This Old Blog

Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan train station A little over a year ago I thought I had closed this particular blog down. Look at the posting history and you'll see I've written nothing here since December 22nd of 2013. I called that post "endgame" because I considered this blog truly at an end. But life never quite works out the way you plan. I moved over and created a new blog with Wordpress. I called it the Arcane Science Lab . I expected to do Great Things on that blog, and I expected the world to beat a path to my new blog. After a year it's debatable what great things were done on that blog, and I can assure you that while I got a lot of followers, I saw no beaten paths leading to that new blog. If anything, while the traffic to this blog dropped considerably, it's still about an order of magnitude greater than to the newer blog on Wordpress. Considering the high hopes I had the and the hype surrounding Wordpress-based blogs I expected a lot more. While it...

I have created a new Wordpress-powered blog called arcanesciencelab . That's where I will be publishing all my words of wisdom in the future. If all goes according to plan, this will be the last post on this blog. Note that all commenting has been turned off and all comments have been hidden. You spammers finally won. As did Google's lack of caring for Blogger.

Stopped by my local Whole Foods to pick up a few supper items; mushrooms, whole wheat pasta, red quinoa. Stuff that supposedly makes you healthier and superior to the folks who shop just down the road at the super Walmart. On the way out I spotted this odd combination of space kitsch and grocery cart with a red faux space shuttle that's big enough to keep a pair of small children, twins perhaps, imagining they're flying a real space shuttle around the isles while their parents try to fill the cart. And I flash back in time to when I sat on the upper bunk bed, with my younger brother in the lower bunk of the room we shared, watching on our black and white TV as Neil Armstrong slowly crawled down the ladder of the Eagle to the surface of the moon. And all the books Time published about space, and the beautiful illustrations of all those rockets we'd be building and flying in the very near future. And the first season of Star Trek, when William Shatner was reasonably res...

A ten-week old pup now going on five years Sometime back in May of this year I passed something of a milestone. blogbeebe turned eight years old. Over those eight years it's managed to accret 1,500-plus posts about subjects ranging all over the map. If you look over at the category cloud you can quickly find the top four or five topics I've written about. This isn't particularly rigorous as I've never been careful what topics to associate with any given article. But you can get a pretty good idea where my overall thoughts have been over the last eight years. When I first started this blog I had no idea where I'd be going with it. I had a vague idea it would be a purely geek type of blog, with entries about my encounters with languages (Java primarily) and software systems (Linux primarily). You'll find some Java entries, and some ancillary Java subjects, such as for Netbeans, but nothing quite like I thought I would write. You will find more than a few L...

Another Taco Tuesday at Tijuana Flats. My wife and my GX1 were with me. It's a cheap place to eat out when you're tired from a long day at work and don't want to cook. Two loaded chicken tacos, chips, and an endless diet Coke for five bucks. What's not to like? I got back into the black and white mood this evening, inspired by " Southwestern Russia with a Leica Monochrom and 35 Lux by Daniel Zvereff " on Steve Huff's blog. I was taken with both the photography and the story that goes with the photos. Try to pixel peep the photos, and you'll be disappointed by the lack of "cutting" sharpness. Stand back and look at them, and I find I'm overwhelmed by them. What they might lack in technical sharpness them more than make up in their emotional edge. My photos aren't anything like his work. For one thing even though the 20mm was opened up to f/2, it doesn't have the shallow depth of field his 35mm has. While I recognize an...

On Wednesday, 17 April, I walked into my office at The MITRE Corporation in Orlando for the last time as a MITRE employee. That day, my division director, who I'd not seen before that day, dressed in a suit and tie, was sitting in the local office's main conference room waiting for me to arrive. Within five minutes I found out I'd been laid off due to sequestration. Or at least that was the official story. I was given a severance for my four years and 11 months as a MITRE employee, COBRA information, and a glossy brochure for Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH), a company that advertises themselves as "change management" and "career transition" experts to help me find another job. I turned in my various badges, signed several pieces of paper, and was back out of the office in about 45 minutes. I didn't bother to clean out my office (I'd do that a week later) as I was still in physical pain and in something of a mental state of shock. I went home and started...

For whatever reason there's been a spate of articles published on the Internets about digital camera self portraits, or selfies, and What It All Means. There is in particular a recent essay published on Luminous Landscape (LuLa to those of us In The Know) titled " The Age of Narcissism – Digitized, Homogenized ." It's the kind of essay I might have been assigned in a freshman college English course. It's an earnest attempt to show how narcissistic we've become in this digital domain, aided and abetted by the twin devil spawn of Facebook and Instagram. So here's my nominal addition this culture's "narcissistic pandemic." If there's any saving grace to these photos, it's that they aren't on Facebook and they haven't been produced by Instagram. Technical Produced over the years with Olympus Pens. The top was produced with the Olympus E-PL2 and the Panasonic Leica 25mm, the middle with the Olympus E-P2 and the Panasoni...

For some reason March of this year has been rather tough to get through. Lots of work, lots of problems (both professional and personal). All of March's hurdles notwithstanding, I decided to grab all the Pens and all the lenses and even the Sony 5N and go out and photograph - something. While we ran our errands I stopped and photographed as well as photographed where we normally stopped, coming up with this eclectic collection of snapshots. For today's use I selected the Olympus E-M5 with the Panasonic 2.5/14mm and the Olympus E-PL2 with the Panasonic 1.4/25mm. Both cameras were set to the dramatic art filter, and I'd further tweaked the E-PL2's dramatic filter by adding the border effect. I came across the van at the top on the way to our local Whole Foods. I'd seen it for several weeks parked on the side of the road. I assume it was there because of Easter, and the owner's desire to publicly express their faith. This is the second large vehicle I've ...

Aaron Swartz was 26 when he took his life. That's the same age as my oldest daughter, a truly  frightening contrast for a parent. I knew of Aaron in a detached sort of way, from his exploits and the resultant stories. I never gave him too much more thought until I read of his suicide Friday morning. I've had a few days to think about Aaron Swartz's short but powerful 26 year life. I've read and re-read just about all that's been written about him since he took his life. I wanted to wait and see what the U.S. attorney Carmen Ortiz, the ignorant fool who stripped him of just about everything he ever had before driving Aaron to take his own life. In the end, the government "quietly dropped" all charges against him. Ortiz declined to comment. It should be noted that the string of trumped up, over-criminalized charges filed against Aaron would have had him facing more prison time than murderers, bank robbers, slave dealers, child pornographers, al-Qaeda s...

I have been nurturing a bit of facial hair since the start of last September's two week road trip. After a little more than a month I am, according to my wife, beginning to look more and more like a cross between a Viking, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert E. Lee. There is, however, one other late figure of note I think I'm beginning to show some degree of similarity to: Stanley Kubrick. In his later years Mr. Kubrick had a full rich beard and thinning hairline, much like me. The only difference between him and I is, well, he's well known for cinematic masterpieces such as Sparticus , Dr. Strangelove , 2001 , A Clockwork Orange , Barry Lyndon , The Shining , and Full Metal Jacket , to name but a few. All nominated and/or won Oscars, BAFTAs, and Golden Globes. And I'm most certainly not. What got me started thinking about Kubrick tonight were two science fiction movies, 2001 and Spielberg's film, A. I. Artificial Intelligence , a film Kubrick wanted to dire...

I'm going to pull off for a while, probably for the rest of August. I've already written 240 posts so far this year, counting this post. I need the chance to recharge and reorganize a bit. Perhaps by the first of September I'll be more motivated enough to write something worth reading. I may even change to writing weekly instead of daily, or more than daily. The word 'blog' is a portmanteau of the term 'web log', which is itself a corruption of the idea of the hand written diary, kept back in the day when people knew how to write and keep a written diary. In spite of the subject matter, this is a personal diary, although not nearly as personal as it could be; no mention of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll, for example. I still do, on occasion, keep personal information in written form in a diary. The written diary doesn't have the rich multimedia capabilities that a blog can have, even one composed of text and still images. The blog is far more approach...

I went into the office for the better part of the day after the police took my statement about the robbery. I worked until 4:30pm, then made the mistake of spending time photographing around Slavia until 5:30pm before heading home. During that time the imp of the perverse that had decided to pick on me manged to tie up traffic all along every surface road I wanted to take, with one wreck after another, all the way up to the intersection of the 408 and I-4. I didn't get home until an hour later. Since I didn't have anything thawed for supper the wife and I went out to our local Lime Grill for supper. My wife told the cashier and the manager on duty about my day. When we were just about finished with our meal the manager came by with complementary sopapillas, a random act of kindness meant to offset some of the long day's events. And come to think of it, it did. I took the E-PL2 with the Leica 25mm with me to capture, well, whatever. Lime Grill is surrounded on three sides w...

Robbed. That's the word that kept ringing around my mind all day today. I woke up this morning none the wiser. Went through my morning rituals, then went out front to put the recyclables out for pickup. As I turned around I saw the Prius, and immediately saw something was wrong on the inside. A reached for the door on the drivers side and it beeped open. Except the doors on the other side were somehow not locked, because that's the side they (the robbers) entered. Still closed, but not locked. How thoughtful of them to close up when they were done. They took two of my cameras and a Motorola Xoom Android tablet. The night before I'd gotten home late and tired and that was what led to the unfortunate chain of events that followed. I'd dragged in my µ4/3rds kit and my work notebook and my cellphone, thinking I'd come out later and grab the rest, my E-1, E-3, and the Xoom tablet. The E-1 and E-3 were hidden down in the boot and covered, but I'd stupidly left the...

It's interesting what you can see if you're not too wrapped up in your own little world. Spotted this outside the sub shop at lunch. Something about the sunlight and shade and the lone translucent violet flower that seemed to float in the middle of it all. Taken with the Leica 25mm at f/1.6. I could have opened it up, but stopping down gives just that little extra depth of field and contrast. Driving home, waiting at a light before hitting the 408, a UCF shuttle shows up and parks right next to me. Bright post colors on white, contrasting against the deep blue sky, flecked with clouds. And then I recognized the stylized iPhoneographer. I had to photograph the iPhoneographer. I made another stop by the old arena. They've pretty much town everything down, and now they're digging into the lower sections where the basement and the basketball court used to be. I got a number of interesting compositions with these two, prowling and digging through the rubble. The silly si...

Ray Bradbury died yesterday. He was 91. I knew of his death yesterday as well as everyone else did, through the announcements over the internet. I waited a day to let the dust settle a bit, to think about the man and his writing, and to avoid looking like another blog lemming piling on. I started reading science fiction in elementary school. My dad was an avid reader and I started to read some of his books. In particular I remember reading Isaac Asimov's " Pebble In The Sky ." I didn't fully understand the book, but I understood enough that it electrified me. From that point forward I was hooked. Later my dad paid for me to have a subscription to the Science Fiction Book Club. I remember it came with a free gift, a model of the X-15 by Revell. I built it and it eventually disappeared into the mists of time, but the books, especially an anthology and Asimov's " Foundation Trilogy " lasted many years. I still have the "Foundation Trilogy." Bu...

If anybody ever tells you that all your parental responsibilities end when your children turn 18 has either never had children or never been a real parent. They may grow up and move out, but the bonds that develop between loving parent and child are never severed. Strained, perhaps, but never truly severed. Being a parent grows ever more difficult as your children grow older simply because they do become adults, with their own independent wills, dreams, and ambitions totally apart from yours. The best you can do is offer advice when asked, both sides knowing that the advice offered is from a different generational perspective, and the older generation realizing the younger generation may decide not to take that advice or modify it to suit the current situation. You can be there to help them the best you can when they need it. But if they don't ask for advice or help, then you have to stay out of their way, realizing that you don't have a complete awareness of their situation. ...

Yesterday. Walked back up Rouse Road. Stood back and looked at this lone warning that the intersection you're approaching is setup as an automated traffic trap. This one lone sign, up high, and far back from the road, is unreadable unless you happen to be sitting in traffic a good ways back from the intersection, which does occur late in the afternoon, between 5 and 6pm, as everybody streams to head back home. But otherwise you don't see this sign at all, unless you're out walking down the sidewalk. Sitting in the burger joint you see an old and stained parking lot that's been here nearly forever. Who knows how many times the place has been re-designed since it was first built. But it's empty on the inside, just a few customers. Instead you see car after car pass by from picking up the lunches from the drive-through window. Car after car, usually just one person in each car. Students in beat-up Hondas, soccer moms in over-sized late-model SUVs, managers in Lexuses ...

The E-M5 with M.Zuiko 12-50mm, the copy I have on pre-order I have ranted and raved a good bit over the last 18 months against Olympus, starting in late September 2010 with the release of the E-5 , then again in June 2011 with the release of the E-P3 . I went out and tried the big names in cameras (Canon, Nikon, and Sony) looking for the Holy Grail of photography. After all the tryouts and comparisons and analyses I learned all over again what I'd learned not very well when I first purchased digital Olympus cameras, and that for my level of photography my dollars go a lot farther with Olympus equipment than with any other camera. And I've also (re-)discovered a number of other factors abut Olympus: For environmental sealing and a magnesium body, at the time I purchased the E-3 in 2009, the next camera that came anywhere close was $1,200 more expensive From an operational perspective, the E-1 and E-3 are more quiet than the Nikon D700 and the Canon 5D Mk2 For sharpness...

You're looking at the Spirit of Joy Evangelical Lutheran Church on Rouse Road, just north of the intersection of Rouse and East Colonial. I don't know how long this church has been here, but I've passed it coming and going to work when I take the Rouse Road exit off the 408. This church is unusual in that it's right up on the road, across the street from a 7/11 store and gas station, in the midst of heavy traffic on East Colonial. It's unusual compared to many other churches that are hidden away in the suburbs, surrounded by landscaped properties. This church, with its simple but effective face, is right up there in the middle of urban life. I think of this church and all the ways that we, as Christians, approach religion in America. We're keen to make sure our politicians, especially our Presidents, are Christian. Yet we keep our churches segregated and isolated, except for the interesting differences such as Spirit of Joy. As Christmas approaches its ine...