Marc's Musings Reality from Marc's point of view!

Brandon hosted a pleasant gathering at his new place. As usual, you always think you take WAY more pictures than you actually do. Even more perturbing was the fact that I *completely* forgot to get a picture of the host himself!

Anyway, classy move having a barkeep. Someday, if I save up, I can have as many cars as Brandon does.

Posted under Photos

I’m pretty psyched. I’d done a fair bit of research and I think this Nikon D60 (Wikipedia link) will let me do the kind of photography that I want to do. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with a camera that allows you to play with pretty much any aspect of the picture taking process.

This camera’s got a lens-based vibration reduction system that claims that you can gain 3 stops of aperture reduction if desired. I also picked up a great little flash unit (Nikon SB-400) that will let me do some work with bounced flashes to further minimize redeye and other head-on flash issues.

I also opted for the 55 – 200 mm lens in addition to the included 18 – 55 mm one.

I found Ken Rockwell’s site to be pretty useful for my research. So much so that I used one of his links in my purchase. Hopefully it worked, I really couldn’t tell from the URL whether or not he would be credited with the purchase. But his site offers pragmatic first hand advice on various kinds of cameras. Of course, he’d say I didn’t really listen to his advice as he was pushing to stick with the D40 and spend the difference in cost on lenses or other equipment, but when I purchase equipment, I like to get the best that I can afford with the hope that it will remain current and relevant for as long as possible.

Posted under Photography

You’d like to think that the media would be.. well… media savvy. So why is it, that when I follow a link to an article on many news sites (like here for instance) it’s so obtuse where the metropolitan (or village or whatever) area served by the site is located?

Some sites are right up front about who they are and where they are (here and here for example), some you need to hop to their home page to find this info, and still others you have to check out their weather center or some of their headlines to try to divine their locales.

Just thought I’d point out that… it’s not you.. it’s them.

Posted under Opinions

I chose this book because the premise sounded interesting. You can read the synopsis of the book on Amazon if you’re interested, so I won’t rehash it here. Suffice it to say that I did enjoy the fact that teleportation was almost a background aspect of the story. There was no real attempt to rationalize or explain it. The story was more about how character(s) learned to deal with this abilty.

This is not a multifaceted, complex story like “Dune” or some of my other favorites, but Steven Gould’s writing style flows so effortlessly that I couldn’t believe how quickly I raced through the book. I will be looking for more of Mr. Gould’s works in the future. I’ve already added the second Jumper book (Jumper: Griffin’s Story) to my wish list.

A satisfying, entertaining read.

Posted under Books

Looking for dark sky near where you live? I just came across the “Dark Sky Finder” (courtesy of the NGAstronomers yahoo group) which might help. It *seems* like it may be a little course-grained but It looks like it should provide a good general direction for your astronomical viewing.

Posted under Astronomy

Continuing with my fascination for altered time and space perception (through mechanical means), I had not heard about Schlieren Photography until I saw this video on Slashdot Review over the weekend.

The balloon (what is it about balloons?) was one of my favorites, but the towel was cute. The shockwaves emanating from piston shots was instructive. In some cases you can actually see the bullet overtaking the shockwave from the initial firing of the weapon.

Posted under Science, Very Cool

Geez! How these countries are going to claw their way out of third-world status while they continue to indulge in superstitious idiocy such as this is hard to imagine.

This gem comes from Solapur, in Maharastra, India. C’mon folks! This is the 21st century!!! We’re supposed to be flying around in little cars worried about the Mars colony. Not tossing infants off of towers to appease… whom?

Posted under Opinions