Rantings of a Lunatic

This has been sitting in draft state since March, and I don’t know when I will get back to it, so I am publishing it. Maybe I will follow up later.

I have been thinking about this for a while, mostly on my drive into work in the mornings, but, how many of those vehicles that have been recalled/had problems recently had manual transmissions? I haven’t found the answer to that out yet, but my guess is that its somewhere below the number 1%. The reason for that is driving a manual transmission requires conscious thought. In addition, driving a manual transmission requires simultaneous action from multiple limbs. I feel very confident that if my vehicle had unintentionally suddenly accelerated it would only be a matter of seconds before I had my vehicle under control. I am actually not sure if I would even have a thought process involved, I think it would be more muscle memory that instantly pushes my left foot forward to hit the clutch, and simultaneously pulls my right hand with the shifter into the neutral position. In the split second that this would take, I have already safely counteracted the entire problem. I have not solved it, however, I have taken myself out of the dangerous situation. Next, I can make the judgement decision of whether I will apply the brakes, attempt to downshift or both. Thats the next point about a manual transmission, it allows me multiple options on what to do in any given situation.
My point of bringing this up is that there is a huge clammoring for a quick fix, and whats being offered up is a software fix. I know a little bit about code, and understanding the complexity of a modern automobile, I find it very difficult to believe that even with a workforce of hundreds of programmers, its in any way safe to release a quickly coded patch to a brake and acceleration system. Think about the system before people start clammoring for the software patch. What is it? Its hundreds of processors running millions, if not hundreds of millions, of lines of code. Its a set of software that has been built and tested over the course of years, and has been ammended and grown such that it has probably spawned its own entities into other vehicles. And now, the solution is to rush through and patch some code in a matter of weeks?
That just doesn’t sound well thought out to me.
And to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it solves the root of the problem. Now, I will admit, I am no Luddite. I love technology. I love to tinker with it, and I love to let it make my life easier. Though to be fair, I usually pick the harder parts of technology, so that something is always broken, and I by consequence always have something to tinker with. However, I have grown to believe that we as a society have come to rely on technology too heavily. We have begun to allow our technology to take over so much of our lives that we are dulling our own consciousness. When I was a kid, I knew every bodies phone number off the top of my head. My parent’s number, all of my friend’s parent’s numbers, the pizza place, everywhere. I was reading people’s tweets the other day, and someone had retweeted a conversation with a person being loaded into an ambulance. The conversation was about calling the girl’s boyfriend to let him know that she was ok, but going to the hospital. Her response was that she didn’t know it. It had been saved on the phone that was smashed in the accident, and she had no idea what it was.

So, I had reset the password on one of my accounts, and neglected to reset it in mint as well, and apparently it tried to login to the account enough times to get me locked out of it again. Now I have two financial institutions that I get to call and unlock my online accounts to. That on top of the fact that they still don’t support my non-mega-bank, I just don’t see any value in keeping the account. I appreciated the graphs, but, really, if they aren’t getting my day to day spending into the budget its not much value.
It was swell, but, the swelling has gone down…

So, over the weekend I moved, and as a consequence, I cut the cable. My old apartment was giving me free cable, so I watched it. Moving into the new place, we made the concious decision not to have that extra bill or time-suck. So I went and got a digital converter box, so that we can still get the local weather. Its nice to have access to it, but, we certainly aren’t looking to stay glued to it. Anyway, its been one year, almost to the day since the switch, and I finally got my box. And, my oppinion? Well, its resoundingly a failure. I can’t get the basic channels well at all. And if I want to get KNVA, one of the local stations I used to work for, I have to adjust the antenna’s so that I can’t get anything else. If I want to keep the majority, about 5 stations, I don’t have access to either of the stations I used to work for. And even then, at best I am only getting approximately a 60% signal level, and there are terrible dropouts and stuttering. I feel about as impressed with digital television as I do digital cable, and if I were paying for it, I would cancel. I don’t have a problem with the digital formats for storing of video or television, but, I have yet to see a digital transmission system that works or looks well. Netflix is pretty good, but, its still obviously compressed, and its not live by any means. More opinions will come later. I get my internet connection at home tomorrow supposedly, I am using tethering right now, but, thats only so useful. Maybe I will start looking for an all online service, preferably with an XBMC script or plugin for watching online news video.

“A programmer will eventually tell you to use Mac OSX or Linux. If the programmer likes fonts and typography they’ll tell you to get a Mac OSX computer. If they like control and have a huge beard then they’ll tell you to install Linux. Again, use whatever computer you have right now that works.” – via Learn Python the hard way

Recently I got myself a new lens for my SLR, and I have been trying to take better photos with it. The lens is a Canon 50mm 1.8 Mark I, and I have been using it on my “ancient” Canon EOS Rebel 2000. The person I bought the lens from had bought it with an Elan 7 back in 1987 or 1988 he said. Its a faster lens in terms of aperture, but the autofocus is incredibly slow on it. Because of this, I have been using the lens in Manual mode, and subsequently, I have even been using the camera in Manual mode. Its been a long time since I shot a camera without all of the automatic features, so I am finding that some of my photos are what I am expecting, and some are not. I think part of this is that I am still getting used to the camera, so I am not as fast with the controls as I might like. I do feel like I am getting better in general, but I do have a ways to go. In all honesty, it has reinvigorated me, and my savings goals have shifted again. The 7d/t2i has once again risen to be an initial savings priority. The two bodies are mostly the same, with the two notable differences being the Burst capabilities, and the storage media formats. I think in the long run, I would end up upgrading before too long, so the t2i is a better choice. (I have had the 35mm for 9 years, and the digital P&S for 3 with its predecessor lasting 5, so too long may be relative.) I could also afford the t2i and a 135mm or 85mm Prime Lens for the price of the 7d body, so that is a consideration.
Anyway, here are the recent photos, and more will be posted when I finish the rolls. Over last weekend I shot 2.5 rolls of 35mm, 10/12ths of a roll of 120 film, 20-30 digital shots, and a couple of phone pics. Though the phone pics were mostly inconsequential shots to capture gps/time metadata.
MemorialDay 2010 Photoset on Flickr