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Photos From The Sprint Triathlon

Remember that one time I did a sprint triathlon? Yea, me too. I finally got around to doing something with the pictures, like posting them here:

Getting ready
Finishing up the 0.5 mile swim
On to the 14 mile bike ride
Biking across I-90
In the groove
Running 3.1 miles after biking suuuucks
Always run through the finish, never let up
But I finished!
And it was awesome
I was really exhausted though

Three Ladies Bored on a Sunday Night

About a year and half ago, when I was still in college, I came across the following ad on Craigslist:

Three ladies bored on a Sunday night… – 23 (Denver Metro)

So as we were searching Craigslist for new places to live, we decided to check out the personal ads. After looking at countless ads, we decided to make our own. We are three very different ladies with equally different interests in guys. Please read below and respond with a picture and info about yourself if you’re interested.

Far left, brunette (let’s call her Jayne): Doing a century bike ride in May (100 miles). Loves strawberry patch picking and hot air balloons. Wants to travel to Italy to drink wine and look at great art. Likes to bake. Loves to laugh. Loves to have game night or invite friends over for an evening at home.

Middle, brunette (let’s call her Penny): Likes hammocks. Likes the smell and sound of rain. Wants to travel the world and learn about other cultures. Shamelessly makes funny faces at little kids in restaurants. Should buy stock in Red Box movies. Loves to take long drives with a good playlist.

Far right, blonde (let’s call her Bekah): Favorite food is bacon. Loves anything the color green. Obsessed with baseball and college basketball. Loves the smell of clothes right out of the laundry or fresh cut grass. Hates cake (but loves chocolate chip cookies). Wants a dog more than anything right now. Loves traveling Latin America (speaks Spanish).

At the bottom was a picture and my jaw dropped as soon as I saw it it.

I knew all three girls in the photo, and not just “yea, I met you that one time at that one party” knew them, but “I hang out with you at least once a week” knew them.

They had cleverly used pseudonyms, but it was definitely them. I thought about responding with an email showing three guys we all knew (probably this one) and writing funny anecdotes to go along with it. But then I had another idea, to reference them by their pseudonym the next time I saw them in person, which would be three short days later at The Feed.

So I waited and waited, filled with anticipation for their reaction. Finally Wednesday came and they didn’t show up to The Feed! I couldn’t wait any longer, so I called “Jayne”:

Me: Hey, how’s it going? Are you coming to The Feed?
“Jayne”: It’s going pretty good. I don’t think I’m going to make it tonight.
Me: Oh, what are you up to?
“Jayne”: Hanging out with the roommates.
Me: Ok, well have fun with “Penny” and “Bekah”?
click

She hung up on me.

I called her back.

Me: Heeeey.
“Jayne”: Andrew, I’m so sorry.
Me: What happened?

“Jayne” went on to describe how her jaw hit the floor when I said “Penny” and “Bekah.” They were, as they described, looking for a new place to live when they decided to make their own posting. However, they had no idea that anyone they knew would find it and was stunned when those words left my mouth, so stunned she hung up in horror.

“Jayne” turned to “Bekah” and “Penny”, who were sitting on the couch next to her, and explained what happened. They immediately pulled the post (but not before I had saved a copy) and we all had a good laugh.

But, let this be a lesson: you never know who’s going to find what on the Internet.

PDF of original: Three Ladies Bored on a Sunday Night

Photos From Around Seattle

We’ve had some pretty remarkable weather here in Seattle over the last few days. I’ve been experimenting with a new app on my Android called Retro Camera while I wait for Chase Jarvis to release his Best Camera app on the Android.

Anyway, the motto is: “The best camera is the one you have with you.” This is usually my Android these days unless I think ahead and bring my DSLR. So enjoy the pictures!

[flickr]5053896535[/flickr]

[flickr]5040584842[/flickr]

[flickr]5039963071[/flickr]

Where Am I?

I feel like I haven’t written here in ages. Don’t worry, I’m still alive. Lots of things have been going on recently, some of which I hope to write about in the near future.

However, that brings me to something I’ve been pondering for a while (like, months). What is the purpose of this blog? Why do I write here? Over the last ten years or so, this little space I’ve carved out has morphed significantly. It was first a place to share things I loved in a very static form: LEGO’s, Star Trek, James Bond, etc. I made some pages, and I tweaked them as I saw fit. It wasn’t very dynamic.

Around 2002, I started keeping a log of the changes I made to the site. And although it was mostly technical and administrative in nature, it could be considered the start of my web log. During my senior year of high school, I started to do what many people would consider blogging.

I think a lot of why I started blogging at that point was in preparation for going to college. At that point, I knew I would be going to school out of state (I hadn’t applied to any schools in Washington) and I wanted to remain connected to people back home in Seattle, primary family and friends. Still, it was mostly talking about school.

Blogging for me formally started when I switched to WordPress, I think this was in the fall of my Freshman year of college. I blogged about everything. One of my New Year resolutions in 2005 was to blog every day…and I did it.

At some point however, this has become less of a blog and more of a journal — a journal for me1 but which I share with the world. I don’t do this out of vanity, but because I believe in truth and honesty2.

Of course, journals come with all sorts of rawness. Life isn’t a perfect venture all the time, and journals usually reflect that. It helped that most of what I was focusing on in school was relatively low risk, and hence this blog was pretty easy to write; I just had to get through classes, which while hard, was something that was feasible.

Life after school is something entirely new, it’s a beast. And in many ways, something I wasn’t quite prepared for. I’ve written more private journal entries this year than I have in any other year, even though I’ve been posting less overall.

At points I’ve thought about taking this journal and making it entirely private, or completely passphrase protected. I even thought about shuttering site completely, for real.

But dating someone and then breaking up have made me realize some very important: This is not a me question. This is not a problem I’m facing because of something I did (or didn’t do). The feelings I have, the issues I’m dealing with, the questions I’m asking are things that I believe many people my age are asking — maybe not out loud, but they’re asking.

I believe that many people are wondering who they are, what they’re doing, and where they should go. I believe that many people are wondering why they haven’t found that one person, or that one vocation, or whatever they need in order to feel complete in life. This is not a problem unique to me because I am an engineer or because I am a Christian, although that certainly plays into it.

I also believe that one of the best ways to work on these issues is to talk about them. And for me, that conversation starts here, with my journal. It’s a conversation I have with myself, that I share — or not (not everything is fit for sharing with everyone…which is another thing I’m learning).

Consider this your fair warning: Blogs can be about many things, this one is going to be my journal of sorts3.

And that’s where I am.

  1. It’s an important tool for me to reflect on later ↩

  2. Even if it doesn’t look good ↩

  3. This is not to say that there won’t be other things discussed here, just that most of what I write will be journal-ish ↩

Numbers

I was home sick today and in between drifting in and out of consciousness1 in my bed, I came up with these sequences of numbers:

  1. 88642483261224_
  2. 7535155251_
  3. 91998188_

Can you determine which numbers comes next?

  1. I think it was some sort of sinus infection or something…massive headache, congestion, general stuffiness, sore throat, etc…pretty much felt like death ↩

The Nikon D7000: 478% Better Than the D70

I’ll drool over some new toy I’d love to have from time to time, but I’m not usually one to let my impulses get the best of me in that regard. However, Nikon’s new DSLR camera, the rumored D7000, could be one of those things I just have to get.

I’ve had my D70 for about 5 years now and it has served my very faithfully. 38,000 shutter clicks later and countless tens of thousands of miles traveled, my camera has done well and probably still has some spunk left in it.

However, I’ve found myself approaching the maximum technical capabilities of my current camera. My biggest need right now is more sensor sensitivity (ISO). My D70 tops out at 1600 ISO, which is not bad, but can produce some banding:

[flickr]212516062[/flickr]

The theoretical D7000 goes to ISO 25600, which is 16 times higher and allows for an additional four stops to work with. This is huge. I had to brace myself against a wall to get that photo in Florence, and even then I was still shooting at 1/50. If I were to shoot at ISO 25600, I could have shot it at 1/800. That’s insane.

The other awesome thing is how much better the quality is at a given ISO. Check out these sample images from Ken Rockwell showing the Nikon D70 (which is what I have), the Nikon D3 (which is a Nikon camera that can actually go to ISO 25600, but it probably not very representative of the D7000), and the Nikon D300S (which is probably more similar to the D7000 than the D3). The important thing to note is not the overall quality of these images (they are cropped really small), but the difference in image quality between ISO levels of a particular camera:

Nikon D70 | ISO 200
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/dslr-comparison/us.htm
Nikon D70 | ISO 1600
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/dslr-comparison/us.htm

Nikon D3 | ISO 200
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000/high-iso-comparison.htm
Nikon D3 | ISO 1600
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000/high-iso-comparison.htm
Nikon D3 | ISO 25600
http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000/high-iso-comparison.htm

Nikon D300 | ISO 200
http://kenrockwell.com/tech/comparisons/2010-08-03-5d2-7d-5d-d300/
Nikon D300 | ISO 1600
http://kenrockwell.com/tech/comparisons/2010-08-03-5d2-7d-5d-d300/

The other big thing I’m looking forward to do is shoot amazing video montages. Similar to this:

Haiti Earthquake Aftermath Montage from Khalid Mohtaseb on Vimeo.

Nikon D90 AF system
http://imaging.nikon.com/products/imaging/lineup/d90/en/advanced-function/
It will be nice to have more Auto Focus points, hopefully more of my photos will be in focus, but I’d be fine with even 11 points — which is how many the D90 has, and still makes my D70 look paltry by comparison.

The downside is that each image is 2.5 times the file size of my D70, which is going to wreck havoc on my storage. I’ve never really had an issue blowing photos up and currently have a 30″ x 20″ hanging on the wall which looks just spectacular.

Anyway, here are the key differences that I’m interested in:

D7000 D70
Megapixel 16.2 6.24
Video 1080P @ 24FPS N/A
ISO, min 100 200
ISO, max 25600 1600
Auto Focus Points 39 5

Hopefully, come September 15th, I may actually be able to plunk down some cash for this baby. Anyone interested in a well-loved, well-traveled, well-used Nikon D70? I’m going to go get a mop to wipe up all this drool.