Diddlbiker is now a permanent permanent resident!

The last Tuesday of september was a historical day in Diddlbiker's life: I-751 (Removal Of Conditions) was approved! No more INS (at least not for a long, long, time...). For the un-initiated, which I guess is about 99.9% of humanity:
After marrying my American wife I applied for a "Permanent Resident Status", usually referred to as 'Green Card' (it's pink, by the way). There are many ways to get a GC, and pretty much all of them are slow, unsure (capped) and take a tremendous amount of red tape.
Getting a GC through marriage, however, is relative straightforward (notice the use of the word 'relative') and has a 99% succes rate (that is, if you're married).
Now, you can call the INS many things, but they're not stupid. Bureaucratic, slow, anal, a lot of things, but not stupid. So, they want to know if you're really married, and not just faking it. This is where The Interview comes in. During the interview the INS officer will go over the proof you submit for having a shared address and life. Mind you, this is a bit of a catch-22 situation. Without the right papers (green card or visa), you pretty much don't exist in American society. You can't open a bank account on an expired tourist visa, you can't get a driver's license, get a credit card, etc, etc. So, proving that you live together is kind of sketchy regarding the address thing. Luckily I did get some services on my name (rent, phone, utilities) and my wife had the rest, so that worked out for the first interview.
So, three years ago we had the first interview, 21 months into our marriage. Why is that important? Because as long as you're not married for 2 years (24 months), the green card will be 'conditional' - you have to come back for a second interview, two years later.

Now, here's where things get weird. The second interview is to confirm that you didn't have a 'convenience marriage'. However, if you get divorced between interview #1 and #2, everything is pretty much just fine. The alien can file a waiver and skip the second interview. Any letters from the ex-spouse stating that the marriage was fake are routinely ignored sinces ex-husbands and wifes tend to send nasty stuff to the INS all the time, just to make life of their ex hell. So, the INS ignores that.
So, basically, divorce and you don't have to prove that your marriage was real. But, if you're still together, you do have to prove that you're still married. Go figure... Anyway, we passed that interview, and for being a PR, the INS is done with me. I'll receive my unconditional green card soon (valid for 10 years, renewing is a no-hassle operation) and I can finally move my 4-inch immigration binder from home into our storage space.

And if you think I got the name wrong: yes, nowadays the Customs and Immigration Service (CIS) is doing all this. But all the letterheads still read "Immigration and Naturalisation Service" - as said before, it's an organisation that moves very, very slow...

The bull is off the premises...

That was an email I received yesterday at work. Apparently, a bull had entered the office campus last week while I was on vacation. Although the bull was considered to be harmless and friendly, people were advised to go jogging or walking somewhere else during lunch!

...talking about bull stories!

Farber's gone ... there IS justice after all?

I was reading through the newspapers that arrived during vacation this morning, and learned something great: Farber has resigned!
For those who do not live in Bergen County, who is Farber and why is this such a big deal?

Farber is the state's D.A. (District Attorney, Officier van Justitie). Her boyfriend got pulled over for not wearing his seatbelt (pretty stupid during a Click it or ticket campaign), and while the police officers where checking his license (revoked) and his car (expired registration), he called the missus.
So, while he was handed out citations, the state D.A. arrives, in a state vehicle with a trooper as driver (Farber doesn't drive herself since she had 12 standing traffic violations). This is where things get interesting. The normal procedure for an offence like this is that -apart from getting a big pile of summonses - is that your car gets impounded. Not in this case, the car was escorted to the local D.M.V. (Department of Motor Vehicles), where mr. Goore got his license reinstated and a new registration for his car.
Yes, for normal people this would take at least a full day of very skillful fighting bureaucracy, but mr. Goore got his stuff handed over as soon as he arrived there. Of course, his girlfriend mrs. State D.A. calling to the D.M.V. had nothing to do with it.

So far, just some real stupid stuff that -for any normal human being with some moral fibre- would mean instant resignation. This is where ms. Farber is making all kinds of interesting remarks:

• I just did what everybody would do for their partner (except that we wouldn't since we wouldn't have such a powerful position)
• I didn't say anything, and it was not my intention to influence the police officers (who tried to void the tickets they wrote out after she arrived at the scene). Suuure...
• I wasn't there to help mr. Goore out, I just wanted to retrieve some sensitive papers I left in his car (now that's showing how good of a D.A. you are - leaving sensitive state paperwork in the back of a van)
• I just misjudged the situation a bit (not a bit, besides that, it's your job to judge situations, nice to know that you're not very good at it...)

So this week, ms. Farber resigned from office, stating that the state is putting its 'ethics bar too high'. Her partner is fired from his state job as well (no reason given...) - together they've lost a total of $220,000 in income. And for what? A $600 traffic ticket.

An unexpected vacation encounter

The last thing I expected to see at my vacation at the shore (my hair cutter explained to me that in New Jersey you refer to 'the shore', in NYC you refer to 'the beach'. I told him that as a Dutch-born, I should refer to that sandy strip as 'the beach' but he replied "You're in Jersey now") was a real live shark.
Granted, most people - including me - will think of 'shark' as an 800 pound killing machine as seen in Jaws, and not the shrimp-like creature (this picture, courtesy of Cabo Yachts, is a good example of the monster that I saw) that I saw, but still.
This was a live shark, with tail, fins, gills, eyes, teeth, the whole thing.
A f##ing shark!
In New Jersey!
The family sitting next to us at the beach came with it out of the water. Probably lost and stunned by the (relative) cold water temperature. I heard that it was probably a Sand Shark (hence the picture of one), but I can't be sure about that - except that it really was a shark.

Some marvelous freeware

Diddlbiker works in a non-IT environment, and that means that the goodies-bag is as good as empty. Don't get me wrong, my employer does not skimp on what they do provide - Windows XP, latest version of Microsoft Office, decent virus scanner, etc.

It's just that for any of those handy-dandy extra tools that, as a geek, you have uses for, but unfortunately, none of the suits do. It is tempting to install local copies of whatever you've bought at home, but most EULA's don't provide in that.

So, I set forth on the task of finding out what is actually free. Oh, did I mention that it has to be good as well? It is surprising what you'll find once you start looking...

Editor:
Notepad++ - this text editor is good, and I mean really good. It has even replaced my payware Textpad editor at home - since Notepad++ is sooo much better! Some features: multi-document support with tabs, column selection, syntax highlighting, executing scripts/preview in browser, code folding, find & replace with regular expressions, and still a 'lightweight' look & feel.

Zip:
Izarc. Windows XP has standard zip functionality, but I think that it is a little bit too transparent. The de facto standard is of course WinZip, but that has it's limitations - especially with spanning (that might have changed over the years but they lost me when spanning still needed to be done through 3.5" disks and everybody else in the industry had a better solution). For years I used Powerarchiver, and I still think it is a very, very good product. But Izarc is almost as good, and completely free!

Picture Viewer:
Picasa. ACDSee is great, but not for free, and the latest versions started to turn into bloatware. Irfanview is really good, but doesn't allow you to view the contents of an entire folder at once. Picasa is, if you're willing to accept that it is from evil Google, a very nice product to use.

PDF Creation:
Go2PDF. Creating PDF's used to involve expensive software (Adobe Distiller), or complicated setups with GhostScript and all kinds of reroutings. Go2Pdf is simple to use, and offers a full feature set.

If you know of any other great freeware, please let me know!

LaTex Schmatex?

Diddlbiker doesn't even know what triggered it but he decided recently to get some hands-on experience with LaTeX. Now, to correct the title, I actually [b]do[/b] like it, [i]but...[/i]
It is not as wonderful and perfect as everybody says it is. Clearly, its biggest appeal to most Linux Kiddiez is that it is not 'Micro$oft'. As we all know, each and every Microsoft product sucks beyond belief. Actually, it is all these immature kids that want to differentiate themselves from the big crowd that suck, they usually don't know what they are talking about.

So, what about LaTeX. First of all, I absolutely [b]hate[/b] software with funny names. As if "Latex" isn't bad enough, an apparently even "LaTeX" couldn't do the job for sufficient weirdness (see logo - this is how the software is referred to in the manual on a continuous basis. The horror!). It is like software as Lotus Symphony! or Act!, or that wonderful non-IBM compatible 80186 powered monster that Philips introduced in the 80's, the :Yes! (an exlcamation mark is sooo common, let's throw in a colon for good measure).

Before I continue to rant; Latex is really, really good. I like it. However, saying that 'Word is the worst word-processor ever invented' and 'no match for Latex capabilities' is like making claims that 'Outlook is much better at email than Powerpoint' - you're comparing two different pieces of software. Latex is purely typesetting software. It is language, not a word processor. The result is the same (a printed document), but the software - and the expectations - are different. So, in defence of word, some of the 'Latex myths' about how horrible word is - and what in my view the reality is.

Latex' output is much better than in word.
Could be, but that's probably because you're looking at something that LaTeX excels at (mathematical formulas for instance). I've been looking for the example that I found that was 'honest' proof - two identical documents with just plain text. "Look at how much better LaTeX handles whitespace, especially at the second sentence". The text in case had an indentation at the LaTeX document, forcing the words closer together. Of course did the Word document look bad...

Latex can handle large documents, Word can't
Technically speaking, LaTex doesn't allow editing of any document - you will have to edit your files with a seperate text editor. Stuck with an old-fashioned Notepad in Windows 98? Too bad, only 1 Mbyte...

Microsoft Office is such a memory hog.
Excuse me? I installed LaTeX (the ProText package) on my machine, which took a whopping 800 megabyte. With Microsoft Office, you get Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Access and a whole bunch of tools - and there's still room left

Word is so slow, LaTex is muuuuch faster.
True, if you're interested in a 500 page dissertation laced with formulas every other paragraph. If on the other hand, the scenario "Boss: can make something to show sales blah blah blah geographical bla bla costs blah?" is your daily routine, Word can usually help you out in less than 30 minutes (and that includes making the two bar charts in Excel and the map in Mappoint)

WISYWIG is horrible!
I saved the best for last. WISYWIG may not always be the best solution, but it is pretty much convenient. Switch to normal mode, show hidden characters on and there's not a lot left to surprise you in Word. And of course, make documents the way you're supposed to - using templates and styles. But no, reading the manual is only allowed for LaTeX, with Word we expect you to do everything correctly at once. And at the same time you see all those LaTeX editors that do have WISYWIG ability. Oh yeah, soooo horrible...

I could go on for a long time. Again, LaTeX is excellent and fun to play with for Geeks. It is definetely better than Word when it comes to large, complex documents. But fight Word on it's hometurf (30 page documents with lots of integrated charts, pictures, and excel spreadsheets embedded in it) and it won't come out that pretty...

Places I visited

I stumbled accross www.world66.com today, and one of the things you can do there is make maps of places that you visited.

This is me in the USA:


create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

And this is me in the whole world:



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Rather disappointing :-)

Reminder: reading from disk is expensive

Diddlbiker is working on a little project at work. What the project consists of is not important, but in one step of the process I have to find transportation links between two locations.
There is all kind of theory written over this, but in this case, the problem was very simple: I have rail links in table 'A', and truck links in table 'B'. What is the best routing option from Houston to New Jersey? Straight over Newark or is railing to Philadelpia so much cheaper that the extra trucking cost doesn't matter.
So, for each route there are about thirty rail links to choose from, and there is only one truck link that connects the rail link to the final destination. So what's the big deal? I have to do it for 200,000 entries, and that takes some time.
The initial approach was a brute-force pure-SQL attempt. Well, that didn't go over that well.
The second approach was a VBA approach. Each link would start with a recordset of all rail links originating from it's starting point, for each rail link I can than look up (another recordset) the truck link, and when I all have them, find the cheapest one. That worked, but it took an amazing amount of time - after 45 minutes of processing, only about 1% of the entries was done!
From here I had three options:

1. Intelligent approach: go and study and find an optimal way of doing it. I don't think there is a lot to be gained here - I'm only investigation 30 options per link, after all


2. Reduced data: instead of 30 options per link, I could reduce the rail set by 30% by predeterming what the 10 links are that are closest to the final destination. I wouldn't want to go below 10 - 5 or 6 links might be the closest location, but different stations, and you really want to see if routing over a different location works. It would reduce processing time by 70% - but processing would still take around 20 to 30 hours.


3. Caching: a lot of time is spent reading the truck rates, and there aren't that many of them (about 110,000 to choose from). Writing a simple cache wasn't that hard, and the result was amazing - total processing time went down to 45 minutes.

One of the nice things about VBA is that you get a pretty good Dictionary for free (it's in the Scripting Runtime Library). A small hashing function was written in minutes.

Total time invested: about one hour
Total time saved: about 80

Yay me!

Brilliant!

In really, really rare occasions Diddlbiker feels like he accomplished something brilliant. Today was one of those days. And the best thing is: my artwork is actually something small, elegant and comprehensible. What happened, was that my clients would need a table in a certain format, but the model it supported would demand a different format:

Client Wishes Model Demands 2006 0% 2006 1.0000 2007 5% 2007 1.0500 2008 4% 2008 1.0920 2009 3% 2009 1.1248 2010 2% 2010 1.1473 2011 1% 2011 1.1587

Clearly, my users want to specify a percentage increase for each year. I on the other hand, want a factor that compounds the increases year after year. The solution I came up with was non-equi self join with a kick: SELECT tblYear.Year, Exp(Sum(Log([tblRate].[Rate] + 1.0))) AS Factor FROM tblIncrease AS tblYear INNER JOIN tblIncrease AS tblRate ON tblRate.Year <= tblYear.Year GROUP BY tblYear.Year; I achieve two things in the query. First of all, by using a JOIN ... ON ... <= ... I'm able to pick up all years up to and including the 'current' year. Second, SQL doesn't have a PRODUCT aggregate function. By turning the factors into logarithms I can multiply them by adding them together - and SUM is something that you can do in SQL! Once they're all summed, I can reverse the logarithm by using an EXP (exponent) function. The query basically turns the first table (input-friendly) into the second table (model-friendly) without any scripts, temp tables or other garbage. Brilliant!

Speaking of brilliant: I saw a link on Joel on Software today about Elastic Tabstops - I wished every editor was that smart!

Nature in Bergen County

Diddlbiker's father-in-law got himself a bird feeder. That doesn't mean that you will get birds, though. Those dinosaur-descendants are very, very careful and seem to have a sixth sense when it comes to photography: they will simply not show up.

The good news is that those dang squirells have no problem with biped mammals at all, so while I was sitting outside in the blistering heat, there was at least something that I could take pictures of. An FIY for my European friends: squirells are not looked upon kindly in this country. They are as much enjoyed as pigeons in large European cities. So, in analogy of winged rats one could call them rats with fluffy tails.
So, why the picture of the squirell? This would be a great moment to quote Ansel Adams, or Cartier Bresson, about photographing the ordinary, but the truth is: they are adorable creatures to photograph!

So what about the birds? Eventually they got used to me and a couple of birds did show up. Thanks to Birds of the Mid-Atlantic I am able to find out what bird this is: a Mourning Dove. Just like in Dutch, American bird names are weird. I mean, you might think "tjiftjaf" and "lepelaar" are weird names, but what about "Grackle" or "Tufted Titmouse"?

I got even luckier after a few more minutes when another rare bird showed up, in this case a House Sparrow. I even managed to get them into a single frame! Without being sarcastic, there are a lot of interesting birds to be seen - I just never carry my camera with me when I see them (which is rare). So far I have seen:

• Pelican (in Charleston)
• Turkey Vultures (lots)
• Eagles (not bald)
• Cardinals (without bats)

And of course a whole list of ducks, warblers, sparrows, geese and other common birds.

And one day I will get a picture of that special bird. It will just take a while - I'm not a bird watcher after all.

...and team Holland is next

Couldn't watch the entire game today, Diddlbiker had to take his son to a birthday party. When I got back, Holland was trailing 1-0 from Portugal and an incredible bunch of red and yellow cards was handed out.
Portugal limped into the next round, decapitated and with most of their players vulnerable with yellow cards - they will not survive the encounter with England.

Team USA goes home

The USA team lost today in a crucial match at the world cup football (I refuse to call it soccer). Not unexpected, when in a poul together with Italy and the Czech republic, although the final ranking of the pool (Italy - Ghana - Czech - USA) was not completely expected.
The inexperience of the American press with the football and the role the USA team plays in it was fascinating to see. A lot of value was given to FIFA rankings. Rankings that work well in sports like tennis, golf and chess, since the players play a lot against each others, so their ratings are calibrated all the time. National teams, on the other hand, only play a handfull of matches each year, and that makes the ratings far from reliable.
So, going into 'Poule E' as the #5 team of the world looked like there would be a solid chance. To be honest, the team is good enough to consider it a serious chance for ending high in the poule. But some realism should be applied as well - both Czech and Italian teams are fearfull opponents, and African teams have proven over the years to be tough opponents as well.
So, the loss against Czech republic came as a total shock. Losing 3-0? Sadly, that was the only match that the Czech played really good, and the USA played really bad. Hence the result. So far, nothing shocking. Anybody can lose from the Czechs, there's nothing to be ashamed about.

What surprised me was the 'analysis' before the second game. Ghana absolutely kicks ass against the Czechs, and the reaction of the commentators: 'this is good news for team USA. They should get hope out of this game'. Basically, now 'all' that is needed is a draw against Italy, winning from Ghana and Italy beating the Czechs, putting the USA in second place. Let me repeat this: your previous opponent, who humiliated you, gets the crap kicked out of them by the team you will have to beat in the last round. And that is good news?

To be honest, I really hoped that the USA team would have advanced to the next round. Hopefully football will survive a blow like this - a lot of the enthusiasm for 'soccer' had to do with the good performance of the USA team so far. This moment had to come at one point; you can't progress forever, and hoping that team USA would be a serious contender for the world cup in the next ten years would be hopelessly optimistic. Any MLS game (and I've watched too many) will confirm that. Still, an 'honorfull' exit against Brazil would have been better than an early exit after two losses and a draw. But the agony of defeat makes the next succes taste better - something that team USA hopefully will learn now as well.

A trip to the terminal

Most terminals that Diddlbiker is visiting these days are airport terminals, but sometimes I get lucky. Last week Diddlbiker's department had its bi-annual meeting.
This year, the meeting took place at a container terminal, and included a tour as well! Now here is a place where I'd love to walk around for the entire day, taking pictures at will. Unfortunately, that will not happen for several reasons:

• Liability: chances that Diddlbiker gets run over by a truck and that the terminal has to pay a huge amount of money to Diddlinabiker and kid is fairly large
• Security: the usual vague reasons that are always given - anything that is worth photographing seems to be a potential terrorist target nowadays (remember, taking pictures of the GWB will get you arrested!)
• Competition - competitors of terminal X would love to know how many cranes there are on terminal Y, etc (after all, it's not like you can see those cranes from 5 miles distance...)

So, locked up in a van that rarely stopped, and of course sitting at the left (wrong) side of the van, I still managed to shoot some nice pictures. Worth a visit!

Back from Charleston

One day later than expected. My flight home on friday night was cancelled. I spent the night in the Embassy Suites hotel in Charleston, near the airport - I can recommend it to anyone!
The flight home brought me right over the house that Diddlbker lives in. Unfortunately, I couldn't see it - it was under the plane, not next to it...

Visiting Charleston

Diddlbiker is staying a couple of days in Charleston, for work. Since bringing your camera is always a good idea, I'm able to show some pictures as well.
The hotel is located on the bay in South Carolina, with a view on magnificent new bay bridge, and the USS Yorktown (an old aircraft carrier).
A few things to note about the hotel:

• There is no gym (kind of surprising for a resort)
• When going out for a walk in the nearby marshes, watch out for alligators!

Shooting pictures of the bridge is harder then I thought. But I won't be leaving without them!

How on earth do we fly in this country

Diddlbiker is writing today from his hotel room in Charleston, SC. The hotel room has free internet, which is nice, by the way. Anyway, my boss decided that we'd leave earlier - I didn't understand way, because the weather wasn't that severe. Just some rain.
Long story short: our 15:15 flight left at 17:45 - and that just for some rain?! No wonder airlines operate at a loss if a few drops of rain already ruin their schedules.

Interesting stuff to read: somebody decided to eat monkey food (as in dog food, but then for monkeys) for a week - after all, humans are primates. Hilarious!

Transcending into the next level

Diddlbiker got a little bit closer to Python-Zen today. Discovering that you have a folder with over two hundred files named '05????.txt' and '06????.txt' isn't really fun if they should be named 'm05????.txt' and 'm06?????.txt'. I surprised myself with conseriding this the easiest solution:

import os
myfolder = 'C:\\blablabla'
for myfile in os. listdir(myfolder):
__oldname = os.path.join(myfolder, myfile)
__newname = os.path.join(myfolder, 'm' + myfile)
__os.rename(oldname, newname)

(underscores used to indicate spaces; blogspot removes them no matter what I do, even nbsp's)
Time to write script: about 40 seconds - and done!

One day, I'll be a real Pythonista.

There are no dumb questions...

But some of them... Diddlbiker was doing his regular workout during lunch: 30 minutes on the stationary bike ('Cascades', 30 min, level 15). The program involves two cascades of increasing and decreasing resistance. I like the program; most of the time you spend spinning with low resistance, but you also spend a couple of minutes at each of the two peaks at high resistance.
Anyway, as I was just past the second 'top', a coworker who is working out on the elliptical machine next to me asks me is it possible to get to a good workout on that bike? Well, let me see... My heartrate is racing at 172, sweat is literaly flowing down my face in rivers, and my shirt if soaking wet from top to bottom. But I stayed friendly, and instead of being sarcastic and answering 'no, it's like a walk in the park', I explained that it all depends on the resistance level and the pedal speed. The weird thing is, she took spinning classes in the past, so she should know better - maybe because it is a recumbent bike?

They canceled my radio show!

Diddlbikers morning commute is a 40 minute trip over Rt 80 and Rt 287. Listening to a decent radio station makes the trip feel shorter. Living in the NYC are means that there is a good selection of radio stations available. Adding a few reasonable constraints (decent music, English language, traffic information) cuts the list pretty short. The one I stuck with was KTU. I really liked the morning show with DJ's Goumba Johnny and Balthazar.
So, surprisingly, they weren't there on thursday morning. Just another DJ, presenting his records as if he always did. Co-hosts Speedy and Cindy where acting like it was the most normal thing in the world as well. Mmmh. Both hosts sick at the same time?
Friday, same story. Now I start to do some researching, but apart from learning that Goumba Johnny (real name John Sialiano) did six months of jail time early 2000 for tax evasion, at first I learn nothing. Then I find out that they fired the hosts of a succesful morning show to replace them with Whoopi Goldberg. Hopefully they'll move to another station. As for KTU - I don't think their morning show will survive this. Grr!

JPEG Myths

Today was a rainy day, so Diddlbiker decided to try something out. What I wanted to do was show how image quality deteriorates through subsequent saves as a JPEG file. After all, JPEG is a lossy format, so every time you save, you lose some image quality, right?
Wrong. It seems that the truth is slightly more complicated. Save a picture with exactly the same image quality over and over again, and the image data will be saved in exactly the same way. Here is an illustration:

This is the original picture.
This is the picture saved at a 25% quality level. Yes, it's pretty bad.
This is the previous picture opened, and saved again at a 25% quality level. You'd expect an even worse picture, but it looks exactly the same!
The process is repeated two more times (four times in total), but no difference with the first picture...

Amazingly, image quality doesn't degrade over consecutive saves. There is the loss of image quality due to the JPEG quality used, but that's about it. I'm figuring that once the JPEG compression has taken place, the end result will, when compressed again, yield the same file. Some caveats however:

• This only works if the picture stays the same (except for the parts that are changed, of course). Resize the picture, crop it, add border around, mirror, etc, and you'll get another round of quality degradation. Any part that is changed will suffer as well of course.
• There is of course the initial quality loss - and there's not a lot of difference in file size between 95% quality and 75% quality (more about that in another blog)
• JPEG supports rotation (at 90 degrees) as well. If you are using a good image editor, all that wil happen when you rotate the picture is that a rotation flag will be changed - the picture itself will still stay unchanged.
  

Lesson learned: never believe 'general knowledge' if you can check the results for yourself - happy experimenting!

Swabbing

Diddlbiker encountered the problem that most DSLR owners will encounter after some time: dust on the sensor. Now, this is the point where nitpickers want to point out that it is not the sensor, but a piece of glass covering the sensor (aka 'high pass filter'), but the end result is still the same: nasty blobs on the pictures.
Getting a brush didn't get the job done. I could still see that friggin' speck of dust sitting their at my sensor, taunting me! Turn out that Copper Hill sells high-quality sensor cleaning kits for very reasonable prices!
There's still some dust on the sensor, but those are really tiny specks and you'll really have to work hard in photoshop to see them. But that big black blob in the middle of my pictures is gone at least.

On photo expedition in the 'hood

With memorial day, nice weather has arrived. This looked like a good photo opportunity, so Diddlbiker set course to nearby Garfield, to take pictures of the Orthodox church. It is actually called the Three Saints Russian Orthodox Church. Originally built of wood in 1903, it burned down in 1915.
A new church was rebuilt at the same spot in 1916, made of brick this time. In the beginning, the interior of the church was very sparse (it almost went bankrupt because of the rebuilding cost) but eventually the inside became as rich as the outside with its golden cupolas.
Taking pictures of the church turned out to be tricky. My initial thought was to have the setting sun lighting up the gold, and putting the whole building in a warm orange glow. Well, I was right about lighting up the gold, but that warm glow never quite arrived, due to a lot of clouds and an upcoming thunder storm.
The alternative was to wait for the 'magic light' that appears after sunset. In this case, it took me about 45 minutes before the camera started to capture dramatic light as shown on the left!
The downside of the time exposure is blown out highlights; the center cupola and the light spots are just white spots without any details. But it was worth it, given the wonderful colors in the rest of the picture (there's no photo shop involved, this is just the way the camera saw it - reality was less spectaculair. Sometimes the camera wins it from Eyeball Mk I...

Memorial Day 2006

Monday was Memorial Day. It is a very important day in the US, for various reasons:

• First of all, all the troops that have fallen are remembered. As a super power, the USA has always been involved in wars everywhere, so there is a lot to remember. Unlike May 4th in Holland, which emphasizes mourning about anyone dying in any conflict anywhere, Memorial day is purely about USA soldiers.
• Memorial day also marks the beginning of the summer. Granted, Baseball season is already on its way, but grilling outside is simply not done before Memorial day.
• For that reason, Memorial simply cannot be celebrated in any other way than with the parade, followed by a meal of hamburgers and hotdogs.

The opening of the parade is done by the local police force, and the Grand Marshall of the parade:

Then, off course, there are the veterans. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and groups, the old ones, from WW2 and Korea, from Vietnam, but also veterans that recently returned from Iraq. As Memorial day kicks off the summer, you can expect the weather to be hot, and not all veterans are able to walk the parade in uniform in weather like that, even in summer uniform. So they'll be driven around in fancy vehicles as well.

Then there is the rest of the parade. No parade is complete without marching bands!
Then there is the local fire brigade, counting four engines in Elmwood Park. Engine #4 is the one closest to us, wedged between the railroad tracks and the local sports fields.
Poor Dakota really doesn't like all the sirens and horns from the ambulances and the fire trucks. So we always bring his ear mufflers to any parade that we take him to.
Then it is time for all the special interest groups: little league teams, soccer teams, boy scouts, girl scouts, more marching bands and the local Hot Rod association
And with the last Little League team disappearing in the distance, the parade is over...
But that doesn't mean that Memorial Day is over! Now it's time to visit the inlaws, play around the pool, and eat hamburgers and hotdogs from the grill! Happy Memorial Day!

Photography == Money pit

Diddlbiker discovers that the more money you pour into your photography gear, the more you'll need. The never ending spiral of more! more! better! faster! bigger! seems to be feeding on the stuff that you throw in it, and as the Monster is getting bigger, so does its appetite.

When recently going through some pictures, I discovered how much better RAW is than JPEG. One would think that the difference wouldn't be that big, and if only Rawshooter would handle JPEG as well and everything, but the pictures in Rawshooter really do come out better than the JPEG's straight from the camera - at least the ones that need some post processing, since there is a lot more room (bits) to play with. When the light is good, the problem isn't that big, but in bad light, when a lot of curving and levelling is needed, RAW is sooo much better.
So, where does the money pit part come into this story? Well, there is of course a price to be paid for all that RAW goodness. I wasn't shooting the Five borough tour in JPEG just for the hell of it - 8MB per RAW picture versus 2MB per JPEG means that you can fit a lot more on your memory card! "So? Get a bigger memory card!", and there is the money pit part. I also need a sensor cleaner, but that is an entirely different story...

Use the right style

One of the things I have learned is that there is great value in being familiar with more than one programming language. The value of being 'multi-lingual' increases if the languages are from different families as well. Without digressing too much - programming language trees are usually horribly incorrect. I saw one where VB.Net was pictured as a derivate from VB 6, and not from C#, what it effectively is (may with a dotted line coming from VB6?).
I never realized the style issue until I got better at writing Python code. Before that, the only languages I knew where Pascal, Visual Basic, Javascript, and C++ - and there is, quite honestly, not much difference in coding style between VB and C++. The possibilities might be different, but the chosen solutions are conceptually the same. After all, they're both Algol-like languages.
It took my a while to figure out why I had such a hard time with larger Python projects: I was trying to design them as Algol-like solutions. Not that Python is completely Lisp-oriented, but once I started to think of tuples as basic variable primitive object types, solutions became elegant instead of just efficient.
Forcing good practice or habits from one language into another is not only dumb, it prevents you from writing efficient code. For example, unlike most languages, VB doesn't exit a function when the return value is assigned. Which is convenient, because it allows cleanup before exiting the function (DAO recordsets have a history of leaking when not explicitly closed). If you're unaware of this, or you force yourself do do an exit function immediately after assigning the return value 'because any other language does it this way', then you'll end up with storing the return value in a temporary variable, cleaning up, and returning the temp. value. And probably showing off your ignorance by telling all your 'coderz' friendz how uncool VB is.

Back from hibernation

Actually, Diddlbiker didn't hibernate, he was just very busy. I'm not a ! So, what kept me so busy?
Mainly work - a few business trips to Charlotte, NC, a place that I yet have to see under a clear blue sky. The last trip had a Semi Flight From Hell on the way back, more about that in a second.
My blogging plan for the coming weeks is to write a lot about Python. I did a lot of coding in it, and yesterday was the magical day where I Saw The Light. What light? At the end of the tunnel? The one in the basement that allways burns out? Nope - the same light that Jake of the Blues Brothers saw. Exactly - that light. I'm now Enlightened in How To Write Pythonian code - but that will be subject for another blog.

So, what about the Flight From Hell? I was supposed to fly with a colleague on the 19:30 back to Newark, but I never saw him. The flight was heavily delayed, due to thunderstorms over Newark - and according to my wife, the sky in northern Jersey was as clear as glass. So, the pilots explained to us that the thunderstorms would be there when we'd land, and that nobody really understands what Washington traffic control is thinking anyway.
We finally boarded around 22:00, and were warned that take-off would only be at 23:11 - but we had to clear the gate for an incoming flight. Most passengers had already canceled and stayed in a hotel at that point, so the flight was very empty and service was good.
We landed in Newark around 0:30, in thunderstorms, just as traffic control had told us - thunderstorms that started when we got there - if our flight wasn't delayed for four hours, we would have been fine!

And my colleague? He was "lucky" enough to get a seat on the 18:00 flight (completely booked full of course), selfishly not thinking about me. His punishment: their flight sat on the tarmac for three and a half hours before leaving at 21:30. Now, that was a real Flight From Hell...

Bike New York

Diddlbiker hasn't posted in a very long time, and feels very bad about that. I do have some valid excuses (or not?). Business trips and family time ate up most of my time available to blog. Of course, 'no time' is not a valid excuse, you can always make time. Let's just say that I made time for things that I deemed more important...
Anyway, today was the Five Borough tour, a bike tour trough the five boroughs of New York: Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. To be honest, the ride is mainly Manhatten, Queens and Brooklyn - both the Bronx and Staten Island are 'enter and then leave via the shortest way' kind of adventures. Later this week I'll post some pictures of the event.
Traditionally we finished the event with a dinner at Carmine's. It still amazes me - we had appetizers, four different entrees, icecream and coffee and a large amount of wine - all for $33 per person (including a generous tip).
And no, I didn't get weighted this week - traffic was so back on the way back from my son's karate class that I missed weight watchers - but I did watch what I ate.

Weight Loss update

Amazingly, after not checking in for a week followed by a week in The South with plenty of lunches and dinners, and I still managed to lose almost three pounds!
Even better, it puts me back on track - I'm now 5 weeks ahead of schedule, on only 5.4 pounds away from my 225 lbs. goal.

Is that the store...

...where Diddlbiker bought his DSRL camera? Yes! It is! You would never think that this building in Brooklyn houses Ace Photo & Digital - an address that I got in the first place because they're selling through Amazon!
How did I get this picture? First of all, apologies for shameless deeplinking, but I don't think it's causing any problems with the (lack of) traffic that this blog is generating. There is this guy in Brooklyn, Don Wiss, has made a list of storefronts of Brooklyn camera stores.
Somehow, most of the mail order shops that one can find on the internet are located in Brooklyn, NY. They all have a few things in common - good looking website, horrible looking 'storefront' for instance.
Not every crummy store is manned by crooks, but there is no doubt that the chances of getting ripped off have a pretty linear relation to how bad the store looks. For now, I've decided to stick with stores that sell at the street as well - B&H, Adorama, but also Abes of Main and ShopSunshine. I got more observant after visiting Don's website, so while going through the invoices of different vendors I also noticed that the invoices are (apart from business address, etc) each other clones. There must be some turnkey package that allows you to run a webstore right out of the box, add some pictures and off you go. Lesson learned: be more careful when buying online (and use paypal where available)

New gear!

Just arrived from e-bay: a 'new' lens. The 35-70 is not very light strong (f/3.5 at best) but it's dirt cheap and supposedly pretty sharp. I haven't had the chance to test it out yet, so a report on that will come later. Having a zoom lens in the 35-70 range means that I don't have to switch lenses between 30 and 50mm that often. I figured that it's especially convenient for outside shooting (where light will be less of a problem - f/3.5 is for that reason not that much of a problem) where switching lenses (dust) might be problematic.
And if anything, how wrong can you go for $40?

I discovered something new!

Apparently, there's this thing called 'website'. Never heard of it, must be new. Diddlbiker decides to be on the cutting edge of technology and got himself one of those fancy newfangled so called 'websites'. You can find Diddlbiker's site at www.geocities.com/diddlbiker. I know, I know... but it's not as bad as it used to be. And Diddlbiker really likes to have everything at one vendor - that's so convenient in case that vendor goes bankrupt...

I'm still a loser

Not as good as last week, but I still managed to lose something this week. Which, given the circumstances, is a miracle - being in a class for two days (abundant lunches, candy on the table all the time), eating pizza on friday night and spaghetti on thursday, only able to go to the gym three times this week...
It is more important for me that I didn't gain any weight than that I did lose something. Apart from Easter celebrations tomorrow, there's nothing that will stop me from being good this week. So hopefully I'll be back on track next week.

Some observations on Route 287

Today was a day off, but Diddlbiker has enough projects going on to drive him nuts, so today was a good day to sneak into the office and do some work. However, I'm not crazy enough to get up at 6 in the morning. Being on Rt 287 at 9:30 taught me some interesting similarities between the 7:00 rush hour crowd and the 9:30 late bunch. See how they agree on a lot of things:

	9:00 late bunch	7:00 Rush hour crowd
65 mph? Wrong speed!	That's 10 mph over the maximum speed!	Tailgaiting, Highbeams
20 ft is wrong following distance	You'll need at least two seconds of space	Hey, there's room for my car!
Let's cut somebody off, here's my exit!	Whoops! Almost missed it! I can still make it... sorry buddy!	There's my exit, but let me overtake those two cars before slamming the brakes

Lesson learned: yes, you'll avoid the rush hour madness when you drive later. It's just replaced by other madness.

An amazing experiment

I've learned an amazing experiment on the morguefile website. The results are shown on the side here. If you don't think the pictures look spectacular, read on - you'll change your mind after reading!

The two pictures aren't sharp. First of all, it isn't necessary for what I'm trying to show, and second of all, the camera wasn't able to focus on the 'subjects' anyway.

What are the subjects? Two sheets - one white, one black. You can tell them apart because the black one is slightly darker - but not as much as you'd expect! If you take your time to setup the experiment (I shot the pictures with different textures, and under bad light), you'll end up with two identical pictures. What happened?

Keep in mind that the metering of the camera has no clue what the light conditions outside the camera are. All it knows is what it sees through the lens. The camera than has to make a decision on how to choose aperture and shutter speed to get a correct exposure. And that's where things 'go wrong'. The camera will try to expose the image in such a way that the median shows 50% gray. So, for a monochromatic image - wether it is white or black - the camera will adjust so that it will show at a gray level of 50%. There's an important lesson to be learned: automatic metering aims for average exposures. Whenever the subject is not average, compensate - or pay the price!

Earth calling Tranquility base...

Finally, after many tries, I managed to get a proper shot of the moon. Sure, I've seen pictures taken with the bigger brother (400mm) of my telephoto lens, handheld (Hail, Minolta Anti-Shake), but I've learned that -at least with the 300mm lens- there are a couple of things you'll need for great pictures:

• Great weather. Preferably cool weather, giving a crisp, bright sky. I didn't even bother to go outside on damp nights.
• Full moon. Much better than first and last quarter
• Tripod - in itself you can shoot reasonable pictures without it, but the tripod really makes everything a lot easier (see below)
• Spot-metering. Unless you want to go fully manual or bracket every single option. The moon is frightingly bright and anything else than spotmetering will overexpose badly. Metering is a lot easier with the tripod, since the camera is pointed to the light source all the time.
  
• Small aperture. It shouldn't matter, but an increased DOF helps to get the image sharper. Don't overdo it; f/36 makes the picture actually fuzzier.
• Low ISO. With the tripod there are no worries about long exposures. Not that you have to worry about exposure time a lot - this picture was shot with 1/250

At least I can stop shooting the moon for now. That is, until I get my hands on that 500mm reflector lens...

My thoughts on software patents

There is an interesting article by Paul Graham on software patents. For those not in the know: software patents are patents, just like any others, on inventions - but in this case, the invention is software - or more precise, 'algorithms'. An example of patented software is for instance the infamous 'one click' of Amazon - Amazon patented the concept of having a button on a website that allows customers to buy something immediate, as opposed to filling out an order form.
The problem is that many software patents are awarded to'inventions' that aren't really invention. Clearly, a patent cannot be awarded if there is 'prior art', but the patent bureaus usually do not have the knowledge to recognize such applications.
So we end up with companies having the patent on the hyperlink, or taking digital pictures. The interesting part is that Paul Graham says that software patents are not evil by themselves. He compares them basically with nuclear weapons - most companies will not use the software patents because their victims will retaliate by demanding hefty licensing fees for their patents. Graham claims that the evil is in patent trolls, companies that do nothing but earn income from litigation. Those companies have nothing to lose and will use their patents to extort money out of regular business.
I think that trusting the market for not abusing their patents is very naive. Legally it would be hard to setup, but wouldn't it be better to have a seperate patent categorie for software? And allow only those patents for which a viable alternative would be keeping the technology secret. Google or Yahoo could patent their search algorithms - if they wouldn't keep them secret like they do now anyway - but Tektronix wouldn't be able to patent 'digital pictures'. Mmmh. Would I be able to patent this idea?

Another short ride

The weather was bad Saturday. Lots of rain, hail, snow (you cannot imagine what kind of interesting stuff was dumped on the Diddlmobile), so it didn't look like Sunday was going to be better.
Well, it did! Although it was freezing (and I was cursing myself for not checking the temperature, assuming the same summer-like temperatures that we had last week), the ride turned out great.
Of course, there was the temperature. Wearing fingerless gloves was not recommended (question, after careful inspection of the pictures, can you derive who was the stupid individual that decided to leave his house at 7:30 in the morning with fingerless gloves? Hint - if you cant see anybody, it must be the guy holding the camera...) But luckily, the temperature rose a full 2 degrees (Fahrenheit) during our ride, so it became slightly more bearable for those with fingerless gloves. Did I mention the temperature?
Taking the pictures was fun by the way. You can see us here riding on Blanche, right before I peel off onto Old Tappan Road to go home. Not a lot of traffic, and the smile, you're on candid camera effect did miracles for everybodies expression.
Going back was fun as well - I was able to keep up with traffic in Dumont, doing between 25 and 30 mph (40 to 50 kmh for those in Europe). It makes it a lot easier if you're no longer an obstacle on the road but just another vehicle, although my legs started to give away by the time I reached the Armory in Bergenfield. Still, it is great to see that working out in the gym has so much effect! The legs got better pretty quick and the ride home went just as smooth as the inbound leg. Total distance: 33 miles - not a lot, but I've been limited on time sofar, and last year I used that as an excuse for not riding, not this year! Tomorrow probably no blog, I'll be home late from work for a two day class.

Weight loss update

Another good week, I lost 1.2 pounds, a total of 16 pounds since the beginning of this year. If that doesn't sound like a lot - imagine walking around with a backpack filled with two gallons of water (preferably in a jug, otherwise you'll get wet) and you can see what the difference is.
I'm especially glad that it's more than 1 pound, the extra .2 add some little reserve to my '1 pound per week' schedule, although I'm still awfully close.
The weather isn't helping either - I want to ride my bike! But not in the crappy rain! I'll have to find another way to burn some calories this weekend...

Sram powerlink

The best way to clean your bike chain is by taking it off your bike, and dumping it in a bucket with solvent. Gasoline will do fine, but if you don't have garage (like me), storing it might be bothersome. Besides that, gasoline is $2.50 per gallon ($0.66 per liter) now - way too expensive to use as cleaner. I choose to use Simple Green instead.
As good as the theory may sound, there is one problem. Every time you use the chain punch to open and close links, the chain gets weaker since the connection of the pin to the hole is deformed. This is where the powerlink (see picture right) comes in play. Don't think this is a new invention - single speeds and bikes with geared hubs use special closing links for decades (see below)
The old-style links need a screwdriver to be opened; the modern powerlinks can be opened by hand. At least, that is the theory. It takes some practice an supernatural powers to open the link after using it on your chain for the first time. Over time, opening and closing gets easier - I guess a combination of simply getting better at it, getting into the habit of soaking the link in grease before closing it (so it doesn't weld together) and a little bit of wear that makes it -even slightly helps a lot- easier to open it.

The trick is to push the plates together, and then move the two pins of the powerlink towards each other. If the powerlink doesn't cooperate, using pliers helps as well - although using them is not recommended. In case you do decide to use the heretic pliers. but the beaks on opposite corners of the powerlink and squeeze carefully. Another technique is to use some metal wire (hangers from the dry cleaner?) to keep links left and right of the powerlink together, thus removing tension from the chain. Of course, you could also lift the chain of the cogs to remove tension, that's what I do. It's a lot easier!

So, soak the chain. I always start with a couple of baths in plain water to get rid of most of the dirt and grit. Then I switch to Simple Green, until there is no more black gunk coming of the chain. And finally, soak the chain in boiling water. Keep it in the boiling water for a couple of minutes and then lift it out of the water (you still have that clothes hanger around somewhere, don't you?). Since the chain is boiling hot, water will evaporate very quickly and your chain will be dry (even at the inside) in a couple of minutes. Swing it a couple of times around, just to get rid of the last water, put it back on the bike and put the powerlink back (I mentioned before - grease it, so it comes off easier next time). Oil the chain (I recommend Prolink lubricant) and off you go!

A plus from the teacher!

The first assignment of the photography class was a bit of a disappointment, none of my photos were picked for display. And I really thought that at least some of them weren't so bad.
So, this weeks result came as a big surprise to me - all my pictures were chosen and were highlighted! And that while I was thinking that, yes, the pictures were nice (at least, I was happy with them, but I had never done any night shots before), but I didn't think they were that nice.
Two things were helping though: that I already had a whole bunch of experimental pictures that were fitting the assignment. And apparently, a lot of my class mates have a hard time with shutter time and aperture. Which makes me think that it should be mandatory for photography classes to use a completely manual camera first - nothing forces you better than that to learn about the effect of the different settings.

A change in the weather

Like they say in Dutch: 'April doet wat hij wil' - April does whatever it wants. Last Sunday we had great weather. I wasn't wearing a jacket, I was driving around with the car windows open and as the picture shows, everything looks like spring really has arrived: blossoming trees, deep blue sky, the whole nine yards.
That did really change today! The weather started with some crappy rain, and pretty low temperatures. But wait! There is more! As I'm staring out of the window at 11.00 this morning (no, work wasn't that boring, the contrary actually - I just needed to focus my mind for a second), I see snow flakes. Now, we're not talking about those sissy half-wet oversized raindrops that melt as soon as they touch the ground. No sir!

We're talking about real snowflakes here. The big ones. Pingpong ball size. Massive. With sticking power. I heard from people who worked in Jersey City that they couldn't see the city across the river (for those not in the know: 'the river' is the Hudson, and 'the city' is NYC), that's how heavy it was snowing. I shot the picture at lunch time, and two hours later everything was gone again. Surreal experience.

I'm just glad it didn't happen on Sunday while I was riding my bike. Now that would have been a story!

Stuff! Stuff! New Stuff!

I was confronted with an unpleasant discovery during my photoshoot this weekend: dust! Notice how I'm writing 'discovery' and not 'surprise' - dust on the sensor is a given with DSLR's, and the question is when, and not if.
The good news was that the dust particle (a dark zit of about 10 pixels across) dislodged itself, so it only showed up on three or four pictures. The bad news was that it confronted me with the facts: I had to get something to get rid of dust, and the sooner the better.
There are numerous options to clean your sensor of course. Some are not that good, others are very good at cleaning your sensor, but carry the risk of doing some serious damage. So I opted for the cheap option: an air blower, that should allow me to get rid of at least the biggest dust balls. Once I'm familiar with the cleaning procedure I can think about investing in a swab kit.
Since you're paying only once for postage, I decided to acquire a nice bean bag as well. This one is called 'the red pod', probably because it is, well, eh, red. The screw to attach your camera to seemed like a nice feature, although it doesn't work now that I have the tripod quick release covering the screw mount. But the screw doesn't protrude too much so it will not pose a problem.
What to do with the bean bag? It will work good as an improvised base for shooting pictures from the grond, from tables, etc. You can point the camera in a lot of directions since the pod is soft, flexible and moldable. Besides that, I needed something to fill up that ugly hole in my camera bag - the lens is fixed, but the camera isn't and I don't like that idea.
Next on the shopping list: probably bigger memory

Spring is in the air

After a winter that can be described at best as 'crappy', spring is all of a sudden in the air! Temperature has jumped from 40F to 70F in just one week (5C to 20C), and the trees reacted immediately, and started to blossom in a matter of days.
As I'm writing this, the burst of nice weather is already over, with rain all day long. But the modest temperature stayed, and one thing is sure - summer is on it's way in, and winter is on it's way out.