew that made it? In general, I think the current NHL referees are a solid group overall, if a bit bland. That blandness is by design, and really necessary to make the two referee system successful, but that’s an essay for some other time – I do miss the flavor a Paul Stewart or Kerry Fraser brought to the game, though.

I do like these refs, though: Devorski, McCauley, Sutherland, Walkom and Watson would be my choices to go into the final round.

Linesmen:

These linesmen didn’t make the first round:

• Development Linesmen: Bryan Pancich (2009)
• Pierre Champoux (1988)
• Michel Cormier (2003)
• Mike Cvik (1987)
• Ryan Galloway (2002)
• Don Henderson (1994)
• Brian Mach (2000)
• Andy McElman (1993)
• Jean Morin (1991)
• Thor Nelson (1994)
• Vaughn Rody (2000)
• Dan Schachte (1982) — retired

These linesmen did make the first round:

• Derek Amell
• Steve Barton
• David Brisebois
• Lonnie Cameron
• Scott Cherrey
• Greg Devorski
• Scott Driscoll
• Shane Heyer
• Brad Kovachik
• Brad Lazarowich
• Steve Miller
• Jean Morin
• Brian Murphy
• Jonny Murray
• Derek Nansen
• Tim Nowak
• Pierre Racicot
• Anthony Sericolo
• Jay Sharrers
• Mark Wheler
• Stand-bys — Darren Gibbs, Mark Shewchyk

A number of the “graybeards” among the linesmen didn’t make the cut this year — Donny Henderson, Mike “oh my god, he’s tall” Cvik, Thor Nelson. Dan Schachte retired and played his last game towards the end of the season (god speed, Dan, and thank you). Mike Cvik has always been one of my favorite linesmen, not just because he’s huge and a good peacekeeper on the ice, but seems to have a good rapport with players as well — but it’s been clear he’s heading towards the end of his career, too. I don’t see any names on the “golf” list that make me want to complain about the choices, but then, I’m not sitting there taking notes on who’s missing offside calls any more, either.

It’s nice to see Jay Sherrers and Shane Heyer just carrying on. Don’t be surprised to see them in the final round, along with Devorski and Brad Lazarowich. That’d be my choices.

These are good, solid crews (a certain missed offsides call notwithstanding. One can guess one name is already marked off the 2nd round roles…). It’s interesting that this is really the first year that all of the referees that were skating the NHL when the league expanded to include the Sharks are now gone, and except for a couple of linesmen like Sharrers and Cvik, pretty much true for them as well); for referees, it’s almost hit the point that referees that pre-date the two ref system have retired. Anyone who still wants to complain about that, time to move on, the transition is complete.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 12, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The Anti-Trust Suit Settlement—A Layman’s Opinion
• Finding Your Voice
• Four Things We All Need To Remind Ourselves
• A Great Post On Indie Book Pricing
• There’s a setting on my new camera that I like to play with…
• The Business Rusch: Writers And the DOJ Lawsuit
• rc3.org – Life, the good parts
• Dune Bashing
• The FontShop Plugin
• Inside the DOJ’s ebook price-fixing case against Apple: an analysis | The Verge

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 11, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Story-centered design: how to make a screencast
• Lower Yosemite Falls Moonbow
• 500px / Photo "Lower Yosemite Falls Moonbow" by Jim Goldstein
• A Message from John Sargent | Tor.com
• Ummm. Maybe. Ummm. Yes. :: Fuji X-Pro 1 Review • Photography By Zack Arias • ATL • 404-939-2263 • studio@zackarias.com
• Landscape Photography For the Serious Amateur
• 10 Laws of Productivity :: Tips :: The 99 Percent
• Interview with Inglorious Apps, a webOS to iOS developer switcher
• At some point it’s really all about having fun with photography.
• What Now: Freemium or Paid?
• The Next Generation Will Leave Us in the Dust…and That’s a Good Thing

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 10, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Macworld’s Jason Snell says what we’re all thinking about iTunes
• → What you need to know about the Flashback trojan
• Redshirts Chapters 1 – 4 Now Out in eBook Form
• We’re back. Both of us. Now. Howdy.
• A Day in the Life of Migrating Sandhill Cranes
• Using Creative Commons to Find Photos You Can Use
• Amazon enables in-app purchasing on Kindle Fire & Android devices
• When will I ever use this
• Poppies!
• VIDEO: Designer Aaron Draplin lays down 50 points…
• A re-introduction to the Visual Science Lab. The manual.

Unwrapping photos.chuqui.com, my new photo gallery

It’s time to unwrap my new photo gallery: welcome to photos.chuqui.com. If you follow me on twitter you may have seen a few sneak peeks that I sent out along the way, but now, I think it’s as ready as a first version should be.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Probably too much, but necessary nonetheless. I’ve been thinking — in and around work — about what I need to focus on to accomplish what I decided I wanted to focus on in 2012. And I kept coming back to needing to seriously upgrade my online presence — and get serious about it.

Two phrases have been wandering through my head. The first is “You don’t have to be professional, but nobody will take you seriously if you act like an amateur”. The other is “You’ll never date the prom queen driving a Gremlin”.

Since forever, my online stuff has been in a state of “some day, I’ll have time to do this right”. That was true back when I was at Apple and it’s still true today.Someday, I’ll get a real car, but for now, I’ll keep this Gremlin running… Every so often I’d take a piece and whack at it with a stick for a while and make it better, but I’ve never committed the time and energy to really fix it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was time to invest the time to deal with it. So I am.

This is phase 1. A place for all of my photos — my big collection. That frees up Smugmug to become my “pro portfolio” — I was never happy with squishing everything together, I feel strongly that your best work needs to be displayed in its own venue; I still need a place for all of my images so I can use them to tell stories and generate discussions, and I lost that place when I left Flickr. I don’t regret that one bit; I don’t want to trust my images into the future to Yahoo; that said, none of the “yahoo alternatives” really impress me, either. Picasa is pretty poor in comparison to Flickr. 500px isn’t really for volumes of images. If I were to move this stuff to a service, I’d use pbase, but I was realizing it was time to take full control of this (and my destiny) and do it myself, so I wouldn’t talk myself into compromises because of the hosting systems.

So there’s nobody to blame but myself, which is both immensely scary and enabling. I’ve spent the last month working on the system, tearing pieces down and rebuilding it, changing stuff, and generally having a great time.

The result? Images exported out of Lightroom, 800 lines of Perl to generate the site, which then gets mirrored out to Amazon S3. There’s absolutely not back end intelligence, it’s a 100% static HTML site, which makes it seriously fast.

It embodies my adoption of Creative Commons for lower-res versions of images, and encouraging sharing of them. This is complicated by the new iPad and the retina screen, which wants higher resolution images to really shine. I finally decided that 2048 pixels was a reasonable compromise; this site has 2048 pixel images on the long side, 700 pixel images for use on blogs, and 200 pixels for thumbnails. If you click on an image, it is brought up in a lightbox. If you click on the image title, it takes you to a detail page with more info on the image, including key EXIF data — and easy access to URLs and HTML to make copying easy.

My reasoning is this: the time and energy to do copyright enforcement of “web capable” images is way greater than the revenue to be found trying to collect from people who use them. The marketing — if attribution happens properly — well outweighs any disadvantages to making things available for sharing. So, rather than fight a losing battle with people who like the images and want to share them, encourage it, but make it as easy as possible to do it right and help educate them as to why they should.

All of which, also, makes the “we didn’t know we shouldn’t use it that way” excuse even harder to justify if push ever does come to shove and this ends up in court or some other kind of argument. You won’t get 100% of the people paying attention and following your wishes, but I believe make it easy and make it clear, and most people will try to do the right thing. We’ll finda out. No matter what, sharing is a key aspect of the internet and we all do it. I can’t see not being part of that sharing culture with my work — and I just don’t think there’s enough revenue opportunity in these low res blog-pixel images to lose sleep sweating over whether someone’s abiding by my copyright or not. Save the stress for other things.

So phase 1 is complete, and a big chunk of phase 2, which is a complete overhaul of my image collection, has also been finished — I’ve been living in Lightroom 4 for the last week+, and honestly, I really like the results. I’ll talk about that soon. Right now, about half of my images are now migrated onto the photos site, and the rest are coming in the next week or two.

The design — I like it, but it’s not the “real” design. I wanted something that didn’t scream “under construction”, but I also needed to have the photo gallery working and in production before I could start the blog work. Laurie’s working on a new logo (that doesn’t suck on purpose), and we’ve been talking over some of the look and I’ve been thinking about whether I want to get serious about building a brand (and what that means if I do). now that this piece is done and the portfolio review is winding down, I can focus on that and move the next pieces forward.

So I expect the current “blue twilight” design to go away at some point, but until it does, I don’t think it’ll drive anyone off screaming into the woods. And I have a nice, easy home for my images to use and share with everyone while I figure the next pieces out. It’ll roll out in phases, but I fully expect it’ll take me another three or four months to finish all of the work I’m planning — but I expect it’ll be worth it.

Next up? I’ve been thinking about how I want to change the blog, how I want to upgrade my link sharing, and what exactly all of this should be about… And something I’ve been wanting to do for a while that you probably won’t be expecting…

And I haven’t touched a camera in a month. I need to fix that…

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 9, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• ADmented Reality – Google Glasses Remixed with Google Ads – YouTube
• ongoing by Tim Bray · On Privacy
• Musings on Preprocessing | CSS-Tricks
• Sass And LESS: An Introduction To CSS Preprocessors
• Ben Clewis Shows How He Photographs Hummingbirds
• Four LED light bulbs reviewed for normal use
• Lakes and Oceans
•  louisgray.com: Measuring Up at Life’s Checkpoints
• Having my Cake
• Artistic License
• They are stealing our work
• More Writers Making a Living
• Are More Authors Than You Think Making a Living Self-Publishing? | Lindsay Buroker
• Thank You creativeLIVE: What a Great Experience | ESSENTIALS For Photographers

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 8, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Sadly, Apple holds the high ground in electronics manufacturing
• Hate Amazon? Well Read About What Random House Did to Me and My Family
• Easter Bunny Photos Gone Terribly, Terribly Wrong
• The Awards Go To
• Literary authority up close and personal
• Why I Print
• CREATE. SHARE. REPEAT.
• Photography, Visual Magic
• Canuck Notes
• A Man Can’t Live on Image Credit Alone
• Reality and Photography
• Who owns the night?

and on to the playoffs!

I have to give the Sharks full credit. they didn’t make it easy for themselves, but they found a way and won the last four games. Finished a point out of the division title and ended up 7th in the west. The last two games with the Kings were (mostly) well-played and showed what this team is capable of.

Unfortunately, this team seems like it plays best when it’s back is to the wall, and so it seems to have to put its back to the wall to play well. That doesn’t seem to me to be a great playoff strategy, but we’ll see.

So the first round of the playoffs is set. Here are my predictions.

In the West:

Los Angeles/Vancouver — Quick vs. Luongo. Upstart Kings vs. repeating Presidents Cup winners. I really like both teams. I think this is the series to watch out west. I’d love to pick the Kings, but I think the Canucks will take this one in six.

San Jose/St. Louis: I’m thrilled to see the Blues back in the playoffs, and they’re a scary team. The sharks haven’t matched well with them this season. This is, actually, the worst match up for the Sharks, so I have to pick the Blues in five. It’ll be interesting to see if the Sharks can solve this, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Chicago/Phoenix: Also great to see — the Coyotes in the playoffs. They’re a fun and scrappy team playing in “mission from God” mode. the Blackhawks just don’t seem to click reliably. Not sure Laurie will like hearing this, but I have to go with the Coyotes in six.

Detroit/Nashville: Nashville is a solid contender. Detroit is, well, Detroit, and you rarely profit betting against them. they are a team that just finds a way. There have been chinks in the Red Wings armor this year. I like the Predators; not flashy, but they get it done. And so I think they will in five.

So in summary: Vancouver, St. Louis, Phoenix, Nashville.

And my pick for the west going into the first round? St. Louis. (then Vancouver)

In the East:

Ottawa/New York Rangers: The Rangers are a fine team (shh: don’t tell Larry Brooks, he hates it when things go well, nothing to whine about). The Senators are a good team, but not in that league. This one goes to the Rangers in five.

Washington/Boston: The Capitals are a very talented team that have never found a consistent winning rhythm. the Bruins have had a few air pockets but they’re still a team you need to be wary of. I can’t see how the Capitals will beat the Bruins the way the Caps have been playing, and Boston is really the better team. Bruins in 5.

New Jersey/Florida: like betting against the Red Wings, until the last few years, you didn’t bet against Brodeur in the playoffs. But he’s shown a strong tendency to fade late, and age is not doing him favors. The Panthers have finally built a good team, and I think they’re rewarded in this round. Panthers in six.

Philadelphia/Pittsburgh: the series to watch in the east by far. Two really good teams that have a big hate on for each other. You have to wonder if the team that survives this round will have anything left for round two. This match is almost a toss-up, but I’m going to pick the Penguins in seven. I also predict one season ending injury and at least one line brawl.

In summary: New York Rangers, Boston, Florida, Pittsburgh

And my pick for the east going into the first round Pittsburgh (then the Rangers)

My pick for the cup? Pittsburgh.

Now, a few days off to rest up, and the second season begins.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 7, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The ABA wants to be your friend – ABA Blog
• How big is Flashback compared to Windows malware?
• Everything you need to know about getting into digital comic books
• Livingston photographer captures Yellowstone Park in time-lapse simplicity – Yellowstone Gate
• My alarm goes off every morning at 5am. I’m usually out…
• Friday Weird Science: A profusion of pressurized penguin poo | Neurotic Physiology
• Reality and Photography
• DRM is crushing indie booksellers online
• New BirdLog app finally provides easy mobile data entry!

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 6, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Happy Easter!
• The Mystery of the Flying Laptop – NYTimes.com
• The Worst Baseball Cards in History
• Researchers find mechanism for bee collapse and recreate it
• Filter Friday on Google+
• Why Selling Direct is Vital for Authors
• Exclusive: a behind-the-scenes look at Facebook release engineering (Ryan Paul/Ars Technica)
• Ocean Currents Imagery Resembles Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’
• Why We Need Big, Bold Science Fiction
• Clash of the Cultures: Sales vs. Engineering
• Enhancing the Macro Image with Janice Wendt
• The Plot Thickens
• KuklasKorner : KK Members Blog : If You Can Play…
• I don’t hire unlucky people – raganwald’s posterous
• ryanfunduk.com » Our Culture of Exclusion

Watch your sticks, gentlemen….

A wild night at Staple as Sharks land playoff spot with 6-5 shootout win, Clowe suffers post-game amnesia | Working the Corners:

LOS ANGELES – The most bizarre moment in the Sharks’ 6-5 shootout victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday night came late in the third period when forward Ryane Clowe was sitting on the bench and extended his stick onto the ice to break up a possible scoring threat.

 

The capacity crowd inside Staples Center saw it happen and it was caught by TV cameras, but referees Stephen Walkom and Brian Pochmara missed it so no penalty was called.

In the locker room afterward, Clowe twice appeared to be feigning ignorance of the move when asked about it by reporters.

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” Clowe said. “I’ll have to see the video or something. Someone show me the video.”

But the Los Angeles locker room was very aware of what happened.

a strange moment in a fascinating but strange game, where both teams honestly played like there was no tomorrow and puppies were going to be killed if they lost.

In this play, Ryan Clowe — on the bench — had his stick hanging over and down towards the ice. As Stoll skated by, the stick got into the play. Clear interference from the bench, which should be a penalty. The referees missed it. My interpretation was that Clowe made a move with the stick, not that it was there and in the way, but I also felt it was one of those instinctual moves, not a premeditated one.

That said, he should have been called on a penalty for interference. And the league needs to send a memo out to players reminding them to keep their sticks out of play and on the bench when they’re on it. The stick really shouldn’t have been anywhere near there in the first place. If I were Brendan Shanahan, I’d be giving Clowe a chat to yell at him a bit. I’m tempted to suggest a one game suggestion just to reinforce to everyone this kind of thing can’t be tolerated (even if missed by the refs). But I’ll settle for some “what were you thinking???” discussion.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 5, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Cooler Than a Bowtie: Doctor Who as a 16-Bit RPG
• The 2012 iPad, Part II: Bigger Display, Better Camera

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 4, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Drop Caps: Historical Use And Current Best Practices With CSS | Smashing Magazine
• "No one in those communities works together to do things, it’s every man and ROM for himself."
• Time Inc. Hearst, Conde Nast, Meredith Launch "Netflix For Magazines" – Peter Kafka – Media – AllThingsD
• I’ll Know I’ve Made it as a Writer When . . .
• Things are looking different better around here at OpenPhoto….
• Papermill
• Backstory: Push A Button, Custom Tailor Your Site For Each And Every Visitor
• An Intelligent Discussion on Marketing for Authors
• Confirming The Link Between Fast Food And Depression
• The Online Photographer: LED Lighting for Photography: Kirk Tuck
• How to Photograph a $380,000 Car with $60,000 in Lighting Gear
• Five Ways to Improve Your Images – Outdoor Photo Gear
• Week 11: Cross Balance Filter in Color Efex Pro 4 « Education Blog

A great example of why you should make friends with a lawyer…

I’ve been working with a lawyer a bit on some things (good things, not bad things), so when I read this, it really struck me as a great example of why you really do want a lawyer on your side when legal things like contracts are involved. At first glance, Passive Voice talks about some contract language that seems simple and straightforward, but see both how he detangles the implications behind it, and how he finds ways to turn it back on the company that wrote it, assuming, of course, the company really had nefarious intent in the first place. Which it of course never would. Never.

This isn’t just true of book contracts, either. There’s a reason those EULAs look as funky and complicated as they do; and screwing you over is (mostly) not the root cause. It’s trying to make sure that little is left to interpretation, because it’s that interpretation that ends up in court some day…

How to Read a Book Contract – Audit Clause | The Passive Voice:

The second paragraph is where serious gnarliness appears. Since the paragraph begins with a run-on sentence, we’ll break that down and shorten it for comprehension.

 

As a condition precedent to the exercise by Author of his/her right to examine the books and records of Publisher,[the auditor] shall execute an agreement to the effect that

“As a condition precedent to the exercise” means if the auditor doesn’t sign an agreement for any reason, Author has no audit rights whatsoever.

What’s going to be in that agreement the auditor has to sign? The agreement isn’t set forth in the Publishing Contract and it’s a “to the effect” agreement which could mean almost anything. Is the agreement one page long or is it twenty pages long?

If the auditor finds the agreement objectionable and says, “No accountant in her right mind would sign something like this,” Author has no right to audit under the Publishing Contract.

Lawyers call something like this, an agreement to agree. It’s a classic unenforceable contract provision, but it’s also a “condition precedent” to any audit rights.

Who prepares this agreement for the auditor to sign? If PG were the Author, he would write up a very short agreement, have the auditor sign it, and hand it to the Publisher. As the audit clause is written, that agreement would satisfy the requirement. There’s nothing that says Publisher prepares the confidentiality agreement. (Look for the publisher who uses this clause to change it as soon as someone there reads PG’s analysis.)

 

Working in a warehouse….

A firsthand take on working in an ecommerce shipping warehouse | The Verge:

The balance of power between employees and managers is tipped from the beginning by extensive use of temp agencies, and of course it’s made worse by the difficult job market. Add in what seem to be very high daily quotas, short breaks, long days, and uncomfortable, static-shock-filled days and it’s clearly not the sort of job to aspire to.

The Mother Jones piece seems to be trying to demonize Amazon in a quiet way for how hard they work their warehouse people.

How first world of us.

Back in the 70′s, I worked for the Mouse. 76-80, in fact. In their warehouse, where over time I spent days unloading trucks and stocking shelves, evenings picking orders and unsticking shelves, and the graveyard shift on a forklift driving though Fantasyland and Adventureland delivering pallets of stuffed animals and blocks of american cheese to places all through Disneyland. That was my job.

It was hard work. I enjoyed the hell out of it, but it was hard work. It didn’t pay well, because non-skilled work rarely does. That’s a fact of life. All the Mother Jones article shows me is that nothing’s really changed. Warehouses are warehouses — somewhat more automated, but still, they’re warehouses.

Are we as first worlders getting to the point where hard physical work is somehow evil? Maybe we need to get out from behind keyboards more often, then. Sit down and talk to your plumber, next time you hire them to root out a clogged sewer. Or your gardener, next time they come in to mow and blow your lawn. Or when you go to a restaurant, sit where you can watch the kitchen and see just how hard the wait staff and line cooks work — for a lot less money than they deserve. And don’t be stingy on the tip…

I’m really kind of confused by the Mother Jones piece. It seems to be demonizing — work. have there been abuses at some of Amazon’s warehouse facilities? yes. Well, guess what. abusive bosses exist. they exist in high tech as well, but here in Silicon valley, when you keep a sleeping bag under your desk, it is a badge of honor to some (hint: the company is still taking advantage of you).

Unskilled labor is like this. It’s hard. you work long hours. you’re tired when it’s done, and dirty, and sweaty. You don’t have a lot of pull with management, because, honestly, there really are 20 people who will take your job if you don’t want it, because for them it’s a step up. But if it’s hard work, it’s honest work, and it’s the kind of work that keeps the world running, that makes life for those of us who are able to make a living with a keyboard safer and softer. I guess so we can complain about how unfair it is that those folks have to work hard. Or something.

I guess.

Exactly what point is Mother Jones trying to make here again?

Update: angry drunk has an interesting take on this.

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 3, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• Instapaper, Readability and monetizing other people’s content
• Blinded by the Light – The Epiphany
• Grizzly Bear Attacks: How wildlife investigators found a killer grizzly in Yellowstone. – Slate Magazine
• I hereby resign – raganwald’s posterous
• FROM THE FUTURE: Fully Remote Photography + Video For Less Than $100
• How Carl Zeiss Lenses Are Stress Tested
• Penn Jillette: Vissa D’arte Even on The Celebrity Apprentice
• April Fools’ 2012 in the Photo World
• Spring Storm

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 2, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• What happens when social surveillance goes mainstream?
• How To Develop Scalable And Maintainable CSS | Van SEO Design
• An Honest PowerPoint Slide
• The inadmissible assumptions
• The Long Game: Lessons on Success From One of America’s Favorite Authors | The Passive Voice
• Books should be as easy to create as websites – O’Reilly Radar
• Coal Chute Point and The Pit
• Fiery The Angels Rose… – Jonesblog
• Love Hotels and Unicode | ReignDesign
• Book marketing & publicity: Advice from three experts
• Comics on the iPad: will the new iPad attract paper readers?

Things You’ll Find Interesting April 1, 2012

Here are some items I found today that I thought you’d find interesting.

• The Western Kingbird and the Beetle
• Your April-Fool’s Joke is Not Good Enough if I Don’t Regret Having Trusted You
• Twitter at Gettysburg
• Making big scenes look big
• Making big scenes look big
• Analyzing the physics of ‘Angry Birds Space’

The best April Fools Joke I never did…

I used to take April Fool’s pretty seriously. but to do it well, it takes time, energy and the guts to take a risk. Which is why, again this year, Anil is right.

So this year, I thought I’d talk instead about the best April Fool’s joke I ever put together, one I never had the guts to pull off.

Very simple, really. Everyone in the building at Apple I worked in at the time would show up to a memo on their desk announcing Apple’s new Drug Testing Policy.

With a sample cup. And instructions on where to drop it off.

This one had the potential for chaos on so many levels. The obvious: a drug testing policy is so against the culture of a company like Apple, it’s an obvious riff. And frankly, a “here’s our new policy” memo or email just isn’t that interesting. But toss in the sample cup and submission info, and it’d suddenly feel a lot more real — at least initially.

then think about the different layers of this: people who don’t get it who get pissed (ahem) and start screaming about it until someone clues them in.

Then start thinking about the poor person at the wrong end of the submission address. And the interoffice mail folks. And… Because you know some folks WILL. And some folks will — but using innovative substances. And…

This one goes way back, when the subject of affection was Kevin Sullivan, for whom I had no real love lost for his work at Apple.

But the reason I never did it was because the peope who’d take the brunt of the bad aspects of the joke weren’t the people it was aimed at (Sullivan, Apple HR at the time, and whiny people who scream first and think maybe), but the AA’s who’d actually have to deal with all of the submissions. And that just didn’t seem funny to me. Now, Sullivan himself dealing with them? that’d have been worth being fired over…

(This is a reprint of a piece I did in 2008, but I think it deserves a fresh look here in April Fools day. Either that, or I’d have to come up with a new joke…)