So I drafted a somewhat flippant response:

I like the book “Making Fire Happen” by, me.

It’s a small book, one page, one sentence: “Get out and make fire happen.”

But in re-reading it, it still sounds pretty good.

I chose “fire” because of the reference to rocketry of course, but it’s implications work almost anywhere you’re looking to create heat, light or intensity (with perhaps some risks attached).

FINALLY. It's been cold and rainny for so long, we finally got some sun and could go out and get in trouble...

• First warm Spring day
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/8.0
• Shutter: 1/4000 sec
• ISO: 400
• Focal Length: 12 mm

Spring has sprung, finally.

• Empty swing
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

Well, this is the longest dry-spell ever on this blog. Don’t feel bad, I rarely update Twitter these days either.

Fear not, I’m not dead.

I do get out an shoot on occasion, often throwing back to actual film with my trusty Leica M3, so I’ll try to post more photos and their stories here.

Oh and maybe a few rants on the state of the newspaper industry….

• St. Francis at night
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

The wife and I hit San Francisco earlier this week and, you know it, I brought along a few cameras.

Forgetting the lessons learned from a few vacations ago I figured my D300 and a few lenses would be a good thing to shlep around and photograph with but I soon remembered that, oh yeah, it’s heavy.

Sure, my new love, the Nikon AF Zoom-NIKKOR
80-200mm f/2.8D ED (one of Nikon’s best kept secrets by the way) is unbeatable and didn’t fail to impress, but after a few miles on foot, nothing says “superfluous” like a 120-300mm equivalent lens taking up room in a sholder bag.

Ultimately I fell back on, and had the most fun with, just my trusty Panasonic LX-3 and of course the Leica M3.

This guy was like a block away but was belting out the opera tunes while we ate in a little outdoor bistro. It lent a perfect ambiance.

• Opera guy
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/2.8
• Shutter: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
• ISO: 200
• Focal Length: 200 mm

I also found that the iPhone was a great fallback when you just wanted to record something silly — and San Francisco has its fair share of silly — and tweet it.

I’ve never been much of a street photography shooter, but the Leica kind of lends itself to it and the touristy nature of a lot of SF makes cameras just part of the landscape so it’s very easy to just blend in. After a while I got pretty good at gauging focus and guessing exposure (f/8 and be there) and really had a lot of fun with it.

• Waiting on the steps
• Camera: LS-50
• Aperture: n/a
• Shutter: n/a
• ISO: n/a
• Focal Length: n/a

So we wandered all over SF by foot, strolling through Chinatown and riding the cable cars and whatnot — in short doing all the touristy things. We toured the USS Pampanito and the old Presidio and finally hopped on one of those open-top busses, because frankly we weren’t cold enough walking around on foot.

All in all a good time.

• Rock wall and barbed wire
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter: 0.002 sec (1/500)
• ISO: 200
• Focal Length: 24 mm

As a history buff living in the cradle of the California Gold Rush, I was ecstatic to find out about Clarksville Day, the one day a year old Clarksville is to the public.

Clarksville was formed during the Gold Rush and later was a transfer stop (at least for a few weeks, folks were vague about that) on the Pony Express route. It’s located just outside of what today is El Dorado Hills and like so many other areas in El Dorado County though you’re only a few steps off the main road, you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.

• Grave at the Tong cemetery
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
• ISO: 200
• Focal Length: 12 mm

Today, Clarksville is located on private property, so you can’t get in there normally. On the grounds are a handful of old houses — curiously, some lived in until shockingly recently — and a number of old stone foundations.

The folks who put it on did pretty well. There were folks in period clothes and wagon rides and all that. There was even a shootout by the varmints in the Blue Canyon Gang.

Window on one of the many abandoned houses in the area.

• Window in time
• Camera: NIKON D300
• Aperture: f/5.6
• Shutter: 0.004 sec (1/250)
• ISO: 200
• Focal Length: 22 mm

I also had the odd opportunity to meet one of the six — yes six — candidates running for El Dorado Sheriff. Bob Luca made an appearance and I worked up the courage to ask him about his stance on CCW permits and Open Carry laws in the county. While Luca has taken some heat in the past for not being as rabidly pro-CCW as the other candidates (notably Larry Hennick), he did state he was in support of AB 375, the bill to make California a “shall issue” CCW state (tho we agreed it would never pass), and talked about the need to proceed cautiously, “look what happened over in Isleton.” While I’m still not sure who I’m voting for, that he took the time to show up won him points.

Anyway, while I shot a lot in digital, I also shot a half a roll of Ilford Delta 100 with the Leica. In a few days I’ll soup that roll and hopefully add to the set.

and yes, this post also serves as a fine test of the Flickr slideshow embed code…

• Shamu!
• Camera: DMC-LX3
• Aperture: f/5.0
• Shutter: 0.001 sec (1/1000)
• ISO: 80
• Focal Length:

So this year the wife and I decided to go to San Diego for this year’s family “vacation”. I say “vacation” in quotes because as any parent knows, there’s not a whole lot of vacationing that goes on during family vacations. There’s running after kids, who’s got the snacks, honey where are my socks, STOP HITTING ME, turn left here… NO NOT HERE, where’s your boarding pass, I’M HUNGRY!… eh, you get the picture.

We’d originally planned to just hit Sea World and then spend a few days at Legoland when the idea of checking out the USS Midway Museum came up. Since my father-in-law was stationed on it during Vietnam it seemed like a cool idea. Then since Ryan just did a report on it, we tacked on a trip to the Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala. For any readers not in the 4th grade, that would be the Mission in San Diego (and for non California readers, the Missions are a California thing… look ‘em up).

Anyway, here are some notes on each:

• The USS Midway

  
  The first stop upon landing was a run through the USS Midway Museum which was mildly interesting. Katie, of course couldn’t care less and Ryan didn’t really grasp what it was all about, although he found the maze-like passageways through it kinda fun (more on that theme later).

  I found it kinda “just OK” too until I wandered into the CIC. The CIC was done up just as it was during Desert Storm when the USS Midway served as the command center for the US Navy operations in that theater. When I say done up I mean right down to the actual CNN broadcasts from the night of January 17th, 1991. That was over-the-top cool.

  I was also taken by how cramped the thing was. An older gentleman who was as tall as I am casually commented, “I’m glad I was in the Army.” I couldn’t agree more.

• Sea World

  
  Next up was a day at Sea World. The neatest attraction there — after the dolphins and Shamu of course — was this huge, elevated play area. That kept Ryan’s focus for over an hour while he ran amok across the various bridges, nets and tubes and such (aka “maze-like passageways”).

  Then there were the various enclosures (yay sharks!) and Ryan and I “flew” to the Arctic and we had a lot of fun with that. Our course all of us also enjoyed the Pets Rule show immensely as well. Did you know they can train house cats?

• Legoland

  
  The main event, of course, was two days at Legoland. Ryan’s favorite “ride” was the Pharaoh’s Revenge, which was basically a two-story cage where you could shoot foam balls at each other. That and The Hideaways, where he could again run amok all over the place… yep, you guessed it, through the “maze-like passageways”.

  Katie liked the smaller rides, and getting her face painted. We stayed off the many water rides as it was too cold for getting wet. We also stayed off the roller coasters because we’re all wusses.

  
  Speaking of the weather, it was cool but not overly cold and we only got a little rain at the end of the day Friday. What was somewhat sad was that we reportedly got a few inches of snow at home while we were down in San Diego (we only get snow once or twice a year so it’s still fun when it happens).

  The Sea Life aquarium at Legoland was pretty good too, smaller than Sea World of course but just as good aquarium to aquarium.

• Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala

  
  The last stop was the San Diego Mission. It was pretty neat in it’s own way, being that it was the first church in California. By this time, however, we were all pretty tired but Ryan still found some of it interesting.

  It was neat to walk around the actual Mission that Ryan did his 4th grade report report on. I have to say, after seeing the real deal, his cardboard mockup was pretty good.

• Other stuff

  
  Instead of lugging my laptop and the Nikon D300 (and the suite of lenses and gunk that go with it) along like I did for Disneyland last year, this year I elected to go über light, carrying only my iPhone and my new Panasonic DMC-LX3.

  The camera performed admirably, putting up with all manner of the bad shooting conditions I shoved at it. It does shoot a little “hot” so a -2/3 EV adjustment made it all good. 400 photos made for a decent pool to pull a Flickr set from.

  However, on the phone side, the iPhone ate itself on the flight down. The music I was listening to stopped and the screen went all static-y (seriously, it was kinda neat). And then it went dead as, well, a brick. This was of moderate seriousness because we’ve found the iPhone’s GPS a real plus on far away trips and both parents having working phones is a must in large amusement parks.

  So I looked up an Apple Store in San Diego and took it in. They happily replaced the dead iPhone with a new one but then that one turned out to have a bad ringer switch — which broke off the next day — so that resulted in another stop at the Apple Store in Carlsbad for another new iPhone. Two iPhones later and I was good-to-go.

All in all, a good time.

But as I’m a curmudgeon (ok, there’s #1) I think it’s kinda dorky, but I still wanna play along so here’s my list:

1. I can be curmudgeonly (but I already said that, didn’t I).
2. I’m Italian, and swear like it too.
3. I want a Shelby Cobra. A 427. With glasspacks. I want the neighbors to fear it.
4. I love the smell of cordite… and spray paint for that matter.
5. I’m afraid of heights.
6. I much prefer guidelines than actual rules. So much so that I see little difference in the two.
7. I was once an officer in the US Army.
8. I’m quite possibly on the PDD spectrum, probably Aspergers.
9. I used to be a news photographer but stopped. Now I shoot avidly but am exclusively amateur.
10. Sometimes I wear shoes that don’t match… yes in public.
11. I don’t have six fingers on my right hand but I still feel like there’s a Spaniard looking for me.
12. I’ve jumped out of airplanes (er, with a parachute of course) on several occasions (kinda assumes a parachute, doesn’t it?).
13. Like that guy from “Duran Duran”, I should have had more sex in the ’80s.
14. I’m socially liberal, fiscally conservative, politically libertarian. Like the GOP… once.
15. I once electrocuted my self on a dog fence. Twice. Just to see if it would hurt that much again.
16. When I grow up, I want to be a dirty old man. When I’m old and in a home, I’ll have a nurse with a really short skirt, and I’ll drop things a lot.
17. I love cartoons. I like Uncle Iroh from Avatar, the Last Airbender the best. Or Donatello.
18. If I could pick an island for an island vacation, I’d pick Easter Island (or Gilligan’s, but only if Mary Ann was there… and she was herself from the show, not her like 80-somethin’-year-old now self).
19. I’m not left handed either.
20. I’ve hacked into computer systems, and gotten paid for it.
21. I once joined the Mile High Club all by myself. Maybe it was more than once.
22. I speak two languages: English and Bad English.
23. To me the only 4 food groups that matter are cookies, pasta, chocolate and soda. That, of course, makes chocolate-chip cookies a twofer.
24. I can do a wicked cool Tasmanian Devil imitation, and a pretty good helicopter, and can nail Popeye’s laugh (of course the kids today have no clue who that is).
25. I’m 20 years younger than my oldest brother, 10 years younger than my closest sister. Teasing them about how old they are is becoming less funny to me.

So I’m pretty sure these are true, or it could be the medication…

P.S.: I’ll leave the tagging on Facebook…

But the purchase of my first widescreen TV almost did me in.

My father was a rocket scientist. Seriously. He probably forgot more math than I ever knew (and I took calculus in college) yet in my house growing up “home entertainment technology” was limited to the 4 channels that magically showed up on the TV and that old scale model of a Duesenberg with the AM radio in it.

Even though Dad could (and often did) clearly define the electromagnetic spectrum to the 10-year-old me and and describe precisely what was meant by Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF), our TV — well into the age of cable and VCRs — only ever got those same 4 channels.

“What the hell do I need cable for!?!” he’d bark and I’d mutter something about all the cool kids getting MTV and things would undoubtedly head downhill from there….

Anyway, apparently I inherited some of this. Despite all the tech in my house, I never put much into the TV so when our old CRT TV finally gave up the ghost (this after being thoroughly scratched by one of the the two small terrors that run through my house) I was dragged by the wife into Costco and pushed in front of the wide-screen TVs.

“That one” I said, pointing at the one that seemed to look the best even though I was completely uneducated on the ways of widescreen TVs. It became ours, and my education began after the fact.

The very first thing I learned about widescreen LCD TV screens is that they suck for SD signals. Though the 4:3 viewable area was only nominally bigger than our old CRT it was noticeably worse quality-wise. Not noticeable to the kids mind you, SpongeBob looks fine to them, but I notice it. Perhaps its that the LCD screen is better and it highlights the crappy signal, I don’t know.

Perhaps the DVD would be an improvement…

My DVD player, old but reasonably advanced, is capable of 480p resolution on a component connection, which in theory should be better than the stock 480i connection off the cable. As fate would have it looked like poo on the old CRT screen but looks pretty decent on the new screen… to a point. There are a number of settings to tweak it but as in digital photography it is all a tradeoff. Noise reduction is a wonderful thing but it softens the image and you lose detail. Crank DNR up enough and the movie looks like mud. In the end you can apply only so much duct tape, so my beloved Ironman DVD looks… passable.

I decided, therefore, I must get something HD.

Now, I’ve also been wanting a DVR for a while, but my wife was happy with a VCR (shades of my Dad, I know. How creepy is that?). It finally came down to my daughter who was absolutely distraught that The Wiggles started coming on at the same time as Wordworld as they are both her very favoritest shows in the world. Well, dear, if we had a DVR… or an HD DVR…

A trip to a Comcast (yeah, I know) pay center later and now we have an HD DVR. What a scam, ya know? You are already getting the HD signal but ya gotta use their gear to thet the HD output to your set. Slimy.

Anyway, I noticed right away that I’d need a DVI to HDMI adaptor/cable as I was out of component hookups (the DVD player and the Wii took those) so a trip to the brand-new but still dead-store-walking Circuit City solved that. Holy ass HDMI cables are expensive — even with the store-closing 30% discount — and who the hell knew that (like ethernet cables) there are different HDMI versions that support different bandwidths?!? More education ensued.

So, finally, I get all the right stuff and get things all set up. I get the HDMI bone connected to the TV bone and the cable bone connected to the DVR bone and… FINALLY, some whopping 1080i HD goodness!

And what the f*** is that *$*#^%@#% white line on the top of some of the channels!?!? So began my introduction into overscan. Turns out the new TV is capable of displaying the whole display signal which is great for components but not so much for TV signals. A lot of TV stations send data in the first few bits of their signals for things like closed captioning. So somewhere in the TV menus I found THAT setting and now we’re happy (if cutting off 5-8% of your image is something to be happy about).

So I think we’re good for now, we got some HD love and we got The Wiggles and Wordworld on the DVR and even got the SD signal coming in at 480p which is an improvement somewhat.

Man, I just wanted a new TV.

So avid readers (all three of you) may remember my one and only New Year’s Resolution from last year: to shoot 10,000 pictures.

Well, I fell a little short of that mark.

In checking I shot 2,211 images with the D80 until it was replaced with the D300 where I shot 4,239 images. The math astute among you will note that this totals a mere 6,450 images which is a hair less than 2007′s count of 6,545. Huh.

Ah but wait. On several occasions I got to shoot with gear on loan from my employer including a D2Hs and the vaunted D3 and according to my Aperture library, those bodies account for 425 images. By the way the Nikon D3, even for the short time I got to shoot with it, easily earned the title of Best Digital Camera Ever… in my humble opinion.

So if I did the 4-place addition right, that’s a grand total of 6,875 images, which is 330 images more than 2007 but well short of 10,000.

So… it still stands, 10,000 images in 2009.