The Nysaverse

A while back I’d attempted to use the iPhone app that allows me to blog from my iPhone. Unfortunately, my version of WordPress was older than that supported by the app. So today while working with other hosting stuff, I decided to run the upgrade.

Of course, when I originally setup my blog it was in a separate directory (I thought I’d be doing custom code for the main domain location). So I go to copy the upgraded files into the correct location, and run into some errors. This causes me to attempt to delete the offending old directories… But ended up deleting the new, upgraded files instead. Now, this shouldn’t be a problem, except my host gives some good upgrade tools (which now think I’ve upgraded). Getting the correct files then turns out to be a challenge.

Grr… So stupid me, it took a while to get the blog running again. Maybe now I can post from my iPhone, which may mean better updating (or not).

A side benefit: the visual editor now works in Safari! Yay!

After reading a blog post by somebody about their lens usage over the past year, I decided to dig into Aperture’s internals and pull up my own lens statistics…

After fighting with Aperture’s screwy internal schema and Aperture’s screwy date/time stamps (which are actually the Unix timestamp minus the Unix timestamp for January 1, 2001 - apparently that’s Apple’s “reference” time), I finally managed to finagle the data from Sqlite (which Apple uses for Aperture’s internal database).

The results for December 2008?

• EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM: 94
• EF 28mm f/1.8 USM: 1 (sad!)
• EF 85mm f/1.8 USM: 340 (yes, Tony, I’ve been favoring that one recently!)
• EF 17-40m f/4L USM:45
• EF 24-70 f/2.8L USM: 424 (borrowed from Tony for a wedding I shot)
• EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM: 105

It’s been an interesting exercise - I also ran the numbers for other months, and my usage certainly varies. Some months the macro lens gets quite a workout, others not so much. You can almost tell when we’ve visited the zoo (the 70-200 pretty much lives on the camera for those visits). Our Door County trip was mostly 17-40 territory (a little macro thrown in).

In case anybody wonders (or I forget by the next time I think about running this query) here’s my SQL:

SELECT zpropertyspecificstring, count(a.zversionid)
FROM zrkversion a

JOIN zrksearchableproperty b ON a.zversionid=b.zversionid
WHERE strftime(’%Y-%m’,a.zimagedate+978307200,’unixepoch’)=’2008-08′
AND b.zpropertyidentifier IN

(SELECT zuuid FROM zrkpropertyidentifier WHERE zpropertykey=’LensModel’)
GROUP BY zpropertyspecificstring;

Life has been busy - and now we head into the holiday season.I’m contemplating some reworking to the site over the holidays, dependent of course on how ambitious I feel. One thought is to merge this site more closely with my photoblog, perhaps even relocating to mwyman.com in a subfolder (or subdomain - blog.mwyman.com, perhaps?). Since I’ve been paying more attention to the photoblog and people I know follow that more closely, it makes a little more sense to move more in that direction.And besides, mwyman.com is easier to tell people than nysaverse.org… Not sure what I’d do with this site, though. Perhaps I could actually write an iPhone app and use this site as the base. Eh… future talk! Must get through the holidays, first!Until then… 

Nothing gets a stadium full of people to stand up faster than a giant American flag…

So I recently got a set of Paul C. Buff CyberSync flash triggers. My earlier/cheaper triggers don’t work with my 430EX, and limited my ability to do off-camera flash. Since I’m still rather interested in exploring that direction, this was a problem.

After some hassle with UPS (AlienBees claims their shipping does not require a signature, but UPS begged to differ), I picked up the triggers yesterday and gave them a try today. Imagine me freaking out when the flash gets triggered every single time I trip the shutter… but… the image doesn’t light!

Turns out there’s something up with the alignment of the antennas, possibly also related to the distance between the transmitter and receiver… Apparently the antennas don’t like being parallel — actually, that’s not correct. The antennas love being parallel. So much so, in fact, that they’ll trigger the flash before the shutter opens!

I finally figured it out when I noticed a small strip of lit image at the very bottom (Canon’s shutters open from bottom-to-top). The flash triggered before the shutter opened, and what the sensor captured above was actually the flash bulb cooling down after firing.

Needless to say, I’m relieved that I didn’t waste money on another attempt to avoid buying the über-cool, über-reliable (and thus über-expensive) PocketWizards… It’ll take some experimenting to determine how to best avoid a repetition of my first experience with the CyberSync triggers, but at least I now know where to start!

Hopefully I’ll soon have some photos showing me gaining experience with off-camera flash as a result!

It’s been so long since I’ve posted… While this past month has had much stress involved — mostly work related — the past two weeks have also seen my first real vacation of this year.

So two weeks ago Jenny and I went to California for the SSP 50th class anniversary. Along the way we met up with my brother (also in town for the reunion), and later with a very good, long-time friend Brad and his wife Katie. While we didn’t have nearly enough time with anybody (only so much you can divvy up four days — including travel), it was nonetheless a good trip and a great break from routine!

My return to work involved a fair amount of stress, partly related to goings-on during the two work-days of the SSP trip. The end result was my burn-out from the long slog of this release cycle got greatly magnified, and it was emotionally a very difficult week to get through.

Thankfully, last Friday I started a week–long vacation with Jenny and her Family to Door County, Wisconsin. Every year Jenny’s family rents a house in Door County and her (almost entire) mother’s side comes to stay for some part of the week! We’re now unfortunately drawing towards the end of the trip, but it has been a very relaxing and rejuvenating week. One thing to mention — tonight Jenny and I spent the evening at Door County’s drive-in movie theater (saw the new Batman and Get Smart), which was quite the experience for me (I’d never been to one). I enjoyed the experience, even though I don’t think I’d want to see every movie at a drive-in — still it has a certain charm you don’t get elsewhere!

I’ve also managed to snag a good set of pictures that will make it up onto the photoblog fairly soon (my current queue runs out shortly), including many I’ve gotten while playing with one of my new toys, an NDX filter for my wide-angle lens (NDX = 10-stop neutral density filter, essentially a solar filter allowing me very long shutter speeds — great for smoothing out water!). My next photo updates will have to include some pictures from the SSP trip, as well, but except for an Arboretum visit in Pasadena the trip was rushed enough that I didn’t get much for photoblog pictures.

Well, that’s all for the moment — it’s time to sleep and prepare for relaxing some more tomorrow. Keep watching my photoblog and you’ll soon see my photos! (the one at the top of the post is a teaser!)

A little late, I guess. But this past weekend Jenny and I became members at the Minnesota Zoo! So far in the past year we’ve joined the Science Museum of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota’s Landscape Arboretum, and now the Minnesota Zoo! At least Jenny doesn’t mind that I tote the camera around when we visit (thanks, Honey!)!

In any case, we spent this past Saturday at the zoo — me trying to get up-close with the animals using my telephoto lens, plus a borrowed 1.4x extender (thanks, Tony!). I feel like I’ve neglected telephoto — my telephoto shots are clearly weaker. The more macro-oriented shots I did in the butterfly tent turned out just generally much better — better composed, sharper, etc. Perhaps I just need to park out there someday with the telephoto and work it…

One of the more amusing things from the zoo, though — we witnessed the handling of a Prairie Dog jailbreak! Apparently some of the prairie dogs had dug under the gate, and made it out into the surrounding animal pens (some buffalo and deer — they weren’t in much danger of becoming tiger-food). They had lots and lots of zoo staff and volunteers rushing over with traps, and the non-escaped prairie dogs freaked out over the intrusion of their territory by these tall invaders!

And the new Russia’s Grizzly Coast exhibit provided some nice bear-sightings! Actually, they had dropped some lettuce into the water by the glassed-in viewing area, and one bear was swimming right up to the glass to get his meal. His paws kept landing against the glass, giving us a great view of their immense size (and the claws!). It was interesting how the fur floated around in the water, plus the bear did a great job keeping its ears dry… Not sure if it always does that, or it just happened to not get them wet, or what!

There’s still lots for us to see — we didn’t make it to the dolphin show, or The Tropics area, and I’m sure there’ll be days when the animals provide better viewing. But now that we’re members, we can make as many visits as we want :-)

So, it’s been a while and Jenny’s been prodding me to post something new so the little rhyme I’d altered the last time didn’t keep getting stuck in her head (who knew I had a hit on my hands!).

This evening I took on the job of cat-sitting my brother’s cat, Gus (full name, Asparagus Rex) — something my parents have been doing, but as their out of town for a bit, the position’s fallen to me. The big problem is that he’s un-fixed and I unfortunately anticipate a bout of two of spraying, on his part. Oh, and he has a peculiar and nearly constant meow which, after a while, can get pretty irritating. But otherwise it’s looking to be an interesting foray into maintaining a cat, some aspects of which I’ve almost forgotten in the almost-year since Amadeus. But my brother returns this weekend, and will take Gus back home (and end Gus’s confusion on being transferred from home to home).

Medalist’s summer rehearsals started this week — after a very short two week break (the second week of which was Memorial Day, which we’d have had off anyway). Summer’s coming quickly! We joined Jenny’s parents to watch the first summer concert-in-the-park near Jenny’s condo this weekend (something that feels strange since we’re normally in the band onstage).

Work is work, and we’ll hopefully finish up our major project soon, and not interfere with our planned summer travel… We’re heading out to California briefly for the SSP 50th anniversary reunion (and to visit with some close friends in Pasadena) in July, and shortly afterwards to Door County, WI with Jenny’s family for the annual retreat… Perhaps I’ll remember to make another posting before then! ;-)

I’ve been fairly absorbed with photography, and have a lengthy queue built up for my photoblog, mwyman.com. Jenny got us a membership at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, where I’m hoping we can visit regularly and photograph the changing seasons (and several wonderful pictures from which will soon appear on the photoblog!). That and the Science Museum, and some travel… Often feels like there’s barely enough time to do everything! (and sometimes there’s not!).

Well… hopefully I can remember to post before our trips… I know it’s been a while!

Cheers! (now I’m off to comfort a confused, and very vocal, kitty)

Having just encountered an issue where my car refused to start, until I’d let it sit for a while… I decided to compose a variation of the old standard:

You put the right key in,
You pull the right key out,
You put the right key in
and turn the ignition about…

You do the Hokey Car-ie —
Punch the steering-wheel, blow your spout!
That’s what it’s all about!

This past Friday was my birthday. Fairly low-key. Jenny took me to dinner at Ciao Bella, a wonderful restaurant near her condo. Beyond that, we had a fairly quiet evening. Lunch this Sunday with my parents at a local sushi restaurant, which should be fun.

Slightly farther back was a trip to Milwaukee with Jenny’s parents, meeting up with several of Jenny’s aunts/uncles and a few cousins. We took Amtrak’s Empire Builder from St. Paul to Milwaukee; a fun ride. I’d much prefer taking trains around the US than flying, particularly if the US would build the kind of system that exists in Europe — high speed rail linking major cities!

I’ve gotten some pictures from the trip posted at www.mwyman.com (my photography site), although I didn’t spend too much time taking pictures. Got a few decent ones of the Milwaukee Art Museum, although we couldn’t get inside at the time.

Jenny and I have finalized our wedding date, with both the wedding and reception sites. Beyond that we’re going to look at wedding photographers shortly, then we’ll be about done with planning for a while (we have 17 months left, so there’s no real hurry at the moment — although I’m sure the remaining months will seem to fly by!).