Of Pictures and Platitudes

I'm not sure how platitudes fits in, but I did take some pictures this week after doing some reading on exposure and ISO and lighting. I figured I could also show off the way I think at work:



Basically, since I've moved into the kitchen I now have the company's largest whiteboards—the kitchen windows. It is actually temperate in the kitchen (my boss suffers from the same temperature schizophrenia that plagues the state of Florida, so it is almost always unbearably cold in the office), and I have some space now to diagram and draw out what's going on in my head. And it erases like a champ.

While at work this week, I did a bit of reading on some camera exposure settings, and I turned on Auto-ISO on the D40 to see how things would pan out:



The one of the car also reflects the use of a slow flash, which helps to illuminate the foreground while capturing some of the ambient lighting also—this has a nice effect on night shots, I think. The exposure on the buildings is also fairly decent. These surround the place where I help teach karate Fridays. I really need to take better advantage of the environment. The sunset was nice, but it was difficult to get the detail I wanted and none of the pictures really came out how I wanted. The more pictures I take, the more I am impressed by my eyes.

Another view of the flash differences:



A slow flash was used in the brighter of the photos, but the lighting doesn't look completely unnatural—some of the background light is still coming in. The use of the slow and rear flashes is going to make life much more interesting for me in the evenings, I suspect. I plan on picking up an SB-400 speedlight to complement the camera, which will let me bounce off the ceiling and should provide much more natural light than the insane stuff indoors normally. AAAAND it syncs at 1/1300 instead of the 1/60 of the built-in—so I will be able to use the flash to stop motion some of the shots in karate. That's pretty exciting.


I'm such a dork, and it's only going to get worse in this entry.

Yesterday was pretty cool on many counts. Teaching went well—I only had three students in my charge most of the night, so I could be my nitpicky self very well. They're enjoyable, too, and we were able to progress fairly well. The kids hit pretty hard, and one of them damaged her hand on my uniform. (She showed me her fist and was all huffy about her red knuckles.)

After teaching, I worked out with J until about 8:30 on some staff moves. We were fooling around a bit with what he knew about the Chinese Bo, which is not much—we're Korean artists, and our stick work is much different. A lot more boring, honestly, and more static.

So he was showing me a few moves that someone taught him at the Taj Mahal (not the place in India—it's a casino in New Crappy, go figure). He had been trying to figure out a transition for a long time that I was able to put together in about half an hour, and it was like the floodgates opened. We just started moving and making some combinations. And more importantly, we were able to meld some of our movement with theirs, which is the first step towards doing some staff form development. I'm really, really excited by that prospect, but I will have to learn a lot more about how the Chinese do things, I think. So I'm going to probably order a couple shorter bo staves—five feet instead of our usual five and a half to six.

I was out on my lawn at one AM playing around with some of it, even though my knees and back were both complaining pretty vociferously about my activities.


After we got finished, I went over to church to help some clean up after their VBS—I knew it was a big production, but I was completely unprepared for what I saw in the sanctuary. They basically transform the entire thing into a wild west town, replete with houses and walkways and the works. They have some very talented voice actors, also.

I'm not really one for production in church—it strikes me as fishing with bait as opposed to nets—but it was pretty impressive, nonetheless.

We also found a rather large moth outside (the squeamish should not look at the following):



J, who was holding the moth, is obviously not that squeamish.

In any case, I helped put up some chairs, clean some tables, vaccuumed a little bit (I learned it all from Mom), and then headed out with B to Cheeseburger in Paradise. It definitely isn't paradise. I haven't been there in almost a year, and I now remember exactly why—bad singers butchering good songs, music that is too loud to talk over, and food that is overpriced and not that good.

We had some fun chatting, however, and I was able to pick up a few pictures (like the beer stuff above). It's nice to be able to do that. We got out pretty late, though—almost 12:30—and I was definitely ready for bed when I finally got there.


And Wednesday, I realized that I am going to have an easier time making an application I want to create, since Python has a lot of the structures in place to help make it happen.

This is pretty exciting, and caused me to go out and by whiteboard markers. I have a list of things to do, and I have a good separation between components, which means that it's going to be hopefully fairly clean to implement.

I also got to tool around some with C# on Linux at work, which is intriguing and may be a good thing. My photo organization tool, F-Spot, is written in C#, and it works fairly well. (The issue isn't the language as much as it is the feature set of the program, which could use a few improvements.)


Today will bring more cleaning (I just emptied the office of four bowls, a plate, a 64-oz container of Gatorade, and I have much more to go) and evalution of luggage to take to Nairobi. Life is busy, and the coffee is good. (I made it this morning, since Mom was out on a walk.)

And despite very hot temperatures to start the week, it has cooled down to the low 80s with little humidity lately. It should get back into the 90s next week for a little while, I expect, but for now I'm really enjoying the weather. Hopefully I can cultivate my knuckle-freckles well.