I know what you don’t know that you don’t know.

I wrote this in response to a post at this site,  which tries to defend Jimmy John Liautaud’s behavior and habit of hunting and killing big game.  That tagline for this bloggers blog is “You don’t what know what you don’t know.”  I guess he thinks he knows what I don’t know that I don’t know.  It’s always interesting how that sort of thing can backfire on you….

To the author of this post:

In an effort to show exactly what it is that you apparently don’t know that you don’t know, I would like you to answer a few questions:

1. What benefit to the world ecology does having billions of chickens in cages have?

2. If all gulls went extinct, but we had millions of them in captivity, what would happen to the world ecology?

3. Think about the world as an ecosystem that depends upon the ability of animals to migrate and allow each to tend to its own discipline. If this collapses, do you think humanity would survive? Or do you refute that the ecosystem of the world is a highly complex, diverse system with interdependencies that we are only just beginning to fathom?

4. Do we need or require biodiversity in order for the planet to survive and produce oxygen at acceptable levels for human survival?

I  am very curious to see your answers to each of these questions, as each of them, if answered correctly and scientifically, should serve to refute the foundation of your argument – which seems to be that hunting animals that are kept in cages (however large or small) is somehow ok, and somehow contributes to the efforts of conservation. Furthermore, the keeping of animals in cages so that they may be hunted for sport exploits these animals, and inflicts and encourages further damage to an already heavily disrupted, world ecology.

Primarily, I think that before anyone, on either side of the fence, begins to argue in this space, they should be thoroughly educated as to the impact animals play in the world ecology. You don’t know what you don’t know – and we don’t know or fully understand the impact of each extinction that occurs. All we know is that every extinction is a warning sign from nature, and we need to listen. We might not be anywhere close to being next, but we are standing in the same line.

How to run a database: some ground rules

So you think you want to be a database engineer/architect/maintainer/worker? Notice, I didn’t say “DBA.” THis is mostly because I have met so many that are not….Database engineers and architects that are good at what they do get paid well, but the term “DBA” has little meaning because there are many people who have minimal understanding of SQL who claim that title. Don’t claim that title unless you are at least MCSE. For an entry level application/database engineer of a big platform sitting on SQL, the expectation is that your pay may deviate from those who work on the front end of the application.

Depending on the industry and the application, you may expect to get paid slightly more than the people on the front side.  This is because it is expected that you will have the same skills as them, but also have knowledge of infrastructure systems, and also be somewhat more willing to receive calls at strange times of day. For example, someone who has five years experience may get paid $77,000.  Someone with the exact same certifications and industry experience, but who can solve real problems and find and fix a root cause that has dropped the entire system to its knees, may get paid anywhere from $80k to $180k, with $80k being entry level into the database/infrastructure work.

Ok, enough about that.  Here are a few ground rules for good database etiquette:
  1. There are very few, select problems that  necessitate a reboot or restart of SQL server to fix a problem. Don’t do it if you don’t know why you’re doing it.
  2. Know your backup strategy, know that it works, and make sure management knows it, too.
  3. Know your disk IO, and test and retest and have a history of tests of it.
  4. Know what your users are doing and why they are doing it.
  5. Database queries should be fast.
  6. Understand the difference between poor disk I/O and poor file I/O
  7. There are a few blogs that are good, plus a lot of misinformation. Know which ones are best. (Ask around).
  8. Read a book, take notes, make lists, have checklists,blog about your experience.
  9. Never test code in a production environment. Especially never test UPDATE, DELETE, or INSERT SQL.
  10. Key lookups, table valued functions, table scans, and clustered index scans are red flags that a query is not well designed. Understand how to fix them PROPERLY.

That’s all I have on this subject, folks.  Let me know if you have any questions!

 

How to Care for a Hedgehog Named Sodium

I have a hedgehog.  I have had her for about 3 months. She is an albino.  This means that her body simply does not produce pigment, as opposed to leucism, which is like albinism, only it produces pigment, but lacks the receptors to retain it.  Sodium, much like the element, is very nearly white.

NOTE:  I am not an expert on hedgehogs. I just have one and it seems pretty healthy, so people sometimes ask me about her.   If you see something in here that is factually incorrect, please feel free to let me know.
Why did we get a hedgehog? I’ve always wanted one, and it was a happy compromise for my son and I. He wanted a tiger salamander. Yuck.
Hedgehogs are Mammals. They are members of the subfamily Erinaceomorpha. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera, found through parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and New Zealand (by introduction).
Where
You can find hedgehogs for sale at reptile expos and probably some pet stores too.  Reptile expos are held  all over the place, there are usually several a month in the Chicago area. You may also find them at bird expos.  If you google “bird expo” you will find it. Let me know if you don’t.
Price
The expo  we attended took place in Wheaton, cost about $10 to get in, and was held at a county fair grounds I think. They  had several hedgehog dealers hawking their prickly pets for $100 – $150.
Demeanor
I seem to recall that the seller told us the female hedgehogs were nicer than the males, but you can just google that and find out if it’s true or not.  check with each vendor, and see who has the softest, nicest hedgehog.  The younger hedgehogs will have softer spines anyway, but my understanding is that, through selective breeding, some fancier ones have softer spines, even as adults.
So, you bought a hedgehog
In the beginning, owning a hedgehog was a challenge. it was difficult for a few reasons, both care and owner related. Our first hedgehog, named Yttrium, died very young, and we only had her for a week. It was very sad, because she was very nice and enjoyed being held and was very comfortable with people.
At any rate, what our experience with Yttrium taught us is that a personable, friendly hedgehog can be a very engaging pet. We aren’t certain we know why Yttrium died, we fed her and she ate and played in her cage, and drank from her bottle, but one day she just became listless and unresponsive and passed away shortly after that; we thought she had gone into hibernation because when we warmed her up and heated up the up the house, her condition improved.  The following day she became listless again and died within 2 hours.  The lesson we learned is that if your hedgie becomes listless and unresponsive, it might not be hibernation, and you should get hedgie to a vet immediately. I have another blog post about that experience.
After Yttrium died, I contacted the man who sold her to us. I just wanted him to know. I wasn’t looking for a refund but he seemed like a nice guy and I just thought he would want to know.  He insisted on providing a replacement. Nothing could (or as time would reveal, would) replace Yttrium. She was feisty, full of energy, curious, and just plain fun. Our working theory is that she burned out her entire life in one short burst of everything.
Ok, enough of my lamenting, but I wanted you to understand that perhaps part of our difficulties with Sodium may be related to our mindset.  We really, really missed Yttrium, and still do.
Sodium seemed to be perfectly friendly, very outgoing, and wonderful – at the show. But then I had to go pay, and they held onto her as I paid. She looked identical to three other hedgehogs they had, but we picked her because she was the friendliest. When. Got her home, it was like we had a different hedgehog. This one refused to uncurl.  Eventually, after much holding and coaxing
(Insert how to pet a hedgehog video here)
I got her to come out. This video shows how to do it. Once I got her to come out, it became easier to do it. So, maybe they pulled a bait and switch, it was a different guy at the counter, maybe he was attached to the one we wanted. Maybe we had a different hedgehog, maybe she just needed to get to know us.
Either way, the bond that we formed with Yttrium just didn’t magically appear with Sodium. Perhaps some things just aren’t meant to be, and we just have to accept that the pets we bring into our homes may not be what we expected.  We have to love and care for them anyway. It’s a commitment and a bond that, if you aren’t prepared to make it, then you shouldn’t buy a hedgehog. A) they are expensive and B) they require a lot of care.
What’s that, you ask? Why do they require more care than any other rodent?  Well, for starters, a hedgehog is NOT a rodent. If you look in a hedgehog’s mouth, you will notice immediately one huge difference is their teeth. A hedgie’s mouth is almost exclusively designed for eating bugs. They seem to have a mouthful of molars.  This means that they are not strictly vegetarians, they are bug eaters and have powerful jaws designed for crushing bugs (I’m spitballing here).  We feed Sodium the same food we feed our cats. Hedgies are, essentially, omnivorous.  This means they will eat just about anything. Mostly (in the wild) they like to eat bugs.
Feeding and Water
Meat eaters (omnivores in general) are considerably more difficult to care for than herbivores for pretty much only one reason: their poop is way, way smellier. You know how true this is if you have ever cared for a human toddler when he transitions from milk to meat.
 Some hedgehogs can be trained to use a litterbox, which you could then change nightly (believe me, you will feel deeply motivated to do this job).  Sodium likes to poop and pee in her wheel. Therefore, her wheel needs to be cleaned every morning, WITHOUT FAIL. Otherwise, the poop gets really hard and it is difficult to clean.  I use an old toilet brush and very hot water, with no soap.parts of the wheel are held together with electrical tape to reinforce it.
[place picture of wheel with tape here.]
Yttrium had a lot of trouble with getting water out of her water bottle. We think this may have contributed to her demise, but since I was not the primary care giver, I wasn’t monitoring her water levels so I don’t know.  I am the primary caretaker for Sodium, and as such she lives in my bedroom, and I keep a close eye on her health.  I noticed then, fairly quickly, that her water levels in her bottle did not decrease as fast as it should, and she was going 10 rounds with the bottle every night.  I switched her immediately to a stone water bowl—something heavy enough that she wouldn’t be able to use it as a toy, and bang it around the cage all through the night.  At first she liked to poop in it, but she seems now to have settled for happily shoving litter into it every night.
Handling
Handling a hedgehog is fairly easy, once you get them to uncurl. They are fairly smart,  I think she recognizes different people by their scent, so be careful how much hand lotion and soap you use before you hold yours. They don’t like strange new smells and will react by curling up very tightly.
They are easy to redirect, they aren’t fast, and generally have a head for heights. They may nip, but their teeth aren’t sharp. If one bites you, your reaction will be to jerk away which could potentially hurt the hedgehog.  Make certain your hedgie isn’t a biter by asking the seller to hold his fingers up to her nose. Yttrium would bite fingers if encouraged, but not as a matter of general behavior, and she would let go after just a moment and it wouldn’t draw blood. The potential is there, I suppose, but having been bitten HARD I don’t think it is likely.  Children have thinner skin, though. Yttrium only bit me two or three times and Ethan says I probably deserved it. With Sodium, if I am laying down and holding her, she will eventually wander up toward my face, grab a hold of my beard with her teeth, and gently tug at it.  I think she might think my chin is another hedgehog, and she is trying to get it to show its face.  Or, this could be a prelude to a behavior called anointing.
I have never seen Sodium anoint, and I never saw Yttrium do it, either.  It is a very strange behavior, it would be interesting to see. Possibly a sodium would do it, if I let her have her y with my beard, but I usually only let her give it a couple of tugs.  I am of course worried about having the small pair of pliers that is her mouth get a hold of some skin.
Exercise
A hedgehog will use an exercise wheel. I have been meaning to make a video about how to convert a “silent” running wheel into one that is actually silent, but the bottom line is that you need to construct your own wheel if the sound bothers you.  I built mine out of a large running wheel by drilling out the center axle and replacing it with one I made myself out of bearings and steel pipe. It weighs about a pound and it outlasted our Chilean mountain rat, Selenium, who used the heck out of it for almost 8 years. Sodium uses hers every night, and the only reason it ever makes any noise is if I forgot to clean the wheel and a piece of dried poop has dislodged and is rattling around the wheel. She isot a fast runner, and so the wheel doesn’t have the turbine sound we would hear when Selenium used it.
Bathing
There are some videos and some instructions on line about how to bathe a hedgehog.  One of them says to use tearless shampoo.  Please don’t do that. Never use human shampoo on animals as their skin is far more sensitive and even baby shampoo will bother them.  Use a very mild cat shampoo, but don’t trust me – contact your veterinarian or ask the seller what he uses. Remember, however, that not all sellers will be certified in animal care and they may not know any better, either.
Night time
There is one more thing about hedgehogs: they are nocturnal.  Sodium actually waits until everyone in the house is in bed, then she gets up and starts to do her thing.  She usually respects others, and keeps to her wheel, but sometimes she figures out how to make some noise, or gets into a situation.  Generally speaking, Sodium likes the quiet, she enjoys midnight runs, and loves to nuzzle my beard. She is a fine little friend, though a little prickly, so be sure to keep a glove around for picking her up.  They are not necessarily difficult to care for, they are just higher maintenance, which is probably the lion’s share of “difficulty” whenever people refer to an animal as difficult. They are smelly, so you need to clean their cage frequently. We use the shredded, recycled paper bedding and she seems to like it just fine.
I hope this helps you in making your decision…frankly, I miss our first hedgehog still.  For a family experience, I think a Degu makes a superior, lower maintenance pet than a hedgehog, and it is about equally priced and lives about as long.  Degu’s are diurnal and herbivorous, and enjoy weeing people and being seen.  However, they require more handling to train and they can get away from you and chase your cats around.

Review of some Canon 1D X Features

I spent this afternoon reviewing some of the problem that people are having with the 1DX.  These problems mostly centered around auto-focus.  I through on my most challenging auto-focus lens, the EF 400mm diffraction optics (DO) image stabilization (IS) lens. I have admittedly had some trouble getting focus lock, but only in situations where I would expect even more difficulty with a less advanced camera.  Ultimately, there are three factors that you need to weigh before purchasing this camera.

1: do you really need 12 fps, and the ability to retain focus throughout continuous shooting?  On the 1D X, with a fast enough CF card (1000X), you can get almost 35 frames – continuous – in RAW mode before the buffer to disk ratio collapses your frame rate. With its second Digic dedicated to metering and AF, you can shoot and maintain focus continuously. In JPG, you can get a lot, lot more (I don’t know how many before it slows down or even if it does ever slow down).  I am reluctant to push this to its upper limit – if you need to shoot more than 100 low quality jpgs in a row, then you should be shooting in video.

2: Do you need the better weather seal?  If you have to shoot the bride and groom running through the rain to the limo, and your 5D gets soaked and you can’t shoot the reception with your best tool … uh oh, sux to be you, right? Or maybe you just stay out of the weather, and you miss what could have been some great, fun shots, you’ll wish you had the 1D X.

3:  The 1D is sturdy,and handles great, but does require some strength to sling with precision. I handhold with the 2X and 400 DO, and have been sore the next day after a 6 hour shoot.

If these three requirements are not important to you, then don’t buy this camera.  It’s not for you.

How to Refinish a Stubborn, Painted, Pine Floor

Years ago, when I was in the military, I had a furniture repair and refinishing sideline.  I grew up in a Victorian home and we rehabbed it, so I had about ten years of refurbishing experience when I graduated High School!

One of the best techniques I ever used to get ALL of the paint off of a piece was a wash.  I would actually take a hose to a piece, and use a softish nylon brush on it.  It raises the grain slightly, but a light sanding with 250 grit takes care of that. My advice to you would be to do the technique I mentioned with the plastic tarp and the remover, covering it for 30 minutes to 2 hours.  (Too long could damage the wood, my recollection it that I would test a piece first to see how much punishment it could bear.  Pine is softer, so tread carefully here.)

After that, squeegee it all up, suck it up with a wet vac, and then hit it with a carpet shampooer. Use a good one, industrial strength, no soap or anything, just the hot eater.  The whole process should go very quickly and not involve being on your hands and knees at all.

At the end of it, if you still have some colored tint left to the wood, I would suggest using a wood dye treatment that matches it.  Wood dye (not stain) will give it a uniform look, it will show off the grain, and it will last forever, and can be done in  a myriad of colors.  It should look really cool.

Woodcraft has an excellent search page that shows off the coloring capabilities of dye : http://www.woodcraft.com/search2/search.aspx?query=dye

 

 

 

How to Quit a Bad Habit

Please pardon any typos. I do this entirely on my iPad, on the train.

The other day I had a conversation with someone about how he never gets anything done.  That sparked a mention of Parkinson’s Law, which reminded me of this essay I wrote quite some time ago….Now, mind you, I’m not an economist, or even that smart about money. I don’t really understand where money comes from, even though it’s been explained to me a hundred times by people smarter than me.

Last year I decided to delete my Facebook app from my iPad. It was a distraction, not because I couldn’t focus on the work I needed to do, but because it was intrusive. I would be typing an email, creating a calendar appointment, or simply browsing the web and there, at the top of the screen, a little thingy would roll over with my friend Douglas saying, “gotta go to the store! Outta beer” or Eric’s status update of, “checking in at the Recliner,” as though I know what “the Recliner” is, and would want to come right over if I did….so I removed it.  The app, not the Recliner.

“Wait, Scorellis!” you say, “Why not just change the settings?”  Because I don’t have time! I find my way around computers OK; it’s just that whenever I try to change anything about how Facebook works, it usually means going down one rabbit hole or another.

I decided that my desire to avoid the complexity of digging into my preferences to prevent the unwanted notifications was greater than my desire to keep facebook on my device.  And the pop-ups werre intolerable. Besides, Zuckerberg would just change my preferences later on without asking, and it would start to do something else equally annoying.  The dude has serious stalker-like issues.  Facebook is like some sort of super-app for stalkers, right?

Later, on my iPhone (which doesn’t constantly annoy me, not with pop-ins), as I struggled with wading through the timeline navigation, my aggravation levels slowly increased.  With its pretty graphics and immense page size, this timeline feature crushed the performance of my iPhone. I am teetering on the edge of deleting the app.  Then, (now. pay attention!) as I browsed facebook I suddenly read a post by a friend of mine.  Oh joy of commiseration! He bears similar anti-timeline angst!

“Aaaaargh! I’ve been timelined!” he posted.

I think about how to respond to him.  I experience a landslide of thoughts in my mind.

Mind-slide

I want to express my frustration in a single sentence, as direct and short as his, but I cannot find the words.   I want to suggest that we all delete the app from our devices. I am fairly certain that if we delete the app, the complexity of the task of finding it and reinstalling it will probably be an effective preventative against ever again using Facebook.

This would not be a terrible thing. I went 20 years without talking to most of these people, I can probably go another 20 and if, after reconnecting as we have, they want to maintain the relationship, there are other ways. I have a phone. Perhaps they could send me email messages..?

Or maybe I could make an RSS feed from my facebook newsfeed that filters the spam posts (really, nobody has done this yet?)…besides, 98% of the people that I became friends with never even say anything, they just lurk, like a bunch of creepers.

When I signed up for Facebook, I thought we’d have these amazing conversations, but most of my friends never say anything!  Recently, one of my friends from Facebook who I occasionally see in the physical realm made a comment that he knew something about me because he read it on fb. Deja vu.

Now, all of the wheels in my mind are spinning, like a juggler spinning plates; I wanted to compress this avalanche of thought and empathize with my friend in just a few poignant words. I want this whthin mind-slide of thought to crash.

“Congratulations,” I say sarcastically. “you’ve been timelined.”

But what does that mean?

How do I  calculate the tipping point, the point of no return, when something becomes such a pain in the ass that it becomes obvious I should not be doing it anymore? If i have a certain amount of time allotted to complete a task, then at what point will the expansion of the work by an outside force cause me to abandon the task.  Is it a return on investment (ROI) problem? Certainly the point of no return involves ROI, but clearly people invest time and money in things that have not clear ROI at all! I have more questions than answers now.  I don’t understand how to calculate the coefficient of nuisance. When, exactly, does something become so bothersome that I can no longer be bothered by it? My mind-slide completes, the wheels stop spinning, and I turn to the Internet for answers.

I Google It.

I got to thinking that there must be some inviolate law of economics which would explain my behavior, so I searched the phrase, “complexity of task is so great that people won’t be bothered to do it. They would rather suffer the consequences instead.”

This search yielded lots of hits on how to stop procrastinating, but one link caught my eye: “How to use Parkinson’s Law to Your Advantage.”

(OK, you can stop reading now.  Here is where it gets crazy.)

I had read about Parkinson’s law before, about the Coefficient of Inefficiency, but all my question are not answered. When does an increase in consumption due to an increase in efficiency become less a matter of paradox, and more a matter of poor decision making? For example, as automobiles become more fuel efficient, rather than being responsible and increasing gas mileage, what has Detroit done? They have increased horsepower and in many cases, gas mileage has gotten WORSE!

This is the Paradox, the absurd contradiction. The price of gas hits $5.00 a gallon, but still people can be bothered to buy cars, put gas in them, and do what they always do. They don’t mind the longer hours at work, lower wages, less savings, and more money, more money,  more money being thrown down the rabbit hole. The most exquisite paradox of all is that if everyone is raising prices, then nobody is raising prices! Except the first few people, who experienced a momentary, monetary gain!  Then there is the additional vector of manufacturing and consumers placing visceral pleasure over social responsibility. Is this Parkinson’s law, Jevon’s Pradox, or poor decision making?

Does the amount of pleasure derived from an act have something to do with all of this? (tongue in my cheek, we know it does).  Jevon’s Paradox states that with any increase in technical efficiency, there will be a corresponding increase in demand.  I would add that the demand will always outpace the efficiency.  It’s a paradox because one would expect that as efficiency increase, then the demand for raw materials would decrease.  For example, think of automobiles. Fuel efficiency has improved, yet the demand for gasoline continues to increase.

But is this really a paradox, or mightn’t it just be stupidity?

There must be a theoretical upper limit to how much horsepower an automobile needs, and perhaps there is a theoretical limit to the need for travel, but ultimately, according to my sources (the Internet), the only effective cap that will truly limit demand is cost. An increase in cost from either green incentives or simple taxes will decrease use. Expensive gas, taxed to hell, will, therefore, increase fuel efficiency?  Or will people just drive less?  I sense a conspiracy in all of this! The Internet is wrong, of course (well, actually, after this post it will be right again, won’t it?). If something is a serious, serious pain in the ass to do, people will also stop doing it.  For example, swimming in Lake Michigan is far less popular in February than in July, because there is a very large barrier to doing it. It’s f’ing cold.  You have to buy a thermally insulated, diving dry suit, or you have to be slightly nuts. Like I always say, you aren’t crazy until you start acting on your crazy thoughts.

There are a number of versions of Parkinson’s Law, such as: “Work Expands to fill the time available for its completion.”  Perhaps another would be that “the list of things to do always exceeds the amount of time we have to get it all done,” which naturally begets “if it’s important enough to get done, you’ll find the time to do it.”

My favorite version of Parkinson’s law is, “if you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.” or “if you want something to only take a minute to do, wait until the last minute to do it.” Recently, I wrote a few chapters for a book titled “Network and Computer Security Handbook.” As I approached the deadline, I found that my critical thinking skills improved. What does that mean? I cut, hacked, slashed, wrote and viewed the work with far, far greater decisiveness than I did three months ago when I still had all the time in the world to get it done. I wrote more pages of content in one week than I did in three months. Perhaps I also spent considerably more hours on it in the final few weeks than I probably did in the final three months.

There is another law, too, which relates to this one, called Wirth’s law.  It states that “software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster.”  I don’t know what that means.  Maybe this was a 1995 thing.  At one time, I might have thought that this meant that innovations in programming were allowing programmers to perform and code tasks of far greater complexity than there exists computing power to accomplish.  Duh!  For example, “computer, tell me please what is the highest prime number that exists?”  just because I can ask a computer to do something doesn’t mean anything.  I don’t see why this Wirth guy gets a law, but heck, if he gets one then so do I, right? Here is the law of Scorellis:

“The amount of work that some humans will attempt to get their computers to perform will always exceed the capability of the infrastructure to successfully complete it.”

The ability of the software to accept user requests will usually exceed the capacity of the hardware to get it done. This is because people do not want to be told “no” by a machine.  The interface between humans and computers leans strongly towards one of a passive nature. Like watching TV, a user in Seattle of a website in Chicago has no notion of the 10,000 other users across the country hitting the machine at the same time. To her, it is just slow.

Essentially, people will always ask more of the subsystem than the subsystem is capable of delivering. No surprise there, right? We do the same things to ourselves and each other, too.  Software developers are people. ( I think. ) Some software developers are better than others, but computers have a funny affect on psychology.  If I ask a computer to do one thing, should’t it be able to do that one thing, even when I multiply it by a thousand times? And in the same amount of time? I once accidentally opened 20 photos on a PC.  So then I tried to open 200 photos; thinking that it would only take 10 times as long. Ha!  I was young once, too.

Somewhere in here there is a moral…if you want to quit a bad habit, it needs to be excessively cost prohibitive to do so from both a financial and efficiency perspective.  Hmmm. Maybe that could be called “the moral of Scorellis.”

 

How to Improve Your Canon SLR Performance

What does this mean? Isn’t a camera just a camera?  Is there anything that can be done to make it work better?  Well, it depends.  If it is  real crappy camera, then “no.”  But it you have a halfway decent DSLR, then “Yes.”  Whenever you take a picture, your camera image sensor gets hit by a bunch of photons, the photons get converted to electrons, which get converted to 0’s and 1’s in the camera’s RAM disk, or buffer.  Then, the camera takes the data in the buffer, converts it into an image format, and then loads it onto the camera’s memory card. Or something like that, anyway. the Digic processors may convert it to an image before dumping it in the buffer, or maybe it goes into the buffer, or some sort of L2 cache, and juggles things around…anyway….

Here’s the problem: Images can, typically, load from the sensor to the buffer faster than they can load from the buffer to the flash memory.  Now, you can’t do anything about the sensor-to-buffer speed, but you can do something about the buffer-to-memory speed:  buy  a better card.

I’ve been shooting digital for a long time, and used to swear by the SANdisk cards.  Then, one day, I picked up a Hoodman RAW CF card.  I don’t even remember where I was.  But, it was a great card.  I could shoot more photos, faster, and recover more quickly then ever before from long bursts. SO, i bought a couple of Hoodman STEEL 1000X compact flash (CF) for my Canon 1DX. ANd then I made this stupid video.

I don’t show it in this video, but in large JPG, I can pretty much shoot continuously.  I don’t recommend doing that – it is possible to overheat the camera (So I’ve read).  It’s a good idea to not do the mean things to your camera that you see me doing to mine 🙂  At any rate, higher X numbers mean BETTER performance.  Never buy CF from the brick and mortar retailers- they simply DO NOT carry the good cards – they just don’t (I went all over the place one day, looking!).  It’s not even close.  You’ll pay twice as much for half the card that you’ll get for the price of ONE Hoodman 16 GB 1000X .

I actually found cards out there, for sale on websites, for $200 that are note even half as good as the Hoodman cards.  Anyway, this is not a paid endorsement, I speak my mind.  I have a 675X RAW from hoodman that I have had for a few months, and its been great, so I thought I would post a video about Camera flash memory card performance, to help people understand where the bottlenecks are. One final note – in this video, when I first shoot about 50 images using the crappy card, the camera was shooting in JPG, not raw.  The card still sucks – but the 1DX buffer is so huge it just takes 50 shots before you notice.  Once the buffer is full, you wait. And wait.  And wait!

Take a look.  I apologize for all the annoying interruptions.  I hope you can tolerate sitting through this video….

The Last Piano

A young, very attractive and elegant woman sits, watches me.  I know I was killed, but here I sit, playing the Last and I’m fine.   A woman, virtually untenable in her beauty, listens to me play.

Mind this: she is not beautiful in that symmetrical, coldly compelling way that drives many men to great insanity.  No, she is her strength and she is her innocence and nothing is layered over this.  I can see it in the way her chin tilts just so, the way her eyes gaze knowingly and in the softness of the set of her lips.  I watch her lips when she speaks, I watch them in her quietude, I watch I watch I watch. Her movement is music; there: in the graceful poise of her hips; there: in the hands moving to rest placidly in her lap.  Mark the time!  I’m enslaved by her motion and I begin to play again, enjoying the silky smooth roughness of these ancient, ivory keys.

©1997 Scott R. Ellis 

The Last Piano Player

by Scott R. Ellis

I remember the blood soaked, black sands of the beach-head encapsulated within the prison star-world; the way the water teemed with stinging mantas and how the seascape seemed to curve upward to where the brackish blue of the sky traced out the ­disjointed curve of the horizon.

As I stood sifting through the sand, the crashing ocean waves exploded behind me into frenzied sprays against the silver steel pinnacles and ramparts of the fortress-prison.  Its ugly spikes slid motionlessly out of the ocean to curl fortified arms around the island.  Many men were imprisoned here, but only some of us knew that this was no island bastille—those of us who had not forgotten—to us it was a self-contained nightmare, floating in outer space.  It was no Devil’s Island, I was no Papillon.  No, I would escape this space-flung prison only through death.

I am Benedict, and this is how it felt when death’s talon grip snared me:  a penetrating thrust cleaving through my body to rest cold in my soul, twisting it—torturing me.  And then my consciousness slowly abated;  a need for reminiscence emerged from the coldness which encroached on the periphery of my vision, a need for some thread to coalesce, to gather . . . my thoughts drift like particles, drifting about in a sunbeam, searching for a place to settle.  But my acuity fails to pierce through to the past. There is a veil….

I remember I died, but here I am again.  Only, it is no longer a prison, and she, this amazing “she,” with me, explains the prison is this: a  place that people danced and listened to music, where troops gathered and formed to go to battle.  A place where I fell in love again. Oh, and where they kept the Last piano.  She asks me, “How could you have forgotten this?”  She explains, “It has been a century or more since your imprisonment, and since the once star-bound prison vessel crash landed, and cracked open its chrysalis to the free skies of Sanctucity.”  It feels rehearsed and so does my response.  “I don’t remember much about what happened before my return here.  It seems so long ago—it’s a sanctuary now?  Really?”

“Yes, my Bened, yes.”

But, before I died, it was just a prison, a shell of a world—small, but somehow, through the use of science, warped to seem large. They, some of the interred,  say the engineers added a fifth  dimension.  Time was the fourth.   And some said that when they built the Stellar prisons they didn’t add a dimension; rather, love was removed.

 **

I am, returned from the grave, a very old man now.  Gaunt, my skin stretches over my cheeks like paper and my eyes—eyes so stark that even a hawk’s stare would divert from them.  The old piano is still in the rectory of the prison— I don’t know what else they call it now.   Prison is as good a word as any.  My God, that piano is old.  It’s small, and upright.  The keyboard is perched high on the harp, like a spinet but this piano you have to climb up a small ladder to play.   I’d really never heard anything play that way,  play so beautifully that time loses you. Hit any rhythmic combination of notes and they play through the air with the bitter-sweet resonance and delicate timber only an age-old instrument can deliver. Beauty for its own sake. No one really even knows how it got there; perhaps its placement was a clerical error.

Strangely, I remember the first time I ever played that piano and, as I remember that first time,  I also remember the first death: bullets piercing my flesh,  piercing my head, killing me, and the hot searing feel of it punching its coldness into, and through the base of my skull.  They brought me before a small man, and first his assistant shot me in the leg.  I fell—more because I knew I should than from any true feelings of pain.  Then he handed the weapon—a projectile type—to the small man and he shot me in the head.  They may have shot more than twice. I don’t know; I never felt a thing, except terrified.

Some time passed, I think, and I drifted, trying to cling to life.  I grasped for the scattering, filament-thin attenuations of consciousness and felt them slip through my clutch.  Then: awareness returned to me, drifting lazily on outstretched wings, languorously soaring before taking purchase;  and I was here, at the piano, playing.   A glimpse of memory of the darkly burnt cerulean blue sky, cracking open, etches a vivid image in my mind’s eye, a splash of multi-colored paints across a fresh canvas.  Suddenly I awake and gasp for breath with unrestricted lungs.  I look about; I am sitting at the piano.  I look down;  the keys are all where they are supposed to be so I know this is not just some post traumatic hallucination.  I know, with an alacrity born of a hundred years of experience, that this is life, that this is real, and that, only a moment  ago, I died.

A young, very attractive and elegant woman sits, watches me.  I know I was killed, but here I sit and I’m fine and a woman, virtually untenable in her beauty, listens to me play.  Mind this: she is not beautiful in that symmetrical, coldly compelling way that drives many men to great insanity.  No, she is her strength and she is her innocence and nothing is layered over this.  I can see it in the way her chin tilts just so, the way her eyes gaze knowingly and in the softness of the set of her lips.  I watch her lips when she speaks, I watch them in her quietude, I watch I watch I watch. Her movement is music; there: in the graceful poise of her hips; there: in the hands moving to rest placidly in her lap.  Mark the time!  I’m enslaved to her motion and I begin to play again, enjoying the silky smooth roughness of these ancient, ivory keys.

I stop, and I turn to her.  She is radiant, smiling at me.  I think I must have somehow become her hero.  “How long have you been here?”  I ask.  To ask her how long I had been playing may have seemed senile.  My voice is dry and I cough.  I touch my face.  It feels slightly different, but familiar.   She is youthful, attentive, and dressed in a black costume gown with white trim and an ankle length skirt.  I look down at myself to discover that I, too, wear strange, costume  apparel, complete with ruffles at the sleeves and a close fitting tunic which drapes beneath my knees.

“Bened! You Silly.  I came here with you on the shuttle.”  She pulls out a small fan and fans herself.  My hand moves.  A chord strikes in the piano and in my mind.  A harsh, dissonant chord, dark and foreboding.  I wonder how I have so strangely escaped the prison, escaped death.  How I have seemingly left my body and then returned again.  Perhaps I am crazy, completely insane, and it is all a hallucination.  No.  I think, were that the case, I would have thought to hallucinate something a little less extemporaneous.

“I want to leave here.  I don’t know why I wanted to come here to begin with.”  I want to tell her that I have been a prisoner here, that being here torments me, that I had, in fact, been bludgeoned then shot to death—to death! not fifteen minutes ago in a steel room deep in the bowels of this monstrosity. I feel my face again.  The corners of my eyes, are there more wrinkles now?  I can’t feel to tell.

“People are coming, you know, to hear your Improvisations.  The troops will be forming up soon.  We can go to the refresher area if you like, and you can have a drink maybe.

“You are playing very well, though I don’t know why you started and stopped like that.”   She shakes her head slightly, her hair shakes at me but I only see my recollection of it, like a distant memory. She holds out her arm to assist me down from the piano pedestal.  I gracefully accept her help.  I no longer need to feel my face to determine my age.  Simply moving tells me, and the sudden, needful way in which she moved to help me.   I am old.  Very old.  Much older than when they killed me.  Senility will certainly be excused in a man my age.

“Are you my lover?”   I ask her.  She giggles.  I sigh

“Love, of course I am.”  She blushes and kisses me on the cheek.

“Where is everyone—all the prisoners?”

“Oh, Benedict.  That was so long ago.  Don’t you remember? ”

“No . . . my love, I don’t.  You are so pretty.”

“Darling, I’m almost as old as you and twice as wrinkled.”

“No,” I protest adamantly, “—you are young, sensuous, opulent.”  She begins to blush.  I see only this young, beautiful woman before me, and I am confused.  I turn away from her and look up at the piano. It is almost all solid wood.  They don’t make them from wood anymore.  Actually, they don’t make them at all anymore, and haven’t since . . . since forever.  They were never made in these colonies.  It’s a mystery how this one found its respite looming over prison congregations thousands of light-years away from a woodworker’s rasp. I turn back to the woman and I speak to her, looking so deep into her eyes that I lose my sense of balance, of place. I am spiraling into her.  ” I- I’m just an old man who doesn’t know what has happened since he has died.” She seems so familiar to me, as if I’ve known her all my life and have been with her for years.  But I can’t shake the feeling I arrived only moments ago.

I turned to her as we walked up the aisle toward the entrance at the back of the chapel, the prison sanctuary.  The beginnings of noise were shaping outside in the mezzanine area.  I could hear talking, and glasses chinking.  “You are so kind,” I tell her. She strokes my chin and turns.  We start to walk again and it is a slow process.

“You were telling me–where are the prisoners?”

“Oh, Benedict.  That was so long ago.  Don’t you remember?  You escaped the prison a dead man.  You were shot sixteen times, but somehow, you survived.  The prison had docked here for repairs. . .”

It came to me as she spoke, I remembered.  Well, I still only remembered the two shots.  Sixteen was perhaps an exaggeration in the retelling.  I was a young man then.  Time was nothing to me, I had plenty of it.

When I was told one day that I had killed a man in cold blood, I thought it a joke.  When they told me they were putting me under the highest security available, I laughed in their faces and bet the judge my freedom that I would escape.  You see, he knew of my past exploits—he knew I was a war hero who had been captured during the Wars and had led an escape from their dungeons.  I had squirmed through half a mile of air shaft and battled insanity to gain my freedom.

“You are a fool, Benedict.  I’m putting you in Stellar H where, even if you escape, you won’t have escaped.”  And then he laughed, a sinister sound to hear in the docket. Those were the final words of the judge.   He disregarded my bet and stood, dark and foreboding, laughing as he left the court.  Black hooded guards led me from the chaos, bound and levitated.

I imagine, now, that it was an ordinary chuckle, a good belly-laugh over an insolent convicted felon, but at the time I imagined it to be the most ominous bone-marrow freezing laugh that he ever chortled.   It echoed in the halls with the hooded guards, followed me, and continued to linger just on the edge of audibility for the rest of my imprisonment.

I began pondered and planned escapes. One minute I believed that I would have to lead a full scale riot and take over the piloting of the vessel/prison and dock her in some neutral territory in order to escape one day and believed I could re-materialize in another world with the power of my mind the next.  I planned.  And I planned.

No matter how ludicrous or impossible, I considered it.  I met other prisoners who were sympathetic, but most just wanted to go on with their lives.  Most led lives of accep­tance, of quiet, suffering desolation.  I was, as you know, innocent.  I had killed men in the wars, yes, but as a civilian I had entered into a career as a systems navigator.  I was well paid, had a nice home and family, and was actually off planet on business, a hundred light years away from the murder scene.  But, the common law held that computers and DNA and photon residual emission tests did not lie.  I actually watched myself committing the murder in a computer generated, courtroom reconstruction of photon residual emissions and DNA extrapolation.  I was getting convicted by a jury of my peers of premeditated murder.  “Besides,” explained the judge, “everyone knows travel records can be forged by anyone with a moderate amount of travel computer codes.  This court finds the defendant, Benedict Arnold, guilty of murder in the highest degree.  We sentence you to Stellar H for life, up to and including Second Death.”  He pounded his gavel on the bench. He almost seemed to be shaking his head as he did this.  His white powdered wig shook its curls at me.  They too condemned me.

Think about it—I did. I even believed, for a short time, that I had done it, that I had killed.

Then, I had an epiphany. Many years ago, the technology (in the Federation and the Reaches) had been outlawed and research halted and destroyed.  The technology to modulate DNA using gene editing techniques had been destroyed and lost.  But, what if, in a universe of trillions of humans, the possibility that my exact DNA structure could exist twice. . . it’s unfathomable, with millions of base pairs, the likelihood of another exact match would be  1 in 9.3810… × 10^1926591.  But aren’t all DNA (of humanity, anyway) 99.9% the same?  The odds then become much lower, perhaps as low as 1 in a trillion, maybe as high as 1 in 100 trillion. What is the given entropy for the actual differences? How hard would it be to build a biodatabase of billions of DNA sequences, and use a biogenerator, or a bank of thousands of them, to just “roll the dice” and replace a native strand with an artificially selected “naturally” generated one? How hard would it be to convert a replicator of food into one of humans? And how accurate is photon emission DNA sampling? How effective was the clone purging? If the Empire had such devices in their creche vaults, how hard would it be for a Federated citizen to get the tech, or recreate it? I knew I was innocent.  I realized then that, in our society, a man with the ability to alter his DNA could behave with impunity. . . my defense, I realized, had been tragically inadequate.

I had not asked enough questions, and there is no appealing from Stellar H.  Even the Warden is a prisoner.  I could appeal, but no one would listen.

***

The Warden of Stellar H was a small man.  He had us digging through the sand sifting for gold twelve to fourteen hours a day.  We never found any.  We just got stung by the sting rays which infested the waters and every now and then they managed to kill and devour a man.  They never bothered me though.   I discovered by accident one time that I could wade in the water and they would avoid me. It was the time the sky cracked open.   Funny, the expression on the faces of the men around me when it happened.  As if they had forgotten what the real sky was like.  As if they had forgotten how truly bright a real sky was.  They cowered and covered their eyes with their arms as the dome above us split. Sting rays writhed and roiled,  frothing the water up to my knees.  I raised my arms in supplication as I stood naked and bathed in the natural warmth of the light. My legs had grown thick and powerful with the labor.  For a moment, I beleived that I could fly and I leapt toward the sky. The ground fell away beneath me. The noise of the machinery operating the dome whined and screeched in protest, but I didn’t even hear it.

And then they grabbed me and dragged me fighting and kicking down into the depths of Stellar.  Their fists hammered me down again and again as I fought them.  Blood poured from us and then I broke free from them and began to run toward what I believed was my escape.  More uniformed guards came, captured me and they beat me till finally I submitted.  I would fight another day, I vowed.  I would return.  They brought me through a doorway and into a room where a man sat on the floor.  He was a small man and he sat there on a carpet and ate some spherical object that he seemed to be peeling.  It looked like fruit, yellowish but with a reddish hue, not the color of anything I had ever seen.  He looks at me, his one eye seeming to burst forth from his face and it penetrates into my thoughts and it sees my plans to escape.

“Kill him,” he says. He resumes eating.  At this point I assume they think I had opened the dome somehow.  I begin to protest, to tell them I had nothing to do with it and that the true escapists are using me as a dupe. No words come out of my mouth.  The bullet is already on course and I am already falling.  I gasp, but I don’t feel any pain.  “Wait!”  says the small man.  He stands then, and holds out his hand to the guard who just shot me in the leg.  “I want to do it.” The guard hands him the gun. I turn away, I can’t watch it come.

The second bullet pierced the back of my head and I felt the world, consciousness, whisked away, drawn away from me, attenuating to an  imperceptible thinness.  I drifted com­pletely detached in a warm, soft haze as the skeins of death’s pirouettes danced around me in tattering shapes of white, black, and grey.  I could hear nothing, feel nothing, taste nothing, smell nothing, and see only the grayish-white haze, like a thin veil all around me.  And then it slowly dissolved as I began to hear music, and feel the pleasure beat of the keys under my fingers, the slow pulse pulse of the music’s rhythm cascades my senses.  I ride the gestalt to awareness and then see that I’m in the prison ecclesia, playing the old piano with its archaic script across the front panel, spelling out in Gothic lettering “Last.”

Now I’m led down the aisle by this sublime young woman who claims she’s my lover but, God (are You listening?!) it—it only seems like twenty minutes ago that I died and now a whole lifetime has passed and I’m back where it all started.

I don’t even remember if I’ve done anything worth anything—I escaped the most secure prison in the universe and she tells me I did it by dying.

I look to her.  Seeing the love in her eyes discomfits me;  I want to tell her, show her, somehow prove through some thing I do that I am worth it.  Instead, I feel a binding in my chest, incredible pain shoots down my arms and my breath comes in short gasps.  I realize I’m on the floor; she cradles me in her arms.  I smile at her, and she smiles back.  She is fragile when she smiles.   I tell her, “There was never enough time to . . . the things I want to show you . . .do for you . . .”  and I watch as tears flow from her eyes.  I see the piano, this “propylaeum”, rising over me.  Too near to me are the arched sanctuary doors.   From a distance— I am far away now—I hear her whisper to me as she cradles my stilled body, she weeps, and says,  “I don’t love you for the things you’ve done; I love you because you’re the one who did them.”  I finally understand:

There is nobody left now to play the Last piano;  the push pull of the hammers tapping on the strings are stilled,  and the stingrays glide through oceans without bound.  This was the Second Death.

 ****

How to Argue Like an Idiot

Idiot n : A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. The Idiot’s activity is not confined to any special field of thought or action but “pervades and regulates the whole.” He has the last word in everything. His decision is unappealable. He sets the fashions of opinion and taste, dictates the limitations of speech, and circumscribes conduct with dead-line.

                                 ~Ambrose Bierce “Devil’s Dictionary”

(This is based on all the ridiculous ways people try to win arguments and has nothing to do with the “12 Ideas for Arguing your Point Effectively” that I read the other day; you just think it does because you’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.)

  1. “Its about me” Position: Make the argument about you. Defend your turf and the superiority of your decision making skills. Do not accept that you may be wrong. After all, you were there first! Just make sure that you frame it as “It’s not just me, but I am sure that everyone thinks…”  or “Think of the kids…” and “It’s not you, it’s me…”
  2. The ignorer: There is only one side to any argument – the winning side. Your side. Do not pay attention to your opponent’s arguments. The best thing to do with an argument you don’t understand is to ignore it.
    Create lengthy arguments over easily reconcilable differences. Reconciliation takes time and means giving up something you want. Don’t do it.
  3. The Verbose, Brilliant Idiot: If you can’t blind them with your brilliance, baffle them with industry-speak and techno-babble. If your opponent uses masterful language and relevant examples and metaphors, rip them apart as irrelevant and fanciful. This is also known as the Proton-proton Chang of Nuclear Confusion.  If nobody understands your argument, it cannot be proven to be incorrect.
  4. The irrefutable expert: Allow people to believe that your opinions and beliefs are irrefutable truths, regardless of the fact that you are completely speculating and making it up. If they refuse to drink your lemonade, criticize them on a personal level, and point out their past failings.  Tell them “I’m a scientist.”  Never mind that you are just a med school dropout who works as a vet tech in a free clinic.
  5. The “It’s all gloom and doom” Offensive: For example, “I don’t see this project ever coming to light, don’t you remember what a huge failure your project management software solution was (ignore the fact that you may have caused it to fail). Certainly you can’t be trusted with an initiative like this one!” or “Coming from someone with a constant problem of x…” or “Allen is an imbecile and can’t be trusted with this” or “Whaaaah, my dog died last night.”
  6. Inverted/Reverted Nascency : If it isn’t time tested it isn’t true. Likewise, if it isn’t brand new it must be worthless. Take whichever stance is applicable.
  7. The infallibility of tradition: It’s been done this way for hundreds of years.  Therefore, we shall not change! How dare you suggest otherwise?  IT’S OUR CULTURE!
  8. The Defensive Offense: Be offended by even the slightest social misstep of anyone. It will give you great power over them. A good defense is the best offense.
  9. The Inverse Rule: “If everyone is doing it, then so should we.” Rely on arguments that stress wide acceptance and popularity, even if the others are not in the same industry, market, or building. It is also fair to execute the inverse of this argument, depending on your position. “Just because everyone is doing it, doesn’t mean we should.”  Many arguments can be fairly inverted, this is just one example (and a good one! You read it on the Internet, right?)
  10. The Oz Emulation If your opponent’s argument is exceptionally strong, submit a straw man attack. For example, “Julie, I am surprised to hear this position from you. I wouldn’t expect this pro-nouveau argument from someone who still uses a PALM IV to organize her day.”
  11. Injected with Redirection: Simply create an argument that has nothing to do with the fact. Phone conferences with Tim are best for this. “I can’t believe the email I just got. Tim, your special project is over budget, again? I guess this means I can’t fund [my special project to generate tons of new revenue sources and make me look really good after all]….” You may not win, but Tim will be destroyed. Do your best to misdirect the attention from yourself. Make this appear to be inadvertent.
  12. The perpetuity of imperfection Theorem: If the solution being offered is not perfect, it will not work. Do not accept anything less than perfect. This is called the “unobtainable perfection postulate.”  Your opponent’s way will NEVER be perfect; key-in on the imperfections and bloat them with aggrandized tales of your own horrific experiences with imperfect solutions. Once you get this argument tacked onto his back, he will slink back under that rock that he came from.  Get back in your box, Bob!
  13. The Kluge Deterrent: Do not accept “work-arounds” as anything less than costly and ineffective or allow them to mitigate the risks associated with imperfection. You will not lose this battle. Everyone hates “kluged” and “rigged” solutions. Say things like “We don’t want to leave any revenue on the table” or “We need to extract value from this engagement” and “We need to maximize  profit potential” to emphasize your bottom line driven focus. How else will you get that Rolex?
  14. The Brown-nose Perspective : Employ flattery. For example, tell the person how ‘cool’ they will be if only they help you and do as you ask. Inviting people to a special event is a form of flattery. In this mode, you will need oxygen as you will be ramming your entire head up someone else’s ass.
  15. The Internet Proof: It’s on Wikipedia/Google, so it must be true (never mind you that I put it there and then used your own book/publication as a source for it to prove it.)
  16. The Angry Man: We’ve all played this angle, so you know the power of this one! If all else fails, throw a fit, yell, call them names, and break things. Slap a table HARD! Whisper threats (not of physical violence)(that isn’t arguing like an idiot, that is arguing like a sociopath (different blog post)) Nobody will dare defy you ever again. If there is no rebuttal, then you win. Here is a great example a friend sent over to me:  “…so outweighed by the fallacies as to firmly place you in the category labeled “dumbass”. Thanks for playing.*
  17. Locus of Origination:  If you aren’t from around these parts, you got no business being here, let alone sticking your nose into our business.  This works best when combined fluidly with The Angry Man: “Are you a complete MORON or just a Liberal import into Colorado from California that is trying to ruin this state like you did California. I guess you can’t fix STUPID!”*
  18. The Pabst Deflection: If it has a pretty blue ribbon, it must be good. (never you mind that the ribbon is 100 years old) If you can make your argument short enough, sweet enough, and put it in a pretty package with a pretty blue ribbon on it, nobody will ever look inside.  Heck, even if they do look, the package is so pretty they won’t care what’s inside.  It could be a pile of dog poo, and they will love it!  The best example of this is the many memes that get posted onto facebook.  If the picture is pretty, or says something you beleive in and connects point A to point B, nobody cares how accurate it is.  It’s TEXT.  On a pretty PICTURE -> therefore it MUST be true. Sociopaths use these memes to validate, in their own minds, the most heinous of crimes.
  19. Complexity Deflection  AKA “your argument is too complex, so you must be trying to pull wool over my eyes :)” You are smarter than your opponent.  Destroy him with your words.  The more grandiose your speech, the better.  Yes, someone actually is keeping score.
  20. Specificity of Precision indirection (more decimal points means I win). Make a base argument a winner by loading it with made up statistics.  Never use even numbers.  “11% of all marriages are happy.”
  21. The un/likelihood of it happening because it did/didn’t happen to me (anecdote of experience) / anyone I know (plurality of experience) it hasn’t happened to you or your friends, therefore it doesn’t happen (aka the witness paradox.) If I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these tremendously powerful tools. Remember, if everyone else is using them then you should,  too!  As you embark today into the world of idiots, remember : In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is just a lying fool, telling fancy tales.

*Quote is used for educational purposes and originated in a long, trailing post of idiocy by multiple people on that bastion of idiocy known as “facebook”.  Quote authors are Mike Wilson, whose profile pic is a picture of his girlfriend, and Nancy Shileikis, a former Target and Hobby Lobby employee.  Original thread can be viewed here.

How to Enable and Disable the Self-cleaning Sensor on a Canon 1D X

The Canon’s 1DX self-cleaning sensor unit is actually attached to the  low pass filter mounted over the image sensor.  It is rigged to vibrate and shake dust off.  Typically, dust enters the SLR mirror and sensor chamber when lenses are removed and attached, but a certain amount of dust can be expected from normal wear.  Additionally, oil from internal components can become dislodged from internal components and stick to the sensor.  This is supposedly rare. I sure hope it is…. However, if for some reason the dust doesn’t shake off, remaining dust spots can be dealt with programmatically until such time as you can get it cleaned.  Which will of course means that you have to go without your camera for a few days.

When the self-cleaning sensor is enabled, it will engage every time you turn the camera off, or turn it on.  I got to thinking that I really only needed it to work every now and then, so I disabled it.  Then I went down the rabbit hole.  I began to wonder why the feature would be there if it wasn’t useful. Naturally,  I then wanted to turn it back on, but I had forgotten how to do it.  As I do with all things I think I will forget, I decided to make this little video here that will remind me how to do it.

After watching this video, you may now find yourself wondering about my earlier statement, “remaining dust spots can be dealt with programatically until such time as you can get it cleaned.”  I haven’t tried this out yet, but apparently you can, using a single, white card or placard or anything pure white, take a  photo and then use the dust in the photo to automatically auto-correct the dust in post. This process is called “Auto Append Dust Delete Data.”  Well, a better title would have been “Auto Append Dust Data” because you can’t really delete dust 😉

To do this, (and this is something you may want to do before every important shoot)(I know! All you need is more crap to do, right?) mount the camera to a tripod, make some nice uniform lighting (hey, use spot metering on the camera to check!) on a big card of white paper.  Set the tripod mounted camera about 1 foot (30 cm) away from the card. Then:

  1. go into manual mode.
  2. use a 50mm or longer lens
  3. focus to infinity and beyond
  4. Shoo Buzz Lightyear out of your picture
  5. Depress the Menu button
  6. Then, under the third context menu under the camera icon, select “Dust Delete Data” and hit (SET)
  7. This will touch off a sensor cleaning.
  8. Now, you need to take a picture.  Press the shutter button. the picture is not saved, but the information is collected at f/22.
Once it finishes collecting the data, a success or failure message will appear. If it failed, try  starting from the beginning.

Once this information has been collected, it will be appended as metadata to all RAW and JPG files. Digital Photo Professional can make use of this data to remove dust. And don’t worry, according to the manual, the amount of data actually attached to the files is trivial, and you won’t notice a significant increase in size.

My camera is new, so I don’t have any dust to report yet.  As soon as it does, though, I will come back and try this out, and I will post a How To on using Digital Photo Professional to leverage the Delete Dust Data. Hopefully this works better than making AF microadjustments to my every faithful 2.8 L 24-70mm lens. To be fair to Canon, I did that completely wrong, but more on that, later.