Flyover Country

I just read the following on Talking Points Memo:

“[Obama is] claiming putting air in your tires is the equivalent of new offshore drilling,” McCain said. “That’s not an energy plan, my friends — that’s a public service announcement.”

The problem is that keeping your tires well-inflated is at least the equivalent of new offshore drilling in terms of how much money you’ll spend on gas. In fact, as Time reported the other day, it could potentially be better than new drilling — if everyone did it we’d consume three percent less gasoline, while drilling would only meet one percent of our overall oil needs.

“In other words,” Time said, “Obama is right.”

A common problem I notice in software development is the desire to build the most complex solution to any given problem. You know the type: software products that solve every need you could ever have, and many you never will. These products are typified by over-run schedules, blown budgets, terrible performance, tons of bugs, and total dissatisfaction on the part of its users.

In response to this inexorable shuffle towards awful, stove-piped systems came the creation of so-called agile development methodologies, like Extreme Programming and Scrum. Regardless of which agile methodology you choose, it will be strongly recommended to you that you Do the Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work. As described by Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the Wiki:

[Implement] a new capability in the simplest way you can think of that “could possibly work”. Don’t build a lot of amazing superstructure, don’t do anything fancy, just put it in. Use an if statement, even. Make the code pass the [Unit Tests] for the new feature (and all features, as always).

To bring this back full circle, why should we give free leases to oil companies who rake in billions of dollars in profit every month so that they may, some day, provide us with cheaper oil? Neither Exxon-Mobil or any other oil firm is guaranteeing us that they will provide us with cheaper oil. We won’t even know for years!

Americans’ pocketbooks are suffering now, and McCain wants us to give his oil oligopolist friends the equivalent of corporate welfare so that they might help us eventually. 

Obama’s proposal (echoed by NASCAR and the AAA) would help us today. For free. Without corporate welfare. It would yield 3x the benefits that McCain’s plan may eventually give us. Yet, John McCain continues to mock it because it doesn’t seem sufficiently complex. What an asshole.

I was informed by Valleywag (inside baseball quip: how often do you hear the words “informed” and “Valleywag” in the same sentence) earlier today that Neal Stephenson–NYT bestselling author of Cryptonomicon, Diamond Age, Snow Crash and the Baroque Cycle–has a new book coming out on September 9, 2008, entitled Anathem. You can pre-order it from Amazon right now (I already did). 

According to io9:

Since childhood, Raz has lived behind the walls of a 3,400-year-old monastery, a sanctuary for scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians—sealed off from the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable “saecular” world that is plagued by recurring cycles of booms and busts, world wars and climate change. Until the day that a higher power, driven by fear, decides that only these cloistered scholars have the abilities to avert an impending catastrophe. And, one by one, Raz and his cohorts are summoned forth without warning into the Unknown.

Sounds interesting, but then again I would probably buy a Harlequin romance novel if Stephenson wrote it.

I was introduced to a fantastic artist (tragically not in person) last night named Takashi Murakami. He’s credited with creating the superflat style,

[Which] is characterized by flat planes of color and graphic images involving a character style derived from anime and manga. Superflat is an artistic style that comments on otaku lifestyle and subculture, as well as consumerism and sexual fetishism.

according to Wikipedia.

You might have seen Murakami’s work on the cover of Kanye West’s album, Graduation.

I put up two more pictures from Minneapolis a minute ago. They’re both of my sister’s family’s dog, Ollie, who is a huge bundle of energy wrapped up in a boxer body. He’s a sweet dog, but not the smartest thing in the world, unfortunately.

I was in Minnesota last week visiting family and friends, and took a number of fun pictures with my brand-new macro lens, the Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro. This is a lovely lens, especially for the price. It’s not L glass, but it’s also 33% of the price of Canon’s high-end 180mm f/3.5L, so I’m not going to complain.

The full set is, as always, up on Flickr.

A very fine gentleman I know asked me today what digital SLR I’d buy for a thousand dollars. I was going to email him back with an answer, but I realized that more people would probably be interested in my thoughts on it than just him.

To be honest, for a good DSLR setup, $1000 is tight, but doable. You’ll want a decent camera body that can be used for a good long while to come. I had a Canon Rebel XT for a while, which was quite nice, but I really do like the bigger size of the LCD on the XTi (2.5″ makes a huge difference compared to 1.8″). Also, the XTi offers automatic dust removal from the sensor, which is a nice touch. The 2 megapixel difference? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, your call. The XT is $200 cheaper than the XTi, so let you wallet do the talking. I’d rather have an older, less cool body and have a nicer lens.

Skip the kit lens version, as tempting as it may be. The fact that the price difference between body-only and with-kit lens is about $50 should tell you something about the quality of that lens. It sucks, you don’t want to use it. End of story.

Instead, spend the money on a really decent lens. You have a few options depending on what you intend to shoot. If you want to do a lot of long-range telephoto work, pick up the 70-300mm lens listed below. More normal stuff? The 28-135mm is no slouch.

You also need accessories. The most important accessory is the compact flash memory card. You can get by with only this for the time being. Pick up a 4GB card; you’ll kick yourself later, otherwise.

• Canon Digital Rebel XT - 8MP DSLR body. $400
• Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1MP - 10MP DSLR body. $600
• Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens - Nice walk-around lens with built-in image stabilization. Won’t give you much for longer-range telephoto work, though. $416
• Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens - Nice telephoto lens; not the best, but it won’t break the bank. Currently the telephoto lens I use. $550
• SanDisk 4 GB CF Card - 4GB means you’ll be able to take a decent number of pictures. $45

So, if I was really dead-set on paying $1000, I’d pick up the Rebel XT, the 28-135mm lens, and the Sandisk card. If I was willing to spend about $1300, I’d pick up the 70-300mm lens, too.

If money wasn’t as much of an object, I’d probably replace the XT with the XTi, but this is less crucial. This ends up being about $1600.

So, it turns out that I botched the date: the SAM 75th anniversary party was actually yesterday. Teaches me to put stuff into my calendar, I guess. Oh well. In any case, Helen and I still took a good thousand photos between the two of us today. I ended up having about 50 ones I loved, which I promptly whittled down to my fourteen favorites, all of which are up on Flickr.

I just ordered a pair of PocketWizards, a Vivitar 285, a B-M lightstand and umbrella adapter, umbrella, a few random accessories, and other such things. I’m going to immensely enjoy my foray into off-camera lighting, but oh dear god did the price of the PWs hurt. Ouch!

The Seattle Asian Art Museum is hosting a 75th anniversary party on Sunday, July 19th, from 10am to 4pm. Sounds like there should be some good photo ops with a youth marimba ensemble, Chinese lion dancing, juggling and more. I’ll certainly be there at some point, and a dozen or so pictures should appear on Flickr shortly thereafter.

The SAM website has more information.

I Just found another place where one of my pictures has been used recently. The local NPR affiliate, KUOW, had a call-in program with Ron Sims, King County Executive, and used my picture of him from the Gay Pride Parade for the website blurb. Neat!