Crazy Christmas Lights – Day 3

So, it’s only three days late. Oh well. I modified the time stamp.

Crazy Christmas Lights – Day 2

Crazy Christmas Lights – Day 1

Okay, so this is really late. I’m sorry about that. I had my last two final exams yesterday, so now I can do fun things. Sorry for the quality of the pictures to come. They were taken out of a car window at night, so even with VR, they are still pretty sketch. Enjoy!

Time Lapse – Dashboard Lights Swap

This is a time lapse of me changing out the light of the instrument cluster in my 1996 Toyota Tacoma. In total, it took about an hour to an hour and a half. This is the second time I did it. The first time I put in blue LEDs that weren’t bright enough. I bought some super bright lights from Japan and put those in this time around. They are much better.

This is 504 shots that I took with my Nikon D80. I used Nikon Camera Control Pro to control my camera. I told it to take a picture every second, but with processing time, I think it ended up being once every four or five seconds.

The music is part of Morning Rain by Joel Steeves (me). I know it doesn’t fit the best, but this way I don’t have to worry about copyright.

What’s really fun to watch is the screws on the right hand side. There isn’t many pictures of me putting them there or taking them away, so they just kind of appear and disappear.

I’m working on getting the high res version up on Vimeo, but it’s not liking me right now.

EDIT: HD Version – http://www.vimeo.com/2263676

Digg Problems

I actually wrote most of this last night, but I didn’t publish it. I now see that Lahni wrote a very similar post, which is strictly a coincidence.

If you know me well, you know that I love Digg. I am constantly checking Digg throughout the day. I would bet that I spend hours on Digg everyday. I find everything on Digg, from hot news items to hilarious videos/pictures to cool science stuff. Lately, however, Digg and I have been having some problems. Really, it boils down to one thing: the other Diggers. I am so sick of the hypocrisy that runs rampant in the comments. I have found most diggers to be left leaning atheists, which is fine. The problem, however, is that many of these fine souls do not practice what they preach. They love to think that they are open-minded and respectful of others. They aren’t though. Any story that mentions religion is immediately filled with comments that basically say that if you believe in God you are a complete idiot who deserves no respect. They lump anyone who has any believes in God into the same category as the religious zealots. They have become very much like the religious zealots whom they despise so much. They are closed-minded individuals who can’t see past their own beliefs. They are egotistical in their belief of the non-existence of God. They label anyone who does believe an idiot, a sheeple, a nut etc. It really bothers me. I agree that there are some people out there who are religious zealots that are rather extreme, but to lump all religious people together, as the comments on digg frequently do, is unfair and wrong. And if you try to explain that to them, they will quickly point out that they are not trying to convert people and digg you down. However, a lot of the comments are about how people have been fed lies by organized religion and telling them they’re wrong. I’d say that that is the same thing.

On a related note, I really dislike how one-sided digg can be and how quickly allegiances can change. Take for instances the American election. First it was Ron Paul. It seemed like every story was about Ron Paul and everyone loved him. A story that brought up some bad points about Ron Paul was immediately buried. Then, when Ron Paul was no longer in the race, Digg switched to Obama. No story could bash Obama. Anything that bashed Hilary or any Republican (except Ron Paul as I pointed out earlier) during the primaries was dugg straight to the top. No pro-Hilary or pro-McCain/Romney/Huckabee article could do that. After the primaries were over it was the same thing, except it was all against McCain and Palin.

The other thing that bothers me is that, no matter what the story is about, someone will turn it into a political or religious discussion. Not only that, but it will end just as I described above. I mean you could have a picture of a cute puppy and someone would say “Palin will probably shoot it from a helicopter” or “The religious right want to ban puppies too! Watch out!” You get the point.

I think the last verse of the song Angry Mob by the Kaiser Chiefs describes digg very well.

We are the angry mob
We read the papers everyday day
We like who like
We hate who we hate
But we’re also easily swayed

If Only

The Poor Radio

This is the story of how I managed to destroy a radio in under 5 seconds. When I say radio, I mean military grade walkie talkie type unit (Motorola XTN XU 2107 to be exact). The tractor I was using was a big John Deere tractor (John Deere 4320). The pull behind mower (Progressive Pro-Flex 120) that is hooked up to it is 10 feet wide and sounds like an airplane and that isn’t an exaggeration. This happened a few weeks back, but I told someone in an email just recently.

Well, what happened was I had my radio sitting in the cup holder on the tractor and I drove in between two trees. One of the trees had a branch the perfect height and length to reach the radio. As the branch went by, it took the radio with it. I didn’t notice until I heard a large clunk come from the mower itself. As I looked back, I noticed that my radio was gone and then realized what had happened. I felt awful. The radio did pretty well, all things considered. It didn’t survive however. It had been ripped open, the LCD had been decimated, and the batteries were in a few pieces. The belt clip was totally destroyed, as was the antenna. I was able to recover the volume knob, which I stuck on the other radio that was missing one. That was the only good thing that came out of this.

Mike (the second assistant superintendent) was the only one there that day, so I told him. He thought it was awesome. I told Pat (the superintendent) the next day that I owed him some money (those things are worth about $200 each), but he said not to worry about it. He owed me a golf ball, (specifically, a Callaway Tour iX, which is about a $5 ball) so he called it even. Good deal eh?

I was going to take some pictures of it, but Mike whisked it away when I told him. I think he thought that it was bothering me, but I actually wanted to keep it, especially since he just threw it away.

Publication?

I have recently been in contact with a member of Dr. Neil Brown’s staff, Rob, in regards to using some of my photos in one of their publications. Who is Dr. Neil Brown you ask. He is the MLA for Calgary-Nose Hill. They contacted me through flickr. If this works out, it would be my first real publication. I have photos in other things, like the Schmap Calgary map thing and other online publications, but this would be the first real printed publication. I’m pretty excited.

I have to phone Rob again tomorrow to work out all the details, but other than that it should be good to go. I’ll keep you guys updated.

Time Lapse Photography

I recently decided to try my hand at some time lapse photography. Here are some of my results. In the first video, I used the continuous shooting mode on my Nikon D50. It was taken at the Devonian Gardens in downtown Calgary. For the second video, I used Nikon’s Camera Control Pro to control my camera, which had been rigged up in my truck.

Devonian Gardens from Joel Steeves on Vimeo.

Driving Time Lapse from Joel Steeves on Vimeo.

A Dystopian Future

Parts of what follows below were actually painful to write. However, because of the ongoing misinformation campaigns launched by Miss Andrea Gallagher and her accomplices, I feel it is my duty to write this. When I first met Andrea Gallagher, she was a normal person. However, over time she has grown into a monster. Her cockamamie theories about the management of the sky-rocketing human population are well beyond the measures needed. She would have great atrocities befall the countries of the east, all so she could sit on her throne and watch as the poor, helpless people die. It is these actions that should be raising a warning flag in your head. If it does not, than perhaps it is time to re-evaluate your current psychological state.

Andrea may be formidable with words, but she lacks the capacity to truly understand the utter drivel she proclaims. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cunningness. While there are still some who can see through Andrea’s exaggerations and incorrect comparisons, she has been able to dupe a considerable amount of the world’s population into believing her, thus legitimizing her stance on numerous issues.  Andrea, in her infinite wisdom, has suggested that children don’t need as much psychological attentiveness, protection and obedience training as the treasured household pet. Although she has been proved wrong on numerous occasions, she continues to spew this misinformation as though it was fact. It is truly scary how incapable of logical reasoning Andrea is. She contends that science is merely a tool invented by the current elite to maintain power. Excuse me, but where exactly did this little factoid come from?

In an Andrea-led society, those who focus on the major economic, social and political forces that provide the setting for the expression of a scary agenda will be suppressed, vilified, hated, imprisoned, exiled and killed. Is this the kind of society that we want to live in? Unfortunately, Andrea has been able to glaze over these details and convince the majority of the human population that, yes, this is the kind of world they’d like to live in. It is her constant floccinaucinihilipilification of advice from prominent and knowledgeable individuals that has led to her current state. She continues to berate her opposition, portraying them in the media as ignorant, moronic imbeciles.

Andrea’s obsequious minions are everywhere, propagating her fabrications and deceptions. She has people doing her dirty work in every country of this great earth. There is no escape from her ever-present ideas. She is constantly expressing her belief that people should be appraised by their number of material possessions and the amount of money they have instead of their internal values and achievements. It is frightening to envision the dystopian future that will be if Andrea has her way. What is even more frightening is the staggering amount of people that fail to see through her very optimistic speeches and policy.

While I must admit that our society is in need of a change, Andrea’s plan for the future is not the right one. She is self-centered and egotistical, only thinking about how she can benefit herself. Although she would have us believe that she is a caring individual, this is nothing more than a charade. That lie is a transparent and strained effort to keep us from noticing that she seizes every opportunity to introduce absurd, baseless, terror-ridden lawsuits intended to destroy the lives of countless innocent people. I cannot believe this colossal clownishness and neither should you.