Vote
Amy and I will not be voting tomorrow, because we already absentee-voted last week, in expectation of a very busy Nov 4th. However, I do strongly encourage all US citizens to go vote on Nov 4th if you haven’t yet, and know that I endorse Barack Obama for president. I would like him in the presidency because he favors net neutrality, increased funding for rail travel and public transit, voting representation for the District of Columbia, a balanced approach between private and socialized healthcare, better environmental protection, fewer abortions while maintaining choice, an end to unnecessary war, and voluntary pulling-up of pants by brothers. He has shown himself a steady, even-tempered, and experienced politician of distinct eloquence, deep thought, and profound managerial acumen, and would go far in rebuilding the USA’s standing in the world.
Check out these reasons to vote Obama from South Carolina-to-Pennsylvania transplant Fairly Ordinary, West Coast Calvinist libertarian Nowhere “The Dane” sville, East Coast libertarian home-schooler Chris O’Donnell, and some general guy.
Stuff That Needs Doing
- Get off this default template and restore randomizing layouts.
- Redirect current feed URLs to FeedBurner.
- Get an underscores-to-hyphens RewriteRule into .htaccess.
- Restyle inside pages.
- Make a Page Entry Index template.
- Make a new 404 page.
- Go back to single-column weblog sidebar.
- Redo blogroll as parsed Google Reader OPML subscription list.
- Install Action Streams, consolidated into flow of main weblog if possible.
- Tag eight years of archive weblog entries.
That is all.
I just finished installing Movable Type 4!
I’ve finally migrated the site to a new web host and upgraded to Movable Type Open Source 4.21. I’ve always intended this next server move to be the impetus for a reboot of the site, and I’m very much a start-from-scratch kind of person, so things will be very raw and bare-bones and default-y for a bit. This presents me with an opportunity to brush up on my Movable Type templating skills, and rethink and clean up various aspects of HNBP’s back and frontend architecture. For now please bear with the mess and tell me if you see anything that needs fixing.
Actually, you know what, don’t tell me. I know and I’m on it.
Just for posterity and amusement, I’ll keep MT’s default first-post text and comment around:
Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!
Rainy Saturday
Drops of water on plants in the Smithsonian’s Mary Livingston Ripley Garden. Shortly after I took these photos it began pouring again and did not stop for the rest of the afternoon. We took shelter in the Sackler Gallery, where we looked at Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur.
Willow Oak Root
Macro details from the knotty, mossy roots of a willow oak on the Capitol Lawn. Note the whorl-like patterns under the bark on exposed portions of the root system:
Caturday!
Just testing out time lapse video on the SD1100IS. As always, music is thrown together from Garageband loops.
Another Talking Head
Discreetly recorded with my Nokia 6120c’s secondary front camera while heading home earlier this evening. I paused and unpaused as people passed by so as not to appear weird, talking to no one on a video phone. Later in the show you can see how tired I get from the walk and the crowd, around when I pass by a freestyle-rapping street evangelist with a megaphone.
(I briefly flirted with naming my Youtube video blog “Another Talking Head, Entertainment-Indigent, Spouting Mundanities,” or A.T.H.E.I.S.M. — but that would have sent some seriously mixed signals. But it’s clever, isn’t it? I’m so clever.)
SD1100IS
To replace my poor, broken SD1000 I set some of my birthday money aside to purchase a new replacement Powershot; the choice was to either get a simpler SD1100IS or splurge on the newer, wider-angle SD880IS. I opted for the SD1100IS — a cheaper camera closer in build to the older one, so that I could make use of the spare battery and charger left over from the SD1000. And the 1100 comes in blue!
Physically the SD1100IS is essentially the same as the SD1000, but with a slightly thicker depth and rounder corners. It’s also lighter, such that the SD1100IS with battery feels more springy (but not flimsy) in the hand than the SD1000 without. Controls are mostly the same, but with more picture review info options, and of course, image stabilization, which I haven’t noticed too much yet.
Picture quality is good, but the grain is noticeable on photos taken with “Hi Auto ISO” in a moderately dim apartment — grainier than photos from the SD1000. This gives me 8 megapixels over the SD1000’s 7.1, but I’d gladly give up that extra 0.9MP for lower pixel density and less grain in dim light. I haven’t had a chance to try the camera in daylight yet (that will come over the weekend) but what I’ve seen so far is reassuring that I will get photos at least as decent as on the last camera, and that’s good enough for me. Here’s a selection from the very first set of photos taken last night with the newly unboxed camera:
They look fine at 240x180px but viewed at full size the graininess is evident, and I’m not noticing much help from image stabilization. And of course, I had to try out the long exposure feature to make a happy face in the dark. This worked nicely:
Final verdict on the Canon Powershot SD1100IS, rendered in this macro shot of a TV remote:
Walking Home
Some cameraphone photos from a chilly walk home along the National Mall yesterday, in the amber light and long, long shadows of an early Fall sunset:
