500 Jack O'Lanterns on Victory Drive

In case you missed it on Channel 12 last night, there's a house on Victory Dr. in Harborcreek that has 500 jack o'lanterns lit. My family and I got the chance to help with making them this past weekend -- it was a two-day project with a cast of dozens. If you get the chance, go check them out tonight!

Slacker Me

I started posting to this blog with good intentions of keeping up on it, damnit! Then my sister talked me into starting a MySpace page and it all went to hell. I guess MySpace is alright, if you can get past the terrible html abuses, frenetic banner advertisements and the overabundance of teen angst. :-/

Anyway, that's kinda what I've been up to. Reconnected with about a dozen old friends who I thought had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. Woot woot!

Been doing a lot of photography, of course, which should be evident from the Flickr widget in the sidebar. The grapes are ripe now, and a drive out into the county is wonderfully thick with the smell of them.

I was out at one of the Sul Farms locations in Harborcreek this evening, shooting. I had a momentary bit of dismay when I arrived, because I saw one of the rows of white grapes first, and they'd already been harvested. Fortunately, the Concords are still on the vines, beautifully ripe and very photogenic.

Zombie-Proofing Your House -- Options for Every Budget

I keep getting these search engine hits on 'zombie-proof house' and the like -- ALL the time. (My favorite to date is 'zombie-proof pictures'.)

I've had some time to think it over, and apparently there's some kind of need for this advice, so I guess I'll oblige.

First solution -- the fantastically unrealistic

Whatever the cause of zombies might happen to be, the best possible zombie protection is going to be a remote island. Worst case, if everyone who dies always becomes a zombie, a small island with a limited population could minimize the risk of an outbreak more-or-less indefinitely by following a few simple measures. (I think I read something like this in a Stephen King story.)

Residents would know what to do if someone died during the day -- immobilize the corpse immediately. Machetes, aluminum bats and shotguns would have a place alongside fire extinguishers. Houses with only very narrow (or grille-covered) ground level windows would be a must, as would strong, locking interior doors, panic buttons, panic rooms, and strong exterior locks. That way, even if someone were to die unexpectedly in the middle of the night, come back and infect the rest of the household, the problem could still be contained to a single residence.

Second solution -- the highly unrealistic

Assuming though, that you're not among the handful of people who could afford to buy an entire island and set up a self-contained community there for you and your closest hundred or so friends, (somewhat) less extreme measures could still drastically improve your quality of life in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

If you're in the highly eccentric, multi-millionaire club, I recommend a compound with a drawbridge, machine gun turrets and 12' walls with razor wire, surrounded by a 16' deep dry moat and an exterior concrete barrier strong enough to stop a semi without budging. That way, even if someone (living) were to try to crash your haven uninvited and in doing so compromise your defenses, they'd have a pretty tough time getting in. Under normal circumstances, little or no sound or light should be observable from outside the compound walls.

The interior of the compound would be stocked with Lots o' Firepower, several years worth of MREs and enough potable water for several months, and have the necessary space and a stockpile of seeds sufficient to plant a garden or maintain a greenhouse inside the walls. The garden/greenhouse should be large enough to sustain its residents indefinitely. Likewise, the compound would (ideally) have both gas and water wells on site, along with rainwater collectors, solar cells, diesel-powered generators and water purification gear. Throughout, blunt weapons and shotguns should be standard emergency equipment.

The interior of the compound would be broken up into smaller units, each of which would have a portion of the short-term survival supplies and could be sealed off individually in the event of a breach. Units would be separated by sets of airlock-type bulkheads.

Now it's not that I'd want to leave, or recommend that anyone do so, but if zombie movies have taught me anything, it's that it's just as important to have a way out of a sealed enclosure as it is to have one in the first place. To that end, there would be two exits -- the drawbridge would be the 'front door'. A well-lit underground tunnel sealed with multiple bulkheads and leading to a smaller concrete garage several hundred yards away from the main compound would be the 'back door'. Ready at both exits would be armed and armored Hum-Vees. Ideally, both exits would have locking mechanisms that required some kind of intelligent interaction to open, and they'd be designed in such a way that it'd be very difficult to leave one open and unsecured.

Outside the compound walls, you might also install light & sound generating stations. These could be activated on demand for the purpose of attracting zombies away from the walls and/or exits -- if an escape were needed -- or so that approaching zombies could be diverted and picked off via the machine gun turrets. (You wouldn't want them eventually piling up in the moat to the point where the wall could be scaled.)

Third solution -- possible

Stepping down another level from highly unrealistic to somewhat plausible, a brick house in which several floors could be secured independently would provide reasonable protection, especially if all of the doors were of the steel security type, and the windows were of block glass or otherwise able to withstand repeated blunt force impact. As before, non-perishable foodstuffs and weapons are a must, and some kind of discreet exit point is highly desirable. I can see the billboard now: Affordable, modern living for the zombie-conscious consumer.

Fourth solution -- reasonable

Let's face it -- chances are, you're actually going to be making do and improvising very close to wherever you happen to be at the moment when the living dead start snacking on us. In this case, a brick or stone structure is going to be ideal, with a sturdy wood-frame house being your next best choice. Seal all windows and doors as best you can and try to have a fall-back point that can be secured quickly. Collect tap water before the supply gets interrupted, and try to gather up a can opener and some non-perishable food from whatever is available.

If you can't get a hold of firearms, find something sturdy like a table leg to use as a weapon. Try not to get stuck with anyone visibly injured, unstable or terribly annoying. In zombie movies, people like this have a nasty tendency to somehow let the zombies inside or become zombies themselves. This is generally considered to be a bad thing.

Some closing thoughts

Wherever you end up when the dead rise in search of fresh brains, lay low and keep your head. If it comes down to it, try to take as many of them with you as you can. See you in Hell!!!

Larry Craig LOLCat

Ping! My BS detector goes off on Hani A. Alkanani's "$900k Worth of Pot" Bust

So here's the news story from Cleveland's Journal Register, which Dennis mentioned in the ErieBlog's headlines page for 7/26:

Turnpike bust nets nearly $1 million in high-end pot
ALEX M. PARKER, Morning Journal Writer
07/26/2007

AMHERST -- The Ohio State Highway Patrol arrested a Pennsylvania man Tuesday on the Ohio Turnpike in Amherst for having nearly $1 million worth of marijuana in his car.

Hani A. Alkanani, 36, of Erie, Pa., was arrested after a trooper found 20 pounds of ''BC Bud marijuana,'' worth $900,000, in his Buick Century, according to the Highway Patrol.

The trooper searched his car using a drug-sniffing dog after he pulled Alkanani over near Amherst for speeding, according to the Highway Patrol.

After finding nearly 20 pounds of the marijuana, a potent form grown in Canada, Alkanani was arrested for possession of marijuana, a third-degree felony, the Highway Patrol said.

He is currently being held at the Lorain County Jail on a $10,000 bond.

He was arraigned yesterday in Oberlin Municipal Court and was assigned an attorney.

Ok, kids, get out your calculators for a lesson in the politics of Prohibition.

We start with 20 pounds of weed which is, admittedly, an awful lot of ganja.

But $900,000 dollars worth??? Total bullshit.

According to precedent in federal court (I think I read this on Erowid or NORML but don't quote me), the container weight of an illegal substance can be (read IS) factored into its overall weight for purposes of prosecution. That means if all the weed were in a plastic tote or a couple of canvas duffel bags, the weight of the container(s) would be considered part of the weight of the grass. Just for the sake of argument, though, let's say that the container weight doesn't subtract somewhere between 1-5 pounds and there really are 20 pounds of pot there.

20 lbs = 320 ounces

$900,000 / 320 oz = $2812.50/oz

That would price 1/8 oz baggies of this gold-plated sensi at a whopping $350 apiece. News flash for ya -- unless you're selling $50 joints to an undercover cop one at a time, IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN. Really, really expensive weed might cost you half to a third of that, if you were getting royally screwed in the pooper. Don't believe me? Check out the prices quoted on the White House's drug policy site. The data's a little stale -- 2001 -- but it's still a reality check.

At this point, you may be scratching your head a little. So again for the sake of argument, let's assume that since 2001 the price of BC Bud quoted on the ODCP site for Denver has doubled since 2001 from $500/oz to $1000/oz. That gives our 20 lb of grass a street value of, um, $320,000. Not exactly the "almost a million dollars worth of marijuana" we were talking about a minute ago, is it?

Let's face it, nobody's going to even question these numbers in public, except maybe Mr. Alkanani's publically-appointed defense attorney. They'll be used to lock up a guy driving a 1979 Buick Century (sounds like a real kingpin, huh?) for most of the rest of his life, spawn some job promotions and re-elections, and justify dumping even more money into the money pit known as the Drug War. And tomorrow your kid will still be able to pick up a dime bag on the lower East side just like he could yesterday -- supply unaffected, demand unaffected. Business as usual.

Compromising Pics of my 19 Year Old Ex-Girlfriend

Just kidding -- but now that I've got your blood pumping, please stop by the Erie Community Blood Bank and donate this week. Tell em I sent ya, or not, but please DO go donate. Check out ErieBlogs.com for more details.

And for the record, if I ever get around to scanning the negatives, I'll consider it...

;)

The Burning Discharge I Experienced the Other Night

Or, pics from Boom on the Bay.





As far as flaming discharges go, I'd have to say that it was more pleasant than the aftermath of an order of the Atomic Wings from Quaker Steak & Lube, but less pleasant than New Years' Eve at Disney World (or one of those hedonistic, young lust, only-get-out-of-bed-to-pee-or-raid-the-fridge weekends from my college days, for that matter). Definitely below par from what I've seen around either Mercyhurst or Lawrence Park in previous years.

On the off-chance that anyone with some degree of influence on the fireworks planning should happen to read this -- I'd suggest that next time around you launch from more than one barge, spread out a little. It'll look a lot nicer.

Was the Sky this Weekend Incredible, or What?

I drove down to Cook's Forest on Saturday afternoon, but the pictures I got during the drive itself were better than any of the ones I took at my destination.


'Stay Away' -- Abandoned House in Fryburg


'Field and Clouds' -- Meadow in Fryburg


'Knee High by the 4th of July' -- Fryburg Cornfield in HDR


'Red Chimney, Faulty Tower' -- Fryburg

I've got to start doing a better job of writing down where I take pictures -- I always think that I'll remember, but afterwards I don't. The ones above were taken in and around Fryburg, but the ones below here were shot further north and I can't remember for the life of me if they were north or south of Union City...


'Country Road' -- Somewhere along PA Route 8


'Clouds & Thistles' -- About 10 feet away from the shot posted above it

I did get a few good shots in Cook's Forest:


'Another Funky Shroom' -- Cook's Forest State Park


'Orton Foxglove Flowers' -- Cook's Forest State Park

I got a few more half-decent shots from the park that just need a little post-processing. I've just had this terrible sinus headache since yesterday (thank the same weather that gave us those clouds) and not feeling quite up to it at the moment.

Oh, and on the way home I hit the Golden Hour as I was driving through Venango, so I had to stop and get a few shots there:


'Red Trim' -- Route 89 in Venango


'3 Silos' - Route 89 in Venango

I got back into Erie at about 9 pm, so I stopped at Waldameer for some shots of the rides. I'm going to save those for another post, though.

Night Photography - Some Basics

In response to a post from the other day that had night shots of Waldameer, Eden of So Anyways asked if I could post some how-to's or tips for doing nighttime photography.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm no expert at this. But I can at least share some of the basic concepts and give a few examples. To take nighttime shots, you should have an SLR camera with an adjustable lens, either film or digital -- a point-and-shoot camera probably isn't going to cut it.

Turn Off the Flash

The first thing to do is to turn off your flash -- you won't need it unless you're doing something like a portrait against a night background (one thing I haven't tried).

Reducing Motion Blur

The most important difference between night and daylight photography is that it takes a lot longer to capture enough light to make an exposure. For that reason, you will want to use a tripod to keep your camera still -- otherwise, you'll probably end up with a very blurry image. (Although in some cases, you may want that.) In a pinch, you may be able to rest the camera body against a railing or some other solid surface to stabilize the shot.

Night Landscape Mode

If you have a newer digital SLR, you probably have a setting called 'night landscape'. Kodak just announced some new additions to its EasyShare line that have this feature, but aren't priced to bankrupt ($150-250). This is a really good starting point, especially if you want to do a sunset shot where the foreground isn't just a silhouette, or a panoramic image of a city skyline or the like. To be fair, pictures taken this way can look a bit overexposed, though, like this one:


To do more advanced night photography, you need the same basic things you would need to make an exposure for any other kind of photography. Having an SLR camera with a manual setting gives you control over the following elements:

1. Sensitivity in capturing light, via either film or a digital sensor, measured as ISO rating (somewhere between 100-4000)


2. The size of the opening that the light comes through. This is referred to as aperture, or depth-of-field (typically between f/3.5 and f/22)


3. The amount of light that enters the camera through the shutter, aka shutter speed. This is measured in seconds and can be as long as 30 minutes or more, or as short as 1/1000 of a second (the upper and lower limits will depend on your camera)

Understanding a little about all three will help you get better shots, night or day.

Manual Focus

In many cases, the auto-focus feature on your camera isn't going to know how to focus a night shot. You may have to switch to manual focus mode.


Optimizing ISO

Using film with a higher ISO rating, or setting the digital sensor to a higher ISO value, means that you can use a faster shutter speed and/or greater depth-of-field. The trade-off to this is that really sensitive film is expensive, and higher digital ISO settings can produce grainy images or unwanted noise (random white pixels). Here's an example of a high ISO (3200) shot:


Here's an example of a relatively lower ISO shot (1000) taken with about the same amount of ambient light:


Lower ISO values translate to more color saturation, so I tend to keep the ISO as low as possible and rely on the tripod and a shallow aperture (f/3.5 - f/5) to help compensate.

Optimizing Aperture

Aperture, or depth of field, determines how far into the background distant objects will remain in focus. A shot taken using a shallow aperture setting (f/3.5) requires much less light to expose than a deeper aperture setting (f/22), so keep it shallow if you can, unless you want more depth of field, like in this mid-range shot taken at an aperture of f/10:


Optimizing Shutter Speed

The faster your shutter speed, the less motion blur you get, so plan accordingly. In some cases, you want that blur for artistic effect. In others, it might keep you from capturing what you want.

Putting It All Together

Adjusting your ISO rating and depth-of-field can allow you to lengthen or shorten your shutter speed -- increasing or decreasing motion blur as desired. Increasing the aperture (making it shallow) can produce an attractive light blur in a cityscape. A higher ISO might be able to capture silhouettes of geese flying against a sunset, where a lower wouldn't.

If there's a formula to making this all work consistently, I don't know it -- I wish I did. I find that my camera's light meter is pretty reliable for taking shots of spotlit buildings, like the one below:


However, I find that I have to wing it if I'm doing landscapes or scenes with a lot of bright light sources. The light meter didn't help me at all with this one -- I took shot after shot until it looked somewhat right in the LCD (which tends to show exposures brighter than they really are):


I shoot digital these days so I tend to take 4-5 shots of the same thing at exposure levels at, above and below what the light meter suggests, and pick the best one later. (That's a really expensive habit if you're shooting film -- not sure what to tell you there.)

In a long exposure, an object in motion will seem to disappear unless it's really bright. In this shot taken near dusk, my daughter's arm was moving so it blurred out almost completely (not a great shot but it demonstrates the concept):


Likewise, this shot captures a boat coming into the marina at French Creek -- the only objects bright enough to be picked up in the exposure were the ship's running lights:

If you've ever seen a shot with a night highway full of red and white trailers -- same basic concept.

And at a slow enough exposure, waves start to look like fog:


That's about all I can tell you right now. Like I said, I'm still figuring out how to do this stuff. Flickr has groups for just about anything and everything, and some incredibly talented photographers -- both locally and globally. Check it out, and if you see stuff you'd like to know how to do, ask. Most people are more than happy to talk about their work and help you improve your own technique.

Happy shooting!

My Phat New Ride

Finally got rid of the SUV and bought something smaller. P and I had purchased an 02 Ford Explorer in late 2004 -- made sense at the time because we had 4 kids (our 3 girls and our nephew) and needed the third row, but also wanted something with 4WD. It had nothing to do with status, or keeping up with the Jones' or any of that silly shit -- it was just the most practical choice under the circumstances. Whoever had the kids with them took the SUV, and whoever didn't drove the sedan.

So that worked out fine for a while. Eventually, though, my nephew went back to living with his mom and we didn't really need the third row seating very often. And when P and I split up, I took the Explorer because the loan was in my name. More often than not, I was driving alone, and with all the time I spent out driving around to take photos, the cost of gas started to really, really hurt.

I checked around at 4-5 dealerships and searched around AutoTrader for a while, and as of this afternoon, (for about the same as what I'd have paid for an 04 Dodge Neon) I have an 01 Olds Aurora. I'm liking it a lot, so far -- it has those little luxury touches, like the unusually polite 'headlights suggested' message that popped up on the message display when I was driving at dusk. There are a few quirks I have to figure out yet, like the fact that the seat seems to return to some preset position (suitable for someone much taller than me) whenever I shut off the car. Overall, it seems to drive a lot like a Lexus that my brother used to have.

From Wikipedia:

JPG Magazine Submission - Creative License Theme

I could use a little love in the form of a 'thumbs up' vote, if you're so inclined:

Some Quick Night Shots at Waldameer

I was out at Presque Isle this evening, and stopped by Waldameer about 20 minutes before they closed. I've been wanting to take some night shots there for a while now, and took a quick stroll around to get some of the rides that were still running. Of the set, the only one that I'm really happy with is the pic of the bumper cars. Next time I'll go back when I have more time to spare, plan my shots a little bit better and try to make them more interesting. I do like the color on all of these, though.

JPG Magazine

An old friend poked me with a stick and got me to start putting some stuff on JPG Magazine, so I put on some of my favorites from Flickr.

Weirdest Search Hit Yet

This search hit just in from the Islamic Republic of Iran... 'mummified damsels'. And somehow I'm the number three site in the search results, between two pages dedicated to bondage movies. Yippee!

Dating Advice from My Wife and Other Weirdness

God my life is weird, anymore. Not just "Hey, my grilled cheese sandwich looks kinda like Jesus!" odd -- I'm talking full-blown P. T. Barnum sideshow. I've got the kind of stuff going on that nobody would believe as a short story, you know?

The thing that's outwardly the strangest is, to me, the most mundane of the lot. I take a somewhat skeptical, but not close-minded, view of the paranormal. On the one hand, nobody's come forward with anything like conclusive evidence of a haunting and there have been some famously-exposed frauds, but on the other hand, there's a mess of anecdotal evidence that spans a number of cultures. Ya know? So I've kept the door open a crack, but haven't gone outside looking.

Anyway, at some point over the winter, I came to the conclusion that I'd been seeing a ghost, or apparition, or whatever you want to call it, sitting on my staircase looking down. On at least 4-5 separate occasions now, I've been at the computer in the living room and thought that I saw my 4-yr-old daughter sitting there watching me. She does that sometimes -- just sits on the middle step without saying a word. So I didn't think much of seeing a pale, blonde girl in a white nightgown sitting there. But then I would say something, turn to look at her and find that there was nobody there. This has happened mostly around the twilight hours of morning or evening, and usually when I felt at peace and well-rested. If someone told me this, it would probably make me feel uneasy. But oddly enough, living it out doesn't have that effect. It feels perfectly fine.

Somewhat weirder was a long phone conversation I had last night with an old friend from college. By "friend", I mean a very beautiful someone who clearly had no romantic interest whatsoever in me at the time, but with whom I'd been so infatuated that I'd have walked in front of a bus if she'd suggested that doing so might be a cool thing to do. (That was a tough 6 months, let me tell you.) And what was really weird last night was coming to the realization that, even though it sounded like she hadn't changed at all, I didn't feel any of that attraction anymore. It was like talking to my sister. WTF?

But by far the weirdest has been the fact that my wife and I have been giving each other dating and relationship advice. We hang out together sometimes on breaks and lunches at work, talking and laughing (which really messes with the busybodies), but our conversations have mostly been about separating our assets (ok, debts is more like it) finalizing our separation and/or talking about who we think we might like to boink. It's probably really harming my chances of meeting anyone new at work, but I kinda don't want to meet anyone at work, so that's not necessarily a bad thing for me.

So that's my life these days. If things continue at this pace, I'll probably have a two-headed pet and the stigmata by end-of-year.

You had me at Speed Racer...

...and when you said "Wachowski Brothers" my eyes rolled back in my head for a few seconds.



So in 2008 the guys who did the coolest thing since anime are going to pay homage to an anime classic. Sweet!

Bees, Blossoms and a Bit of Apiphobia Therapy on the Sly

My four year-old daughter, Em, has developed a bit of a fear of insects (especially bumblebees) and spiders. I'm trying not to make too big of a deal out of it, but still try to give her a little bit of exposure to them in a way that's not threatening to her.

Today she watched me outside while I was taking some pictures of the rhododendron, which just started blossoming over the past few days. I asked her to tell me whenever she saw a bee, so that I could take a picture of it. She had fun running all around it and shrieking "a bee, daddy, a bee!", and I actually got a couple of half-decent shots with bees in them. I thought bumblebees moved pretty slowly, but I guess slow is relative when you're trying to do a close-up shot (I wouldn't say 'macro' because I wasn't using a macro lens) on manual focus. This wasn't one of the bumblebees, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Random Bits - StatCounter, Stop-Motion & My Estranged Wife

Statcounter: I do love da StatCounter -- especially the keyword analysis function. The post I did about zombie-proofing the house the other day seems to have fallen into one of those weird little niches -- on the first page of results for something that a couple of people Google up every day. My old blog still gets hits on the phrase "synthetic thc recipe" as regular as sunset, and about 3-4 variations of "hippie non-conformist" just about every day. I also did a 'separated at birth' comparing Monty Burns to Condi Rice, and it's apparently a big hit overseas -- I get hits from all over the EU in waves. (Incidentally, if anyone has a synthetic THC recipe, I'd be more than happy to post it.)

Stop-motion: Today was nice and sunny, but I was stuck in the $%@ing office all day. I did, though, take a few minutes at lunchtime to snap a couple of 1/4000 second exposures of the fountain in the courtyard at work. I'll put them up on Flickr later.

My Estranged Wife (irony finger): Irony finger because we get along just fine, both at work and outside the office -- but it's finally hit the rumor mill at work in the past few weeks that we've separated and my wife's now taking the brunt of the wild speculation. People suck - especially the kind that never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Wintergreen Gorge Pics

Went back to the Gorge today to shoot some more pics. I had tried to get some slow shutter speed pictures of the water the other day, but there was so much glare that most of them didn't turn out well at all. With it being overcast, I tried again today and had much better luck:


I also got a few miscellaneous shots that I was happy with:



Maybe I need to get on some Prozac or something, because seeing that egg on the ground (last pic in the bunch) put me in a funk for a good while. I had to go drown my sorrows in an omelet.

Vacation's over now. Back to work tomorrow, no more six-hour photo shoots for a while. Just COBOL, vbscript, VBA and the crazy people I work with.

-= sigh =-