Star Wars

If you haven't seen Star Wars Episode III yet, I'm going to spoil a scene, so please move on and skip this post.

There is little good to speak of in the jar-jar trilogy of Star Wars, Episodes I, II, and III.  But there is a small gem in Episode III where a real tale is told: Palpatine convinces Anakin that the Jedi are evil.

The scene is set against a bizarre water-opera with flying fish and suspended spheres of water.  Anakin walks in amongst Palpatine's friends, who are curtly commanded to leave.  Then Palpatine starts to sweet talk the young Jedi with conspiracy theories of a Jedi Council power-grab.

Then it gets more interesting.  Palpatine asks Anakin, "did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?  Darth Plagueis is a dark lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force... to create life."

And in a few moments you understand how the young Jedi, seeped in petulance, could embrace the dark side.  He is convinced that he can control the forces of life and protect his family.  Anakin doesn't set out to do evil, he begins to believe that what he is doing is right.

Ian McDiarmid does a wonderful job acting the part of Palpatine.  He narrates just as I would expect from a Sith, he comes out swinging from the moment he says, "leave us."  The tense music, the Cirque du Soleil flying fish, and the creepy senator all add up to a classic scene buried in an otherwise dull movie.

Then you can fast forward to the fight scenes.

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I took my last final today, so I'm setting up my plans for the break.  I enjoy racing games, but there is nothing left to do on the ones I own, so I'm exploring other options.  An acquaintance from school suggests PC racing, because the games are supposed to be more realistic.  I'd like to give them a shot, so I'm setting up Boot Camp again to install Windows on an Apple computer.

The last time I installed Boot Camp was right around the time it came out, something like 2005.  I uninstalled it about a year later – I never used it and it wasn't satisfying.  Maybe this time will be more interesting.

I'm also looking to read Goodkind's latest trash novel, Confessor.  I have a love-hate relationship with Goodkind, I love to hate him.  But just as with Windows, I keep coming back for more.

As a final note to tie my sub-posts together, George RR Martin is a superb author who fills his books with scenes that are more satisfying than the gems you'll find in Star Wars.

GRRM : Goodkind :: Mac : XP

The circle is complete.

Camera stuff, finals, refocus

I'm looking to buy a new lens.  The 50mm 1.4 is my top choice right now.  It is a prime lens, which has some interesting qualities listed below:

1. "Prime" means that the magnification is unchangeable.  You can't zoom in, you can't zoom out.  This allows the manufacturer to make a lens which is really good at taking pictures at the one-and-only focal length.  It is easier for a manufacturer to make a lens work really well at a set focal length than it is for a designer to make a lens which works well throughout many focal lengths.  This means that there is less glass in the lens and the quality is improved.
2. Easier design and less moving parts means that these lenses are cheaper than their zoom-able counterparts.  The tradeoff is that you can't zoom.  So it may force me to be a better photographer and work with my tools more.  This isn't a bad tradeoff, in my opinion.
3. Without getting technical, prime lenses generally allow more light to pass through.  If you are curious, search for info on "aperture."  More light means that you can use faster shutter speeds, and you can take clear action photos.  It also means that you can do interesting effects such as focusing on a very small portion of the photo and blurring the other parts.

Natasha says I can buy the lens, but I'm going to mull it over.

On another topic, Tuesday is my first final test.  I feel pretty good in general, but I've never taken a class where the only score that mattered is the final test.  Please wish me luck over the coming weeks, I'd like as much help as I can get.

Just yesterday I spoke with Clint about blurry photos.  He mentioned that new computer programs can refocus an image.  That means that you can have shaky hands and the computer will play mathematical games to figure out what the original photo should have looked like.  I went to Google and found that a plugin exists for a popular image editing tool, meaning I can do this myself at home.  Now I can be the computer guy from CSI who says, "enlarge, sharpen, enlarge, sharpen," and get the villain's license plate reflected off the hero's sunglasses.

So I thought I would do just that.  This past summer, some idiot rear-ended me in stop-and-go rush hour traffic.  I got out of my car with a disposable camera and he drove off.  My photos of his truck were very poor quality and the shots were too blurry to be useful.

My plan was to run the blurry photos through the refocus tool and see if anything interesting came up.  Honestly, I expected nothing – the shots were taken with a truly horrible disposable camera with poor quality film.

In the end, it didn't matter.  After the insurance was worked out and my car was back on the road, I threw the photos out.  I didn't want to keep the photos.  All they did was make me angry.  But I had a hope that I had kept digital copies buried somewhere on my computer.  So I pored over the archives and searched high and low.  They are gone forever, so we'll never know who the truck belonged to.

I've surpassed my allotted time.  Back to the books!

Amateur Photography

I own a DSLR camera, which is something akin to a teenager owning a Ferrari.  Actually, it is probably more like a midlife-crisis Ferrari owner.  Point is, all that power and no idea how to use it.

Case in point: walking through the woods with Natasha, we happen to see a woodpecker peck-peck-pecking at a tree.  I've stumbled unwittingly upon a subject.  This is a perfect opportunity to take some stunning pictures of nature at work.

Only problem is that I don't know what I'm doing.  So I take out my zoom lens and snap 200 photos.  Only one of the photos is sharp and in focus, the rest are fit for the garbage bin.

So where does that leave me?  I apparently don't have the skill to take steady shots, I don't have the patience to lug around a tripod, and I don't have the money to hire a camera crew (I'm exaggerating here, I have photos of Natasha lugging around my camera bag).  The only force I've found to compensate for my lack of skill is copious quantity.  I've got to take a lot of photos to get one that hints at quality.

I wonder how my photography would have been if I had taken this hobby on in another era.  If I had to develop my film painstakingly, if film cost real money with each squeeze of the shutter, if I had to calculate exposure, focal settings, and aperture by hand.  Would I take better photos because it is too damned hard to take crappy ones?

I'll keep at it.  With time and practice, many things become easy.  Until then, I'll be the guy holding the shutter button and shooting until my 400 shot memory card is full.

Stick to Your Teeth Cookies

I baked cookies!  Even better, I recorded it.  The chocolate melts right before your eyes and the cookies are done in smell-o-vision (I tried to upload the smell-o-vision-version, but Blogger doesn't support it yet).

The recipe is Paula Deen's, so you can check out the food network website and make some for yourself.

Mmmmm, tasty.

Welcome! Introductions are in order.

Welcome to my new "blog."  I had a "blog" on a popular social network, but I found it lacking in features and quality.  In particular, it didn't publish properly and creating new entries was ugly and difficult.  Ultimately, I removed myself from the other site and am starting anew here.

MYSELF

I'm a former computer scientist, now in law school.  I like motorsports, coffee, and $7 pens.  I live in Portland, Oregon, and have lived in CA, TX, AZ, Germany, NY, and AK.  I like puns, puzzles, and some video games.

Lets talk about some of the fun stuff I've been up to recently.  I'll tell you about school, vehicles, and Portland.

SCHOOL

School is taxing.  I spend vast amounts of time preparing for class.  Law school involves copious reading and a good amount of writing.  Despite the boatloads of work, I enjoy it all.  I like my classes, I like my classmates, and I like my teachers.  Many people dislike some portion of their classes – not me.  I like them all.  This is a good sign.

My computer science background allows me to pursue certain parts of patent law which aren't otherwise available to lawyers.  This field is bustling with activity.  I have an inclination toward practicing this body of law, but it is way to early to tell.  For now, I'm happy to keep my options open and see what is out there.

VEHICLES

My neighbor backed into my motorcycle and knocked it over.

If there was some good of it, he owned up to the problem and came and got me.  "I didn't see it."  He did $315 of damage and paid for a replacement fairing.  Good thing the cover was on, too.  I took the whole right hand side apart and searched everything for damage, so the time investment was also pretty big.  What a pain.  This really hurts me, but there is nothing to be done about it now.

Following that, I had some shifting problems.  These problems are impossibly remote to anything that could have happened as part of the tip-over.  I tried to diagnose the problem and found a lot of people who have installed a shift detent arm with a stronger spring and had all problems clear up.  So I ordered the part.  $200 later, while installing it, the new part rubs against the engine case.  I call the manufacturer and they don't really care much.  I'm still trying to work with them to get things straightened out.

Part of the installation process involves using a special tool to hold the clutch basked while removing a bolt that is tightened by Hercules himself.  Turns out that the specialty tool I bought doesn't fit, so it chips at my clutch basket and ruins another $100 part.  Woe!

Further, it looks like the new detent arm doesn't do a damn thing.  The next possible action is to tear the whole transmission apart and replace the shift forks and any broken dogs.  So the transmission job is on my to-do list.  It involves (1) remove engine from frame (2) split the cases (3) fool with the transmission.  I've never done anything this detailed.  Professional mechanics specialize in transmissions because general mechanics won't touch them.  I have the job penciled in for Christmas break.

PORTLAND

Portland is great.  The weather is very nice.  The city has a public rose garden that we've

 walked around a couple times.  The campus is also very nice and fun to explore on foot.  Come to think of it, the campus is nestled in a state park, with paved paths winding through wooded areas and the cool breeze of the Pacific Northwest.  I've got nothing to complain about.

Also, Natasha and I are having a great time together.  We walked around the campus yesterday and explored the older buildings for the school of education.  These buildings are a page out of history – I'm glad they are around and I'm also glad that we don't have to use them.  Much of the law school is recent and modern.