I just finished installing Movable Type 4!

2008-10-26.

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

2008-10-26.

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

2008-10-26.

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!

2008-10-25.

Just testing out time lapse video on the SD1100IS. As always, music is thrown together from Garageband loops.

Another Talking Head

2008-10-24.

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

2008-10-24.

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

2008-10-23.

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:

BTQ in NYT

2008-10-22.

In “Begging the Question, Again” on the Times Topics weblog, NYT deputy news editor Philip Corbett talks about the misuse of the phrase, and briefly mentions BegTheQuestion.info, my pedantic language site. I was alerted to this by the sudden flurry of “nytimes.com” inbound links in my referrer log that day.

BTQ’s continued growth in popularity still has not served to unseat “begging the question” on Wikipedia from its top search position on Google, however Number 2 is nice, though. BTQ has also garnered only occasional mention on Twitter.

Update: Oh hey, now BTQ is intermittently #1. This is an agreeable outcome!

Sunday at the National Gallery

2008-10-21.

We spent Sunday after church at the National Gallery, to see the Indian paintings of George de Forest Brush and hear the Lucerne Festival Strings play music by Mendelssohn, Sarasate, and Brahms.

See that garbage can? You know what’s wrong with it? We went up to it and paused for a few seconds wondering if it was really a garbage can or if it was for recyclables. Then we saw the second line and parsed it. Not the best way to label a garbage can.

Caturday!

2008-10-18.

Mom got us some Edo-style broiled eel from Tokyo when she came to visit so we’re eating that now with some rice. Here it is with Pandora, who didn’t get any.

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