January normally seems like a long month. This year, it’s seemed even longer. We didn’t get hit with the real cold until the end of the month, but it’s here now. Add in the fact that today will be the fifteenth day in a row I’ve been in to work, and it just doesn’t seem as though month-end will ever get here.
Which isn’t all bad, either. I’ve still got lots of stuff to do before I can call this month done. Moving rapidly to the top of the list is filing all the damned paperwork for my business. I’ve been trying to wrap things up, but it turns out my payroll service, since I didn’t pay them for a full year last year, didn’t file anything for me. That means about ten different pieces of paper to be mailed in to various government agencies, except that a couple of them have to be done online. Did I say Ugh!
yet?
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| Breakfast with the squishycow |
At least there are a few little pleasures still. Even if I’ve had to go into work on the weekends, I’ve managed to cook up yummy breakfasts for myself. I haven’t had a ton of time to go out taking pictures (which I find myself missing a lot), but I have at least kept the camera skills from gathering dust, even if it’s something as simple as using my phone to snap a picture of one of the various joints where I eat lunch (though I often forget about that until we’re back to work, where my cow-orkers get to hear me say D’Ohh!
as we’re walking from the cars and I remember).
The ABE show on Saturday was fun, too. A lot of the regulars weren’t there—I suspect because they’d seen three sets just the Sunday before, but there were a couple cute gals to sit with me, and I enjoyed the show and got to talk to Scott a bit both before and after. I don’t especially like parking around O’Gara’s on a weekend evening, but it all went well, was a fun show, and a darned good break from thinking about code. And it sounds like Scott and the guys have enough new songs to just about be ready for their fifth CD, so I’ve got that to look forward to. And while poking around on the web yesterday, I found MPR’s pages on the ABE and on The Crops. If I find myself with a bunch of spare time anytime soon, maybe I’ll go add some stuff there.
- PopPhoto’s The 15-Hour Photographer is a good idea to get to take more pictures. They’re also having a contest. I wish I had the time to even think about entering. It sounds like an outrageously fun way to spend a day. [holy schmoly]
- Watch that prime-time medical drama with the cranky doctor? You might be interested in these Medical Reviews of House by a doctor. [flutterby]
- This essay titled Why Is My 50mm Lens Equivalent to 80mm on a 35mm Camera and Why Is There More Depth-of-Field? gives a VERY good look at the realities of shooting with digital cameras. And after a few back and forths, the discussion on Luminous Landscape finally pointed to a tutorial on Diffraction Limited Photography: Pixel Size, Aperture and Airy Disks. Playing with the calculator that’s include on that web page, I found what I’d suspected, when shooting with my D-50, any aperture smaller than f/8 doesn’t gain me any sharpness. With my D-200, it’s just about f/11. Yes, stopping down further will increase the depth of field, meaning I can screw up the focus a bit more, but at the expense of blurring the image a little bit with diffusion effects. It continues to make me think that
f/8 and be there
is still a pretty good mantra. Unless it’s night photography, in which case it’s f/8 and be there for about ten minutes. [luminous] - Want to buy a bit of computing history? Joey’s got a Symbolics XL1200 Lisp Machine for sale. I never could really wrap my brain around lisp, so it’s not for me, but I know a few folks who might really dig that sort of thing… [accordionguy]
- Finally, Kirsten’s got an opportunity, perhaps, that she writes about in When Opportunity Knocks, Don’t Vomit on Its Shoes When You Open the Door. Why do I point to this? Well, I had a part (with the help of friends) in making this possible. Which leads me to think to myself
Cool. I still have the power to make women want to throw up!
It’s not much of a super-power, but I’ll take it. [kirsten]