Ring Light Hacks

I haven’t been posting many pics lately, but I have been taking a few, and planning some more. And a big part of the planning is trying to put together a DIY ringlight kit. Brother pointed me to this one that lifehacker highlighted, but like all things I find on lifehacker, I found a better more comprehensive approach out there (specifically over at fuzzcraft).

I like the fuzzcraft approach better because it’s more planned, plus it was very parallel to what I was thinking before I started looking at what otther people were doing. One of the big things I found out is that polishing and properly aligning the fiber optic cables to the flash unit is very important. Unpolished fibers will lose a significant portion of their ability to carry and transmit light.

But either way, it actually involves buying and doing something, which at this stage is very iffy. Still editing Halloween parade pics.

Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends 2009 season at Baryshnikov Arts Center

To say that I am fairly new to the modern dance scene is something of an understatement. I know nothing of the art and fairly little of what it all means. What I do know is that I the little bits I have seen have been fairly entertaining, so tonight I figured to actually pay some money and see some of it up close.

As it turns out I’ve been going to the fundraisers for a small company here in the city, Isabel Gotzkowsky and Friends, and I’m on their mailing list, so it was the logical place to start. And at $20 for a Saturday night performance, that fits right into Gene’s budget. Sadly, Gene’s plan to get a date for said night of dance kinda fell apart, but that’s not important right now (I couldn’t find anyone. there, story done).What is important is that I went, and I had a fairly good time, with a few surprises.

For example, had I known there would be brief nudity involved, I would have gone to see the show when it first opened on Wednesday. And had I known that wine would be available for sale, I would have not made plans for the bar afterwards. But mostly, had I known I would be so tired, I would have takken a nap beforehand.

Don’t get me wrong, I was thoroughly entertained by it all, and I do plan on going to see future performances. But lord help me, I had to fight to keep my eyes open during the first act. Part of it was that I was very tired, and part of it was that it was very dark, but a big part of it was that the music was, for me, very very boring. Which is sad, because it was the only act that had live music. The second and third acts were a lot better, as I didn’t have any trouble keeping aake then (although I did get a bit distracted by the lighting).

Overall, I’d say it was a good time, but a far different kind of good time from my usual fare. If nothing else, it has all the marks for a good date: dark hall, wine, artsy, and relatively cheap. It’s too bad the season closed tonight.

Starbucks New Tea Infusions

Lately it seems that Starbucks has taken to introducing new drinks that are pretty meh and go away fairly quickly. A few stick around, Pumpkin Spice latte comes to mind, but for the most part the new drinks are just plain lame. But I got a coupon in the sunday paper for a free drink, and $2 drinks after 2pm, so I figure why  not give em a shot, I’m practically living out of there nowadays anyway.

Chai Berry tea infusion – It’s pretty much hot punch. One can hardly tell there’s tea in there, and it seems little expensive until you remember that tea costs $2, so in that respect it’s prettty average for your dollar to enjoyment ratio at Starbucks. What would improve it greatly is a shot of vodka. Giving it a shot of vodka would make it the best drink in the Starbucks lineup. I’d suggest you bring along one of those airplane mini vodka bottles if you plan on ordering this.

Chai Apple tea infusion – Hot Apple Cider. Like the Chai Berry infusion, it’s very hard to discern that there’s any tea in this at all. Tea is far too mild and subtle a taste for this mixed drinik crap. Hot apple cider at the greenmarket runs $1.50 a cup, and this is nearly twice that amount, so again, pretty average for Starbucks. What would greatly improve the experience is to pair this sucker with a apple cinneamin or pumpkin donut. Market it for the fall, and give it a nice atumnal yellow and red packaged cup.

Overall, these aren’t teas, these are fruit juice beverages. They don’t taste all that bad, but so far nothing great. Don’t know if there’s any good justification for keeping them on the menu permenantly. In the meantime, for the rest of February, I plan on enjoying them in lieu of my normal hot green tea.

Nikon 85mm f1.8

It’s not the f1.4, which is supposedly one of the best portrait lenses out there, but it’s pretty sweet nonetheless. Wide open, the focal plane is nearly razor thin, and a little soft as one would expect, but it’s also still great at blurring out the background. Sadly, I haven’t really had a chance to use it as a portrait lenses, because that’s totally not the style of photography that I engage in. But if I did do that work, I would hands down go with this over the 50mm f1.8. Not that the 50mm is bad, but it’s just that the 85mm is so much better.

However, what I use the lens for is as a fast fixed zoom lens for the dark gigs that I do. I’ve found it to be the perfect lens for shooting bands or fire spinners or pretty much anything on stage without having to get down in the trenches in the front. The problem with being in the trenches is twofold, the first being angle. Stages are usually elevated so that people int he back can see, and although I am a solid 6 feet, at the front of the stage I’m still 4 feet below the performer. The angle is just plain awkward, unless you like crotch shots or up the nostril action. The other major problem is noise, speakers are usually up front, and even with ear plugs I’m getting too old to come home with bleeding ears every weekend. However with the 85mm, paired with the Nikon D70′s 1.6 crop factor on the sensor, we’re talking an effective 135mm lens, which allows for me to camp out 18 feet out from the stage and still get some decent head-shot stills.

Put it simply, the 85mm f1.8 is pretty much the fastest furthest you can go without  breaking the bank. Anything with a longer reach is going to set you into the f2.8 range, and run you something crazy like $1000. Anything faster would be the f1.4, and those are running close to $1000. I got the older film AF version for about $350, but the new D  versions can be had for about $425.

New Tropicana

I haven’t been the only one disappointed with the new Tropicana box redesign. It’s a bad design change for many, many, many reasons (8 specific reasons, actually). If you can believe it, they actually had to make a website to help you find the damn stuff in the store. And that, right there, is why the redesign sucks.

For two weeks I was looking for Tropicana orange juice to buy, and wasn’t able to find it. I thought it odd that the grocery store would stop stocking Tropicana, and instead replace it with a giant shelf-full of generic, but hey, it’s tough times. I know grocery store margins are razor thin, and if it makes more sense for a store to stop stocking premium OJ and instead sell generic, who am I to question their business model. And then mom points out that the “generic” OJ I’ve been ignoring, that’s the New Tropicana.

I say New Tropicana, because like New Coke, they’ve taking something smart and simple and beautiful and utterly ruined it. No longer is it the premium OJ worth paying the little extra for, it’s just expensive generic. No longer does does the label make intuitive sense, you’re gonna have to break out your reading glasses now. No longer does the box scream Premium Healthy Natural Fruity Deliciousness, now it’s just another white industrial box. And it’s impossible to tell which damned thing is what from any distance longer then 6 inches from your face.

Buying OJ shouldn’t be this hard. Buying ANYTHING shouldn’t be this hard. You should see it, and tell from a glance if it’s that thing you want and love. Anything more complex then that is Branding FAIL. Pepsie may have changed their stupid ying yang, but it’s still there front and center.  What Tropicana has managed to do is unbrand their product. WTF?!

1982 All Over Again

Today on the train, I had to wait while a homless guy rolled off his 3 carts of stuff, and then on the bridge a pushy panhandler worked every single person on the train. Which in itself was desperate, cause the N train at night is mostly Chinese, and they don’t give at all. The month before, the police department announced they would be easing off those petty quality of life crimes. All those murderers and rapists we keep telling the police to chase instead, turns out there are too many of them for the cops to deal with rather then us regular folks. Rents in Manhattan have crashed back down to almost affordable, and my subway station is waging a daily war of paint against the graffitti kids. And through it all, I get this uneasy feeling that it’s 1982 all over again.

There’s been a lot of talk comparing the currrent economic collapse to the Great Depression, but that’s not quite right, yet, because before you get to 1939 you have to first stop at 1982. 1982 was a lifetime ago, and nobody talks about it much because, frankly, the kids have no idea what you’re talking about. The Great Depression you learn about in school, 1982 is one of those ancient things your parents talk about but was before you were born, so it’s ancient history and didn’t really exist. Except that it did, and it sucked.

Right now, everybody just talks about it being so bad because it’s been so good. The recession of the mid 1990s was fairly mild, or at least it seemed that way compared to the crippling stuff of the 1980′s. The end of the dot-com bubble was pretty mild too (so long as you didn’t look at your portfoliofull of iVillage.com), and before it all went bust things were generally fabulous for everyone. Oddly enough, it was the good times of the past few years that have actually been the worst. Supposedly it’s been a boom, but everywhere you look real wages have fallen and savings went to negative as people borrrowed begged and stole to make up for stagnant incomes. Housing prices went up, but unless youu bought in the 90′s you pretty much missed the boat, if you weren’t totally priced out of the market.

But 1982, those were tough tough times. How tough? It’s hard for me to say, I was pretty young back then. I do remember buying cereal with marshmellows was a big treat. I remember if you were lucky enough to get a train, it was dirty, broken down, and covered in graffiti. Women couldn’t wear jewelry, someone would just tear it off their necks. It was the era of the squeegee men and a weird boastful pride in your town being tougher then Philadelphia. It was a time of homeless men aggressively panhandling for money, a constant stream that seemed to come on at every station and street corner. You didn’t go out at night, people died for the stupidist small amount of money, and Your car had three seperate keys: one for the doors, one for the starter, and one for the gas cap. It was a time so desperate, people were stealing batteries out of parked cars. WTF?! How much money can you get for a jacked used car battery? 1982 wasn’t someplace you wanted to visit much less live at, but we didn’t hyperventilate about it because the 70′s had sucked pretty hard too.

Install After Cleaning

The very first thing I do whenever I get my hands on a new computer is to spend a week de-crapping the thing. And sadly it takes a solid week because you have to patch the OS mutliple times, and then uninstall the crapware, usually with multiple restarts along the way. And even then, if you go with certain manufacturers (SONY), you have to spend time hunting down the crapware they hide in all the nooks and crannys of the hard drive (no, I do NOT want the demo Spiderman 7 Video game movie trailer). But what to install when the machine is finally clean (and fast?)

I have a short list of things I go right to: Firefox, Avira Antivirus Free, Adaware, Adobe Reader, Flash, Quicktime. But after that it’s usually a little bit of just pulling down what I feel like. I’m still building an install disc in my mind, but techspot recently put together a decent list of their own, which isn’t half bad. Some of their choices I disagree with (seriously, photoshop cs3? Who has $700 to spare?), but overall it’s not a bad place to start.

The Pointless Acer Aspire One 2.0 Bait and Switch

The new Acer Aspire One 10 inch models have hit the street running (newegg.com, J&R, Amazon.com), and for essentially a $20 upgrade you go from a 8. inch screen and keyboard to a glorious 10 inch model. The screen doesn’t do much for you there, native resolution (actually, possibly only resolution) is still 1024×600 (which, btw should become the new web design standard). But the keyboard gives you much more room to play with. $50 cheaper then the competition gets you lesser build quality, but then again, $50! $100 if you want to go up to the category king, Samsung NC10.

What you do sacrifice, however, is battery life. And that’s where the baiting and switching comes in.

Taking the charitable view, Acer was so eager to ship the thing they threw in a higher capacity 5800mA battery in there to make their ship dates. It’s supposed to ship with a 4400mA battery, and all the spec material is out there advertising this fact. Coincidentally, most of those early adoptor models went to reviewers, who subsequently then raved about 7 hours battery life. You the consumer will no doubt read these glowing review, and purchase your own Acer Aspire One AOD150 10 inch model, not knowing that you’re buying a machine capable of only hitting 5.5 hours at most. Now, to be fair, Acer did immediately notify all the reviewers about the “mistake” almost immediately, but that still didn’t stop a lot of positive press from hitting the street before the correction. Not helping the credibility that Acer launches their new product with such a fishy start. And it’s a shame, because there was no need to try and bait and switch the market.

The 10 inch Acer Aspire One (seriously, why not call it the Aspire Two to differentiate from the 8.9 inch model?) is not the king of the 10 inchers, that title clearly belongs to the Samsung NC10. Better battery life, ginormous keyboard, superior build quality, and the fact that it’s been in the market forever (2 months, which officially counts as forever in the netbook market). But then the 8.9 inch original Acer Aspire One was never the king either, that title belongs to … the Samsung NC10. Only $100 more for better battery life, ginormous keyboard, extra 1.1 inches of screen, and better build quality. What the Acer had going  for it, what it always had going for it, best bang for the buck.

Great battery life (my 6 cell 8.9 inch Acer Aspire One AOA150-1447 packs, you guessed it, a 5800mAh battery), great form factor, decent keyboard, and reasonable build quality. Aspire Ones were perfectly situated as the best compromise between quality, features, and price. And at $350, the Acer ASpire One 2 (the new AOD-150 models) remains just that, the best bang for your 10 inch buck. $350 for (guessing) 5 hours of battery, serviceable keyboard, and cheap but not too cheap build quality. Plus, you can actually upgrade the thing without having to get all video tutorial hardware monkey hacker on it (seriously, Credit Card should not be on the tools list of things you need to open a laptop case). Sure you could go up to the King NC10, price of admission: $100 more. Or you could get the Jr. King, the Asus 1000HE, just pony up $50 additional please. But at $350 (under $400 with tax included), you’re solidly in netbook territory, and you get a great little machine.

In fact, if battery size is really that big a deal, you could even go one better and get the second best bang for the buck option: the soon to be discontinued Acer Aspire One original (See! Name scheme is all confusing. Acer Brand Managers, get with the program here!). $330 for 5800mAh of netbook fun, in the smallest practical 8.9 inch form factor you can find, better build quality, and with a second SD slot for more SD goodness.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Disappointment

Been pretty excited to see Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist ever since I first heard about it. Besides the fact that one of my all time favorite bands is featured predominately in the movie, it seemed to promise a virtual tour of the NYC indie music scene circa early 2008. The soundtrack is like a greatest hits collection of Brooklyn bands that carved out a niche in the scene. I figured there would be typical Hollywood scriptdoctoring to grind through, but the summary, pair of kids traipse through indie NY music scene while finding emo love sounded harmlessly sweet. And it is a cute sweet movie, but the pacing is a bit uneven and the drunk friend pretty much steals the show.

First off, the kids are from Jersey. Not in a good, moved in from ohio and can’t afford the city sort of way, but in a white suburban kids from Jersey sort of way. Bridge and Tunnel kids, essentially. Big downer (for reasons I’ll explain in another blog post). To make it worse, half our characters are rich and connected (well, all the girls are, as the one of the first scenes established the fact they go to some snooty private high school), it’s Gossip Girl in emo movie form. BIG downer.

Then there are the bands, or decided lack thereof. You get to see our leads in their fake band, and you get to see them play a longer set then any of the real bands featured. In fact, their fake band takes up nearly as much time as all the real bands screen time put together. Sure there’s a lot of music as soundtrack, but that’s pretty much it. And venues? Arlene’s Grocery, Union Pool, 30 second interior shots of Bowery Ballroom and Crash Mansion. That’s it. No Pianos, Knitting Factory, Pete’s Candy Store, Galapagos, Hammerstein Ballroom, Mercury Lounge, Lit Lounge,  Rockwood Music Hall, Living Room, Roseland Ballroom, Music Hall of Williamsburg, or even Terminal 5. Most of the movie is spent in the car on the streets, which makes it more a suburban fantasy then any hip urban indie thing.

Not that I would really know anyhow, I’m pretty much a poser myself. It’s been months since I’ve even been to Crash Mansion anyway, and I’ve never caught a show at Arlene’s Grocery yet. But my point is that you could transplant this movie to Englewood NJ, throw in 2 fake venues, a Metro-North train station, and a 7-11, and you really wouldn’t change all that much in the film. The whole indie music thing is just wallpaper for your typical emo suburban teen flick.

But perhaps most disappointing of all, and perhaps the primary reason I’m not at all thrilled with this film, is how one of my favorite bands is the musical villan of the movie. Yup, that’s Project Jenny Project Jan as Are You Randy, the band everybody in the movie dislikes. I froze my ass off last week waiting for Project Jenny Project Jan to play an outdoor ice skating rink set at 9pm on a Friday night. I’ve been hitting nearly every show they’ve done in the past year trying to recapture the kick ass time I had when they played the House of Yes benefit at the Pussycat Lounge. That lone weird guy dancing to them in the empty room, that’s me! And it’s just so sad.

Plus, I’ve not yet met a mysteriously pretty girl at the bar, so it’s all just Valentine’s Day  bitterness for me.

Sept 10, 2001

It was 9pm and I was wandering around the Borders bookstore at the World Trade Center. At the time I was looking for a Java book, as I was thinking of taking up Java programming (who knew that Javascript would turn out to be king instead?). And I found exactly what I was looking for, a giant mid-aisle display of thick red books on sale. I had the money, but I waffled, figured I’d sleep on it. A display that large would still be there the next day, I’d just buy it then. Of course, tomorrow never came.

About 2-3 weeks ago, after indulging in my flat panel TV lust over at Best Buy, I ran across Joe Ades on the street corner. He’s been a fixture in NYC for forever, selling his miracle peeler on the street corners of the city. A pile of carrots and potatoes, mounds of peels littered everywhere, his fine suit, and English accent hawking the superior qualities of his fine veg-i-table peeler. I thought about taking a picture, as he always makes a fine subject, but everybody’s already got a picture of him anyhow, I was in no rush to get mine. Besides, I’d just catch him another time.

There are no more tomorrows for Joe.