April, 2005:

Weekend Away

If you need to reach us… well… drive to Arkansas, I guess. I don’t think there’s any other way.

We’ll be back Sunday night.

For those of you looking for a quick, easily modifiable, full-featured weblogging application, look no further. “Typo”:http://typo.leetsoft.com/ has everything you need and more. Check out this feature list:

# XML-RPC backend implementing the metaWeblog and MovableType api (this means you can use a desktop application to make posting to your website even easier)
# Comments (with cool Instant viewing feature)
# Ping / Trackback
# Categories
# TadaList, del.icio.us, Flickr, and 43 Things integration (with more on the way)
# Textile and Markdown Support (so you don’t have to know HTML to do fancy tricks in your entries)
# Fulltext search (with a cool LiveSearch feature)
# RSS2 and Atom export (so that other people can keep up with you)
# CommentRSS export
# Some use of caching and sweepers including a simple to use mini caching class (to make things faster)
# Mysql, Sqlite, and PostgreSQL support (to keep things flexible)
# Beautiful perma urls like example.com/articles/2004/01/01/title-with-dashes
# Spam Protection with filters
# HTML administration and posting interface
# Migration Script for MovableType? 3

To make it even better, it’s written using “Ruby on Rails”:http://rubyonrails.com/ so, even if you’re not a programmer, modification and customization are a lot easier than they would be with some other language.

Of course, I can’t leave well enough alone. There are some features I’d like to see in it, as well as some areas where I’d like to be a little more flexible for integration. So, I’m merging the code I’ve already written with the Typo v2 codebase. Of course, I’d be honored to see my changes make it into the official Typo releases, but, I doubt my vision will align with the authors. We’ll see how it goes.

So I broke down and bought Mike Doughty’s new album, “Haughty Melodic”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?tag=revjimnet-20&creative=9325&camp=1789&link_code=ur2&path=tg/detail/-/B00080EV7A/ref=pd_sim_music_5?v=glance%26s=music, from Amazon because it lets me hear the album now, despite the fact that it’s not released yet.

It’s phenomenal! It’s everything that I ever felt was amazing about Soul Coughing, with it’s own fresh edge and meaning. The music is incredible. Mike’s percussive voice is beautiful, and soothing, and awakening at all the right times. The lyrics are moving, and meaningful.

My only complaint is in regard to Amazon’s Digital Locker. The items that I can listen to from Amazon seem to only be playable under Windows. Despite the huge annoyance involved there, it’s even worse because, once I play it in windows I can’t seem to find any way to download it. So, I can only listen to it on a windows computer. There’s no way to move it to my Linux box, play it on my TiVo, or enjoy it in the car on the way home. Luckily, the real album will be in my hot hands in a week or so. I can’t wait.

As of right now with my brief introduction to this new album, “His Truth is Marching On” is striking a strong chord with me so I’ll leave you with a few lyrics from it (and I apologize if they are wrong):

bq. They say that God is great. They say that God is love. And I believe them. Don’t fear the random fate. I trust the hand of the almighty and the infinite. His truth is marching on. Let me know your enormity and my tininess. And help me see your infinity and my finiteness. I’m frickin’ starved for love. I deeply need to feel connection with the infinite. I want the nourishment and I need to drink it just like water and it will sustain me. — Mike Doughty / His Truth is Marching On / Haughty Melodic

Buy this album!

I’ve got a file I keep on my computer with snippets of things that I’d like to write here but haven’t had the time to flesh out. That file is getting quite large. So, I pushed a bunch of the stuff from that file that was just links witha snippet of commentary into “Del.icio.us”:http://del.icio.us/revjim/. You can see those links up there at the top of the front page of *revjim.net*, however, I’m afriad that there aren’t that many people that remember to read them. As soon as I make a few other changes around here, I intend to implement an automatic Del.icio.us recap that will syndicate a list of links and commentary from those that have been posted each day. However, until I get that done, here’s a list of a few things that I think are interesting. If you check my links often, you may find some duplicates here.

h3. Photography

“Photographic Cheat Sheet”:http://www.night-ray.com/comments.php?id=59_0_5_0_C
Information showing proper exposure, handheld shot guidelines, and flash information for popular flashes. If you haven’t commited this stuff to memory yet, printing this out and carrying it with you might not be a bad idea.

“Two new Nikon AF-S DX lenses announced”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042001nikondxlenses.asp
18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G ED and 55-200mm f/4-5.6G ED. This should fill a void in some people’s arsenals.

“Nikon D70s announced”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042003nikond70s.asp
As best as I can tell, the only thing different from the D70 is the sensor, and the size is even the same.

“Nikon encrypts white balance data”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05041901nikon_encryptnef.asp
Information regarding the encryption of white balance data in Nikon’s RAW format from new firmwares for Digital SLRs. This will piss off a lot of people.

“Nikon D50 Preview”:http://www.dpreview.com/articles/nikond50/
It’s basically a toned down, cheaper version of the D70s.

“Nikon D70 firmware announcement”:http://www.dpreview.com/news/0504/05042002nikon70firmware.asp
This should add most of the D70s’ improvements to the D70.

h3. The Web

“grat.uito.us”:http://grat.uito.us/
A very Del.icio.us WishList

“GreenZap”:http://www.greenzap.com/revjim
A PayPal Alternative scheduled to open in the Summer of 2005. Sign up now and get $25 free. There’s a lot of noise going around about how this is just an MLM scam. A lot of people are linking this site to wrong doing by absurd means. As best as I can tell, it is legit. They ask for your name and address upfront, so, even if it is a scam, you aren’t out all that much.

h3. Technology

“Flickr.rb”:http://redgreenblu.com/flickr/
A Ruby library to make Flickr integration dead simple.

“Ruby-MemCache”:http://www.deveiate.org/code/Ruby-MemCache.html
A MemCacheD (of LiveJournal/Danga fame) client library for Ruby.

“Klogger 0.0.1″:http://www.hyperionreactor.net/node/55
A weblogging (BloggerAPI / MetaWeblogAPI) client written in Ruby for KDE.

“Perl for Series 60″:http://www.postneo.com/2005/04/18/perl-for-series-60
Perl for Series 60 smartphones!

As promised (elsewhere), here’s Jim Reverend’s Crush of the Week.

Wait a minute. Crush of the week? That’s too girly. How about… Patron Saint of the week? Yeah. That’s much better.

This week’s Patron Saint is “Mike Doughty”:http://www.mikedoughty.com/, of “Soul Coughing”:http://www.scug.net/ fame.

His “blog”:http://www.mikedoughty.com/blog/ is a nice mix of documentary style photography and personal observations. It’s just candid enough to be interesting, and just clean enough to be readable.

His music is everything that I loved about Soul Coughing (think, Sugar Free Jazz), including those amazing percussive vocals that Soul Coughing is known for.

“Scarborough Faire”:http://www.scarboroughrenfest.com/ is upon us. Jess and I are planning on going this year and we’d like our friends to come with us. The only weekends that are left that Jess and I can make it to are 05/07, 05/14. and 05/21. If you’re planning on going this year, and would like to go with us, let me know which of the following days is best for you and I’ll see how many people we can get together. I like the 14th the best, myself, but, any of those days will work.

For you non-DFwers, there are rooms available at Chez Reverend (complete with a beautiful “window planter”:http://revjim.net/item/10324/). But hurry! Rooms are filling up fast.

Let me know.

I’d like to give a special thanks to all of you who helped with my “ad placement”:http://revjim.net/item/10312/ a week or so ago. Not counting the day I mentioned it (which represented a ~14X increase in my daily earning) the new placement managed to almost double my revenue. Thanks again for your help.

If you can think of anything that I could do to make them even more effective, I’d love to hear it.

My fingers are covered in the sticky sweet of the orange I just had for breakfast. I’m tired, my legs hurt, my arms hurt, my cheeks are burnt and I couldn’t be happier.

I spent Friday night doing my best at drinking an entire bottle 1.75L bottle of JD. I had help from two other people (thanks, Stacey and Laura). By 3am the bottle was half gone and I was $30 poorer (thanks to playing poker while drunk). However, I did see boobs, twice, and had my cards rubbed on some for good luck. My hand still sucked, but that’s okay. I had a great time. I think that even Jess had fun (despite the fact that she had to go to bed early since she had to be at a work thing the next day). She and Stacey were upstairs talking about… god only knows what… for what seemed like forever. I’d keep trying to talk to them, and they’d keep boring me to tears.

Saturday morning, Jess left the house early. Two hours later I met up with her at her work. They were doing a fund raiser/charity thing at the Pre-School she works at. I offered to photograph the event. 200 images later I realized something. I generally prefer working with fixed focal length and small range zoom lenses. They are generally sharper and cheaper and they force me to think about focal length as a choice as opposed to a convenience. But, for fast moving events where you are fairly close to the action and must act quickly, nothing beats a zoom lens. I was working with a 19-35mm zoom, and a 50mm fixed. Jumping back and forth between the two was more than annoying. I think, for an events like these, a 18-50mm would be a decent range (that’s 28-75mm in 35mm speak). 18-70mm or so would be even better. I poked around a bit and added a few items to my “wish list”:http://grat.uito.us/revjim. Feel free to buy me any of these:

NOTHING SPECIAL: “Sigma 18-50mm f/3.5-5.6 DC”:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=335741&is=REG $119.00

A LITTLE BETTER: “Sigma 18-125mm f/3.5-5.6 DC”:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=324386&is=REG $289.00

BETTER STILL: “Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G AF-S ED-IF DX”:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=324190&is=USA $339.95

BEST: “Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX SLD IF DC”:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=340173&is=REG $499.99

HOT DAMN: “Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8G AF-S ED-IF DX”:http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=300490&is=USA $1349.95

A photographer for a “local paper”:http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?brd=1426&Nav_Sec=68876 was there as well. She had a nice ass Canon digital SLR with what seemed like a great lens. I only say this because she was taking shots from a lot of the same distances that I was using, only she never had to change lenses once. Sure, hers was huge and probably a lot heavier than both of mine put together, but I’m sure the convenience it afforded gave her a lot more good shots.

After we had our fill of Photography for the day, we stopped at the hardware store picked up some supplies and tried to do some landscaping in the front yard. I won’t bore you with the details of our failure, but, suffice it to say, a few bags of dirt, lots of planning, and 4 hours of sweat later, we learned a few valuable lessons about landscaping. It could have been much more expensive, so I’m grateful for that, despite the fact that Jess stabbed me in the arm with a spade.

That evening we drove out to see my Grandparents at my Parents’ house since they were heading back to Vermont the next day. We had a good time and left late.

The next morning, Jess and I got up and went back out to the hardware store. We were sick of dealing with the situation we created in the front yard, and knew what we had to do to fix it. So, we decided to work on the back yard, just for a change. For about $80 (not counting the plants) we built the first of many projects that we have planned for back there. It took about 4 hours of work (not counting travel) and at least 4 phone calls to my dad to finish. All in all, I’d say it wasn’t too bad for our first landscaping project.

Under the window Planter

After all of our hard work, we cleaned up and then went to the grocery store for some supplies that Jess needed to make dinner for a family whose mother is dealing with a second bout of cancer. After coming home, and making dinner, we headed out for Sushi with a few friends and then home for some much needed rest.

These are the kind of weekends I love. I can’t wait for next weekend: Canoing in Arkansas. Weeeee!

Poker night tonight at our place. These people will be there: Stacey (+2), Alan, Laura, Miki, Patrick, John, Jess, Myself.

What a terrific night it will be. That’s 10 people, but not all will play. Hell, even if *no one* plays it’s going to be a good time. Generally, when we have poker nights or parties, there is a mix of people that enjoy letting loose and having a good time, people that remain constantly reserved, and people that go crazy and over the top. Not counting the 2 extra people that Stacey’s bringing (since I don’t know them at all) this group is comprised of 100% of those people that know how to have fun without pissing on the walls or involving the police.

Yay.

I plan to be drunk, for a change, so, Stacey, Laura, Miki, Jess… please forgive me in advance for encouraging you to use your clothing as currency. Then again, as I was saying above… you all are laid back enough to just find it funny, and possibly even consider paying up. ;)

To make matters even better, Jess is getting off at 4:30 tonight, and I’m getting off early as well. So, not only will we get a chance to eat and clean up before everyone comes over, but, we might even get to relax as well. Hey Jess, if you’d like to practice your poker skills, I have an excellent suggestion for currency. ;)