Well hot darned, I ain’t never seen that error afore. I reckon it’s
time to reboot the ol’ girl.
Untitled
Best tripod for beginning photography
There are a lot of crappy camera tripods out there, made cheaply, that pass themselves off as useable. They’re not.
They are mostly lightweight piles of plastic junk that are a waste your valuable money.
My recommendation? Get a Slik PRO 330 DX. I owned and used for years the previous model until it disappeared to New Mexico with a friend, and I just bought the new updated model. It’s essentially the same tripod, so I’m excited that I can do some night photography again.
The primary reason I love this tripod is because it isn’t a plastic piece of junk. It has a solid metal head, with aluminium alloy legs, and if you take care of it, it will last for years.
The head, although not “pro”, is suitable enough that you’re never going to hate it. It’s sturdy and smooth, and will handle your SLR confindently and securely, without slipping. The quick release plate is very sturdy. It also has a vertical tilt handle in addition to the pan & tilt handle, which makes it easy to adjust.
While I don’t like the fact that this new one is lighter than my old one, which is an issue I think people mostly misunderstand, the potential downfall for that is made up for by the fact that it has quick release legs now instead of the old twisty screw knob-type. This makes the tripod much more user friendly and faster to set up and adjust.
To explain the weight issue, everyone wants light tripods because they have to carry them around. But extra weight means more stability, especially in windy conditions. Stability is the entire purpose of a tripod to begin with, so if you’re not a wussy and want images that are sharper, get a manly one. This tripod, it’s fair to say, straddles that line nicely, providing sufficient stability without being cumbersome.
The Slik tripod here isn’t the cheapest, compared to Wallmart cheap, but it’s not expensive either. At about $100, it’s a significantly better investment than any other tripod in that range.
All things being said, if you’re interested in doing photography, do yourself a favor and don’t skimp on your tripod. The Slick PRO 330DX is in my opinion the best initial investment you can make if you’re a beginner or enthusiast and you want to get serious about your art. This will start you off on a nice foundation, and still give you room to grow.
Sent straight back to Topaz
This is unsettling, at the very least.
Topaz War Relocation Center covered 31 square miles and housed about 9000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans during WWII. An interesting tidbit from Wikipedia about the name:
Topaz was originally known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, but this name was abandoned when administrators realized that the acronym was naturally pronounced “Curse.” The camp was then briefly named for the closest settlement, until nearby Mormon residents (with their own heritage of forced relocation) demanded that their town name not be associated with a “prison for the innocent.” The final name, Topaz, came from a mountain which overlooks the camp from 9 miles (14.5 km) away.
The 442nd RCT of the 100th Battalion was a military unit made up entirely of Japanese-Americans and became the most highly decorated combat unit in the history of the U.S. Army. Many of the boys in the unit returned from the war and were sent straight back to Topaz.
From War of Relocation:
Star Trek: How It Should Have Ended
via @darthvader
Awful open mic performance
Last night I played the open mic night at the Empyrean. And, quite frankly, I was awful.
My first mistake was that I decided to play my twelve string guitar on stage. You know, to “liven it up” or something. Once I started playing, however, I remembered why that particular guitar sat in the closet for so long:
It sucks big, fat Yeti toe.
Half way through my second song, my hand was already hurting. A twelve string has twice as many strings as a standard Spanish acoustic guitar, and this particular one has a string action that makes it almost impossible to do barre chords at all. Even open position “cowboy” chords start to become difficult to play after a while. By the time of my third song, it was painful to the point of distraction.
By my last song, all I wanted to do was smash the guitar ALA Joe Strummer. I was so pissed that I wanted to throw it, smash it, break it. In hindsight, that might have been cool, but to a room of about 30 people expecting mellow acoustic music? Who knows. It might have secured my legacy.
That anger didn’t help my singing, in a real bad way. It’s hard to sing soft, mellow songs when you don’t feel mellow, and what normally would have been a routine performance turned into a disaster.
I decided, foolishly, to play a song I hadn’t rehearsed, and I totally spaced on the lyrics. That messed me up, and I was so distraught that I messed up the second song also.
Remember my guitar? Yeah, it turns out it was also tuned a half step too high, which I discovered when I attempted to play Bon Iver’s Flume. (That also accounts for a lot of the other discomfort in playing that stinking pile of strings and wood, although this was clearly user error.)
It was death to a song sung in a falsetto. I copped out halfway, and sang it an octave lower. Weak sauce!
For my last song, I proclaimed that I was gonna play a song that I could actually sing, which I did. But halfway through the song, I realized that I just wasn’t feeling it at all.
I had previously changed my song into one that is sung softly, kinda like Elliot Smith or something. But that wasn’t working. What the song was originally was loud, brash, and at the edge of my singing range in terms of pitch and volume.
Halfway through, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying myself, and I wanted to sing my song my way, pitch be damned. I think I spooked the soundboard guy, because halfway through the song, I jumped up about 20dB in volume from both my vocals and my guitar.
And you know what? It worked. I actually enjoyed the last two minutes of my performance, and I think the audience did too.
Two lessons learned: One, give your twelve string acoustic to your worst enemy. Two, sing with your heart. Forget trying to appease the masses at the expense of your own interest in the music, because nobody will end up enjoying it.