This evening, I heard part of an interview with Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum by Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air. Gross spent most of the time that I was able to listen asking about the senator's views on abortion, then went on to stem cell research and finally in vitro fertilization. It was apparent she was trying to maneuver Santorum into a contradiction, but he's a far more skillful politician than she is an interviewer. (As an aside, I noted that one of his techniques, which may be common for all politicians and I've just never noticed until now, is to talk as long as possible, even to the point of repeating himself, even on obvious points, so as to give the interviewer fewer opportunities to ask questions.) Santorum posed his opposition to abortion on the basis of a regard for the sanctity of "all human life," which, to his mind, includes embryos. It's a reasonable position, and defensible.
Gross tried first with stem cell research to put the Senator at odds with the benefits of stem cell research against the sanctity of "all human life." She stumbled in framing the question, suggesting that President Bush and the Republican party were in favor of banning stem cell research, when in fact they oppose federal funding for embryonic stem cell research with the exception of certain stem cell lines that existed prior to the policy, though I'm not absolutely certain on that. Santorum's position is somewhat more restrictive, and consistent, with his views on abortion; and that is that embryonic stem cell research involves the taking of a human life, and is therefore wrong on its face. He advocates more research with adult stem cells. In this context, Gross tried to make a distinction on the issue of "taking" a human life on the basis that some embryonic stem cells are obtained from embryos that were created as a result of in vitro fertilization at fertility clinics, and which were, for whatever reason, never going to be implanted and thus become children. Not exactly the same as an abortion, where the intent is most often to prevent a viable fetus from completing development into an infant child. Santorum stuck to his position and then made a comment dismissing the distinction as something of a "utilitarian" view of the matter, as though that was not a valid way of regarding the issue.
"Aha!," I thought, "Now she has him!"
But no. Instead she went on to try to get him to say he was opposed to fertility clinics in general, because many embryos created there are simply discarded. I've forgotten exactly what the senator's response was, perhaps because I was disappointed with Gross; but I have the impression that he successfully evaded making an overt statement that he was opposed to fertility clinics helping infertile couples conceive children, which would be a somewhat more difficult position for a politician to take and defend.
Once Santorum raised the objection to utilitarian arguments, I thought Gross should have pivoted the discussion on that point and then asked how his absolute regard for the sanctity "all of human life" and disdain for utilitarian arguments, squared with his support for the war in Iraq. Alternatively, she might have chosen ask him about his support for capital punishment, and whether that was an apparent contradiction of his regard for the sanctity of "all human life." Santorum is skillful, so he might have been able to run out the clock by saying nothing substantive at length; but it seemed such an elementary trap I was surprised Santorum seemed to be walking into it. Perhaps he more correctly estimated Terry Gross' abilities as an interviewer than I did.
It's not that I think the senator is necessarily wrong to hold any of his views on these particular issues. I don't know for certain what the right answers are. Where I think he is wrong, and where he misleads people, is in dismissing arguments on one issue because they are utilitarian, while relying on utilitarian arguments for those issues where his views are inconsistent with the moral or philosophical principles that undergird his other views. The point to be made is that arguments are no less legitimate because they are utilitarian, and therefore to dismiss the arguments of your opponents on that basis is disingenuous at best. Would that if the worst we could say about a politician is that he is disingenuous, we'd probably be in a lot better shape than we are.
The difficulty with utilitarian arguments is that they are damn hard. Strict reliance on absolute moral principles is much more within the capacity of our limited cognitive abilities; which is perhaps why we've elevated it so much as to make the blinkered, mindless, rote recitation of platitudes regarding "good" and "evil," and the sanctity of "all human life," a public virtue and a mark of strong, stalwart leadership in these difficult and troubling times.
Moving is chaotic, but this is no revelation to those of you who've had any experience in these matters. I seem to have a lot of it.
I had arranged for Father and Son Movers, Inc. to come to my old apartment at 8:00 a.m. yesterday, and I had planned to be finished with moving all the large items I can't handle by myself no later than noon. To make a long story short, I cancelled their services, which had failed to materialize, at noon and arranged for Apartment Movers, Inc. to execute my move between 3:30 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. for less money than the no-shows from Father and Son, Inc. I tipped the two guys who did all the heavy lifting very substantially and still paid less than I would have with Father and Son Movers, Inc.
Because of the glitch with the incompetent and flippant Father and Son Movers, Inc., I was more than three hours behind my schedule. I had to reschedule the cable rep to avoid conflicting with the arrival of Apartment Movers, but since the guy is kind of an independent agent representing the cable company, that turned out to be a non-problem. He popped over more than an hour ahead of his scheduled time and had me connected in less than an hour.
I decided to go with cable over DSL this time. I was on DSL at the other place because cable modem service wasn't offered at the time. So now I had to consider how I wanted to spend my bandwidth dollars. Before I cancelled cable at the other apartment, I was paying for telephone, DSL, cable TV and cell phone, all together a little over $200.00 a month. The telephone seldom rang and when it did it was most often a sales call. Most of my communications with my family were over the cell phone or the internet. I cancelled cable TV because there was seldom anything on it that I wanted to watch. But that still left me paying for telephone service that I used for little more than an excuse to have DSL (though the reverse is probably a more accurate description). Cable television at least offered news coverage I occasionally watched, and the infrequent worthwhile distraction. And I can't ignore the fact that Caitie likes to watch TV, though perhaps too much so. I figured it made more sense to just skip a hard-line telephone. (In the event of a hurricane, I know cell towers are likely to be down. But so will the power, and both of my phones are cordless models that require power anyway. In the event of a hurricane, communication will be difficult. Plan accordingly.) Right now I'm enjoying an introductory promotion with both expanded basic and cable modem for $20.00 a month for two months. After the introductory period, the cable modem/TV cost will still be less than what I was paying for DSL (although I won't have a fixed IP address); and I'll have to consider whether or not I want expanded basic. It seems the Sci-Fi Channel is going to be turning their remake of Battlestar Galactica into a series in January, so maybe I'll rationalize keeping expanded basic. At the end of the day, I'll probably be paying in the neighborhood of $140.00 a month for bandwidth (cable and cell), which still seems high, but much better than $200.00 a month.
The management of my other apartment is paying me $1200.00 to move out early, and I signed a 14 month lease at this place, which gives me the month of September free. Ordinarily I'd be about $2100.00 ahead of the game ($1200, plus my usual $900.00 rent), call it $1250.00, net, after moving expenses, new water service deposit, pet fees, and prorated August rent at the new place. Before I could figure out what to spend this windfall on, my son did $3000.00 worth of damage to his new/used $6000.00 Bronco his mother bought for him. To say nothing of the PT Cruiser he ran into. This is called, "one step up, two steps back." Well, maybe three steps. Sigh. The good news is nobody was hurt and I think it was the kind of thing that will make a significant impression on him in terms of his awareness and behavior behind the wheel. As accidents go, it's probably one of the better ones a parent could hope for; although I'm probably being a little too optimistic about its long-term affect on his demeanor behind the wheel.
So now I'm surrounded by boxes and furniture that I have no idea where to put, and I still have all my kitchen crap and hanging clothes at the other apartment (I don't have to be out of there until the 31st), and basic clean-up to do there. The cats are trying to comprehend what's going on, but they seem to be adapting. Squeaky isn't hiding under the bed anymore, and Karma was immediately content to sit in her tree and ignore the chaos around her. I've got all the computers hooked up and networked, and the TV/DVD/stereo/GameCube are all hooked up. A guy's priorities, to be sure.
Well, I've got some stress-relieving, taekwondo training a little later this morning and lots of local entropy I need to reduce, so this is enough trivia from me for now.
This is going to be about Tom Peters' post, the one I wasn't linking to for much of yesterday. I wanted to do this yesterday, but time and events prevented it. So I'll take a stab at it here.
One of the things I read there, which I hadn't read anywhere else before but which resonated with me, was this quotation from a book called Fire in the Belly by Sam Keen (can't say I like the title, but anyway): "One day, out of nowhere, you realize you don't know who you are, and none of the cards in your wallet provide the slightest clue to your real identity."
I love that line, because I know that feeling. And when the day comes, as it does for many of us, when you know that feeling, nothing will ever be the same. For me, and I suspect for most people, since I'm not exceptional, it didn't happen suddenly, "out of nowhere," but the realization came all at once. The day I realized it was in my first session with Sandy when I was trying to describe why I was there, and why I thought I needed her help. I told her that I felt like the trees I see along the beach, all bent over from the constant sea breezes. I couldn't recall what it felt like to feel like myself anymore. I had no idea who I had become, or how I had allowed myself to become that way. And that's when she mentioned "Know thyself," though she didn't tell me it was Thales. (Imagine my surprise and delight, some months later, as I'm watching The Matrix for the first time, and Neo goes to see The Oracle and she directs his attention to that same quote on the wall of her kitchen.)
In his post, Tom Peters writes, "(Paradoxically, I caught myself thinking, this glorious morning, 'I could die now-at least I'd know I'd lived.' And I couldn't say that five weeks ago.)" I know that feeling too. But I disagree just a bit with him here, regarding this matter of "knowing" we've "lived." The nature of ignorance is such that we simply don't know what we don't know. So, to say that because our experience of our life now is different, and presumably better, than what it was, we therefore know we are living now, is incorrect, or maybe inaccurate. Tomorrow, we may know more. Indeed, if we're paying attention (something that's harder than it sounds), we will. Life will present us with more opportunities to know what it means to live. Some of them will be unwelcome. Perhaps the best ones always are. But we will know more of what it means to live. I don't think we'll ever know it all. We will die when we die, and our ignorance will likely be only marginally less than it was the day we were born. But I do understand the sentiment, and I'm not unsympathetic to it. It's kind of a quibble, I guess.
He also offered this:
Susan (my wife): "You seem so much more relaxed."
Me: "Not 'relaxed,' 'at peace.'"
I believe I also recognize this, and it's what I was referring to a couple of days ago writing about grace. I also know that this is a state that, to some extent, comes and goes with the shifting winds of fortune. But what you find is that it becomes somewhat easier to return to that state after you depart from it. Perhaps the day comes for some when they never depart from that state. I'm not there yet; nor, do I suspect, is Tom Peters. But that's not a criticism at all.
A big part of this has to do with the ego, the "inner critic," the voice in your head that has its hands on the controls most of the time. Ego is the guy that will take you to the place where you no longer know who you are, if you let him. Ego is a cunning bastard. Ego will morph and disguise himself to blend in with his new surroundings; and so you find ego in people who claim to have extinguished their ego. Mine's still with me. I catch him every now and then (well, a lot more often than that, but it's when I don't catch him that troubles me), controlling my fingers on the keyboard, trying to present himself (me) as something special. Or beating up on something that frightens him (me). Ego fears that state of grace, because there is no more need of him, nothing from which ego must defend us. Most of the stuff you read here was written by ego. About the best I can do, for the moment, is to remind the reader that I am an authority on nothing, and I make all of this shit up. You should definitely do your own thinking. Do not feed my ego. Or anyone else's for that matter.
Update: When you post on the run, and you don't check your links before you run, you wind up pointing to the wrong thing for most of the day. Fixed now. Apologies if anyone was confused by my carelessness.
I haven't felt the need to opine on the Real versus Apple dustup, and the supposed "lock-in" of the iPod, but a scan of MacSurfer the last couple of days shows nothing but headline after headline of FUD and misinformation and deceit regarding Apple, the iPod, DRM and the iTunes Music Store.
I can't do the subject any more justice than John Gruber has at Daring Fireball. If you're not sure what all the fuss is about; or if you're not sure but inclined to view Apple as the bad guy in this, read Mr. Gruber's essay. If you have a weblog, and if you're persuaded by Mr. Gruber's analysis, then I encourage you to link to it to increase his Google-rank so when lazy reporters do their "research" it's in the first page of links, because I suspect few reporters ever go much beyond that.
As for Real. These guys have treated Macintosh users as second-class citizens all along, pursuing the vastly larger and supposedly more lucrative MS market. Having failed to make any real money doing that, they now hope to pursue the iPod market to see if they can make some real money milking Apple's efforts at creating a product and a market. Real is just a bunch of parasites as far as I'm concerned. More MS "me-too'ers," they're cut from the same cloth. In fact, Glaser used to be a MS exec, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.
I don't own an iPod, but I'm inclined to go buy one just so I can own one and not buy any of Glaser's knock-offs. Pretty irrational, I know, but I'm a little ticked off about this crap.
It's time for me to have yet another address. The apartment complex that is currently the host of Dave Cave II is undergoing condo-conversion, and the management would like me to be gone. Of course, I can stay until the end of my lease, but they're willing to assist me with relocation expenses. So, basically, I could stay another four months and move at my own expense, or I can move in the next few weeks and do it for free.
Moving is a hassle anytime. Free is good.
There's another apartment complex owned by the same company literally almost right around the corner from here. The apartments aren't as nice, you only have windows along one wall and there is no view, but it's not like I'm going to be living there forever. I'm going to take a one-bedroom this time. I'm in a 2-bedroom apartment now, but the second bedroom doesn't have a bed and I use it for the computer and my books. And Caitie ends up sleeping on the couch, either folded out or not, when she's here; and, again, it's only until my divorce is final and the property settlement is concluded. In any event, a smaller apartment will save me a little money on rent and utilities as well.
I haven't had much opportunity to play with the new camera, but I expect I will soon. I did play with iCal, iSync, Address Book and sync'ing my Clié and Nokia phone. It works, it just doesn't work as I might expect it to. I reset all my devices to use the data from my iBook which I had painstakingly edited to remove all duplicate (and triplicate and quadruplicate) events from iCal, and cleaned up all the phone numbers and addresses in Address Book. The subsequent sync had the effect of deleting all my groups on the phone, and yielding yet more duplicate events in iCal. I haven't quite figured out what causes this yet, but in iCal the problem is related to the different categories for calendar events. All of the events in my "Work" category ended up being duplicated as "Home" events, a category that has existed in my iCal application for a long time, but of which I have no recollection of ever creating. I'm not sure if it's a default category or not anymore. But it looks as though the solution will be to just have a single category ("category" = "calendar" in iCal, as in calendars you can publish and subscribe to), that is intended to sync with the handhelds. It's by no means essential for me to categorize all my calendars as I have no intention of publishing any of them. I guess I just liked all the pretty colors.
I'm going to recreate all the groups on my Nokia 3660, and then try another sync. There is no way to synchronize the various groups between the computer and the phone, so new contacts entered on either one will have to be placed in the appropriate group manually after a sync. I think the reason why all my groups went away on the Nokia was because I did a "reset" which probably instructs all the devices that are being set to synchronize to the device sending the reset, to basically delete everything and just go with the data from the computer. It doesn't have this effect on the Palm, all my groups remained intact as near as I could tell, and my guess would be that Palm doesn't implement this part of the SyncML spec for synchronization.
Caitie spent the weekend with me and when we weren't looking at apartments, we were having something of a film festival. We watched Freaky Friday (the original with the very young Jodie Foster), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (based on a story by James Bond creator Ian Fleming), Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2, and two feature-length Thunderbirds movies, Thunderbirds are Go! and Thunderbird 6. It was a pretty wet weekend, or I expect we'd have found something else to do, probably involving cameras.
Well, that's probably all the excitement you can stand for now.
I'll need to think about this some more, but I've got a 7MB QuickTime movie of about 8 hours and 20 minutes of yesterday's sky. It's kind of an interesting little time-lapse movie of the weather here. What is shown in the movie has little to do with Charley, but it looks fairly impressive nevertheless.
I set up the DC290 to take one picture every minute looking out my bedroom window. I chose the middle resolution, 1440x960, which is, in hindsight, still much too large. Something I learned from this is that I need to fix-focus the camera at infinity. Sometimes the sky became an indiscriminate gray overcast, and the camera's focusing mechanism moved to the nearer field tree branches in the left part of the frame. Other times it appeared to go to a mid-field focus on the other apartments. This shows up in the movie as the apparent size of the apartments varies slightly.
The 7MB movie is an export using jpeg compression at 360x240 resolution. If I put it up, I'll probably only keep it up for a couple of weeks or so, as that single movie would be 7% of my storage space on .Mac. The full-size movie runs over 70MB in size. I've got a bunch of errands to do today, and I'll have to review how I posted QT files here in the past. This time I think I'll document it to myself so I don't have to look it up again.
In other news, my Kodak DX6490 did show up yesterday. So I'll probably be posting some examples from that as well.
Okay, sorry about the load time, and I should do a poster, but I'm tired and lazy. If you're on dial-up, either be very patient or move on. This sequence begins at 0814 EDT and ends at 1633 EDT. Toward the middle of the movie you'll see some very dark clouds roll through. That was right around 1130 or so, and I was driving to meet a friend of mine for lunch. It was a mess. But, it wasn't a hurricane and these images have nothing to do with Charley.
Okay, that was enough of that. When I have some more time, (whenever that will be), I'll look at other codecs and maybe there's a more humane way of posting these things.
I didn't get the chance to stand in the teeth of the gale and growl, "Argh!" to the howling winds.
Not sure that I'm exactly disappointed, but still.
Charley passed well south of those of us in Jacksonville. Others did not get off so easily, so perhaps it's inappropriate to make light of what is, for many people, a disaster.
They should have named the hurricane after Bonnie, "Clyde." Those weather guys have no sense of humor.
Bonnie blew through here yesterday very quickly. Most of it passed well north of us, but we did have one tornado touch down, which is kind of a rare event around here.
Charley is going to be a much bigger kind of problem; although as hurricanes go, it's better for those of us in the Jacksonville area to get hit this way than from the ocean. Charley's trip across the state will take a little of the wind out of its sails, and we won't have to deal with the destructive storm surge. We're going to have power outages, and localized flooding, and some wind damage mostly associated with falling trees or flying debris, but it could be a lot worse.
Sure would be nice if I got my camera today. We shall see...
There is so little left that hasn't been said; we must speak carefully, quietly against the din of the age, like conspirators on the evening before the big event.
This resonated with me for some reason. I've been wanting to write something here, but I wasn't sure what it was, or what I felt comfortable writing about, so I've contented myself with noting various semi-interesting (to me, anyway) technical tidbits. There are, I think, a number of reasons for my reticence or perhaps it's a block, or maybe just reluctance. I suspect at least part of the reason is "a good thing."
I find I've achieved some measure of success at not being compelled to write by emotional responses to events. Many times I think that effort was somewhat cathartic, but I think it was a catharsis at no small cost to myself, and to the larger world I share with everyone else.
Watching a video clip of O'Reilly "debating" Krugman on some show with Tim Russert, I wondered how Krugman could just sit there. He looked rather weak and ineffectual, even if he seemed to have a better command of the facts. While O'Reilly with his loud voice and his wagging finger seemed like just another bully. Someone who feels he must shout down or try to intimidate those who disagree with him. I was wondering to myself if I would have had the self-control to say, "Let's use our indoor voices, shall we Bill?" Or if I would have just punched him in the mouth. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have punched him in the mouth.
Pretty sure.
I think, to a large extent, it's all just fear and ego. I suspect ego is early consciousness' response to fear, so the two go together in equal measure. The larger the ego, the greater the underlying fear, the louder the voice. But I don't know this, it's just something I'm using as a sort of working hypothesis. I certainly don't think I'd care to get in a shouting match over it.
And once you admit that your only real concern is long-term survival, it's easy to see how arbitrary the rest of it is. People get "passionate" about all sorts of bizzarre things; like jumping out of airplanes, climbing on the sides of rock cliffs, fly fishing, and so on. These passions that people have are choices; they are not pretedermined by fate or genetics. Collecting baseball cards is not an innate part of someone's personality. Watching NASCAR is not a reflection of someone's deeply realized "self". These are all vanities. If someone can be passionate about NASCAR, why on earth can they not be passionate about their day job? Being passionate about one is no more or less arbitrary than being passionate about the other.
To be clear, I am not recommending that someone seek "self-realization" from their day job. I am simply pointing out that to seek self-realization from other activities is equally absurd and arbitrary.
To restate his conclusion, Joshua is simply pointing out that seeking self-realization is absurd.
Now, this is just Joshua's "working hypothesis." He's no more certain of this than I am that ego is consciousness' early response to fear. We each have beliefs or thoughts that we believe support our respective hypotheses, but neither or us is in any sort of position to know or to be certain. I'll return to this in a moment.
I think Joshua is conflating "passion" with "self-realization," which, to be fair, is a widely-shared misapprehension. The examples he cites seem to be more related to "sensation" rather than "passion," with the possible exception of fly fishing, though I suppose even that is a sensation. People do become attached or addicted to particular forms of sensation, and in that sense will pursue them to an extent that seems reasonable to characterize as "passion."
The thing is, the main, literal meaning of "passion" is "to suffer." While it is possible that an addiction or a strong affinity for repeating a certain sensation can lead to suffering, this is not the same thing as "passion," at least as passion relates to the achievement of self-realization.
Earlier in this brief post, Joshua writes, "I tend to think that "self-realization" is a rather vain fancy anyway." And here is perhaps where I most disagree with him. Certainly the presence of the word "self," juxtaposed with the rather loaded term "realization," suggests vanity and fanciful notions; but I think it's a superficial and unfair characterization of an imperfect, if not especially "fresh," neologism. And, to pick nits, Joshua cites Mazlow, who I think used the term "self-actualization," a construction of no greater virtue, to be sure.
I think Mazlow and much of the modern self-help industry are victims of our infatuation with our own conceit about our modernity and sophistication. What "self-realization" and "self-actualization" are really about is best described by a rather quaint and almost archaic word, "grace;" but I'm afraid I'm going to have to exercise a bit of sleight of hand, or take a small liberty here with this otherwise very serviceable word. By "grace," I mean that quality of being that one exhibits when confronting and accepting the world as it exists, and acting in a way that affirms both the "the world" and "the self." This has little to do with sensation. Rather, it is almost the absence of sensation, though that is not exactly true either.
Where "passion" meets "grace" is in the experience of suffering. It is by exploring the nature of our suffering that we can discover grace. This is not to say that those who achieve a state of grace do not experience suffering, indeed they do. It is to say that the "sensation" of suffering does not govern their choices. Is it "vain" to seek the sort of existence wherein one's experience of life is not defined or governed by one's suffering? Is it fanciful? I don't think so. Indeed, I think it is ultimately what all consciousness seeks.
Another word that one might use instead of self-realization or self-actualization would be "enlightenment" but that's an imperfect term as well. I think "enlightenment" suggests a certain knowledge or insight that is "greater" than that of the "un-enlightened;" but as it seems to be becoming clearer to me, "knowledge" or "insight" are largely orthogonal to the achievement of "grace" or "enlightenment." There is an element of insight or knowledge, but it's not some special capacity that makes one a sage of some kind, with lots of answers to perplexing questions. I believe it's entirely possible to be "self-realized," or "enlightened" or to have achieved a state of "grace" without having the answers to any questions. Indeed, it may even be an advantage. I suspect answers are, in some large measure, a product of ego and therefore are likely more of a barrier to grace than a path to it.
Which brings me back to the other thing that I disagree with Joshua about, and that is not just his premise, but that he offers it as an assertion: "Simply," self-realization "is absurd." Well, that certainly stops that conversation, closes off that avenue of approach, excludes that area of exploration. Which is why I believe it's a product of ego. Ultimately, achieving grace is about extinguishing the ego, the state that ego most fears. If we can discount, denigrate or otherwise put aside supposedly "vain" and "fanciful" notions about self-realization, we can remain comfortably within the confines of our elaborate explanations of the world, secure in our judgments, and content with our particular view of ourselves and our relationships with others.
For a while anyway.
But, I'm not going to get excited and jump up and down about this. "People love to jump up and down," as someone said. That's a "sensation" thing too many of us are attached to. Joshua may well be right, and I make no claim to authority of any kind. But I don't agree with him. As always, I make all this shit up. I'm an authority on nothing. Which may be why I seem to be saying nothing of late.
I've been of two minds about this post. I had it up, then took it down. It's back up. This is not an argument, and I'm not saying Joshua's wrong. I'm just saying I disagree with him, and those aren't the same things.
I received a brief e-mail from the folks at Mark/Space confirming the conflict I experienced between The Missing Sync and Mac OS X, 10.3.5. They're working on it.
It's probably a character defect on my part, but I decided that life was too short to not enjoy a good, modern digital camera. This complicates my life in certain, limited, ways; but I do enjoy taking pictures and it's not as though I'm suffering from a surfeit of enjoyment in my life at this moment. So, rationalizations all in order, I set about the task of identifying a suitable replacement for the late, lamented Canon PowerShot A70.
I determined early in my search that I would not buy another Canon consumer product. Although I have rationalized buying another camera, there are limits to how much rationalization can increase your apparent wealth - I'm definitely going to have to live with a consumer-level device. Since I've had good experiences with two Kodak digital cameras, albeit from their earlier models, I decided to look at what their current offerings are. To make a long story short, I settled on the Kodak EasyShare DX 6490. The whole EasyShare branding thing is a mistake, I think, but there it is.
Here's what I liked about it: First, it's not a Canon. Second, the 10x zoom lens. I've been frustrated at the number of candid shots of anoles I've missed because the little suckers ran away before I could get close enough to get a decent shot of them. Now I can stalk the miniature monsters from long range, and bore all of my weblog readers with lots of pictures of little Florida lizards. Third, the lens is made by some european manufacturer that I can't pronounce; therefore, it must be good! (Well, every review I read said it was a nice lens system.) Fourth, Kodak color! To a certain extent, arguments about color reproduction are largely academic exercises to me. I have generally been more pleased with the color reproduction on my Kodak DC290 than on my Canon PowerShot A70, especially in outdoor images. But, it's not a huge thing and I have no idea which one is more likely to render an image with more color fidelity than the other. Fifth, it can take an external flash. Not that I'll ever buy an external flash, but it makes me feel good to say that. Finally, generally it looks as though the 6490 enjoys the same low-noise characteristic of the CCD that my DC290 enjoyed, which is good for low light shots.
It's not a perfect camera by any means. It's not a "pocket" camera, or even a "wrist" camera. This one goes around your neck on a strap. Adds to that whole "photographer" experience, I say. It takes MMC card media, which means my investment in Compact Flash cards goes unexploited, except as they may be used in the DC290; or in the unlikely event that I'm able to resuscitate the PowerShot A70 by repeatedly smashing it into a wall. But I digress. It also uses a proprietary battery, albeit one with universally praised endurance; so my investment in rechargeable NiMH AA batteries likewise goes unexploited, except in the aforementioned predecessor camera(s). Various reviews commented negatively on the relative speed of the camera in terms of startup, and focusing. I'm going to say it's going to be fine for me. It has only one setting for compression, and many people feel it's too high. It does not take RAW or TIFF (uncompressed) images, and it has no manual focus.
As I was meandering over to Firehouse Subs last Saturday, I decided to pop into Ritz Camera to see if they had a 6490 that I could hold in my hands to see how it felt in terms of construction. They did, and they let me play with it a bit. It was quite solid, and it felt quite durable; which is an entirely subjective, almost irrational assessment, but I think it matters. Then the very pleasant, knowledgeable fellow behind the counter asked me if I'd considered the Canon PowerShot S1 IS. This is a 3 mega-pixel camera with a 10x zoom lens with Image Stabilization! (Hence, the "IS.") Well, I played with it a bit, and I was quite impressed. It's a bit smaller than the 6490. It uses Compact Flash media, and AA batteries. The image stabilization system works very well and allows you to use much slower shutter speeds at full zoom, or more flexibility in aperture. It takes VGA-size movies (640x480 pixels), with a compression setting for "extremely fine" or something like that, for quality that approaches or exceeds that of digital video. Plus, you can zoom the lens while you are "filming." The 6490 limits one to quarter-VGA size movies (320x240) and you can't zoom while filming. Plus, the PowerShot S1 has manual focus; and the image in the focusing area will be magnified in manual focus to allow the LCD display to be actually useful when trying to focus the camera manually. The LCD display flips out and rotates 180 degrees so I can see myself in it when I take all those vanity shots of myself.
It was really almost too much to bear. It looks like a great camera! And it's the same price as the 6490 (a little cheaper, depending on where you look). But, in the final analysis, I concluded that Canon builds a consumer product with a lot of very geek-lustful features, and packs them into a small, very attractive package for a very affordable price, all at the expense of a small thing called durability! The camera didn't lack for critical flaws either. Several people reported problems with being able to read or write to Compact Flash media. The focusing system gave many people problems. And the LCD, at 1.5 inches, is pretty much tiny and useless for the hopelessly near-sighted like yours truly. The Kodak comes with a 2.2 inch LCD that even I can see and read text on.
So, after struggling for a bit, some remedial rationalization, sleeping on it and finally saying to myself, "What the hell!" I went ahead and ordered the Kodak. Should be here in a few days. Then, watch out for the monsters!
I installed Mac OS X, update 10.3.5 the day before yesterday, to seemingly no ill effect. There is one reproducible glitch introduced by 10.3.5 that affects me. The Missing Sync, from Mark/Space is a utility that brings additional functionality to Palm OS handhelds used with the Mac. It's a very useful application. Using it, I can export photographs from iPhoto directly to the Clié, or mp3 files directly from iTunes. It also enables mounting the Memory Stick flash memory card on the desktop like a removable drive.
I used the audio record function on the TG50 the other day to make a recording of a meeting I was attending, and I wanted to share the recording with someone. At first, I thought I could just send the resulting .wav file directly from the Clié wirelessly through the Bluetooth connection. But I had forgotten about the size limitation of files transferred by Bluetooth. If the file size is larger than the internal free memory of the handheld, you can't send it wirelessly. So I thought instead I'd just mount the Clié's Memory Stick on the desktop by means of The Missing Sync and a sync cable I carry in my bag. I had updated my iBook to 10.3.5 the day before, and hadn't noted any problems. I connected the Clié and the iBook by means of the USB sync cable, launched MS Import, the application on the Clié that supports mounting the memory stick as a drive, and I experienced an immediate kernel panic on the iBook.
You can count on your fingers the number of kernel panics I've had on OS X since I first installed it 3 years ago, so this was something of an unpleasant surprise. I was able to replicate the problem consistently. I swapped Cliés, from the TG50 to my 665c, and I swapped Memory Sticks from a 128MB Sony stick to a 256MB (128x2) memory stick from Lexar. Same problem.
When I got home, I reproduced the problem in the G4 MDD using the docking cradle, so it wasn't a problem with the iBook or the sync cable. I upgraded The Missing Sync from version 3.x to version 4.x, and the problem continued. The problem with Memory Stick access also extends to the ability of iTunes and iPhoto to export files to the Clié. So, basically, it appears as though The Missing Sync is broken under 10.3.5.
The last thing left to check was to try to mount the Memory Stick using a Mac running 10.3.4. I have another HD in the G4 MDD that still has 10.3.4 installed on it, and so I booted into 10.3.4, stuck the Clié in the cradle and launched MS Import and the Memory Stick promptly appeared on the desktop. This drive still has The Missing Sync 3.x installed on it, but not 4.x; so the only thing I wasn't able to confirm was that version 4.x works under 10.3.4. In any event, I'm convinced 10.3.5 caused something in The Missing Sync to break.
I went to the Mark/Space web site to look for any technical support information on kernel panics, and found none. Since the problem seems related to 10.3.5 and since 10.3.5 has been released for only a couple of days, this wasn't particularly surprising. I looked for some way to report this problem to their technical support people. They have a form on a web page that you fill out to describe your system configuration and the nature of your problem and the steps necessary to reproduce it. I dutifully filled in all those fields and wrote the results of my investigation and clicked the Submit button, only to be greeted with an error message that I had failed to fill in the "Palm Desktop" field. I assume this would be a field that contains what version of the Palm Desktop software I am using. Unfortunately, if you'll look closely at the support page I linked to above, you'll find no field labeled "Palm Desktop," and I put relevant information into every field on the form. This is a little frustrating.
I found an e-mail address on their contact page, and I wrote up my problem along with the glitch on their support web page and e-mailed that off to them. I promptly received an automated response that, in effect, said they received a lot of e-mails and it might be a few days before I hear from anyone.
Just because I can't stand it when my Groundhog Day export files upload quickly, I figured I post a couple of more spider pictures and grind my network to a halt again.
This little guy started weaving his web at the entrance to my apartment sometime the night before last. I went out yesterday morning to discover he (or she) had accomplished quite a little feat of engineering. I had enough room to come and go without knocking it down, so I left if there. He's probably less than half an inch across, so he's just a little guy. I don't know what to make of that fancy carapace. Looks pretty intimidating, doesn't it?
I tried getting some shots with my DC 290 without using any of the macro lenses, but that wasn't working. I have a couple of macro lenses I'd bought some time ago, but I've never really used them before. The instructions indicated I should use manual focus, but on the 290 all manual focus means is you get to select one of a number of fixed distances (at least that's all I could glean from the menu). So I selected the closest distance, which was 15 inches. Then I had to turn on the LCD to tell approximately when the spider was in focus. This tends to really deplete the batteries ridiculously quickly, so I didn't have a lot of time.
The wind was blowing so the web was moving in and out and the spider would go into and out of focus and I'd try to trip the shutter when there was a calm moment and it looked like it might be in focus in the not terribly useful LCD display. I think I got about a dozen shots before the camera began to gasp for electrons. A couple of them actually came out fairly decent.
This one didn't turn out very well, but it's a slightly different pose.
The others were all crap. I may try again later, and use the AC adapter from an extension cord so I don't have to fret about swapping batteries.
This is going to cost Bruce Springsteen a number of fans. How great a number, I don't know; but I believe it will be significant. Personally, I don't think they're any great loss as I expect the vast majority of them are of the sort like that perfectly-coifed woman in her pressed blue jeans who asked me to sit down at Bruce's Jacksonville appearance. Which is almost a metaphor for that kind of people: having paid their ticket price, they're disinclined to be inconvenienced in any way by actually participating in the experience. They attend the performance simply for the social cachet, feeling no real connection with the artist or the emotional content of his music.
Maybe if nothing else, it'll keep those people at home the next time he passes through my town, and that would be a good thing.
"These are the reasons that people with a memory — like Dwight Eisenhower — are slow to go to war. Combat is always a sad, desperate monument to man's inability to get it right, either diplomatically or tactically. The wise but uneducated people in a culture generally clean up the messes created by the over-educated fools who just know they can manage a war better than the similar idiots who screwed it up last time."
Britt Blaser, a guy with whom I disagree about many things. But not this.
I finally heard back from Visa on the repair to my Canon PowerShot A70 digital camera. It's been disallowed. Apparently, the repair facility assessed it as "impact damage" and not subject to the conditions of their warranty, and Visa merely extends the period of that warranty, so if Canon wouldn't cover it, Visa won't either.
I'm afraid I didn't take the news very well. I've never dropped or mishandled the camera. It's always been transported in a case, and when I use it I wear the wrist strap. While I'm by no means indigent, I treat a $289.00 device with the utmost care. As I recall, there is not a mark on that camera. If there was any "impact" that might damage it, it was nothing that is not encountered in the course of normal day-to-day use.
There is one possible explanation, and that is when I allowed Caitlin to use the camera at the black belt test in June. Caitlin says she didn't drop it, but I suppose it's possible she could have banged it against the bleachers or something. The test was on June 12th, and I used the camera on several occasions after that date, taking 40 photographs and a number of short video clips before it failed on July 9th.
At this point, I'm not sure how I feel, except very disappointed. I spoke to the people at the camera shop and they simply point their finger at the Canon repair facility. Visa points their finger at the repair shop. I suppose the Canon facility would have to point its finger at me. I will say that my next camera will not be a Canon. I'm sure they make fine cameras, but they're not very durable. I'm also disappointed with Visa, though I'm not sure that I'm being exactly fair.
My Kodak DC290 is more than three years old at this point. I took my first picture with it on June 6, 2001. Apart from a vertical line of noisy CCD elements that appear in very dark images at long exposures, it still works flawlessly. It's also very big and very slow, so it's not the kind of thing you take with you everywhere, and you don't capture many casual "action" shots. I don't know how much miniaturization and speed compromise durability, but it seems likely that making very small digital cameras at prices consumers can afford requires some compromises. The DC290 when it was originally released sold for around $900.00. I bought mine new, but for much less because it had been eclipsed by the relentless advances in digital cameras. But I think that original price point, and the large size, allowed for a much more robust device. At least I hope so, because it's the only camera I have at the moment.
At the moment, a new camera isn't in my budget. But I'll start looking at what's available with an eye toward something that can take a certain minimal amount of ordinary physical abuse without failing. The repair shop told me they "see this all the time." I suppose I should ask them which models and brands they see least often.
I'm having the camera returned to me. If I fiddle with it enough, I might be able to get it to work now and then. Failing that, maybe I'll take it apart and see what I can do with it. I don't think I can make it any worse.
I took Chris back to the clinic this morning, and the new doc on duty decided his wound didn't need to be packed again. I took a look at it and it's a pretty gruesome little hole in his knee, maybe 1.25 cm deep, and about that in diameter, with bits of dead or dying skin around the margins. We got some very expensive antibiotic ointment to go along with the oral antibiotic, and he's just supposed to change the dressing twice a day. After the clinic, I dropped him off at the Jacksonville Fairgrounds where he's enjoying the Warped tour. Slam dancing with his wounded knee. Ah, to be seventeen and foolish, I mean, indestructible.
As for me, my own knees hurt (a lot!) as I've been sitting cross-legged on the floor all day, surrounded by paperwork from my half-assed filing system. Divorce is never a fun thing, but about the cruelest thing anyone can ever do to me is make me do paperwork. I'd almost rather go to the dentist. For whatever reason, a divorce requires a mountain of paperwork. I suppose to make sure I haven't hidden away any assets from my vast financial empire. Plus, they seem to require a great deal of other data, not strictly related to money and property. Fortunately, a good deal of that is already documented by the Navy; and I've had to document a great deal of the rest of it before, in maintaining my security clearance. But still, it is paper, and my filing has left a great deal to be desired. So I've been going through really organizing what I didn't review during my last review/purge. I hate it, but I suppose it'll be good to have everything organized for a while. I had promised my attorney's assistant that I'd have everything together this weekend. I'm not sure I'm going to make that, but it'll be close. My life is pretty much an open book, so it's not like I'm trying to hide anything. I just think it's insufferably, intolerably, excruciatingly boring!
In my continuing exploration of the Sony Clié PEG-TG50, I have discovered the appropriate key-presses to effect a num-lock, thus facilitating the entry of strings of numbers; and there are key combinations that allow you to go from one field to the next in the PIM applications. Oddly enough, or perhaps not considering it's Sony, they're not just tab and shift-tab like they would be in nearly any other software applciation. It's CTRL-G and CTRL-P. Go figure. Reminds me of my Apple ][+ days, except CTRL-G would make the speaker beep, as it was the ASCII code for the bell feature on teletype terminals. But still, good news is good news. (Well, scratch that. It's CTRL-O and CTRL-P. Seems I'm going blind too. Sheesh.) Lastly, I'm somewhat chagrined to point out that this information is available in the slim paper documentation Sony provides, near the end of the book. Shows you how much I pay attention to manuals.
Anyway, this post was by way of giving my knees a break from sitting on the floor. I still have another box of papers to go through and sort, staple and paperclip. Then I have to answer the obligatory interrogatories, and mandatory disclosures and such. How much simpler it would be to follow the old Steve Martin process, "I break with thee... I break with thee... I break with thee..."
