Doc Searls has been looking for a new camera and decided on the Canon EOS 30D.
He made a good choice, in my opinion.
The more I use this camera, the more amazed I am by what it can do. My newest addition is a Canon EF-S 60mm macro lens, which lets me take close up pictures of small things, like this orb weaver who has a home outside my study window.
I have a lot more to learn about photography, but the more I learn the more I like the 30D.
Stowe Boyd’s blog is like golf or photography. There are some good shots, a few bad ones, and then, every so often, the magical, perfect shot that keeps you running back for more.
Not too long ago, he nailed the noisy blogosphere thing so well, I quoted his post like scripture.
Today, he talks about the downside of Advisory Capital and in the process gives a sermon that applies just as much to business, relationships and life. Much of what he says is completely consistent with my experience with business, both big and small. And much of what he says is equally consistent with encounters we’ve all had in conference rooms, board rooms and our neighborhoods.
Here’s the part that made me stand up and shout Amen this time:
“[O]nce rule #1 is broken — the “No Assholes” rule — then there is no hope. People can learn to moderate their behavior, but never their basic psychological makeup. Once they start [screwing] you over, there is no end, because if they rationalize doing it once they will always be able to go through the same thinking process again and again.”
This precipitating event for the violation of the “No Assholes” rule (a first cousin of my long held and often applied “That Just Ain’t Right” doctrine) is when someone has to choose between doing the right thing and the easy thing. Between telling the truth and saying what they believe is in their best interest. Some people will make the right choice, but many won’t.
And someone who lies about one thing is a sure bet to lie about the next thing, and the thing after that.
Stowe is generally correct that suing someone over a resulting breach of a contract is generally a waste of karma that only enriches the lawyers (of which I am one). Unless there is a lot of money at stake, our legal system often doesn’t provide realistic options for the wronged.
All you can do in that case is, as Stowe suggests, avoid the offenders like the plague. I have walked away from some big clients over the “That Just Ain’t Right” doctrine, and I have let budding friendships die on the vine for the same reason.
It’s not a perfect solution, but the more people who demand compliance with the “No Assholes” rule and the “That Just Ain’t Right” doctrine, the better off we’ll all be.
Farmgate, one of my daily reads, reports mostly good news about the condition of family farms.
According to the 2005 Family Farm Report, most U.S. farms – 98 percent in 2003 – are family farms, defined as “operations organized as proprietorships, partnerships, or family corporations that do not have hired mangers.”
While small farms with annual sales of less than $10,000, very large farms, and non-family farms have increased in number, the number of small farms with annual sales between $10,000 and $249,999, which is where most farmers I know fall, declined.
The report also confirmed what anyone with significant farming exposure already knows:
“Small-farm households typically receive substantial off-farm income and do not rely primarily on the farms for their livelihood. Most off-farm income is from earned sources, either wage-and-salary jobs or self-employment.”
While not an entirely rosy picture, it is reassuring to read that the family farm is still alive and somewhat well in the country that has eaten at its table for hundreds of years.
I came across this neat site (but they need to lose the lame pop-up ads), which tells you the top rated TV shows for any year from 1950 to 2000. I was born in 1960, which seems to have been the year of the western. Maybe that explains why I like them so much.
Here are the top 6 shows from 1960:
Gunsmoke
Wagon Train
Have Gun Will Travel
The Andy Griffith Show
The Real McCoys
Rawhide
Here are the top 6 from 1966, the year Raina was born (the year of the somebody show):
Bonanza
The Red Skelton Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Lucy Show
The Jackie Gleason Show
Green Acres
And finally from 1998, the year Cassidy was born:
ER
Friends
Frasier
Monday Night Football
Veronica’s Closet
Jesse
Delaney and Luke came along after 2000, so no lists for them- at least not on that site.
Luke was baptized during our church service today. Gigi and Papa were there, as were his Godfamilies the Clarks and the Veldmans, and Delaney’s Godfamily, the Fenrichs. We had a big crowd and Luke handled it like a champ.
Afterwards, everyone came over for a fajita lunch and swimming. Cassidy, Evie and Rachael wrote and have been practicing a musical about owls, based on some baby owls we saw in our yard the other night. They prevailed on me to make a stage out of the deck in the new yard, complete with offstage areas behind some camping air mattresses, on which they performed their musical to thunderous applause.
The kids practiced their swimming strokes a little, played games and took turns jumping off the big wall into the pool. I got some good shots, including this one of Larsen, Evie and Cassidy. After cake and ice cream, the kids each recorded a message in an audible photo book for Remy, who is moving to Michigan in two weeks (this being a profoundly sad thing for us). Afterwards, the kids went to Rachael’s dance recital and Evie’s piano recital.
Between getting up at 6:30 a.m. for swim practice yesterday and the busy day we had today, everybody is pretty wiped out. I think it’s time for Daddy to take a little nap.
Unless, of course, the kids want to play a little soccer.
Jason Kottke posts a list by film critic Jim Emerson of 102 movies someone ought to have seen to be considered movie literate. I suspect my list and that of just about everyone else would be different, since we all like and dislike different things, but here’s the list.
An asterisk means I have seen it.
* 2001: A Space Odyssey (overrated)
* The 400 Blows (pretty good)
8 1/2
Aguirre, the Wrath of God
* Alien (defines the modern alien genre)
* All About Eve (good)
* Annie Hall (other than Tiger Lilly, I find Woody Allen’s movies boring)
* Apocalypse Now (great movie)
* Bambi (I liked it and my kids do too)
The Battleship Potemkin
* The Best Years of Our Lives (great movie)
* The Big Red One (pretty good)
The Bicycle Thief
* The Big Sleep (OK, not great)
* Blade Runner (one of my all time faves)
Blowup (never seen it, but would like to)
* Blue Velvet (great movie)
* Bonnie and Clyde (OK, not great)
* Breathless (nah)
Bringing Up Baby
* Carrie (good scary movie)
* Casablanca (as good as its reputation_
Un Chien Andalou
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis
* Chinatown (pretty good)
* Citizen Kane (great film)
* A Clockwork Orange (famous for being weird, but still pretty good)
* The Crying Game (great ending)
* The Day the Earth Stood Still (great sci-fi)
* Days of Heaven (fantastic movie; a must see)
* Dirty Harry (great Clint)
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
* Do the Right Thing (good movie)
La Dolce Vita
* Double Indemnity (one of my favorite of the film noir genre)
* Dr. Strangelove (great film)
* Duck Soup (I actually get the Marx brothers)
* E.T. — The Extra-Terrestrial (great at the time)
* Easy Rider (good, but Wild Angels was better)
* The Empire Strikes Back (masterpiece)
* The Exorcist (great horror film)
* Fargo (great, but Raising Arizona is better)
* Fight Club (OK, not great)
* Frankenstein (masterpiece, if he’s talking about the 1931 one)
The General
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (should have added III too)
* Gone With the Wind (I liked it the first few times I saw it)
* GoodFellas (great film)
* The Graduate (great film)
* Halloween (maybe the best modern horror film)
* A Hard Day’s Night (good because it’s the Beatles)
Intolerance
It’s a Gift
* It’s a Wonderful Life (my favorite holiday film ever)
* Jaws (how in the world has Jason not seen this!)
* The Lady Eve (good, but not great)
* Lawrence of Arabia (great epic film)
M
* Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (great post apocalypse films)
* The Maltese Falcon (great Bogart)
* The Manchurian Candidate (OK, not great)
* Metropolis (never understood the big deal about this one)
Modern Times
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the funniest movie ever)
* Nashville (good, not great)
* The Night of the Hunter (great Mitchum)
* Night of the Living Dead (one of my all time faves)
* North by Northwest (my favorite Hitchcock)
Nosferatu
* On the Waterfront (Brando when he wasn’t a cartoon character)
Once Upon a Time in the West
* Out of the Past (Another of my favorite film noir movies)
Persona
* Pink Flamingos (great, but I like Hairspray better)
* Psycho (good)
* Pulp Fiction (one of my all-time faves)
Rashomon
* Rear Window (good)
* Rebel Without a Cause (OK, but not as good as its reputation)
* Red River (great movie- there should be more westerns on this list)
* Repulsion (weird, but with Catherine Deneuve)
The Rules of the Game
* Scarface (pretty good, but Casino’s better)
The Scarlet Empress
* Schindler’s List (masterpiece
* The Searchers (another great western)
The Seven Samurai
* Singin’ in the Rain (a rare musical I like)
* Some Like It Hot (OK, not great)
* A Star Is Born (the original is bearable; I hated the remake)
* A Streetcar Named Desire (great movie)
* Sunset Boulevard (another great film noir movie)
* Taxi Driver (great movie)
* The Third Man (great Orson Welles)
Tokyo Story
* Touch of Evil (definitely in my top 5 all time)
* The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (great movie)
Trouble in Paradise
* Vertigo (more great Hitchcock)
* West Side Story (didn’t like it)
* The Wild Bunch (great western)
* The Wizard of Oz (speaks for itself)
I’ve seen 78 out of 102.
All in all, a fairly good list. I would certainly add The Birds, Suddenly Last Summer, Summer of 42, The Last Picture Show, and A Place in the Sun. I would seriously consider adding Full Metal Jacket, the remake of The Thing, Belly of an Architect and the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
If I’m to be your camera,
then who will be your face?
-REM
After researching cameras for a while and considering the various alternatives, I bought a new digital camera. I wanted a digital SLR that would allow me to take photos semi-automatically, like my trusty Sony DSC-V3, and do a lot more manual stuff as I climb up the learning curve.
I settled on a Canon EOS 30D. I also bought a Canon Speedlite flash to use with it. My impressions so far are (a) it is a great camera that can do everything I want it to and more, and (b) I have a lot to learn about photography. I am going to take a camera class later this month, but so far it has been a process of trial and error. I happened across Darren Rowse’s excellent Digital Photography School blog. If anyone has any other sites I should bookmark, please let me know. My initial objectives are to learn the proper settings to take shots of the kids playing their sports and colorful shots in lower light settings and to learn how to manipulate depth of field.
Through reading the manual several times and trial and error, I have already 
learned a lot more than I knew before about the various camera setting. I am still confused by the practical interplay between aperture, shutter speed and ISO. I know what each term means, but I don’t yet know how to set each for a particular shot or which one to set first.
I took a hundred or so photos today, first of a birthday party and then of the kids and their friends swimming.
The kids love to jump off the walls behind the swimming pool. Previously, getting a decent photo of them in flight was a hit and miss proposition, with at best one face sort of in focus and the rest of the faces blurry.
This camera will take 5-6 shots of the same jump, with every part of the picture in focus. This camera compared to my old one is more than night and day.
And that’s notwithstanding the fact that I am a mere novice at the digital SLR thing.
It’s going to be fun learning all this stuff, and I certainly welcome any bookmarks or pointers from the experts.
Mathew tagged me with the Three Things Meme, so here goes.
The three things are supposed to be things that you would like to see occur in your lifetime. Some folks mention the important, serious things, like curing cancer, world peace and making the world safe for all children (which would be my serious three), but I’m going to follow Mathew’s lead and give my less serious three:
1) Wake Forest win a national championship in college basketball.
2) The remaining members of Led Zeppelin tour again and come to Houston.
3) XM and Sirius satellite radio merge so I can get Sirius channel 14 on XM.
I think the chances of the above happening are 3%, 60% and 75%
I’m tagging Mike Miller, OmegaMom and Rick Mahn.
Thomas Hawk has another great photo, this time of the San Francisco immigrant march.
Maybe I’m more of a visual person that I thought, but more and more I find myself moved in areas of spirituality, philosophy and politics by a photograph. I think it’s because a photo isn’t trying to cram itself down your throat.
It just wants you to look.
Which is what the immigrant marches were all about.
What a beautiful little girl.
Newsome.Org 