sharks/wings — looking at game 5
- At May 7, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
1
I had a couple of people ask me if I was disappointed at the sharks loss in game 4. Honestly? no. I expected a split in Detroit, I got one. The Wings are too good a team and too poised to go away that easily. It would have been nice for San jose to win game 4, but I didn’t think Detroit would let them sweep.
But watching game 4, if I’m detroit, I’m not feeling too confident right now. The Wings opened with a strong push and were able to build a lead, but the Sharks didn’t fold and didn’t go into “okay, we’ll get them in game 5″ mode. Detroit scored 3 unanswered goals, but so did San Jose to grind back to a tie before the Wings got a late one to win, and even at that, I felt they barely hung on as San jose really pushed in the last minute to tie it. That game wasn’t far from overtime in a number of ways.
So even though the Wings won, I saw nothing that made me feel they’d changed the momentum of the series as opposed to forestalling the inevitable. There was nothing in game 4 that made me feel like Detroit could keep that up three more games, especially in San jose. So this series might go six, but I’m thinking game 5 in san jose will end it. But it’ll be close and hard fought.
But this series really has the look of the student showing the master that he has learned his lessons well, and that the time for teaching is over. Because San Jose’s style, and more importantly, mindset, is a clone of Detroit’s, and that negates one of the Wing’s strongest advantages against most teams — that the Wings don’t panic, don’t give up, don’t get frustrated. These two teams are identical in many ways, but I think San jose is a little younger (and so recovers a bit faster and so has a bit better conditioning) and San jose has a little better depth in the third and fourth lines (especially the third), and those differences are just enough to tip this series. It really is that close.
and it’s awesome hockey. Can’t wait for game 5.
Thinking of Yosemite
I have scheduled, at least tentatively, that second week off that I planned on taking, and I’ve set a motel reservation for a few days in Yosemite. With a bit of luck, I’ll hit it during a high time for waterfalls and as the dogwood kicks in — spring is late this year, but if seems to be arriving, finally.
And that has me thinking of Yosemite, and doing some planning for what shooting I want to do there (most planning to go out the window as soon as I get there and see what’s going on, likely), and looking to some of my yosemite resources for inspiration and advice; I thought it might make sense to talk about a few of them.
The two current photographers that I find influence me most strongly about Yosemite are Michael Frye and William Neill. Frye’s blog is one of the resources I’m using to try to time myself into the park for spring, in fact. Frye’s been photographing yosemite for a couple of decades and was staff photographer for the Ansel Adams Gallery there (and I’ve recently been borrowing heavily from his lightroom post processing technique to rebuild my own, but that’s a blog posting for another day). Frye has published The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite
William Neill’s been at it a long time as well. His work moves very heavily into artistic abstraction over traditional landscape imagery, which is very different from the typical work I shoot — but if you look at what I do when I go out on extended trips like the one I’m planning, there’s usually some experimentation in abstraction, and Neill is the photographer that I’ve been studying to get a sense of how to do that. It’s an aspect of photography I like and am trying to teach myself to do well. Neill has also been experimenting with ebook publishing, and he’s turned out some strong works in that form; I especially like Impressions of Light as a good work showing the power of the abstract landscape, and of course, his book Yosemite: Volume One on the park. He’s also recently published a new volume on Yosemite, Digital Landscape Photography: In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams and the Masters
But the photographer that first defined Yosemite for me was Galen Rowell. If you can find a copy of Yosemite and the Wild Sierra
But the book I find most inspirational about Yosemite isn’t a photography book at all. It’s a book of woodprints by a Japanese Artist named Chiura Obata. He first visited Yosemite in 1927 and continued for many years, finally interrupted by World War II when he was interned in a camp (and his work done at the camp is also stunning: you should get a copy of Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment
Notably absent in that list of influences is Ansel Adams himself. I can explain (maybe). In my first incarnation as a photographer, which lasted until I was out of high school (1970ish to about 1978) I was primarily a sports and journalism photography shooting mostly Black and White (love my Tri-X) and being a bit of a darkroom rat. I studied Adams a bit, but mostly from the black and white and darkroom aspects, not the nature aspects. I did my first nature photography in the latter half of the 80′s primarily using Velvia, but gave it up again (and I wasn’t very good, or serious). It wasn’t until digital kicked in and I caught the bug again about 2003 that I started shooting and then started getting serious, and in all of that time I was doing color work. It’s only been the last few months I’ve even started moving back into black and white — so along the way, Adams work just hasn’t been a focus of my studies. I need to fix that at some point, especially now that I’m trying to work with black and white on a regular basis.
Yosemite has always been an important place for me; my family visited there regularly growing up — I’m old enough to remember (barely) the firefall, and (seriously!) playing golf on the course that the Awahnee had (which no longer exists). Like photography, I lost my tie to the park for many years, and like photography, now that I’ve reconnected, it’s hit me hard, and I’m loving every minute I get to spend there. Especially with a camera. So hopefully this next trip will let me fill out my portfolio a bit and try do do things I haven’t already done, instead of sitting up at Tunnel View for hours waiting for the light to hit just right (of course, I may do that again, too).
And when I go, I’ll take along the thoughts and images of those who influence me to guide me….
The Malik Report : The lecture linesmen
- At May 2, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
- 1
KuklasKorner : The Malik Report : The lecture linesmen:
Regardless of whether you’re a Wings fan, a Sharks fan, or any other sort of fan, you’ve probably been driven nuts by the fact that, over the course of the regular season and the playoffs thus far, linesmen have seemed so willing to herk-and-jerk the puck in an attempt to get one team’s player to flinch and then be thrown out of the faceoff circle, but not before offering a 30-second lecture to both the tossed out player and the one that replaces him
Well, to be honest, my belief is that unless your paycheck has the name of one of the 30 NHL teams on it, or the league office itself, if you let things like this drive you nuts, that’s your fault, not the league’s, and this is especially true of hockey writers who (realizing their salary is directly tied to the games but not really paid for by them) and doubly especially of hockey writers in canada where they take all of this crap way too seriously for their own good.
But ignore that, because that’s not really my point. But I had to say it.
Having told you not to take all of this so damn seriously, I will now admit that, having watched hockey pretty damn seriously for over 20 years, I still have no clue why players get kicked out of face off circles most of the time. The decision making process that linesmen take in deciding whether someone cheated enough to be kicked out, or whether a drop was unfair enough to blow the whistle and redrop, eludes me 90% of the time (the other 10% of the time, it’s Joe Thornton, who cheats massively in the faceoff circle, and even when he doesn’t, the linesmen kick him out anyway by force of habit. Sort of like how some refs whistled Bryan Marchment to the penalty box even if he was sitting on the bench, just in case…)
IF I can sit for 20 years three rows off the glass next to a faceoff dot and watch the linesmen from maybe 15 feet away and have NO CLUE why they make these decisions, perhaps the rules are a bit too opaque and arbitrary for their own good. But then, I also wonder about such things as — well, why do they continue to draw the lines intended to force players to square up on the faceoff dot when they have been routinely ignored since Bernie Nicholl’s retired?
it’s a mystery. but I refuse to get freaked out about it, because the games are there to be enjoyed and to entertain you, unless, I guess, you write about them for a living.
And for those of you who ARE driven nuts by this stuff, I’ll close with a quick joke:
Q: what do you call a center who doesn’t cheat on faceoffs?
A: Left Wing.
(don’t forget to tip your waiter….)
2011 Playoff Picks, round 2 edition. And other comments on the playoffs so far.
- At April 28, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
- 0
Round one is done, and how did I do on picks?
In the west, I picked Vancouver in 5, San Jose in 6, Detroit in 6, and Nashville in 6.
In the west, I picked Caps in 5, Flyers in 5, Montreal in 7, Tampa in 6.
So I went seven for 8. the only series I missed was Montreal/Boston, which I picked to go 7, and it was decided in overtime in game 7.
Excuse me for saying this, but that’s pretty darn good picking. So I guess I’ll go 1-3 in round 2, just to even it up again…
In the West, we have:
San Jose and Detroit. Detroit really worries me; the goaltending’s been good, they are mature, crafty and know how to win in key, high stress games. San Jose has shown they’ve finally grown up and seem to have that same ability, but the goaltending’s been less reliable (but Niemi rose to the occasion) and they still are less proven than Detroit. I think it’ll be a hell of a series, and I’ll take San Jose in 7. Very evenly matched, should be a lot of fun. Definitely not easy.
Nashville and Vancouver. I have to congratulate Nashville for getting to the 2nd round. That’s a great progression for them that they’ve earned. But Vancouver is playing really well, and I just can’t see Nashville beating them. As I said earlier, any of the three big teams (San jose, Vancouver, detroit) could come out of the west and I’d not be surprised, and all three are in the second round. nashville is a team moving forward and getting better, but they’re not in that league yet.
San Jose has the hardest progression out of the west, too, because they had to beat the Kings, which was far from easy, and then detroit, and then Vancouver. That’s going to be tough sledding. I think they can. I’m not convinced they will, and if they don’t, I doubt it’ll be San jose’s fault. but we’ll see. I’m still picking them until someone beats them. Unfortunately, both Detroit and Vancouver could.
Over in the east….
Tampa/Washington: I really like the Caps here. Tampa has some nice game to them, but I don’t think they can beat Washington. Caps in 6.
Philly/Boston: going to be a bruiser series. I’m going to pick Boston mostly because of the Tim Thomas factor, because I’m not really sure philly’s goaltending is going to be what they need. And Philly knows that. Again, their goalie situation is chaos, because the flyers simply odn’t seem capable of building and maintaining a solid goaltending system or developing their own goalies without breaking them. Boston in 7.
I’m REALLY hoping boston/philly goes 7, because I expect the Sharks will need a few days of rest if they beat detroit and need to face vancouver. Otherwise, going in against the canucks tired worries me. I expect Vancouver ot finish their series first and be able to sit an extra day or two.
LA really impressed me. If they can keep the team intact (or mostly) and players mature as expected, they’re going to become a western power. Teemu Selanne really impressed me, and the Ducks impressed me more than I expected. I’m not sure they’ll be able to stay as good next year, though. Has anyone noticed how important Ryan Smith is to the Kings? Ever wonder if Edmonton wishes they still had him? And anyone wonder why anyone bothers to let Dustin Penner out of the press box, because he showed a few flashes of good hockey, but mostly, he left me wondering why anyone handed him a uniform. Slow and plodding and not very physical, with no real offense. He’s way too expensive to be a 4th liner or a pylon.
On to round 2. and I’m glad we aren’t doing playoff tickets; we both wondered if we’d hit a point where we wished we were at games. Maybe in the cup finals if San Jose gets there, but right now, sitting at home means not missing some of this hockey to get ready to go to games — and in my case, allows me more to be a hockey fan again and not mentally turn into a sharks fan. Much as I enjoy rooting for the sharks, I find I’m more able to just sit back and enjoy good hockey — and boy, has there been a lot of good hockey (although if you’re a canadian hockey writer, maybe you’re unable to actually see it, from some of the crap being written… fortunately, I can ignore all of that…)
Today’s Shared Links for April 27, 2011
- Study probes how surgery makes diabetes disappear
(Reuters) - Game Seven
- Real time vs. slow time – and a defense of sane work hours
The Challenge of a Healthy Diet
Gary Taubes, who is a Science Writer for the NY Times, has a new piece out called Is Sugar Toxic? (hat tip Daring Fireball for linking to it)
At first glance, the title sounds a bit hyperbolic, but don’t let that stop you. Taubes has been writing about this stuff for a long time and has a lot of heavy research behind his opinions. When I was previously talking about some of the things I’ve been chasing in restructuring my lifestyle, a friend of mine suggested I read Taubes’ books on the subject, which I have.
I read Why We Get Fat, and then I went off into a corner to think about it for a while. I knew I wanted to talk about it, but I wasn’t sure how. Many things he says struck home, they sync up well with how I have come to feel given the research I’ve been doing.
But the thing is, I can’t point to this book and say “he’s right”. He’s going against standard medical advice. Frankly, I’m not qualified to look at his data and say “believe him instead”, and the universe is full of people who have the real answers that the “establishment’ wants suppressed, so any time someone bucks the establishment, you need to be careful and understand the issues before buying into it.
So having told you to be skeptical — and that includes being skeptical of me — I do encourage you to read this book and consider what he has to say. His opinions struck home to me, and align well with what my study independent of him was making me think; his opinions are well backed up by studies, and those studies he’s using seem to be well-designed and well-implemented, their results seem consistent, and they come from reliable institutions. And he’s not selling a product (ALWAYS be extra skeptical when there’s a product involved); this isn’t a framework of studies based on 12 teenage girls from Cleveland looked at for four weeks.
His research and data frankly impresses the hell out of me, and he reaches back into the past to unravel how we got here and how the medical establishment ended up recommending the current dietary protocols and why he thinks they’re wrong.
The basic underpinning of Taubes work is that the medical establishment made a leap of faith in deciding that fat was bad for humans and therefore, carbohydrates are good; that this dogma was established through a few key researchers that politically others weren’t willing to challenge, and that unfortunately, there’s basically no medical studies that can be found that prove they’re right, and a growing body of evidence that the current idea of “fat bad” is flawed.
There are a growing number of people who are starting to take up this concept. It was recently written up on the Huffington Post by Kristin Wartman and she quotes a number of folks from Martha Rose Shulman (NY Times food writer) to Dr. Frank Hu (Harvard) with opinions that encourage moving away from the “low fat” movement.
I encourage you to read the Taubes piece and the Wartman piece, and if they seem to make sense to you, grab a copy of Taubes book and read it and consider his arguments for yourself. I am not saying “he’s right, do this”; but I do believe it is in your best interest to consider his arguments and make up your own mind.
Having been chewing on this (sorry!) for a few weeks, here’s my view of this. As a survivor of the 70′s “pasta and bagel” diet mentality, I’ve long felt that the blind view that fat is bad for you so eat carbs instead was flawed. My personal reaction to the 70′s diet was weight gain and a tendency towards blood sugar crashes because the carbs hit harder and fade faster. I’ve always tried to trend towards a more protein heavy diet over a classic “mediterranean” diet, and this whole “one size fits all” mentality for dietary regimes has always seemed over simplistic to me. My genetic background (northern germanic) is one not well attuned to the mediterranean diet, and I’ve never really reacted well to it when I’ve tried, so even without all of the research that’s been coming out the last few years, I’ve had personal reason to believe the dogma around dietary practices had flaws, if only because it doesn’t take into consideration basic things like ethnic and regional genetic differences — but then, it wasn’t that long ago that drug testing was done almost exclusively on white males and the reality that drugs responded differently to blacks or women or other ethnics was kind of ignored. It’s only been in the last couple of years that we’ve seen the first drugs come out specifically for blacks that take into consideration the genetic differences in how drugs are processed, and this is still a new part of the medical field.
If you stop to think about it, this medical dogma has been eroding for decades. In the 70′s, cholesterol was bad and to be avoided. Now, there are HDLs and LDLs and Triglycerides and some of these actually help the heart, and instead of tracking to a low total cholesterol number, you’re encouraged to do things to raise HDL while lowering LDL, and so we’ve figured out reality is a lot more complicated than they told us. Eggs have even been brought back from exile.
Ditto fat. Used to be, fat was bad. Now, the still yell FAT IS BAD, and then whisper “but monounsaturated fats are maybe kinda less bad”; sometimes they even admit that the poster child of the anti-fat establishment, that box of lard, is actually about 50% monounsaturated fats and maybe not as bad for you (in moderation) as they said. Especially if you swap it out for something that uses trans-fats.
And yes, there are really three kinds of fats in our world today — unsaturated fats, saturated fats, and trans-fats. The latter are manufactured by the food industry and increasingly, we seem to be finding out those are the least healthy of them all.
(interlude: interestingly enough, this new study just hit my inbox, where a high fat, low carb diet seems to protect and repair kidney damage in diabetics. By shifting to a ketogenic diet, it seems to give the body a chance to repair the kidneys in mice. Whcih is interesting, because one thing the Atkins diet was criticized for was that it puts the kidneys into ketosis and that was considered bad for the kidneys. Except if you read Taube’s book, one thing he talks about is a study of existing aboriginal hunter/gatherer societies like the australian aborigines and the Inuit, and if you study their traditional diets, they are heavy in protein and fat, not carbs, and are generally ketogenic — and that the belief that the classic “historical” diet of our genetic predecessors as being carb-centric is wrong, and part of the evidence against our current dietary programs.. it’s definitely worth reading Taube’s take on this, but this study seems to reinforce this idea)
Carbs are no longer carbs. Carbs are now complex carbs and simple carbs, and simple carbs include sugars, and a subset of sugars are the fructoses, which include high yield corn fructose, another manufactured product that’s been heavily adopted by the food industries. And even the medical establishment is telling people to eat complex carbs more than simple ones.
So the reality is, even though the high level position of the medical industry hasn’t changed, if you listen to the details, you can see how it’s eroded over the years: Cholesterol is bad (well, some kinds of cholersterol); carbs are good (well, some kinds; other kinds aren’t), and fat is bad (well, except for the kinds of fat that aren’t bad for you). And more and more of the medical researchers are starting to question and poke holes in the standard dogma.
Here’s a quick thought on the question “Is it really possible that all of the experts on health and nutrition in medicine are wrong?” — consider this. Look at the sheer numbers involved in the obesity and diabetes epidemics confronting us; they’re estimating as many as in 3 americans will be diabetic in 20 years. Ask yourself “is it really possible that this large a percentage of the worldwide population is unable to follow the instructions for eating healthy?” (which is, really, what the medical establishment and the media that echoes their messaging basically tells us; it’s our fault) — or is it possible that the information being given to these folks is wrong? And if it really is societies inability to follow these directions, what changed in the last 40 years, because up until that point, we had hundreds (maybe thousands) of years where we could. Obesity and diabetes are fairly new epidemics, and, coincidentally enough (or not) coincide with the “low fat” healthy diet teachings that led to the “bagel and pasta” diets of the 70′s and up to today. It also coincides nicely with the switch to more refined/industrial foods and the growth of high yield fructose over natural sugar, as well as the massive increase in intake of sugar as a percentage of diet.
Now, to circle back to Taube’s article on sugar for a bit: I think he’s mostly right on, but with a caveat. I disagree with his premise that sugar is toxic in two aspects. First is he lumps in “real” sugar (which is typically about 50% glucose and 50% fructose) as being as bad for you as high-yield corn syrup (which is typically 45% glucose and 55% glucose) is going to be proven wrong. There are studies coming out (here’s the most recent I’ve seen) that show that we don’t process glucose and fructose the same, and that the human body is genetically tuned to process sugars — when that ratio is thrown off and there’s extra fructose in the mix, the body doesn’t adapt and things get out of balance. This is going to be the defining reason why the high yield stuff is going to be shown to be more damaging and more fattening than “real sugar”, that ratio change is significant in how the human body processes and reacts to the food. So they aren’t going to be equally damaging, high yield corn syrup is worse for the body than sugar is — I believe. it’s not proven, but the studies are coming out, and I believe it’s a matter of time.
The second aspect I don’t agree with him on is the emotionally charged word “toxic” — he is right, but only if the substance is abused. Right now, sugar seems to be going through the same demonization phase that alcohol went through. SUGAR IS BAD. Well…
Yes, it is, if you eat too much of it. And just like eggs were demonized over cholesterol and have been returned from exile, and alcohol was demonized and has been sort of returned from exile (much of the medical establishment seems incomfortable admitting that moderate amounts of alcohol seems to be actually helpful, because they seem unwilling to admit that we all won’t end up abusing it and going alcoholic; but small amounts of alcohol and certain types — like red wine — seem to be healthful in many ways), we’re doing the same to sugar.
My view is different; I think these things IN MODERATION are going to be fine. The key is doing things in moderation. In the last 40 years or so, the typical american has gone from eating 40 pounds of sugar a year to over 90 pounds, and a chunk of that 90 pounds is the high yield stuff. There’s a very close correlation on this increase in sugars in our diet and the growth of diabetes and obesity in the culture. The link isn’t proven, but I’m convinced it will be. When we ate moderate amounts of this stuff within our diets, we didn’t get fat, we didn’t get diabetic. Now we eat way more than we should, and we do.
So I’m uncomfortable promoting the “sugar is toxic” concept. I don’t believe it is. I believe that abuse of sugars is bad for your health, and chronic abuse leads to chronic health issues. But eating a healthy diet in a healthy lifestyle (there we go, away from simple answers to complex solutions. sorry!) with this stuff in moderation within it is how to make this all work.
What does that mean for how I’m trying to do this in my own life?
I think the manufactured foods are evil; I try to minimize both trans-fats and high yield fructose corn syrup. That’s difficult to remove 100% from an american diet without extreme changes (please don’t suggest vegetarian, not gonna happen) but I steer away from them, and they play very small parts in my diet and I try to remove them where I find them and can.
I try to aim FOR healthy fats and complex carbs and AWAY from saturated fats and simple carbs. Which is tougher than it sounds, because white flours are a simple carb and you have to be careful even with “whole wheat” and how that term is used. I am not banning lard, or white sugar, or white flour from my life. But I am also not pulling out the tub of lard and a spoon. I believe if you use margarine instead of butter you’re being foolish (and research is showing I’m probably right), but I try to be rational about how much butter I use.
I try to be moderate about all this stuff. My goal diet is 40% protein, 30% carbs, 30% fat. I try to steer towards healthy stuff; the more processed foods are, the less you should eat them. But I still drink alcohol (once or twice a week), I still eat sugar (I just don’t bathe in it), I still eat breads (but I lean towards whole wheats and lower carb versions where I can); I still eat cheese (a lot, actually). I’m still not where I want the diet to be — I’m more 35% protein, 40-45% carbs and the rest fat, and unfortunately, as a diabetic, I feel that’s too high on carbs. But if I weren’t diabetic, I’d feel comfortable taking my diet to any dietician in the universe. Which says a lot, given that five years ago, I was a burger-and-fries guy five or six times a week. Now? maybe once a month — except I rarely eat more than a few fries, because I find them rather grainy and salty (I’m convinced most fast food fries are eaten by habit, not because they remotely taste good; I’m happy to say I’ve lost my taste for them).
And having said my diet is 95% of where i want it to be, that last 5% is proving to be a terror. but I keep working on it. that’s a discussion for later, though.
So read Taubes’ article, and think about getting and reading his book. See if you agree with his arguments, and what that means for your lifestyle and diet. And then we’ll talk. This is a big, hairy, complex thing; if there’s a real sin the medical establishment has committed,it’s that they simplified this into something unintelligible, and then tried to solve all of the complex wrinkles off in the footnotes. Get yourself out of the footnotes and get informed and start figuring it out for yourself — and Taubes is a good place to start.
Today’s Shared Links for April 21, 2011
- WordPress Plugin for Webmaster Tools verification
- The 5 Qualities of Highly Effective Community Managers
- My thoughts on Major League Baseball taking over the Dodgers from Frank McCourt
- Why You Should Strive To Be Unrecognizable In Five Years
- Using Photos to Tell the Story of Katie Rose
- Breaking News: Imagine having Layers in Lightroom. Well, OnOne Software Just Did it!!
- Dunes, Mesquite Flat, Sunrise
- Spectacular Yosemite book published by Universe
Dealing with criticism…
Mark over at Nature Light Photo recently wrote about getting some unexpected criticism and how it affected him (see part 1 and part 2).
I like how he reacted to it and turned a potentially negative bit of kneecapping into a more positive situation. His discussion on how to do these things more — tactfully — is right on.
But it also doesn’t deal with the reality that some people are interested in being nice. And that some people get off on destroying what others are building. And one thing you need to do if you’re going to play in public — especially here on the internet — is learn to step back from the trolls and not let them get under your skin.
Way back in the day when I was writing fiction, I was a member of a writer’s group called the Over the Hill Gang. it was somewhat legendary in some circles and I was thrilled when given a chance to join. The attitude matched up well to my view of workshops and critiques, which is, basically, “if you want to hear nice things, send a copy to your mother”.
The group was full of characters; She Who Must be Obeyed was the grammar queen, we had a guy who could worldbuild in his head (imagine having someone read your story cold and tell you that your orbital mechanics are wrong — on the fly — and be right. consistently); we had someone strong at characterization, another who’s strength was dialog; a couple of walking trivia machines, and my specialty ended up being consistency checking and general nit picking on details (um, wasn’t he left-handed five pages ago? If so, when he goes this this door in this way, doesn’t that block his ability to aim?)
Sessions could be spirited. A number of people who wanted to join never returned for a second session. Occasionally one didn’t survive the first. But the goal was simple — make the story better. And the one rule nobody could violate was that it couldn’t be personal. You never, ever spoke about the writer, only the work. It was then up to the writer not to internalize what was being said into their ego.
Easier said than done. But good training for the internet. And to this day, I still feel that group did more to improve my writing than anything else. But that group had something that doesn’t exist out here in internet comments much: we all knew each other, and we all respected each other’s opinions.
And that’s the key to dealing with this kind of negative commentary, I think. Respect.
If some random stranger walks up to you on the street and insults your shirt, you’ll probably get that puff of adrenalin, and then let it drop and write them off as a jerk and move on. But on the internet, that kind of drive-by insult happens all of the time, and i see it again and again that folks react to it and let it dig in and affect them.
Here’s the secret truth about trolls: they only have power over you if you let them. Trolls can’t hurt you. Trolls can only convince you to hurt yourself.
And that’s a lesson I learned late in life, and the hard way. And as I did, I came up with a set of ideals on this that I think can help others deal with this kind of attack. They are:
- Only pay attention to criticism from people you know, to the degree you respect them.
- Unless the criticism is right.
- Do not take it personally, and do not internalize it or dwell on it.
- Because if you do, you give them a little piece of your soul to own. And they will.
- It may be their advice to give; it is your advice to accept or ignore. Nobody else gets a vote. It’s your work. Only change it if you agree.
Learning to leave the criticism within the work, and to let slide off criticism aimed at the wrong thing (i.e. the person instead of the act or object) isn’t necessarily easy, but doing so will keep you from wasting energy on the trolls and stress on the comments — but still leave you open to when someone says something useful. I think Mark did this to some degree, choosing to see how to take constructive work out of something not designed to be constructive. I think ultimately he gave the guy too much credit and time, given the circumstances.
I mean, just in general, if you don’t know a person, why are you paying attention to what they say and letting them piss you off? (easier said than done, but definitely worth learning to do)
Today’s Shared Links for April 20, 2011
- How Decisions about Color Add Impact to Your Photos
- A Big Fat Debate
- New Free Node.js E-Book for Beginners
- High-fat, low-carb diet may reverse kidney failure: study
(AFP) - Saying no to great ideas and customers
- Imaginary Friends
- The Only Things That Really Matter Are…
- Choose Your Risk.
- Another Internet Canard: /1.4 Lenses
- *UPDATE* Firmware 1.2.5 for EOS 7D
- Heaven
- Selling Photos
- Is Sugar Toxic?
Some birding resources
Birding is, as much as anything, a hobby of details. As you progress in the hobby, you need to spend time learning the fine details of various birds. Most birders start out with a field guide, one that they carry with them as they bird. Rarely does it stop there, it seems.
When I’m birding, I’ve mostly switched to electronic field guides (which are a posting for a different time), but I still carry one of the standards, the Sibley Western Field Guide. At home, I have a copy of the larger National Sibley. I also have a copy of the National Geographic Field Guild. They are good examples of the two schools of guides, with Sibley being painting-based and the National Geographic being photo-based.
It may seem like a photo-based guide would be the best, but I’ve found in practice the Sibley, based on drawings, works better for me. The big philosophical difference is that National Geographic images all show a specific bird at a specific time of year, while the Sibley images are idealized images of the species, with a focus on the marks you use in the field to help you understand which identifiers are most important. Under most circumstances, the drawings help you more than photos, but there are times when only photos answer a question. The quality of a photo-based guide depends a lot on both the quality of the images, but also how well the editors choose representative images of a species.
Sometimes, however, what you need is lots of images. Nothing defines the complexity of birding more than gulls, which a few birders absolutely love for the challenges, and many birders grumble about at the same level as mopping the kitchen floor. It’s an occasionally dirty job, but you gotta do it, at least once in a while. But if you do, you’ll quickly find most general guides can’t cover the complexity. Gulls change their plumage as they mature in major ways over the first few years, and especially with younger birds, the differences between species can be subtle and individual birds vary widely from the standard. In my view, the birders who can pick a Slaty-Backed third cycle gull out of a flock of 5,000 mixed Herring and Western gulls gets nothing but respect from me (and I know damn well even if I had the patience to sort out that flock, I’d still never see that bird).
But when you start playing with gull ID (or shorebirds, another class of birds that can make you crazy), you need specialized guides with a lot more detail.And that’s why I own Gulls of the Americas and The Shorebird Guide, because somedays, you need to be able to sit down with your images and be able to make heads or tails of a 3rd Cycle Glaucous-Winged or understand the difference between a Least and a Semi-Palmated Sandpiper.
So those four books are my go-to library where I research about 95% of my birding questions, supplmented by my electronic guides I carry in the field, and resources like Flickr or Cornell’s All About Birds.
But most birders build a library of books over time, because when the weather doesn’t cooperate, you can still sit down and read up on the hobby.
If you’re just growing past the “carry around binoculars” stage and don’t really know what that means, the Natgeo Birding Essentials guide is a good starting point. Owls has been a recent fancy of mine, and so I’ve gotten a couple of guides to stary studying them. I particularly like the Field Guild to Owls of California and how it describes and discusses the birds.
Finally, you can’t find birds if you don’t know where to look, so every birder ends up grabbing a stack of these regional guides. My favorites here in the bay area are Birds of San Francisco and the Bay, John Kemper’s Birding Northern California, and for those of us here in Santa Clara County, Birding at the Bottom of the Bay, which is available through Santa Clara Valley Audubon. The more general guides are good ones to get you started and help you explore the highlights around a region, but the more you want to explore, the more you’ll find yourself drawn towards the specialty guides done by the local Audubon chapters. Many of these are now going online, and a great example of what’s possible is done by Sequoia Audubon in their San mateo County birding guide — this really is the future of birding guides, I think.
On the Road Day 3 — Along the Coast
- At April 18, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Road Trips
- 0
(don’t forget to read part 1 and part 2 — and check out all of the images from Piedras Blanacas)
Having gotten to Morro Bay, it was time to settle in and focus more on relaxing. I spent three nights in Morro Bay in all. I typically stay at one of two motels there, this trip it was the Best Western Tradewinds, which is clean, quiet, inexpensive and the folks who run it are nice and efficient. It’s also very close to the harbor and in a good location. The other place I like is the Best Western El Rancho, which is a bit to the North of town, also clean and quiet and generally a bit cheaper. But it doesn’t have Versus, and I don’t mind supporting a motel that lets me watch hockey in the evening…
I woke up after the first night to find out it’d rained overnight, which made a decision not to go back and explore Carrizo easy; even though it hadn’t rained much, Carrizo Plains isn’t a place I want to get stuck in the mud, and that’s very possible, especially for someone not very familiar with the area — my total time out in that area is about 6 hours three years ago, not exactly what I’d call making me an expert. The rain had cleared the fog out (always something you deal with around Morro Bay, and sometimes your friend, and sometimes making photography impossible) so I headed out and decided to go north up the coast to the Piedras Blancas area.
I ended up just south of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse at the elephant seal rookery. Most the the seals there were younger calfs, most of the adults were gone, but it still was a pretty busy place, and it has good views of the lighthouse and I was lucky that there were some heavy surf going on leading to some interesting seascape possibilities. But mostly, it was about the seals.
In watching the seals, it’s clear the primary behaviors of the seals on the beach when it’s not breeding season are sleeping, throwing sand on themselves to protect the skin from insects and the sun, and arguing. They argue a lot. the young males start play fighting early in life, and that’s important later, because if you aren’t good at fighting, you stay a bachelor. These animals were all to young to show scarring from the breeding fights, but it was clear even then the pecking order was being sorted out and they were taking it fairly seriously.
Today’s Shared Links for April 15, 2011
- E-Books See Enormous Growth As Paper Book Sales Dive
- Craigslist Apartments
On The Road Day 2 — Unknown Territory
- At April 15, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Road Trips
- 1
(don’t forget to read part 1 of this trip!)
Day 2 of the trip was intended to be an experimental day, get out of my comfort zone, get away from my normal material, and see what happens. I woke up early in Santa Nella and headed south down I5 for Bitterwater Road in the coastal hills.
I’d visited Bitterwater and Carrizo Plains once before in 2008 while on one of the many trips to Southern California while my dad was dying; that trip lasted maybe two hours, but it was clear this was an area I wanted to come back and explore more thoroughly. It took three years, but I finally got the chance. The area is coastal hills, and during parts of spring is a notable wildflower area, but it was pretty clear going in I was early for the bloom because of the cold, wet winter (it’s a few weeks later, and reports are still showing weak wildflowers at best…).
The entire area is on the San Andreas Fault. The hills have the look of a blanket that’s been tossed on the best, lots of soft folds, no sharp edges. The northern half of Bitterwater is Mature oak and scrub — and is open range — while the southern half is pasture and fenced grazing range. Both are beautiful in their own way.
Since it wasn’t going to be a strong day for wildflowers, I decided to focus on other types of photography; I love the structure of the mature california oak, so I decided to work with them as a primary subject. I also gave myself some restrictions — no tripod, no flash, no HDR and no more than five minutes at a location. I wanted to challenge myself to find good subjects, get the image, and move on, make myself see and shoot and not overthink the images. The lack of tripod and HDR made it more of a challenge because there was a lot of high, grey cloud that made the light glary and also removed most texture and interest from the skies — and then there were the contrails. Lots of contrails, at least when the clouds broke up to show sky, so there wasn’t going to be an easy “fix” to an image from dramatic skies. Oh, and I felt it was a good time to make myself think about Black and White conversions, and to shoot some of my images with a mind of conversion and practice my black and white work.
Other than that, it was a perfect day to shoot landscapes…
But heck, the idea was to challenge myself, force myself to make good images, find interest and make it happen without turning it into a technology outing instead of a photographic one.
This type of image is one I’m frankly not very good at. The type of landscape I like to call “iconic” I seem to do pretty well; by that, I mean the sort of thing you shoot at Tunnel View in Yosemite, or when you pull out a dramatic feature as a focal point. Taking images of less “Wagnerian” landscapes isn’t easy; I’ve found I make a lot of really boring, forgettable images. One of the things I did leading up to this trip was study the imagery of G Dan Mitchell, a photographer that I think excels at executing this kind of image. It wasn’t about trying to emulate him as much as trying to understand how he visioned his images so that I could integrate that into my own work in my own way.
So that’s what I set myself to do going into this day. I drove down the 5 to the 41 and then cut to the coast. I drove out to Palos Verdes where I filled the tank with gas, then cut back to Bitterwater — mostly because I wanted to explore that part of the area as long as I was there.
Overall, it was a fascinating day. If the words “open range” doesn’t mean anything to you, it means it’s cattle grazing territory, only without fences. That means you’re occasionally sharing the road with the cows. Sometimes they’re amused, sometimes they’re scared, sometimes they don’t particularly care what you think, and occasionally they get grumpy. It’s never a good idea to drive these areas too fast, especially around blind curves, because if you hit a cow, you stay hit — and the rancher will ask you to pay for it…
When I popped out the south end of Bitterwater, it put me on the northern border of Carrizo Plains, another area I’ve wanted to explore. I decided not to, because of the combination of a lack of wildflower activity and surplus of recent rain, because much of Carrizo is unpaved and impassible when muddy. Discretion is the better part of valor, so I decided not to push my luck and headed off to Morro Bay to my hotel room, a nice meal, and a pleasant evening…
Overall, I came away from the day pretty happy with the results. I don’t think I’ll be mistaken for Ansel Adams, but I felt like I pushed myself and got some decent imagery of various forms I’ve struggled with.
going on the road (and taking a few pictures…)
- At April 14, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Road Trips
- 2
(don’t forget to read the rest of this story: part 2/.)
With 160 hours of vacation accrued, it was time to think seriously about taking some time off, and actually taking it off. With the cold and wet winter, I decided against heading up the Oregon Coast (a good decision, it turns out) and ultimately decided to keep it simple and explore the coastal range and central coast and hang out for a few days in Morro Bay — less exploration and driving, more unwinding and relaxing.
So day one I got up early and headed out for the central valley — which may seem a strange way to get to Morro Bay, but… Day one was a day for the birds. I started heading up to Calaveras to see if I could locate the new location of the eagle’s nest (no, and I haven’t had time to try again since; word is there’s one eaglet, so I have to get up there). I had tentatively planned to then drive out to Livermore and do the Mines road drive out to Patterson, but the weather and reports of a heavy concentration of Ross’s geese at Merced NWR changed my mind. I really wanted to get one more round of photos out at the refuges before the geese and cranes left for the summer.
That was a good decision on my part. I motored out into the central valley and headed out to San Luis NWR. One of the loops was closed due to flooding, and the other was pretty quiet, but I did get to watch a prarie falcon playing in the breeze, and a few other interesting images.
I am still, honestly, figuring out the best times and ways to bird and photograph at this refuge, but it’s an interesting place with diverse habitat and it tends to have a somewhat different mix of birds than merced, and since it’s fairly close, the two make a good full day trip out into the valley, so I’ve been spending time here exploring and trying to figure out how to take advantage of the location.
After a quick lunch in Santa Nella, off to Merced in search of geese.
Merced NWR is one of my favorite winter locations. Starting in November and ending sometime in April, it’s a good location for Sandhill Crane and you can usually find Ross’s Geese in good numbers along with Snow Geese and Greater White-fronted. Surprising to me is that I almost never see Canada Goose there, and I’m not sure why not. It’s a limited access refuge with a car loop and a couple of short hiking areas, but the intent is that you stay in the car and on the loop and use the car as a blind as you circumnavigate the perimeter of the refuge. Sometimes the birds are nearby and easily seen, sometimes they hide. Unlike a lot of the refuges, Merced is a no-hunting location, so the birds aren’t as skittish as at some locations.
My normal pattern is to visit either for a dawn or a sunset; I typically find about half a day at Merced is a good amount. I’ll drive the tour loop once without too many stops to see what’s going on — there’s nothing quite like spending 45 minutes coaxing sandhill cranes into photo range only to drive a bit down the road and find a couple of hundred blocking your path, so while I’ll photograph as things happen on the first loop, I’ll generally drive the entire refuge and make notes of what seems to be the most interesting locations, and then go on a second tour and focus on those locations for longer stops. Obviously, things can move around and change, but I find this gives me a good idea of where to put most of my time and energy and it seems to work well to maximize my productivity.
I was really hoping to get some good shots of the geese, since they tend to be the species more likely to stay at distance from the tour route and harder to get quality photography of — the sandhill cranes seem to be a little more willing to tune the cars out and go about their business there while the geese then to head into the center of the refuge and not be cooperative subjects.
Little did I know. When I got to the back of the refuge by the observation platform, I found the Ross’s Geese. Easily 6,000 and more, and all hanging out — the extended flock right next to the platform, maybe 50 feet off the road.
A couple of hours later, with a storm moving in, I’m set up for what is building to be an epic sunset with the geese on the water, the sun behind them, and what I hope to be epic color in the clouds. And as sometimes happen, suddenly, after hours of just hanging out and being geese, the entire flock bolted.
And then the storm blew over the sun and took out the sunset. Welcome to the romantic world of nature photography (hey, it happens). But I’m not complaining. I left for dinner with full memory cards, tired and satisfied. And when I processed them, I came away very happy. I think this might have been the single best day of photography I’ve ever had. Not just the number of quality images I created — I took over 1000 at Merced alone, and put 140 into my portfolio pool and another couple hundred into my keeper pool — but that with the exception of the fizzled sunset, I had a specific set of images I was trying to create, and I succeeded wildly, both in species I was chasing and in behaviors and specific situations I wanted to capture.
I ended up for the night at the Santa Nella Motel 6, and I have to say, I’ve paid a lot more for a lot worse. The refurbished Motel 6′s are actually not bad, especially when all you want is to sleep… I ended up with about 5 hours of driving and almost 7 hours of shooting, but it was one of the most productive days I’ve ever spent with a camera.
Merced isn’t just about cranes and geese; it’s a great place for the white-faced ibis, and this trip didn’t have huge numbers, but it didn’t disappoint:
March is also a good time to try for a bird that’s a bit of a nemesis for me; the Marsh Wren. Most of the time, the Marsh Wren stays deep in the reeds screaming its lungs out, but not willing to be easily photographed. But this time of year, they’re starting and defending territory and starting to build nests — and so they’re more willing to step up and come into view
And yes, believe it or not, that shot was one of the reasons I drove to Merced…
And then I got up the next morning to start the real adventure and headed off into new (for me) territory
At the Queen’s Command by Michael Stackpole
A long, long time ago, in a Galaxy far away (or so it seems), I published a science fiction fanzine called OtherRealms. At its core, it was about reviews. I also spent some time writing book reviews for Amazing Stories, back when it was published by TSR. OtherRealms was well-thought of enough to score me a couple of Hugo nominations (and I finished ahead of No Award, thank you very much!) and I really enjoy the process of figuring out how to help someone decide if hey ought to try something out.
I’ve wanted to get back into doing reviews for a while. I’ve considered a lot of options, but I’ve always held off because to do it well takes time and, well, more time and I didn’t want to do it unless I could commit to gettting onto a regular schedule. After considering doing it as a separate site and basically bringing back OtherRealms in a New!Improved! form, I’ve finally decided to be rational about this and I’m going to do this as part of this site. So starting this week, Wednesdays are about reviews here. Hopefully, I’ll be able to keep up a regular schedule and get back in the rhythm of doing it — we’ll see.
So welcome to Wednesdays in Review. What is it? Every week I’m going to talk about some stuff — sometimes it’l be SF or Fantasy, sometimes it’ll be tech, sometimes it’ll be other stuff, and sometimes it’ll just be random weird and interesting. Or at least, I hope so; I want it to be all over the map of the stuff that interests me, in the hopes it interests you.
I write reviews, not criticism. I’m not going to talk about deeper meaning or higher purpose — or even, necessarily, if something is good or bad. My goal is to help put things into context so you can make a decision if you want to buy/use/read/eat/watch/whatever something. What I try to do with reviews is help you map my experience and worldview into your worldview so you can make a judgement on something and whether it is worth investing your time in it in some way.
And ultimately that’s the issue here: time is a finite resource, and even in one small segment of the universe, if you did nothing else, you couldn’t read every book published in the SF/Fantasy universe every month (and if you tried, you’d go crazy and be committed, or should be). So given there are many more books published in a month than you have time and budget to buy and read, which ones are worth your time? I hope to steer you towards some, away from others, and hopefully make you spend your time budget in a way that you appreciate.
One reason I do this is to broaden my own universe. When I was publishing OtherRealms, one rule I had was that at least every fifth book was by an author I’d never read before. I’m going back to that rule again, and I’d like to recommend it to everyone; it forces you to explore, it forces you to sample new things and new people, and I pushes you out of ruts where you can go stale and stop enjoying what you’re doing. Revisiting the familiar is comforting and relaxing, and god knows we all need that in our life, but wading into the new and unknown is broadening and energizing, and we need some of that, too. And one small way of doing that is to always be sampling things we haven’t sampled before, so I”m going to try to help you do that by doing it again myself.
About a year ago, I made a commitment to try to stop buying dead trees. I’ve bought a Kindle, I’ve been exploring ebooks and looking into electronic publication for my own writing, and in general, I’ve stopped buying words on paper in favor of words embedded in electrons. It’s not a perfect situation yet (it’s not easy to lend an ebook, compared to a paper one), but I was clearing out my computer tech book shelves again one day and realizing just how much paper was being sent out to be recycled because after 3 or so years the books were effectively useless. That caused me to rethink how many computer books I buy (sorry, geek authors), but also made me get serious about buying books in general electronically, because I can now carry around many books in my pocket, and not throw out my back schlepping them around. The side effect of that is if you aren’t allowing electronic editions of your books, I’ll probably never read them. Sorry.
Today’s Wednesday in Review is about an author I’ve known for a while, but never actually read. I love historical fiction, and I really love when an author can write a good alternative history and make it both an interesting story and an interesting view into a period of the past — especially when there are strong fantasy elements built in; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
For some reason, I’ve never read Michael Stackpole, but when I was searching for a book to take with me on a trip, I ran into At the Queen’s Command
And it really is rather fun. It tells of the time when two major superpowers are fighting for dominance, and this fight spills over into the new lands that are being colonized; the colonists are at that point where they’re wondering why they are still beholden to a far off land that mostly sees them as a source of revenue, and the age of exploration is just beginning as the western expansion is starting and everyone is seeing the advantage in owning and controlling the lands they’re finding out there. The indians, of course, aren’t so hot on that idea.
The story echoes some of the real happenings in our universe involving the exploration and control around the Great Lakes, and here, Stackpole writes about the creation of a fort by one power to assert control over the lakes while the other power sends people over to work with the colony to prevent this from succeeding.
It’s a well-told story based in a fascinating time period that’s been under-utilized and which most of us aren’t very familiar with Stackpole has some leeway in making events fit his need without creating the “hey, that’s not how it really went” echoes you sometimes hit with historical fiction in familiar locales. The fantasy elements have been carefully crafted into the story, but at the same time, he hasn’t made them a focal point. All in all, I really liked the quality of the writing and the story, and it’s a solid piece of world building.
It is the first book in a series, but this book tells a story in its entirety without cliffhangers. There’s a second story in the cycle — what I think is going to be a fascinating one — that builds out of the resolution of this first book, but it’s definitely a second story, not just phase 2 of this one. One of the things I hated back in the days of OtherRealms were what I called the three book novels — and that hasn’t changed much. This book isn’t one of those; it’s its own story that stands alone nicely even though it’s clearly part of a larger story arc.
So all in all, a successful and entertaining book. Well worth picking up and reading, and I’m definitely putting book 2 on my todo list. If you’re at all interested in historical fiction and historical fantasy, you’ll want to grab a copy and spend an evening or two with it.
I have committed NAS; updating my data storage and backup strategy
One of the projects I’ve been working on the last few days is cleaning up and organizing my files ands refreshing my offiline archives. I generated enough new data on my latest trip that I realized it was time to think out how to store my data when my current setup ran out of room, which it was going to do in the next couple of months at the rate I was adding new images. I wrote abouthow I did backups a while back, but that’s almost 18 months ago now, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised it’s time to revisit this and update my processes.
I decided it was time to retire the older disk mechanisms and upgrade everything to two terabyte drives, and as long as I was doing that, I decided it made sense to move my data to a mirrored RAID and to a NAS. With the exception of the internal drive in my laptop (about a year old) and the bus-powered 2.5″ drive I use as a cloned and bootable backup of the laptop, all of my other drive mechanisms are being retired and refreshed, and all new drive mechanisms are going to be 2 Terabyte drives. The two 2.5″ drives are a year old, and I’ll refresh them this fall when they hit 18 months old.
Remember rule one of my backup strategy — the best possible backup is one you never have to use, and the best protection against needing to use a backup is to replace your drive mechanisms before they fail. It is especially true of drives that get carried around and bounced a bit — like those in a laptop — that in my opinion, they need to be replaced every year or 18 months, depending on how hard you are on your hardware. You still need backups, but if you spend a few bucks on replacing that drive mechanism every so often, you will be a lot less likely to NEED the backup, and that’s ultimately what we all want, right? A good 500Mb, 7200 RPM laptop drive is under $100. How many hours of lost time do you need to waste recovering a disk to pay for that?
So I decided to tear down how I was storing all of my data, and here’s what I came up with. I’m continuing to use a 500Mb internal in my laptop where I carry all of my key files and active set of data, and a 2nd 500Mb that’s bus powered (no power brick) firewire that I update weekly using Superduper! which means that drive is bootable, and if something bad happens, I can boot from the spare on another Mac and carry on with minimal disruption.
What’s new here is I’m replacing my 2nd drive, which was a firewire drive with a 500Mb mechanism inside, with a NAS (Network Attached Storage). Given I rejected that option last time, what changed? Mostly, my work habits. I spend more time untethered from my desk and working ad hoc around the house, and it is nice to be able to access files without going to the desk and wiring in. As my photo library grows, I’m putting more of it on the secondary drive instead of carrying it on my primary disk — the combination of the two makes putting the data on the network and accessing it that was what convinced me to change my mind. I considered a Drobo, I still feel it’s overkill for my use (but don’t consider that a criticism of the Drobo, merely an evaluation of my situation).
I ended up buying the D-Link DNS-323
I’ve used the NAS for under a week so it’s too early to talk about reliability and performance (but so far, so good); installation was straight forward, but be aware it’s windows-centric. If you’re a Mac user, it’ll be a little more complicated, but if you use vmware or parallels to carry around a windows virtual machine (as I did), that works. the NAS creates a samba server; there are ways to make it be an AFP server, but right now, I want to leave it stock and see how things work.
Another thing I needed to upgrade was the home network. I was still using a first generation Time Capsule as my wifi router, which didn’t have the full 802-11n dual band capability. After some research, I replaced it with the Netgear N750
With a NAS, your network is part if your data pathway, so you need to make sure it’s not getting in your way.
This is requiring rethinking my backup strategy, but in some ways also simplifies it, remember that a mirrored raids adds redunancy and reliabiltiiy but a raid is not a backup. If you lose a drive, at the mirror covers is and allows to to replace the drive and rebuild the raid, but what if you have the controller fry and scrible garbage across your drives as it dies?
So you need backups. Since its not connected to my mac and is a samba device, Time Machine and SuperDuper! won’t solve this. Instead, I’m going to use a 2Tb drive in a firewire housing and use rsync to pull the data over. This will actually be two drives, one being rotated offsite. Since the data on the NAS won’t change as often as on my laptop, I’m not worried about doing instant backups — the rsync backup is more for unit failure or data corruption, and for the latter, having a backup that is NOT backed up constantly is a good thing. If doesn’t help recover your data if all of your backups have been corrupted, so keeping a backup around that isn’t updated immediately is a nice insurance against that. The plan is to manually update this backup once a week, or whenever I put significant data onto the NAS, and rotate this backup offsite monthly.
I could create the offsite backup by removing one of the NAS drives and replacing it and having the NAS rebuild the RAID, but to be honest, I like the idea of having a copy of the data on a Mac-readable device, so I’ll use a firewire drive instead for now and see what happens. I could decide to change this. Adding in diversity if it doesn’t add in unnecessary complexity is good, so little things like buying drives at different times or usinng drives from two manufacturers To limit design issues that might affect all of your mechanisms doesn’t hurt — there are little things you can do to limit some of the more obscure “ouch” factors, like buying your drives from two vendors or over time so you get them from different manufacturing batches, or using drives from two manufacturers — every once in a while a set of drives will have a common flaw that might now show up for weeks or months, and if you can acquire your drives so that not all of them end up being in that same recall batch, so much the better. And if you buy your drives over time, they’ll all be slightly different ages in your rotation — and if you buy them over a period of two months, they’re unlikely to all wear out at the same time on you. These are all decisions that impact rather rare edge cases, but with backups, most of what you’re trying to avoid are edge case failures…
The thing I like about this is how it scales. I expect the NAS will take 18 months or so to fill, maybe a bit more. If it fills faster, I have the option of switching to 3 Terabyte drives, or adding a second NAS (and four drives and a firewire casing). At minimally more hassle in my backup regime, I’ve got a setup that I won’t have to re-architect for a number of years — probably when I hit ten terabytes of data it’ll make sense to go to a larger data array rather than a platoon of smaller NASS, and by then, the technologies to manage this will likely be a lot better, too.
I just need to remember to backup the NAS when I make big changes, and swap offsites on a regular basis; and even if I don’t do that religiously, most of the data on the NAS is static, so even if my offsite is a couple of months old and the house burns down, I have a way to get the data back.
In this format, I end up with lots of copies of my data: my laptop drive is backed up to two different places for a total of four copies (the live version, two bootable backups, and the Time Machine backup); one set of that data also is kept offsite, for a total of five copies, one of which might be a month old, and one a week old — and those protect me from corruption issues that don’t show up right away.
My secondary data is stored live on two mirrored drives, and backed up to a third, with a copy of that third offsite. That means it lives on four drives, one might be a week old, one a month old. That’s pretty good. the biggest risk is a failure of the NAS itself, which would take out both mirrors; if the drives are good, replacing the NAS solves the probelm, if the NAS scribbles the drives, you still have the older backup to recover from (and that’s why it’s always good to have copies of data not plugged into anything that mights scribble!).
I’m a bit anal on my backups, and I admit it happily. On the other hand, having lost key data under deadline, I’d rather not ever do that again; and so far, the strategy I’ve used has worked pretty well. How’s your backup strategy working for you?
2011 playoff picks (and some notes on the season)
- At April 11, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
- 3
As is my tradition, I am now going to embarrass myself by picking the playoff winners in the first round and my choices for Stanley Cup finalists and winners. Please do not use this info for betting, unless you like losing money. For what it’s worth, last year I picked 6-2 in the first round, but I’m normally closer to .500. and 3-1 in the second round, and then sort of faded to black. My choice for the finals were San Jose and Washington, so you can tell I didn’t keep up that torrid pace.
This year the playoffs look to be some really good hockey. I’m definitely looking forward to it.
In the West –
Vancouver/Chicago — Chicago snuck in to the playoffs after losing so many players from their Cup run. good for them, but it wn’t last long. Vancouver is a great team, and Chicago won’t beat them. Canucks in 5.
San jose/Los Angeles — Growing up in hockey a kings fan, I can’t think of a series I’m looking forward to more than Sharks/Kings. And Lombardi gets to face his old team in the playoffs. And it’s a california rivalry series. And.. And… And LA is a pretty darn good team. I don’t believe they can beat the Sharks, adn I don’t believe the Sharks will beat themselves, but I don’t think it’ll be remotely easy, and it’ll be a lot of fun. Sharks in 6.
Detroit/Phoenix — Detroit isn’t the team they have been and their goaltending is suspect to me. That means they’re merely scary as hell. Phoenix is a well-coached, hard playing team, but they won’t take the Red Wings. But the Red Wings need to be careful they don’t get injuries or bad bounces, or there could be a surprise here. Wings in 6.
Anaheim/Nashville: all three california teams in the playoffs. But in this one, I like Nashville, as good as Anaheim is. I’ll take the Predators in 6.
My pick coming out of the West — San jose. Because it’s what I do. And because I think this year, this team looks like it’s solved the things that have gotten in the way in past years (like growing up and learning to not let down) but having said that, I also won’t be surprised to be wrong. Vancouver is scary, but if the Sharks are going to advance, it’s going to be through LA, through Detroit, and through Vancouver. That’s a tall order (if things go as I expect, 2nd round is Vancouver/Nashville and San jose/Detroit. And THOSE will be fun, too). Vancouver has an easier path, but not easy. So I can easily see San jose being worn down along the way, but Vancouver is going to come out of series with Chicago and Nashville tired and bruised, too. So in some ways, it’s a three way toss-up; I won’t be surprised at all if the western challenger in the finals is any of the top three seeds.
But I’ll pick San Jose, because i must.
East:
Washington/Rangers — I definitely like the Capitals again this year, and the Rangers got in, but not by much. and deserved to get in, but they won’t win. Caps in 5.
Philly/Buffalo — ditto Buffalo. Flyers in 5.
Boston/Montreal — series to watch in the first round. Two teams with a history, most of it full of bad blood and anger. and now a playoff series or go home. I expect this to go seven, be tough, tight, physical and the biggest question is whether the winner will have enough to challenge in the second round, or be beaten up, exhausted and sent home. I’ll take Montreal in 7, and too tired to win whoever they play in the next round. But it’ll be historic hockey.
Pittsburgh/Tampa — lots of questions in Pittsburgh, starting with “Will he play?” If he does, all bets are off. but the way it looks now, I have to root for Tampa, and I think they’ll take this one in six.
My pick in the east? Washington. If they stay healthy and carry on the way they’ve played, I don’t see a team in the east stopping them. Philly is a dark horse, and I can’t see anyone else taking them out, barring injuries or a breakdown. the caps can beat themselves, nobody else in the east can.
And before I go…
As I noted earlier, we decided to sit out the playoffs and not renew our seats next year — take a step back, not spend so much time in the arena, and so we’ll be watching this playoffs from the couch on the big ass HP 50″ plasma in the media room. We’ve talked a lot about whether this was the right decision, and we both agree it was. I’ve talked to a number of our friends who’ve been going to the arena mostly since the start, and it’s surprising how many have been thinking down this same path, or have in the last couple of years. We’ve already talked a bit baout buying some games from folks in our section, and another couple we know from the cow palace days also are looking to back off, and we may just grab a chunk of their seats.
Just to reiterate — not mad at the sharks, it’s not about money, it’s not about the team, it’s not about anything, other than when you commit to 35 games a year like we have for 20 years, you end up spending all of your time in town and going to hockey games. Which we don’t regret a bit — but we both feel we want more flexibility to do other things, and I want the ability to go out and do more photography on weekends and do some traveling, where it seems it’s a real chore to coordinate that around games right now. If the sharks win it all this year, awesome. I’ll probably regret not being in the building when they win (but not much). I’ll definitely be watching and cheering. But I won’t miss the half dozen barker games a year, the not-competitive teams, the trapping teams. And we can always buy more games than we planned, or we can use this as an excuse to get back into going to other arenas like we used to, and get back up to Vancouver, or mayber finally get to Kelowna or do the edmonton/red deer/calgary trip. we’ll see.
Knowing that we were running down to the last few games in those seats, I’ve been kind of drinking it in, seeing it with fresh eyes; you tend to get in a routine being at so many games a year, maybe taking it all a bit for granted.
I remember a good number of years ago, back when the sharks really sucked (it may have been the Al Sims era in fact. shudder) when we were at one of those games you try to forget, and griping about how bad the team was playing that night. And two rows behind us were a couple of guys who’d painted their faces and were just having a ball, loud and just being crazy (in a good way). And so I got talking to them about why they were cheering such utter crap, and their response has stayed with me all these years — this was one of their two games in the arena that year and for them, the quality of the hockey was almost irrelevant. THEY WERE THERE.
I’ve tried to remember them ever since, and just back off and enjoy it for what it is; hard to do some nights, and hard to do when you spend your time tearing games apart and analyzing them and nit-picking everything to death. that’s one reason I backed way off on hockey blogging, because I think there’s something about being that tied into the games and trying to be analytical that turns you jaundiced and cynical after a while, and I simply didn’t want to go there (don’t believe me? Name me a beat writer or columnist out there who’s been covering hockey for any period of time that isn’t primarily negative and many times sounding rather bored with it all. Other than Elliott Friedman at CBC, it’s a ratehr short list; I find the vast majority of Canadian writers and many of the broadcasters absolutely intolerable, because they take is so damn seriously and negatively all the time. Although there will always be a place in my heart for Tom Benjamin at Canucks Corner, who has turned negativity into an art form, and I love him for it).
My seatmate the last couple of seasons is relatively new to hockey (Hi, doug!) but knows more than he thinks, and it’s been a lot of fun talking games through with him; he also has a strong sports background on the business side, and so we’ve had fun chewing on aspects of that as well. That’s been good for me, because it has helped me see games through his eyes as well, which has helped me keep that perspective on the games.
I have to admit I’ve had a ball this season, both watching hockey in general and in the arena watching the Sharks. It’s hard to remember today that in December and into January people were questioning this team, and even having the “should we trade Marleau” chat when he was in his enigmatic phase (again). And you look today, and watch them the last 20 games, and you need to remember that a season is a marathon, and nobody wins a marathon in mile 6 (but you certainly can lose one there). The best factor for the Sharks is that they finish seasons strong, and I’ll take a team that plays well in April over one that’s red hot in November any day. Of course, in November, April is a long way away so it’s hard to be sanguine…
If Doug Wilson doesn’t win executive of the year, I’ll be pissed. He doesn’t make blockbuster deals, but he makes deals that others don’t see that help the team. Don’t underestimate what bringing in Mayers and Wellwood and White did for this team.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m off to the couch to watch eight weeks of really kick ass hockey. Is the game perfect? No, waht is? can it be improved? sure. Am I going to worry about that? Not now, right now I’m going to enjoy it for what it is, and we can nit-pick how to improve instant replay some other time, okay?
And if you can’t step back and just enjoy this game for all the things that it is — maybe you need to step back… And speaking as someone who has, you may find the view better than the one you have right now.
On to the playoffs! may the best team win.
Today’s Shared Links for April 10, 2011
- Horseshoe Bend in the Dark of the Moon
- Sharks first-round schedule
- “People—myself included—frequently part with their money on the web, but only when it’s easy. If…”
- Twitter failings
- The Falling Woman: Insightful novel about mother/daughter relationships
- Photographic Risks and Rewards on Safari: A Guest Blog Post by Todd Gustafson
- The Art of (Avoiding) Seduction
- Trail Canyon, Lower Slopes of Wildrose Peak, Death Valley
- Five Easy Pieces of Online Identity
- Ev's identity map ignores what we say
- Telling Stories About Our Photographs
- Oscium’s iMSO-104 turns your iPad into a mixed signal oscilloscope
Today’s Shared Links for April 9, 2011
- At April 9, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In FYC - Shared Links
- 0
- Why I Didn’t Write About the Shutdown That Wasn’t
- Sibley's Ethics of Playback
- An Amazing Day of Photography at Some Eastern-Kyoto Temples
- Liquid Fire and Exploding Glass
- Pt. Reyes: A Top Wildlife and Wildflower Destination
- Lenses and Nature Photography
- The Difference Between Science Fiction and Fantasy?
Today’s Shared Links for April 5, 2011
- At April 5, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In FYC - Shared Links
- 0
- R.I.P. Ryland Sanders
- Wherein I Throw Darts at a Dartboard and Guess the Direction Apple Takes iOS 5
- Shot Across the Bow
- Redbud Popping
- Mosaic: Finally a news reader that is as powerful as it is beautiful
- Camera+ hits 2 million sales / Revealing details about upgrade numbers and in-app purchase sales
- Newspapers and Social Media: Still Not Really Getting It
- Silver Efex Pro 2
- Owning the subscriber relationship isn’t really about selling the data
Today’s Shared Links for April 1, 2011
- At April 1, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In FYC - Shared Links
- 0
- Our Favorite April Fools’ Pranks, Japes and Tomfoolery
- The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City (Excerpt)
- Unveiling My Secret Fantasy Project
- What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill? Managing Your Own Psychology
- World Premiere: BMW M3 Pickup
- GoDaddy CEO Tries to Explain Elephant-Killing “Safari”
- Models Know Best: What It Takes to Be A Great Photographer
Today’s Shared Links for March 24, 2011
- If you stop learning, you stop creating history and become
- On Working for Bertrand Serlet
- On Working for Bertrand Serlet
- Diary of a Shoot, Day 5 — Epic Turn for the Better
- Enhancing Silhouettes
- Silhouettes, Flock of White Faced Ibises
- Go Read It!
Today’s Shared Links for March 22, 2011
- The Audacity Of Getting paid
- Making The Image – A Book Review
- Finally, Finally, and Finally in Homer!
- To Demo or Not to Demo? [Marketing]
- Amazon, Lendle and the Danger of Using Open APIs
- 8 Easy Steps
- Diary of a Shoot, Day 3 — The Devil is in the Details
- Erosion and toxins from farm runoff leaves the Salton Sea in California contaminated and abandoned
- Reproductions in LensWork
- Two Lawsuits Settled
- Reflection of Yellowstone National Park
- Getting ‘Out the Door’
- Time Travel
- 10 Tips to Improve Your Wildlife Photography
Today’s Shared Links for March 20, 2011
- Why I Don’t Like Artist Statements
- xkcd’s radiation dose chart
- Birder Sex!…and another twist of the tale
- Sweat The Details in Your Photos: What a Difference A Shadow Can Make
- 50 Hard-to-Explain Photos
- The Economics of DSLR “Protective” Filters
- Witness the power of this fully operational…. photo app!
Today’s Shared Links for March 17, 2011
- Rules For Online Writing Happiness
- webOS Finds a Home at xda-developers
out on the road…
- At March 16, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Road Trips
- 0
So day 3 of the road trip is over. I’m tired, in a good way; sitting in a motel room in Morro Bay looking at the results so far — 1900 images and counting. Tomorrow is another day around Morro; the harbor is full of loons, but the otters are being coy and distant, and as usual, early and late you’re dodging fog. But I’m not complaining…
Just starting to sort through the images, but here are a few that caught my eye… 
More soon.
notes from the commish — hits to the head.
- At March 14, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
- 1
Welcome to the latest ruling in “Notes from the Commish” where I as the Commish of the NHL (in my universe) and my Vice President of Disclipine Barfy will pontificate upon the state of the game and what I think needs to be changed. The fact is, NHL hockey is in pretty damn good shape overall, not that you’d believe that reading some of the pundits out there. But the reality is, a business the size of the NHL can never be perfect, and there are always things that can be improved, and there will always be things that need to be fixed. And I’m the guy to fix it. (or replace this with something witty and snarky)
Tonight’s Note from the Commish is about hits to the head.
Hits to the head and concussions in hockey seems to have hit a flash point — but it’s not a new topic for me. I remember first talking to some of the Sharks medical staff about concussion issues back in the Cow Palace days, and it’s something I’ve written about a few times (like here (2003), and here (2007), and here (2009), and here (2004, and here (2009)). So this topic is not new to me, and this problem is not new to the league.
It was clear from the start many didn’t think that Rule 48 (the new hit to the head rule implemented this year) didn’t go far enough; there are segments of the hockey press that have taken every opportunity to rip the league for not going further. My view on it was that it was clearly carefully considered and that the league thought through the options –and tried to find a balance between protecting player health and not screwing up the game (what Mike Milbury lovingly calls wussification, what I more thoughtfully prefer to call “not wanting to turn hockey into ringette”).
I’ve given the rule some time and the league a chance to see how it worked, and it’s painfully obvious the rule doesn’t go far enough. What’s not so clear is what to do about it.
The first problem: hockey is a sport of violence and physicality. Injuries are going to happen. The fact that an injury happens doesn’t mean someone did something wrong; when two strong human bodies skating at 20 miles an hour collide, injuries are going to happen. So we have to accept that people are going to get hurt playing hockey, and nothing we can do (short of turning hockey into Ringette) is going to stop all injuries. That should not be the goal. Because of this (among other reasons) I have real issues with the “outlaw all hits to the head” rules some are calling for. What’s appropriate and needed in a development league like the OHL doesn’t necessarily make sense in the NHL, and it’s hard to see how a 100% rule banning hits to the head could be implemented in the NHL without significantly reducing physical play and giving some players new opportunities to dive for penalties — to some degree, I think an absolute ban WOULD be a step down the path of wussification of the game, andgod help me, in this case, I kind of agree with Milbury that we don’t want to do that — unless we absolutely have to.
Do we?
One of the data points that has come out in the last few days is the test results on Bob Probert’s brain, which show clear signs of brain damage. What’s not so clear (and it’s a subtlety some critics of the NHL have forgotten here) is whether that damage was caused by hits to the head or because Bob Probert was a fighter for many years. And that leads us to…
The second problem: how in the HELL does the NHL ban hits to the head without taking fighting out of the game? Because what is a hockey fight? It’s two guys beating each other in the face and head with their fists (instead of “hockey hits” where they put an elbow or shoulder or forearm into the head….). If the league tries to ban head hits and NOT remove hockey from the game, it’ll be a farce and an embarrassment, and the league clearly knows this. So what to do? What to do?
I count myself as one of those people who admits to enjoying a good fight at a game, while also admitting that I find some of the staged fighting and goonery rather boring and an embarrassment. And I’m also someone who believe fighting in the game is heading towards an end and wouldn’t mind if it was removed, because ultimately, I don’t think it’s a core aspect of the game I love — but it’s not the travesty anti-fighting people like Ken Campbell of the Hockey News makes it out to be.
This is all tied up with another current controversy, the Chara hit on Pacioretty, where Chara stuffed him into a stanchion, leaving him heavily concussed and with a cracked vertabrae and further inflaming the hit to the head controversy. Some are using this to call for bans to hits to the head, others are simply pissed off because no suspension was given. My initial thought was that there should be a suspension, but on reflection, I think the league did the right thing, because while I think Chara intended to hurt him a bit, I don’t think there was any intention or premeditation to injure. The league has to be very careful assigning intent to an action, because they aren’t mind-readers, and there simply isn’t (to me) any evidence that Chara set Pacioretty up here and tried to smush him into the hospital. This is not, in any way, Claude Lemieux on Chris Draper — even if the result is similar.
I do not remotely pretend to have the answers here. but I do have some thoughts on where the answer might be found.
What’s the core problem here?
The core problem is that hockey players today are bigger, faster, stronger than they ever have been in the game. Today’s hits are the same type of hits the game has always had, but now they’re hits applied by someone who’s 6’2 and 230 instead of 5’11 and 190, who bench presses 270 instead of 200; who’s skating at 22 miles and hour instead of 14. When players collide, they collide with a lot more force and violence, simply because they’re bigger and faster — and the hit contains more energy.
Players are in much better shape physically; in fact, I think eventually we’ll figure out these athletes are over-trained, pushing their bodies too hard, getting too strong and not giving the bodies enough recovery time or having reserves to get through the stress of the season — this is why I think the rash of things like groin strains are plaguing the league; players are in “too good” a shape, actually beating up their bodies too hard to get that ultimate edge. For every guy like Chelios or Brind’Amour who can push their bodies to the very edge for years, there’s half a dozen guys who try and end up on IR for periods of time each season. We still have a lot of learning about what “game shape” ought to be, even though we’ve come a long way from the days when water wasn’t allowed on the benches.
So one reason head injuries are becoming more severe is simply that the hits are more physical. It’s far from clear that rules can fix this problem, because at the speeds and action of a hockey game, hits will still happen that players don’t plan or can’t control — and those hits are simply more than a human body can take. there’s an essential failure mode here thatsaying “don’t do that” can’t solve, and putting a player in the box for doing it anyway won’t heal the concussion.
One of the things I give the league credit for that many of its critics don’t is that the league understands that rule changes — especially absolute ones — aren’t necessarily the best solutions. They explore other options, whether it’s equipment changes or better safety gear or whatever. It’s easy to call for bans; it’s hard to solve the problem. At least the league seems to understand they haven’t gone far enough with Rule 48 and seems to understand they can’t wait too long. Even the union seems to be getting it.
I think solving this problem is going to take multiple approaches to get it under control without significantly impacting the game. I don’t think a simple rule change is going to do it. There are many things that need to be considered.
First, building safety. The good news: the last buildings with the rock-hard seamless glass will be retrofitted with more flexible glass systems during the off-season. That removes a set of dangers that have caused concussions for years as players end up going into glass with the flexibility of concrete (these are hockey’s equivalent of artificial turf stadiums, and just about as well-loved by the athletes). That’ll help. the Chara hit and the Doughty hit into the stanchion this week both show there are still safety problems in the arenas that need to be investigated and addressed — don’t blame Chara for the hit, blame the building for having a surface capable of causing that injury, and then find a way to mitigate that danger. I was watching the game a number of years ago when Bryan Marchment went into the open door of a bench head first and sustained a massive concussion and lay on the ice convulsing — there are any number of injuries every year that can be reduced or prevented by fixing the inherent dangers in the building rather than trying to change a rule.
Second, equipment safety. The league has been working to make gear safer for years, and has been fought by the NHLPA as the union dragged its feet. it’s time for both sides to quit screwing around here and get the dangerous gear off the players and ice, and look at other ways to reduce the change of serious injury through improved gear. There’s been some interesting data on helmets showing they aren’t designed to prevent the kind of impacts that lead to concussion, and out of that, we can find improved helmet designs that can make head injuries less severe and hopefully prevent more concussions.
Better safety practices in the arena and with the gear will prevent injuries that no rule or simplistic ban will. So the league really needs to get committed to finding those changes and getting them implemented, Every arena should go through a league-managed safety inspection and a plan made to improve problem areas where a player has a higher risk of injury — like those damned stanchions. Maybe it’s more padding, maybe it’s more glass to prevent those kind of corners from being hittable — whatever, make it happen.
Better safety gear, better helmets, banning gear that leads to injuries, like some of the armor players have been wearing as shoulder pads thelast few years, elbow pads with hard rubber knobs that serve no purpose beyond whacking other players — there’s a lot we can do here. Go take a look at the shoulder pads players have worn recently:
Back when Marty McSorley — not exactly a physical shrinking violet — played for the Sharks, I had a couple of opportunities to see him shirtless. Not what you think, back then, tiedowns weren’t mandatory and he lost his jersey as often as Rob Ray did. And McSorley’s shoulder pads were little more than a couple of pieces of leather on each shoulder. Just think about the change here, and what it means both for the ability for a player wearing THAT thing above to apply a hit — AND for that player applying the hit to feel confident they won’t be injured in applying it. Scale back the equipment, and players will have to scale back their physicality somewhat, and that will reduce the severity of the impact.
So there are many ways of handling this, where rules may not actually solve the problem.
Maybe — gasp — we should “de tune” skate so players can’t skate as fast. They won’t generate as much kinetic energy, so hits won’t be as severe. This may sound like a strange option, but if it’s applied consistently across players, the reduction won’t give anyone an advantage over others — and this strategy is exactly what NASCAR does to cars by throttling down engine power to make sure they can stay on the track and not take flight and end up in the stands with the fans. It can be done, and without impacting the core of the game in a negative way.
Another suggestion: Dress one less player. Make coaches make a decision on who should get ice time. that person who no longer is on the bench won’t be the 25 minute left winger, it’ll be the 7 minute guy who plays fourth line, or the 6th D. The one who doesn’t penalty kill, doesn’t do power play, and doesn’t do much of anything but look for people to bang. By reducing the skating roster, coaches will be less able to find reasons to justify having someone in uniform that “is not a complete hockey player” — which is mostly going to impact marginal guys who survive on hits and/or fights without contributing anything else. Honestly, I won’t miss them if they go.
And one more suggestion: suspensions eat the roster spot. A suspended player can’t be replaced by a call-up. That roster spot is frozen for the duration, and the coach has to juggle a depleted roster. You can bet when you start hitting the team where it hurts, they’ll take a more active role in ‘discouraging’ play that leads to suspensions, and guys who are repeat suspension addicts will find it ever harder to maintain a place on the active roster….
But I’m not convinced that’ll be enough. I’m certainly not going to say we should NOT impose new rules, or even a complete ban on hits to the head. Just that there are lots more things that need to be looked at as well.
But I do know this. There’s no way a ban to hits to the head can be implemented without removing fighting from the game. I, personally, would support that if it’s necessary to maintain player health. Is the league able to take that step? Are you, as a fan, willing to support it?
I don’t know.
We do not want to wussify the game. We do not want to take the hitting and physicality out of the game. I was a season ticket holder for the old roller hockey international summer league, and trust me, you don’t want the NHL turned into “arena hockey”. The reason most of us are fans of the sport IS the physicality.
What we need to do is push the league to be serious about fixing this, but support the league as it looks for solutions beyond simplistic things like rule changes that may or may not fix the problem — while changing the fabric of the game. AS I like to say, if this was simple, it’d be fixed by now. So stop and realize anyone making calls for simple fixes is wrong, because fixing this isn’t like that in the real world…
But what we have clearly hasn’t fixed the problem, and the problem isn’t going away. So what we as fans need to do is keep a voice in it and make sure the league knows they have to keep working on solutions.
And the league needs to get on it…. before fans start turning off because too many players are getting hurt. or a player is hurt in a way that could have been preventable.
But at the same time, we need to encourage the league to find solutions that don’t screw up the core of what makes us fans of hockey in the first place.
Because I gotta admit, I don’t miss the old roller hockey league, and I’m not interested in being a fan of ringette. But I’m also quite uncomfortable with teh thought of players having the rest of their lives screwed up so I can be entertained.
Finding the right balance there — it’s not easy. but the league needs to find it, as fast as it can.
(added bonus: Ken Dryden has his say, and illuminates much better than I can many of the issues I’ve been chewing on. As they say, “what he said”.)
And now that I think of it, this is also tied into another one of those continuing discussion points in hockey today, that of “players respecting each other”. Of which I’m working on another piece, to be published whenever I’m happy with the result. Stay tuned.
Agree? Disagree? drop a comment with your opinion.
Got a rule or some aspect of hockey you want the Commish or — Colin — to rule on? drop us an email or a comment with the question. And we’ll be back soon with another Note from the Commish.
headed out on the road…
- At March 11, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Road Trips
- 1
Finally time to take some vacation, so I have no idea what I’ll be blogging on for the next week or so — of if I will. I’ve been chewing on various plans for the trip for the last couple of weeks, and sweating out the weather to try to minimize the chance that I’ll spend my vacation in a motel room watching it rain… Because of that, I decided not to go up the Oregon coast, although I’d love to spend some time up there.
I decided I just didn’t want to do more driving than exploring, so I decided not to head down into the desert this year (again) — Salton Sea would have added 350-400 miles to the trip, and I just felt that was overkill. Since the knee still isn’t hot on lots of off-pavement hiking, that also made me decide to keep it simpler, so no death valley or Anza-borrego or Joshua tree. the combination of not knowing the areas (sad to say, it’s been 35 years since I’ve been to Joshua tree, and I have never been to death valley) and the distance involved and the days I wanted to spend just seemed to not make it worth it — I didn’t want to spend all my time scouting and little time shooting, or finding the things I wanted to do my knee wasn’t up to. so I have to focus on getting in better shape, and commit to a longer time in the area to allow for both scouting and shooting without being rushed.
So I’m headed to the central coast, planning on a day and a half or so in Carrizo, and then a day+ around Morro Bay to do some birding and relax. Then down to Orange County to visit mom and do some more birding, where I’ll probably hit Bolsa Chica and a couple of places and spend some time down on the coast. Really low key, more emphasis on — gasp — relaxing than running around doing things, and covering more familiar territory (my entire history at carrizo is half a day in 2008, but at least it gives me some context).
After that, back to work for a week, then taking a second week off. which some co-workers think I’m insane to do it that way, but — that second week will involve some time in Yosemite, and so I get to come home and be with laurie and do laundry and catch up on email, and I’m hoping waiting an extra week means I’ll get in on some early spring and dogwood action when I go visit the valley… So I expect to spend 3-4 days around Yosemite just at the end of the month.
I’m keeping this really fluid — between weather and some potential complications, things may still change. but so far, it seems to be coming together well, and it’ll be nice to see mom and spend some time with her. And I saw a report that the first western kingbirds of spring have hit the Carrizo area…
So we’ll see what happens next week while I’m on the road, and get back on a blogging schedule once that’s done..
Upgrading your photography Kit part 3 — software and the digital darkroom
Every so often, I think it makes sense to evaluate your gear and think about how the pieces are performing and whether you should consider upgrading or adding a piece, or whether there are pieces that aren’t being used enough to warrant hauling them around. I’ve been looking at my gear and considering options, and I thought it might be interesting to talk about that and explain my thinking — and get your suggestions about things I haven’t thought of.
Part 1 is about the bodies and lenses. Part 2 is about bags, accessories and other hardware like tripods and toys. Part 3 is about software and the digital darkroom environment.
I’m old enough to remember the good old days of wet darkrooms, with enlargers and chemicals galore — and bad ventilation, and sitting in the dark room waiting for things to happen and unable to do anything else, and…
And while I enjoyed the process of developing my own film (b&w, I used labs for color) and printing (ditto) — I don’t miss it. Not one bit.
I love digital photography and the digital darkroom, and I’m not one bit sentimental about the good old days. Well, maybe just a touch. But being able to do all of this digitally, in my office, with the lights on, and being with my wife and not stuck in a musty converted bathroom — that’s awesome.
But when building a digital darkroom, what does that mean?
Start with hardware and the platform. Mac? Windows? Linux? Well, given my background, it shouldn’t be surprising it’s a Mac. You won’t hear me dissing Windows users (although if you’re still running XP, why?) but don’t ask me for help on doing it… Linux? Well.. I just don’t think the tools are up to snuff. If you want to try to do serious digital photography with the gimp, go with my blessings — but I think you’re going to regret it. Sorry.
I long ago gave up the idea of a desktop computer; I use a laptop, and when it’s at home, it gets wired into things to give it the desktop capability. I think few people need the power of a dedicated desktop like a Mac Pro, and trying to keep your portable computer and your fixed computer in sync just adds complexity. I hate “it’s on my other computer” issues, and I don’t see why I should spend the money for multiple CPUs — so I don’t. And the laptops are really powerful enough it isn’t an issue.
The one I bought last year as my most recent upgrade is the 13″ model. Smaller screen, a bit less powerful, but lighter, better battery life than the 15″ and for me, it was a great choice. I’m going to upgrade it to 8 gig of RAM soon, from 4, but I rarely run into situations where I think it’s underpowered. The small screen isn’t a problem at home, because it’s wired into a 25″ samsung monitor, and on the road, it’s perfectly usable for importing images and doing some basic editing, although I’m not sure I’d want to do my entire workflow for a long period of time on the smaller monitor. I do wish I could find a nice 23-25″ LCD monitor designed to be hauled around with good color rendition. Maybe at some point I’ll break down and buy a Cinema display and put it in a Pelican hardcase.
Laptop + Large monitor rocks. Slap on disks for archival storage, more disks for backups, more disks for backing up the backups, a good card reader (I use a Lexar USB model), a wireless network (I use an Airport, but this is going to get upgraded soon to Netgear N600), some ethernet for places where having wires is faster and convenient, and a printer. I retired my HP fine art printer a while back and haven’t replaced it (yet), but I keep thinking I will. Lab printing is fine for some stuff, but I miss my Hahnemuhle papers… I’m leaning towards the Canon Pixma Pro 9000, but I’ll wait to see what makes sense when I buy, since printer lines get upgraded a lot.
Upgrades are, ofcourse, a fact of life. And I find it’s better to plan them in and upgrade stuff before it fails rather than deal with the joy of being on deadline at 3AM and freaking because something just broke and now you’re screwed. How old is that hard drive all of your images are on? If its older than 18 months, you’re tempting fate. Why?
Software? I’ve owned a copy of photoshop since (I think) Photoshop 3.0. that’s a long time ago, kids. My current version of Photoshop? CS3 — yup. It’s ancient. Because when Adobe went to the suite model, I felt it was a money grab. And I went along through CS3, because I still used Photoshop a lot, but when CS4 came out, I simply didn’t see anything that benefitted me, so I chose to wait until I needed something CS3 didn’t do. I’m still waiting.
The reality is, I do 99% of my workflow today in Lightroom. I started out in Aperture, of course, but Apple fumbled the ball and still hasn’t brought Aperture back to the power that Lightroom has (I keep hoping; I think Aperture has really nice roots; but Lightroom is the better product).
So my basic software needs are pretty straightforward: Adobe Lightroom. If Aperture ever leapfrogs it, I’ll consider switching. I’m not holding my breath. But CS3 is getting really ancient, and it’s time to move forward, so I am — to Adobe Photoshop Elements. Because I can’t remotely justify the cost of what Adobe wants for Photoshop, given how little I use it any more — but Elements will handle my needs. If I ever hit a point where it doesn’t, THEN I’ll consider a copy of photoshop again. and I strongly suggest to everyone not to buy into the “gotta have photoshop” mentality. That was true three years ago, it’s not true today. Get a copy of LIghtroom, get a copy of Elements, and don’t buy the expensive products until you find a need those products can’t solve. And if you do end up needing the “big” photoshop, don’t buy the suite — unless you also are an active user of at least two other suite tools. Me? I’m not. I’ve kept a log of what I use — and the suite simply doesn’t make sense financially. It never did (and I’m thinking that’s true of most photographers out there but if you upgrade your suites, adobe thanks you, and pockets the fees).
Another thing to consider before buying the “real” photoshop: are there independent tools or plug-ins that do what you need? You can likely find a solution to a specific problem via a plug-in, or via an application that interfaces with Lightroom or Aperture. More and more, you’ll find digital photographers break into two camps: those who use Photohop heavily in their work (mostly because they’ve worked in photoshop so long it’s second nature), and photographers who spend most or all of their time in Lightroom or Aperture. As those programs have matured, there’s less and less need to use Photoshop on your images — probably the biggest exception still existing are people doing extensive retouching.
And with careful purchase of a few plug-ins, you can reduce the need for Photoshop even further. There’s also, at least on the Lightroom side, this entire sub-culture around presets (free and paid) to create specific effects on a photo. I’ve dabbled in it a bit, but haven’t dived in to date, but there are dozens of sites and thousands of presets — it seems to be the Lightroom replacement for actions for geeks that really want to hack on stuff within the program. It’s something I need to spend some more time exploring, honestly.
My plug-ins break down into a couple of broad areas — things that add specific functionality to Lightroom, and things that modify the images.
For things that add specific functionality, your first stop should be jeffrey friedl’s site. I use a number of his plug-ins: Flickr upload, Smugmug upload, his geo-encoding plug-in. For image modification, a key tool is LR/Mogrify, which is sort of a swiss army knife tool for making scripted tweaks to an image. It’s used heavily by photographers to do frames and faux mats and watermarks.
For HDR, I currently use Photomatix Pro. I’ve been experimenting with Nik Software’s new HDR Efex Pro but as seems typical of 1.0 products from Nik, I found it a bit laggy, and so I’m sticking with Photomatix for now. As is also typical of Nik’s software, they’ll tune it and improve it and speed it up, and then I’ll probably do another set of tests and likely switch, or share duties. both apps have a style that can be useful for certain HDR images, so I’m guessing having both will be worth it down the road as I do more HDR work on a regular basis.
Other Nik tools I use: Viveza 2 (which I absolutely love) allows you to do selective modifications of an image through intelligent selections that you can then use to modify many aspects (exposure, saturation, etc). It’s almost addictive at times, once youg et the hang of it, and it is a lot easier than the old photoshop technique of using layer masks and blending options and lots of brush-based tweaking. It really reduces the tedium of post processing in my workflow by a large amount.
Another one I use is Silver Efex Pro for black and white conversions. I like it better than doing the conversions in Lightroom, and it’s a lot easier to do than doing it in Photoshop. They have a new version (Silver Efex 2) out that I haven’t tried, but I plan on it.
A final Nik tool I use is Dfine, which is their noise reducer. Prior to Lightroom 3, I put most images through it; LR3 improved noise reduction massively, so I find I don’t need it nearly as much — but when I do, it’s a lifesaver.
There are two Nik tools on my short list to add at some point: Sharpener Pro and Color Efex. Sharpener Pro does what you might think; it’s an image sharpening tool. I still fight sharpening (honestly, I still kinda suck at it), but I decided instead of buying a tool I could use as a crutch, I felt it made sense to continue sharpening in Lightroom and learn how to do it better that way. There are times when I think it’d be useful to do selective sharpening, and so at some point, I’ll probably add this to the kit — but again, I think Lightroom 3 does a good job of this so it’s need isn’t high for most images, but it’ll be a real boon for those specific images that need help.
Color Efex is a filter toolkit — think of all of those things you used to do with Cokin square filters back in the ancient days. From warming an image to creating specific effects, this is the tool to use. It’s the one I plan on adding to my kit next (when? soon… really).
All of these are implemented as separate programs that you interface to via a plug-in or similar hookup within Lightroom — they act similarly to how photoshop does from Lightroom.
The one other plug-in I own is from Topaz Labs, Topaz Fusion Express. If Color Efex is the swiss army knife of simulating filter effects, Fusion Express is the Swiss Army Knife for preset style effects. It’s created a way to make it easy to do the kind of thing presets do, and create and save them within the program. it’s pretty neat — but like my relative lack of interest in using presets, I don’t use this plug-in a lot. That’s not a criticism of of the tool — I actually think it’s pretty neat — but I just havent’ spent the time learning how to take best advantage of it in my workflow, because since so much of my imagery is birds, it just doesn’t seem like it fits into my workflow well. I need to spend some time beating on it, and I expect once I do, that’ll change. It’s a nice tool and one worth taking a look at, especially if you have dabbled in presets more than I have…
Upgrading your photography kit part 2 — toys and accessories
Every so often, I think it makes sense to evaluate your gear and think about how the pieces are performing and whether you should consider upgrading or adding a piece, or whether there are pieces that aren’t being used enough to warrant hauling them around. I’ve been looking at my gear and considering options, and I thought it might be interesting to talk about that and explain my thinking — and get your suggestions about things I haven’t thought of.
Part 1 is about the bodies and lenses. Part 2 is about bags, accessories and other hardware like tripods and toys. Part 3 is about software and the digital darkroom environment.
I am convinced the same gene that triggers the “Oh! Shoe!” reflex in some women triggers the “Oh! Bag!” reflex in photographers of all genders. I am not immune. Part of this is that I have yet to find a bag that isn’t going to force some decisions or compromises on me, so it seems no matter what I do, I’m always slightly grumpy about whatever my current bag does NOT do for me. Hence a tendency towards a wandering eye and the grass is greener syndrome of thinking the next bag will solve that issue (but end up causing something else to make me grumpy).
That said, it’s been over a year since I’ve bought a bag. Yay me. Not that I don’t hear the call, just that I have the urge under control, mostly. I find my current setup works pretty well — I use a Tamrac 519 Pro Zoom
When I want to create a street kit, I use a Tamrac 5684 Digital Zoom 4
Everything else (more or less) fits in a photo backpack, an Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW Camera Backpack
Actually, I have a fourth bag I use — a Tamrac 3375 Backpack
In my storage room I have three other bags. For serious travel, I keep a Pelican softside carry-on capable roller bag I’d use for travel, if I traveled by air much. My original plan when I bought it was to use it to store all my gear, then pack a kit when I was going out so I wouldn’t just carry everything with me all the time, just in case. That lasted two weeks. It’s an awesome bag, just not one that fits how I work right now. I also keep a Tamrac 5608 Pro 8
Yes, I have a strong preference for Tamrac and Lowepro. Both make great bags. The Pelican is a nice bag as well — exceptional build quality.
All of these bags involve various tradeoffs. What’s my perfect bag?
- Well-constructed and waterproof
- Big enough to carry all my gear. Preferably as a backpack. With a laptop compartment.
- Weighs no more than 10 pounds, fully loaded.
- Small enough to be comfortable to wear and inconspicuous.
- Costs no more than $50.
And yes, what I’ve just described isn’t a photo bag, it’s a TARDIS. I’m still waiting. But the fact is, what I have works well. And I’m comfortable with it. Except when it makes me crazy, or some piece of gear I use twice a year isn’t in the bag when I need it because I left it at home (because i never use it).
After bags,the other big ticket item in your kit that isn’t actually a camera is probably your tripod. I keep two in my car at all times — an older metal Slik I use with my spotting scope, and a newer Slik carbon fiber tripod. the carbon fiber is a LOT more expensive than steel or aluminum, but it weights over a pound less than the metal tripods, and trust me, that’s worth the investment. I also carry a Bogen monopod, which I almost never use any more thanks to Canon IS technology and modern camera bodies that can handle 1600 and 3200 ISO with acceptable noise. But there are still times when you want support, and sometimes, the monopod is perfect for that.
Both tripods have Bogen ballheads attached, using a quick release plate. All of this gear is fine; none of this gear is awesome. the carbon fiber tripod is light, but the tradeoff there is rigidity. It’s — bouncy — and in high wind conditions, you get shake and vibration. In very windy conditions, you go home. For now, that’s acceptable, but upgrading the tripod is on my list. Many photographers I’ve talked to are swearing by the Induro tripods. For a new ballhead, I really have fallen in love with the products from Really Right Stuff, and plan to get their BH-40 with a panning option. But right now, spending $500 on a ballhead makes me wince, so I’m going to leave this on the wish list for a while (I will definitely upgrade the ballhead before the legs, but when I’ll want to put a grand into this upgrade, I dunno. but it’s definitely worth it, and I don’t think it’s worth doing an incremental upgrade to something less pricey with compromises…)
Flash gear: for a couple of years, I’ve told myself I need to sit down and get comfortable with flash photography. For 2011, I made if a formal goal. I’ve just added a couple of minor toys to the kit — a Better Beamer fresnel adaptor, and a Phoenix RF46C ring light. As soon as the adaptor ring (on order) arrives, it’ll go on the Sigma. The Better Beamer upgrades a Milagrid fresnel I’ve been using for a while. I own two Speedites, a 580EX and a 580EX II. I’m pretty set here; I just need to use and study them (I also just got Syl App’s book, which is awesome. expect a real review soonish).
What else is in my kit?
Filters — for every size lens I keep a set of filters; I use a UV on the lens to protect it (and I have dropped my camera and had it land lens first, and had the UV die a hero protecting the lens itself… for me, a good investment), and I carry a Circular Polarizer and a 4X ND for each. I’m finding when doing landscapes that I want more darkening, even when stacking the polarizer on it as a 2X ND. This implies I should add an 8X ND, but I think focusing will be an issue, so I’m trying to decide if I want them to be screw on or square. I’m leaning towards the Cokin/Square factor and switching so that only the circular polarizer is screw on. I no longer carry graduated ND filters — between HDR and post-processing techniques, that’s something I deal with later, not on site, and I don’t miss it. Similarly, I don’t carry any of the old-guard school of filters (warming, cooling, black and white modifiers, etc) — but NDs can’t be simulated in post, and many things the polarizer does for you also needs to be done in the field.
I’d love to go with something like the Singh-Ray Vari-ND, but they’re a bit pricey for me still. Typically I go for quality filters, usually Tiffen, Hoya, or B+W. Skimping on filters is, to me, like skimping on memory cards; a foolish idea that bites you when you least expect it.
For memory cards, I carry at least two for each body; for the 7D, I carry 300x 16 gig cards (two each), which gives me about 950 images combined. For the 30d, I carry some of my older 4G and 8G cards. I’m using Lexar cards right now and like them, but also have used Kingston; I stick with name brands and don’t try to save money here, but generally stick to what’s mid-priced among the major manufacturers. No off-brand stuff, but don’t over-spend — and I can’t think of the last time I had a card failure. I generally retire cards after a max two years, just in case.
Other toys:
- I carry an Opteka Bubble Level
for landscapes, since otherwise I’m invariably off level by a couple of degrees
- I own two Giottos Rocket Air Blaster
, one in my bag, one in my home cleaning kit.
- I carry a second battery for each body, and spare batteries for anything that needs batteries (usually in the car, not the bag).
- I carry many microfiber lens clothes. I throw them out and replace them every six months max. They’re cheap. they get contaminated with finger oils fast.
- I keep a wet cleaning sensor cleaning kit, which I fortunately rarely need.
- I use a Visible Dust BriteVue Sensor Loupe 7X
to monitor and clean my sensors. One thing I’ve found: if you blow your sensors clean regularly, dust doesn’t have a chance to moisture weld itself onto your sensors so you rarely have to do more drastic cleaning. the Loupe lets me check for problems, saving me bigger problems.
- I carry a 12 mm macro extension ring. I need to add a 25mm ring.
- Battery chargers — I use the manufacturer chargers for the body batteries. I wish I could find a charger system I really liked that did fast charging.
- I have a cable release; I’m going to be adding a wireless shutter release and an intervalometer soon – time lapses fascinate me as do panoramas, but I don’t have the gear to do them well yet. High on the list. I don’t think I can under emphasize how important a cable release is. I use it ANY time I set up on the tripod. Period. Otherwise, why bother with the tripod? Camera shake from punching the shutter button still impacts your image, tripod or no.
There are many toys I’ve considered buying; the combination of staring at the pile of toys I bought and never actually use, and the “every toy you buy depletes the 500mm lens fund a bit” has slowed that way down…
Upgrading your photography kit part 1 — bodies and lenses
Every so often, I think it makes sense to evaluate your gear and think about how the pieces are performing and whether you should consider upgrading or adding a piece, or whether there are pieces that aren’t being used enough to warrant hauling them around. I’ve been looking at my gear and considering options, and I thought it might be interesting to talk about that and explain my thinking — and get your suggestions about things I haven’t thought of.
Part 1 is about the bodies and lenses. Part 2 (coming soon) is about bags, accessories and other hardware like tripods and toys. Part 3 (coming not quite as soon as Part 2) is about software and the digital darkroom environment.
I carry two bodies:
, which I bought abouit a year ago.
, which I’ve had since 2006.And my lens kit includes:
- Canon 100-400 IS
— my go to lens.
- Canon 300mm f/4L IS
- Sigma 180mm f/3.5
- Tamron 28-300mm
- Canon 1.4X II Extender
Teleconverter II
- Canon 2X II Extender
Teleconverter II
I estimate 85% of my photography is done using the 7d and the 100-400IS, handheld on a shoulder sling. Since I do so much bird photography, that combo is a killer setup, easily handheld and hard to beat. It also makes it easy to get into habits where you don’t stop and think about alternative photographic options often enough, a charge I plead guilty to (and which I need to change). When I’m out shooting small feathery things, if I shift to using a tripod, it’ll typically be the 300 F4 + 1.4x on the 7D, also a combo that works, and which creates a sharper image than the 100-400 under similar circumstances. Sometimes I’ll handhold the 300+1.4, but the 100-400 is more compact and easier to handle (IMHO).
I’ll usually put the Tamron on the 30d and keep that handy as my second body. that gives me a lot of flexibility — but the reality is I rarely seem to use that combo; if I’m doing a lot of wide angle work, I’ll swap the Tamron onto the 7d and shoot there. In 2010, about 96% of the images I took and kept came from the 7d.
I never seem to haul out the 180 Macro. That is not a fault of the lens. When I do use it, I really like it. But for some reason, I just don’t get in the macro mindset. “Fixing” that is a goal of mine for 2011. That’s just photographic tunnel vision, and I know it.
So what changes have I considered here?
The obvious one, as a photographer of small flying feathery things: bigger lenses — a 500mm or 600m lens would be really nice. And some day, I will, but not any time soon — given the cost of large glass like that, it’s not going to happen soon. Maybe I should set up a paypal tip jar so everyone can donate to the “buy chuqui a big honking lens” fund…
I’ve admitted to having a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Tamron. There are things I like about the lens, and the lens performs well at the wider side (28-125), and is a nice one-lens unit for when I want to travel light — which you can’t do with the 100-400. But I find that it doesn’t go wider than 28mm (about 45mm equivalent on an APS crop sensor) sometimes frustrating. I’ve tried a few times to convince myself to upgrade it and get something with a wider option, something like the Sigma 17-70 or the Tamron 17-50. But in reality, I’ve never convinced myself I really need this upgrade.
And I don’t. There is, really, nothing wrong with the Tamron but the fact that I’m not currently comfortable using it. When I sit down and think it through, the range of images that are impossible to make without that 15-30mm range is really pretty small, and unless I were to go to a high end lens in that range (something like the canon 17-55 F2.8 EF S) it wouldn’t really upgrade the image quality in the key ranges – re-arranging deck chairs, not fixing the core problem. A better alternative would be the Sigma 10-20 to supplement what I have, and my best bet with a lens like that is renting it when I’m going on a trip where I know I’m going to want that option. Which is what I plan to do…
I use the 1.4x a fair bit on the 300 F4. I’ve used it occasionally on the 100-400, but that’s not an officially supported matching. Being able to push the 100-400 with a tele is a nice option to have, but in the stock configuration, you lose autofocus (but I’m starting to experiment with the “tape three pins” hack). The 2x is more problematic. I found it effectively impossible to manually focus reliably using the 30d, 300/F4 and 2x (putting it on the 100-400 was even worse) and pretty much stopped carrying it. The 30d viewfinder is fairly dim and relatively small, and the combination just doesn’t work well for me.
Of course, it took me buying the 7D to figure this out. There’s a huge difference between the viewfinder of the 30d and the 7d; the 7d is larger and brighter and it makes a world of difference when you get into the world of manual focus, especially in marginal light. If you switch into Live View, you can do even more, but I’ve found that really works best on a tripod. So I’ve done the tape hack on the 2X, and I’m going to give it another whirl and see waht happens.
None of that is a replacement for a 500 F4 or a 600mm behemoth — but it’s a lot cheaper, if I can make it create good images. If I can’t, it was still worth the experiment, and then I can retire them again.
And that brings me to the 30d. As I was analyzing what I was doing and how I was taking pictures — and how I was NOT taking pictures, it became clear to me the reason I wasn’t using the Tamron/30d combo much wasn’t the lens; it was the body. The 30d is a perfectly good body — but technology marches on. The quality of the 7d image is significantly better than the 30d — when I load my images into Lightroom, I can tell at a glance at the thumbnails which ones come off the 7D and which come off the 30d. The difference between the two is that significant. So without really thinking about it, I have been shying away from using the 30d, except in the “heat of battle” when I really need both bodies going at once. In most circumstances, when I go wide-angle, I move the Tamron to the 7d and STILL don’t use the 30d.
So it’s clear to me that if I make any change here, that change is that it’s time to upgrade the 30d to a modern body; that’s the weak spot in this setup, and I was routing around the weakness without really thinking about it. The obvious thing to do would be to buy a second 7d — but if I’m honest with myself, having a second 7d is overkill for what I’m doing.
So I’ve been thinking that the cost effective upgrade is to move to a body that has the Digic 4 processor in it, so I’m thinking the proper upgrade would be a T2i or T3i. It uses the Digic-4, it would give me the same 18 megapixel RAW image and it’d support video like the 7d (and I’m starting to dabble in that a bit — in fact, being able to shoot with one body and doing time lapse or video with the other is probably the key reason to upgrade). And the T2i is about 40% of the cost of the 7d, and the compromises I’d be making going with that as the 2nd body instead of a 7D seems like a good compromise, especially since I could then spend the money I don’t spend on the new body on the 500mm. Or at least put it away towards that…
So if I’m doing any hardware upgrades in the next year or so, it’s likely the 30d upgrade to a T2i (or perhaps a T3i. I’ll decide that when I’m ready to buy…). The second would be something like the Sigma 10-20, but for now, I plan on renting that when I want one until I see how much I use it for real, and whether it’s worth investing in. And at some point, I’ll realize I have enough money socked away for some big kicker glass. But not for a good while…
One lens I’ve looked at, FWIW, is the sigma 100-500. Right now, I don’t think that lens is for me. I’ve gotten mixed feedback about it, mostly comments about image softness at 500, and it clearly isn’t going to replace the 100-400 in my life, so I don’t see it as a good investment. And the new Canon behemoth that is going to have the built in teleconverter and go out to 560mm? That one has me drooling, but it looks like it’s going to be even more expensive than the 500mm, if and when it ships. so maybe I’ll see it as a chance to buy a used 500mm off someone who has to upgrade…
Does this make sense? Anyone have any other suggestions to consider?
Today’s Shared Links for March 2, 2011
- At March 2, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In FYC - Shared Links
- 0
- Gary Crabbe – A Photographer with a New Idea
- 100 Cameras, Lenses, and Accessories Turned into Pixel Illustrations
- Photography Travel Gear Checklist
- Why My Gigabyte Film Scans Might Not Be Good Enough
- Yosemite Nature Notes: Horsetail Fall (Video)
- Slow Battle, Yosemite National Park
- Herpetology
- How to Give Your Photography a Turbo Boost
some more thoughts on giving up the season tickets…
- At March 2, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In About Chuq, Sports - Hockey
- 3
When I posted that we intended to give up our season tickets after 20 years, it generated some interesting comments and a fair number of private emails. We heard from a number of long-time sharks fans, folks we’ve known since the early days of the Sharks mailing list, and got similar thoughts from any of them — either they have given them up, or are considering it.
Almost none of them were down on the Sharks, either. Like us, it really was more the time commitment, and how over time other things kick in and make spending that much time going to games more challenging.
Derek’s view is somewhat different:
Get the tickets, pick out, in advance, the handful of games you want to plan to go to, and then immediately just put the rest on Stubhub with electronic delivery. You won’t have to touch them again other than to pull money out of your paypal account.
Then, if you make it to the post-season, you’re in position to leverage it still.
It’s a valid view, but not what we wanted. We talked about that, and decided against it. Here’s why.
First, given where our seats are, full season tickets is a significant chunk of change and an investment — if you include playoffs, it’s likely going to reach $8K for the two seats and can reach $10K if you include a deep run and parking. We’re three rows off the glass in the club, so the tickets aren’t inexpensive, but to us, were always worth it.
We talked with some of our seat neighbors (so they knew what was going on and could coordinate with their account manager to slide to the aisle next season), and the confirmed what we had thought — demand for these seats is pretty thing. There are a couple of singles in our section, and they don’t sell out 100% of the time (but being a single hurts).
If you take the full season, you’re on the hook for that money unless/until the tickets sell. As Derek noted, Stubhub is available and easy, but only if the tickets sell. We have, in fact, put a number of late season tickets up for sale, and so far, a bit more than half have sold. We expect the rest to sell as we get close to game night, but — it’s clear the price of the tickets limits the pool of buyers.
There are basically three ways to handle selling off chunks of a set of tickets:
- Do it yourself, basically, privately sub-lease or syndicate out pieces. Laurie and I just aren’t particularly interested in managing this process, although we could pull in some people who might be interested. But it’s all up to the vagaries of who wants to commit each season, and what happens when the Sharks go into the inevitable down cycle? We just don’t see hanging onto the tickets as worth the work and energy in doing this.
- The Ticketmaster “Sharks Approved” system, which is really painless, but… If you look at the fine print, you can’t sell tickets at below face value, by the time Ticketmaster and the Sharks get their fees, about 25% of the value disappears, and there’s no guarantee the tickets will sell (and if you look at how the program is structured, it’s pretty clearly designed to give priority to unsold Sharks inventory before your tickets will be re-sold, the way the pricing is set up pretty much guarantees that). It’s really easy and convenient, but — the margins charged to it are pretty high.
- Stubhub does a nice job of brokering a market in tickets. But again, there’s no guarantee they’ll sell. There’s no guarantee they’ll sell at face value, much less a premium. They also charge a 25% premium — 10% to the buyer, 15% to the seller. that implies we’d need to average sales of 15% above face to break even.
On top of that, since we have used on-site parking for a number of years, we’d have to eat parking on sales through Stubhub or Ticketmaster. to break even on that, we’d need to price another 5% or so above face value, or find some way to private-sale parking for those games we don’t use.
So by the time you get done with all of this, you’re putting $8K down up front, depending on being able to sell tickets at an average 20% above face value to break even on fees, and our history is that the market demand just isn’t that strong, even in the recent years when the Sharks have been competing well. When they hit a down cycle? If the silicon valley economy continues to struggle, or hits another air pocket?
And ultimately, that’s just more risk and hassle than we care to deal with, not when we can invest nothing up front and buy on the open market for the games we choose to go to; we’re talking to some of our seat neighbors so they’ll let us know about seats they might be selling off, and otherwise, we’d simply rather be buyers on Stubhub than sellers.
Now, if we were higher up in the arena at a lower price point, it might be different — demand is stronger at lower priced tickets, that changes the dynamics of the situation.
But really, the bottom line is this: we had a great 20 year run, and now we want to take a step back and go to fewer games, and we want the flexibility to decide how many and which games more or less on the fly; and after 20 years, we just aren’t that worried about giving up our priority and seats. It’s not worth the effort to us to maintain those (for what it’s worth, Laurie was one of the first 100 to put in a deposit when the Sharks franchise was announced, so after all of this time, our priority is probably somewhere in the top 25. but — that and $10 will buy a couple of lattes…)
It’s not about the Sharks, or the cost, or any of that — it’s more about shifting around where we want to spend our time, and give us flexibility to do other things. And some nights, that other thing is simply going to be watching the Sharks from the couch instead of the arena…
Notes From the Commish — shut up about expansion already.
- At March 1, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Sports - Hockey
- 0
Welcome to the latest ruling in “Notes from the Commish” where I as the Commish of the NHL (in my universe) and my Vice President of Disclipine Barfy will pontificate upon the state of the game and what I think needs to be changed. The fact is, NHL hockey is in pretty damn good shape overall, not that you’d believe that reading some of the pundits out there. But the reality is, a business the size of the NHL can never be perfect, and there are always things that can be improved, and there will always be things that need to be fixed. And I’m the guy to fix it. (or replace this with something witty and snarky)
Tonight’s Note from the Commish is about expansion in the NHL.
Or more correctly, the media’s insistence on asking about, hinting about and rumoring about expansion in the NHL.
It seems that — almost going back to the lock out — the hockey media, especially in Canada, has been chewing on the issue of expansion. If you go back and look at what the league itself has said, it’s been very consistent; the league keeps saying it’s not looking to expand, that there’s no timeframe, that it’s not on the agenda, that it wants to make sure all of its existing teams are on solid ground.
That doesn’t stop some in the press, however. Some of them rip the league for not expanding back to Winnipeg (or Quebec City, or both, or Yellowknife, or the Maritimes, or the mythical second team in Ontario, or… ). There’s another group that loves to write articles ripping the league for even considering expanding, seemingly oblivious to the fact the league keeps saying it’s not. So the way these guys work it is they report on (or create) rumors the league is thinking to expand to 32 teams, and then rip on the league for considering it. Even though the league is saying it isn’t. Because, you know, the rumors must be true and the league is lying (because it’s run by a damn american, you know?)
It all gets really silly. How silly? I wrote about this before:
Expansion Possibilities – Chuqui 3.0:
It’s taken a little while, but it’s starting to sink in: NHL expansion is a possibility.
There are subtle hints popping up many places.
While I’m not ruling it out, I think the fans are way over-reacting to this. Bob McKenzie on XM today echoed that thought noting that yes, some discussion about expansion probably will occur at the all star GM meeting, but he felt it was far from a front-burner item. I don’t see the NHL as being all that interested in expansion.
I happened across that tonight looking for something else. Sound familiar?
I wrote that in 2007. Four years ago. And the same folks are doing the same old thing. Only back then, the teams at risk were Pittsburgh and Nashville (writers: “how dare the league consider expanding until the Penguins arena issue is solved?” League: “Earth to sportswriters: we aren’t considering expanding” Writers: “The league must solve the problems of existing teams; considering expansion now is a bad idea” League: “hello? HELLO? Anyone in there?”)
And for those wandering around trying to prove the league is screwed up because it has franchises with some challenges — notably Arizona and Atlanta and the Islanders — please note that four years ago, the same argument was made because there were problems in Pittsburgh and Nashville. And here we are, four years later, and those franchises seem to have gotten fixed…
And yes, there are still franchises with issues, but in any large organization, there are going to be parts that run well, and parts that run not so well. Look at, in the NBA, the Warriors, Kings and Cavaliers. Five years ago, that would have been the Warriors and Supersonics. Except the supersonics no longer exist. I’d mention the clippers, but they were given a life achiement award and retired from contention. When you have a large industry the size of the NHL, there will always be teams that need improvement.
But if you look at the last 20 years, since Bettman came on board, the league also has a pretty darn good recorrd of fixing them. Not that you could tell reading some of the writers out there…
So, okay? No more expansion talk — until the league talks about it. Okay? Thanks.
Agree? Disagree? drop a comment with your opinion.
Got a rule or some aspect of hockey you want the Commish or — Colin — to rule on? drop us an email or a comment with the question. And we’ll be back soon with another Note from the Commish.
Take or Make?
- At February 22, 2011
- By Chuq Von Rospach
- In Photography
- 4
As aspect of your craft as a photographer is the shift from taking photographs to making them. What we mean by this is that as you study and practice, you learn to predict the image and you go from pushing the shutter and hoping you get a picture to understanding the situation and manipulating it (and the camera) to make sure you get one.
And then there’s serendipity.
There were reports of short-eared owls in Coyote Valley. I decided it was a good excuse to head out for some birding and grabbed the camera, a good excuse to go out and work with the camera in low light conditions and see what happened. The sun went down, no owls. Twilight darkened, no owls. One very loud and happy meadowlark — no owls.
And just as I was about to give up, I saw this bird patrolling the meadow, so I hauled out the camera and snapped off some shots. ISO 3200, 1/6 second at F5.6. It was pretty dark, and if nothing else, I wanted some imagery to study to help decide if this was an owl or not, since it was hard to tell live in the low light conditions. I could have gone the other direction, popped on a flash and a fresnel and tried to light the night sky — but isn’t this an awesome image the way it is? I sure think so.
As soon as it popped off the card and onto the screen, I loved it. I’ve been experimenting with abstracting avian forms, looking at ways to capture and explain birds in non-photo-realistic ways. The panning was pretty much spot on here, causing the blurring and streaking of the wild mustard blooms in the meadow to pop out. Very impressionistic, and yet very clearly a bird in flight. It required very little post processing.
But is this image taken? Or made? In honestly, some of both. I knew what I needed to accomplish to get a usable image under those conditions, and I knew it was going to be more impressionistic or abstract than a classic bird in flight shot. But the details that for me make this image work are in many ways a happy accident — but a happy accident made possible by knowing how to create the conditions to make it possible. Not something you’re going to get putting things on autopilot and hitting the button. that’s a bit of what really makes me like this image, I think.
By the way, it’s a northern harrier, not an owl. the white spot on the butt makes the ID possible. The Harrier and the short-eared Owl share similar facial and body structures, similar hunting styles and are effectively both in the same ecological niche but the owl works swing shift. In this case, though, it’s the day shift working late, not the swing shift coming out to start their day. I’ll have to catch the owl some other evening, I guess.
If you’re interested, I’ve made this image available as a desktop wallpaper over in my smugmug wallpaper library.
in the “oh my god, hell just froze over” department…
Laurie and I have been talking this over for a couple of days, and I figured this might make for interesting blog fodder.
We’ve decided not to renew our season tickets with the Sharks next season. Which given we’ve had season tickets since the Sharks first season, and we’re going through the 20th season now, probably comes as a surprise (especially to folks who know us well).
Why are we doing this? Well, it’s not because we’re upset at the Sharks, or the quality of hockey, or the cost, or whatever. It’s because we both want to spend less time sitting in a hockey arena.
Think about it. If you’re full season ticket holders, you’re committing to 43 games a year. Lots of season ticket holders sell off chunks; in our case we average about 35 games a year. That’s over a month a year sitting in the arena, so from October to June (depending on how deep a team goes into the playoffs), you’re committing a big chunk of time and a lot of evenings to being at the game. This year, especially, I’ve felt at times that it’s gotten in the way of some of the other things I want to do (especially photography), where the friday night or saturday game really limits the ability to do other things on the weekend. When I birded Panoche a few weeks ago, I only covered about half the territory I’d planned on because I needed to get back for a game.
Our decision was to drop the tickets and buy on the open market (hello, Stubhub) rather than hang onto the tickets and have to deal with selling off the ones we don’t want. It’s just less hassle and gives us more flexibility (and no responsibility…)
So we’ll still be in the arena, just less — and watching more TV from home, where we can multitask or PVR the games if we need to. or (gasp) miss one. I expect we’ll try tobuy tickets down in that area, or maybe grab tickets from some of our seat neighbors who sell them off, since we like that section and the folks in it, and we like the angle (or perhaps we’re just used to it…)
amusingly enough, we both had been thinking about this independently for a while, and weren’t sure whether to mention it to each other. And amusingly enough, neither of us was at all surprised to find out the other one was also thinking that way; the joy of sharing your life with someone for a long time….
And yes, this opens up options. We’ve wanted to check out hockey in other venues, and this frees up some cash (and time!) to give us a chance to, say, try the edmonton/red deer/Calgary trifecta, or do a trip through ottawa, toronto, montreal and some of the OHL. Or just start getting back up to Vancouver again on a more regular basis and wallow in the WHL and take in a game or two at GM place.
Oh, and we’ve also decided not to buy playoff tickets this year. Partly for this reason, partly because we just don’t think this team will go deep and can’t convince outselves to spend the money for another first or second round exit. maybe they’ll prove us wrong, if so, we’ll happily cheer (from home).
Go sharks!
Only a flesh wound….
Behold the new hole in our garage.
The morning started as plumbers from about four counties all arrived at our house, in search of a slab leak. For those that don’t know, a slab leak is when your plumbing breaks, only the break is hidden under 6″ of concrete, and you get to guess where the leak is.
Fortunately, there are leak detection specialists. They have a gizmo that stuffs a sequenced electric charge onto your plumbing, and another gizmo that finds that and tells you where the pipes are, and how deep they are. They wander through your house hearing beeps (it’s the really expensive machine that goes PING!) figuring out where the plumbing is. Then they stuff your pipes with helium, and use a set of stethoscopes the size of a big can of soup (two, actually) to listen for the helium exiting through the leak. I swear it looks like the guy is dowsing….
And in about an hour, he mapped out where all the pipes are, and then he found the leak. And that made me happy.
Not because we found the leak, but because the leak turned out to be in the corner of the house, where the service enters. Right where we were seeing the water come out. And this makes me happy because the leak wasn’t in the dining room, or in the kitchen under a cabinet, or under the tile in the bathroom, or…
You get the point — if you see how this gets fixed, the place that needs fixing is best in the garage, where it doesn’t trigger major remodeling projects. So the plumbers used a saw to cut the concrete, and then a jackhammer to remove it, and after I took this picture, patched in new copper to connect the good piece to the good piece, and by about 4PM, we had water — and it wasn’t out in the front yard.
Tomorrow they’ll come back and patch the concrete, and we’ll give it a few days to harden, and then life will return to normal, at least it will once I clear out the concrete dust and the mud and all of the other debris that now inhabits the garage, and backfill the bed that used to be part of the front yard…
If you live in an eichler, this is the kind of problem you dread, and when they happen, they can become really bad really fast. If it had to happen, this problem is about as close to the best case scenario as you can ask for — so I’m happy. And it was a relatively quick fix, too.
and once they stopped jackahmmering, I even got work done…
But it’s been an interesting few days…
Happy Valentines day!
And how did you spend your Valentines day? I spent mine with the plumbers, with what we thought was a leak in the service line into the house. That’s been patched, but when we turned on the service again, the leak re-appeared. Not so good. That means we have a slab leak; this is an Eichler, it has no crawlspace, it’s on a cement pad. and in the pad is the plumbing, and somewhere it’s leaking. So soon the guys with the really expensive leak detection machine will arrive to find it, followed by the guys with the jackhammer to chew out the part of the floor over where the leak is. which is likely (I hope) either in the kitchen or dining room. if we get really lucky, it’s in the garage but somehow I doubt it..
And we have this nice hole in the front yard, slowly filling with water again…
But we have a nice new copper service line that no longer routes through the porch slab…
This is likely going to complicate my blogging schedule. and maybe vacation. And who knows what else?
oh well. nobody’s died, and that’s good.
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