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.

First Ride of the Season!

Today was the first ride of the season. It was good to see almost everybody showing up for the ride, including two Road Dawgz who showed up for the eight o'clock ride but forgot about daylight savings time...
Working out at lunch really seems to work - I was able to make it all the way from Elmwood Park to Tenafly on my big ring. Not that I plan on doing that regularly, but it's good to know that I'm strong enough at the beginning of the season to do something that I wasn't able to do at the end of the season in previous years! Just a few pounds more, and a little bit more strength, and I can punish everbody at will. Mario and Charlie were happy with the shape that I'm in and are already looking forward to get the paceline exercise going again. Will we be able to do a 30mph paceline this year?

Weight Loss

This week was pretty good, although I expected a higher weight loss than it turned out to be. But that might have been compensation for last week, when I lost more than I expected (based on weighing at home). It seems that I'm back on track of losing one pound per week - exactly 1.0 pounds this week! I'm still awfully close to target, I'd rather have a couple of real good weeks to get an extra buffer.
What made it a good week? Staying away from the choclate chip cookies. And I really did very well at the lunch I had with colleagues at the South City Grill last thursday - no desert, the entree was a seafood salad and I used my original lunch as dinner that night.

Tomorrow will hopefully be a biking day - another way to lose pounds!