Category Archives: Photo Stuff

Camera

Posted on by 
Items Ordered   	 Price
1 of: Nikon D90 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only) [Electronics]
Condition: New
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
	$779.95

Scary. I just spent almost $800 with one click. Still, it’s something I’ve been needing for a while (since my D50 is competely busted now) and Carnival is coming up in a little over a month and Greg and Zeke and my aunt are visiting next month. Still, I feel weird spending so much money.

Life lately has been full of tagging photos. In 4 days (Friday after work, Saturday sometimes, Sunday sometimes, today after work), I have managed to tag May, April, March, February, and January 2004 and December 2003 photos. This means I now have a total of 183748 tagged photos with only October and November 2003 remaining between me and 100% tag completion.
(I have also completed the task of writing all the tags to the photo files, so I can easily migrate to Picasa at some point if that becomes necessary.)

I have also been following my goal of taking more different pictures. Life has been updated pretty consistently with both life and daily photos. As soon as I finish 100% tag completion, I will work backward in life so that there’s photos all the way back to 2000. Fun.

That means, of the goals I set for myself this year, two are now significantly underway. That’s not bad for end of February. Unfortunately, as they were sort of in priority order, I need to catch up on Scala learning, but meh. :)

Life is good.

Photo Dump

Posted on by

I spent most of the morning tagging photos, managing to finish up September 2003. I’ll probably go to May 2004 next and tag backwards so I can start working backward on life.alanv.org as well.

I also did some digging around and discovered that Adobe Photoshop Album (which I use) stores its tags in an Access database. This is actually kind of awesome, because it means I can export the information from the program into an XML file (or other format). Looking at a preliminary dump, it appears that there are two relevant tables: one for tags, which contains a row for each tag that basically gives the tag an ID (and stores information like parent tags and tag ordering), and one for photos, which contains a row for each photo that gives information like filename and path to the image. The photo table also contains a column that appears to be a base64-encoded bit vector. My assumption is that this bit vector is how the tags on each image are stored (based on the tag ID in the tag table). I’ll probably try writing a script to parse this stuff so I can generate dumps of tags by photo or similar. Still, it’s nice to know that I’m not locked in to using PSA forever, and can export my tags to some other program by some means.

So yeah, without further ado, photodump from the past few weeks:

Brian and Danny at lunch after the volunteer event at Glide.


Simon at lunch after the volunteer event at Glide.


Awesome cupcake boxes from the KaraVan.


The Bay Bridge as seen from Colt Tower. Also a bit of downtown.


A game of Kubb at work in the Spear 7 courtyard area.


Release food… Buca di Beppo this time.


He’s so pretty! :O


Ally in her new apartment.


The Container Store’s awesome rainbow-colored selection of hangers. I was amused.


Matt hugging the roll of bubble wrap at the Container Store.


Ally contemplating the fuzzy lime at dinner at 21st Amendment.


Matt in Shawn and Daniel’s awesome living room.


Shawn in his living room.


Shawn and Ally attempting to restrain each other.

Also, the Daily Photo Project seems to be good for me. It gets me out of the house at least once per day, and it’s making me notice things I never have before. I’ve been doing it every day, but uploads will be done in batches because it’s a pain to move files from one computer to the other.

I am really missing my DSLR though, especially now that I’m forcing myself to take more different photos. I might have to get the D90 this month.

Tonight is all-you-can-eat pizza at Local. Om nom nom nom.

Daily Photo Project

Posted on by

Today’s been an interesting day.

First off, life has gotten an update from the past few days.
In addition, it has gained a new section: the Daily Photo Project.

My last entry got me thinking that I really want to take more different photos, since all of my photography as of late has been random documentary photography of social events (work meetings, board games, rock band, food out) and that kind of sucks. The result is this project, where my goal is to take at least one photo each day that is “different” from my usual photography… that is, a photo with no people in it (or at least minimal people) where the subject is something I would normally never think twice about. Let’s see how long I can keep this up.

Additionally, Justin is currently moving to a new apartment. This would not be too terribly interesting for me except for the fact that he has a ton of Magic and WoW cards that he doesn’t want to move with him. As a result, I found myself dragging a suitcase full of ~12,800 trading cards home at around 8 this evening. I missed the bus by a few seconds and the next wasn’t for 15 minutes, so I figured I would walk to Geary and Fillmore (from Green and Fillmore) and catch the 38 instead, as it would take me around 15 minutes and the 38 stops closer to home.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account the hilliness of the area… nor the rain… nor my lack of direction in the area. As a result, I spent 5 minutes going the wrong way down Fillmore (down a rather steep hill) only to have to turn around and head back up that hill. My shoes, unfortunately don’t have much traction when wet, and pulling a very, very heavy suitcase behind you doesn’t help either. Overall, there were three really steep hills to climb (where I would actually slide backwards if I stopped moving due to the weight and the rain) and it took me about 20 minutes to go three blocks. Once there, the remainder of the walk was relatively easy, and I somehow managed to get the suitcase onto and off of the bus. Yay adventure.

So yeah, now I have a shitton of Magic and Wow cards that I should build into decks and play with. Yay more cards? Thanks Justin! :D :D

Also also, my parents and uncle had been visiting for the past couple days (took yesterday off of work to explore the city with them). It was a good time and I miss them already.

So yeah, two goals from my last post are now in progress (tagging photos and taking photos) as I have started tagging high school photos again (and have finished August of my last year of high school). Yay progress. Yay goals.

Nostalgia

Posted on by

I’m sitting here at 3 AM unable to sleep, so I’ve been going through old journal entries and website bits instead.

It’s interesting to see how my interests tend to come and go. For example, there’s a period of time when I’m really interested in working on card games and crank out many expansion sets for PPA TCG or Student Wars. Then that stops being interesting and I switch to working on website code instead. Various other periodic interests include photo tagging (and associated statwankery), video games like PSO, web design, video game design (PPA Adventures, CMU Adventures, etc), and photography. Currently my interest seems to be cooking and baking (or food in general, as I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at restaurants’ food photos on the internet). I should probably buy a food processor so I don’t have to mix pie crust by hand because mushing your hands around in butter and Crisco is not too enjoyable.

Another interesting thing is how friendships and relationships (in the general sense) change over the years. People I spent a ton of time with in high school (Brian, Akshat) are people I don’t really ever talk to anymore. I haven’t kept up with people I considered fairly close freshman year of college (Avery, Howard). Ev and I used to see each other every weekend (or at least every other) for random photography or games my junior year, but we haven’t spoken in long time. I used to do things with CMU people living in south bay a lot (jgrafton, dfontain, etc), but haven’t seen them for many months. People I’m hanging out with more now (Sharon, Charles, Mark) are people I didn’t even know a year ago. It’s not a bad thing by any means… just interesting to look at. Some of this is certainly geographic distance and lack of IM (which I consider my primary communication medium).

It’s also interesting to look back on my college years and read about classes and life in general. I miss college a lot… and as much as I complained about classes, I actually did enjoy taking them (well, most of them). I suppose there’s a part of me that really wishes I had taken the job at Viz and remained in Pittsburgh (specifically, remained close to CMU). On the other hand, I love my job here and really feel like I made the right choice. I don’t know. In a year or two it will probably matter less, but I’ll still miss the general environment of a college campus.

I also miss photography. Specifically, I miss taking black-and-white film and developing it, then making prints. There’s something about spending several hours in a darkroom that makes you appreciate your photos much more than sticking a memory card into a computer, and shooting black-and-white film also seems more rewarding (more challenging?). As much as my life is digitized nowadays, there is something to be said for tangible photos you can hold in your hand and hang on your wall. If I ever get a house, I’ll be seriously tempted to convert a room into a darkroom for developing film and making prints. It’s too bad I don’t live in Pittsburgh, where houses are affordable. :P

I should set some goals for myself for this next year so I have some things to work on.

  • Learn Scala. I don’t mean “Learn Scala” like I did with C++ either, where I read a book and poked around at some code and told myself I was done. I really mean learn the language… start writing little test programs with it. I haven’t really coded for fun in several months (work has been kind of annoying lately though), so this would be a good way to start again.
  • Finish the People Wars base set. It’s been sitting around in a semi-started state for a while, and I posted card teasers to Facebook many months ago. I should just sit down and crank out cards at some point, because it really seems like it could be an interesting game.
  • Finish tagging photos. My last year of high school is all that remains between me and tags on 100% of my photos. Unfortunately, that is also the year when I took my camera to school every day. Still, I should just get it done so I can start statwanking on high school friends, as well as by camera.
  • Finish the next RPG Get! expansion. It’s looking like it will be an Evolution Worlds-based expansion, which will provide a nice contrast to the existing PSO sets. Relatedly…
  • Playtest RPG Get! As the game will soon have 3 sets, it kind of needs some playtesting to determine what works and what doesn’t before things become too difficult to change. I really just need to sit down and assemble a deck and print it, but it seems difficult to find the motivation to do that.
  • Take more photos. This probably sounds silly to people who see me taking photos all the time, but lately I’ve been finding myself taking the same few photos over and over (see life for proof of this). I want to get back to where I was in college, taking random artsy images for fun. A goal of one interesting photo every day seems too difficult, so let’s shoot for three or four a week (pun not intended). This’ll also give me reason to update life more consistently.

Yay life. Yay 4 AM.

RIP Nikon D50 3/22/06-11/15/09

Posted on by

My camera utterly and completely died today. Remember how it was having some shutter issues where the mirror wouldn’t flip all the way, meaning I had to use it upside-down with high shutter speeds?
Well, today, it decided to completely die. The mirror won’t flip at all anymore. It makes an odd grinding sound when the shutter button is pressed, then displays “Err” in the viewfinder and on the little screen.
Here’s the last picture it took.

It had a nice long life. Got it March 22, 2006 and it’s taken well over 100,000 photos since then and has travelled from New York to San Francisco to Thailand to France.
(It’s also funny, given that the first photo I posted from this camera was a photo of Mark, and this last photo I am posting from it is also a Mark. The first photo it took, however, was Keith.)

Relatedly, today was board games at Jeremy’s. It was a lot of fun. I played Through The Ages, which took a while (as promised before we started). I was doing decently well (was making the second most research points each round, and the most culture, and had 9 civil actions to spend each turn) until the guy with a massive (75+ power) military declared a Holy War on me. Given that I had exactly two points of strength (and only had two military actions), I lost massively and all of my guys were killed except for one lonely worker producing 2 food. Oh well. Nevertheless, I only came in fourth by two culture points.

On the way home, I decided to walk (from 3rd and 20th) while Mark took the Muni. I managed to beat him home (the Embarcadero and Brannan stop). I was actually quite impressed. Either I walk faster than I think I do, or the Muni hit more red lights than I was expecting, as he only had a 3 minute wait for it when I started walking.

So that’s been my day. It has been a good day.

Edit:
A list of all my cameras and statuses, for my curiosity’s sake, along with the cost at the time. (Ordered by date of acquiring.)
Intel Pocket PC Camera – $200 – Functional, back in Arizona. Not really worthwhile to use. (640 x 480 max resolution with fixed focus and aperture and shutter speed.)
Olympus C-3000 Zoom – $400 – Partially functional. Light meter is broken, causing photos to come out completely black.
Kodak DX6490 – $550 – Dead. Very dead. Smashed into pieces dead.
Nikon D50 – $570 – Dead. Shutter is broken, mirror no longer flips up.
*Nikon 28-80mm f/3.3-5.6 – $0 – Partially functional. Can no longer focus to infinity.
Canon AE-1 – $120 – Functional. Not used as much due to lack of film and darkroom access.
*Canon 50mm f/1.8 – $0 – Functional
*Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 – $100 – Functional.
*Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 – $200 – Functional.
*Nikon 50mm f/1.8 – $130 – Functional.
Samsung SL30 – $80 – Functional. Still new, still happy.