Author Archives: Peter

Spam-no-more

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I’ve just installed the ***MT-Blacklist|http://www.jayallen.org/projects/mt-blacklist/*** plugin in our ***MovableType|http://www.movabletype.org/*** installation. This should prevent those lovely ads for Cialis, Viagra, etc, from showing up in the comments of blogs hosted on MovableType at prwdot.org. You shouldn’t notice anything different with this new feature, unless you happen to be a spammer. Then, you will notice that your spamalicous comments are DENIED!!! Whoo-hoo!

Congratulations Tom!

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We would like to congratulate Thomas Lowe for his completion of the ***Boston Marathon|http://www.bostonmarathon.org/*** today! His net time was 4 hours, 8 minutes, 43 seconds, which was excellent considering the humidity, temperatures in the mid-80’s, and the grueling terrain of the 26.2 mile course.

Becky and I had a great time spectating. We got off at the end of the Green Line’s B branch, at the Boston College stop. From there we walked up Commonwealth Ave., to the top of Heartbreak Hill, and then part of the way down the hill. We walked back up to the top of the hill and hung around the “Top of the Hill” line, where all of the news media were parked. It was great fun to cheer on everyone as they reached the top of the last major hill on the course. One guy near us I dubbed “Mister Top-of-the-Hill,” after the creative cheers he came up with for most every runner who went past. For example, to the man with his jersey unzipped all the way down to the waist he called “Come on, Plunging Neckline!” Another runner had an “FBI” t-shirt on, and MTOTH called out “Come on, FBI! Al-Qaeda is just ahead of you!”

We did manage to make visual contact with Tom, after walking back closer to the BC T stop. We saw him just down the hill from the 21 mile marker, gave him some cheers, and got a reaction. Hopefully it helped to motivate him for the five miles he had left to go.

Due to the laboriously slow, error-ridden Green Line (the train we were on was actually “rebooted” once while we were waiting, and before they finally decided to take it out of service), we weren’t able to make it down to the Finish line before Tom arrived. But all in all, it was a very enjoyable experience, and I definitely think it would be fun to attend even if we didn’t know anyone participating.

Just for fun, there is an athlete result search form ***here|http://www.bostonmarathon.org/cfm_Public/2004/pg_RaceAdvanced2004.cfm***. You can type in a city and state, for example, to see if anyone from your home town was participating in the race, and see what their results were. Or you can search by name, age, citizenship, or even their exact ‘Bib Number’ if you have it. Nobody from Mount Vernon, Ohio was participating, but there were two participants from Townsend, Massachusetts. For Jenn, there was one runner from River Vale, NJ. For Michelle, there were 17 runners from Saskatchewan (one from Moose Jaw, which I think is near your seminary). Play along at home – see if you can find a long-lost friend who ran in the marathon!

One last thing – as I have previously mentioned, the digital camera is out of service at the moment. I’ll be sending it in to Canon for repairs, but today we used Becky’s standard 35mm camera to take photos. I hope to have those developed this week, and I should be able to have the photo lab digitize them for me so that they can go up in our online gallery.

Canoes to Cameras

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Saturday was the Townsend Canoe Race, in which Becky and Ken participated as a mixed pair. They placed fourth in the mixed pairs category, and I was happy to be there to cheer them on.

I have some ***photos from the event|http://gallery.prwdot.org/canoe_race_2004***, but you may notice that they seem to end abruptly. That’s because my camera succumbed to the apparently-infamous ***E18 error|http://www.google.com/search?q=e18+error&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8***. This error, which I’ve found is widespread among lower-end Canon digital cameras, is caused when something gets in the way of the lens when it is retracting or extending from the camera body. The first time I noticed this error was during Jeremy and Angela’s wedding. Thankfully, it didn’t stop me from taking all of the photos I wanted to take at that event. It has been popping up now and again in the past month, and finally this Saturday it seems that my camera has a permanent E18 error. No amount of “whacking” as recommended by the websites I’ve found, nor any amount of changing the batteries, putting in a new CF card, or any other remedy seems to work. My next step is to contact Canon and to attempt to have them replace or repair the camera, as it is still covered under a 1-year warranty. Hopefully they’ll be able to replace it at no cost, or even a negligible repair fee. We really can’t afford to buy another new camera at this point.

Since my camera will be out of commission for a while, we’ll be bringing Becky’s Canon SureShot back into service for the photographing of Monday’s ***Boston Marathon|http://www.baa.org/BostonMarathon/***. Becky and I will be going in to try and catch a glimpse of her uncle Tom running the race, and to take in the general spectacle. Since we’re doing traditional film, this means the usual photo upload will be a bit delayed, so please bear with us.

Oh yeah – and Monday is the first day of my “unstructured time off” – the first time I’ve taken a week off of work with no particular plans to travel anywhere or do anything. Just going to hang out with Becky and relax. It should be nice. 🙂

Hope everyone else’s Sunday is as beautiful as ours! Sunny and 61 here in Beverly.

Belief Quizzes

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Inspired by ***Will|http://pulchersentio.prwdot.org/*** et al, I took some of the Spiritual Quizzes over at ***BeliefNet|http://www.beliefnet.com/***, going from a sort of top level quiz down:

***What’s Your Spiritual Type?| http://www.BeliefNet.com/section/quiz/index.asp?sectionID=&surveyID=27***

In this quiz, a score of 0 marks you as a skeptic, and a score of 100 marks you as an unmoveable, confident believer. I scored in the high end of the range 80 – 89, or “Confident Believer – You have little doubt you’ve found the right path”

***Belief-o-Matic (What is your faith?)|http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html***

My “matches” that were above 80%:
1. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (100%)
2. Orthodox Quaker (98%)
3. Eastern Orthodox (93%)
4. Roman Catholic (93%)
5. Seventh Day Adventist (88%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (84%)

Not terribly surprising.

***What kind of Christian are you?| http://www.BeliefNet.com/section/quiz/index.asp?sectionID=&surveyID=83***

In this quiz, a “0” indicates that you’re a secularist, or someone with minimal belief in the bible, while a “400” indicates that you’re a bible-thumping lunatic. I scored in the high end of the range 330 – 400, or, “You are a Jerry Falwell Christian (a.k.a “Historicist”).” Eek! I really don’t identify with Jerry Falwell, so frankly I find that analysis scary. But then again, I’m only similar to him in terms of my answers to the questions that the quiz asked, and the degree to which my true beliefs matched up with the available options. And it’s just a quiz. Still… blech.

By the way, I’ve started a new ‘Category’ in our blog called ‘Quizzes’ – you can access it via the ‘Archives’ link in the top left corner of our page. I went back and changed the category of previous quizzes, so you can now find the results all in one place. Hooray!

MoRSS

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I’ve added a new XML feed for your consumption:

***RSS 2.0 “Latest Comments” Feed|http://prwdot.org/blog_comments.xml***

This feed will be updated with the last 20 comments on any of the entries in our blog, and will provide links back to the entries that were commented on.

I’ve also added some feeds for compatability:

***Atom-enabled feed|http://prwdot.org/blog_atom.xml***
***RSS 1.0|http://prwdot.org/blog.rss***

Use ’em if you need ’em.

Speaking of RSS readers, I know that at least one person (***Michelle|http://mikao.blogspot.com/***, I think) is watching our feed via the ***BlogLines|http://www.bloglines.com/*** web-based RSS reader. And there’s someone watching us with ***FeedReader|http://www.feedreader.com/***, coming from a Wisconsin-based ISP… no idea who that is.

Personally, I use ***SharpReader|http://www.sharpreader.net/*** at work, and ***NetNewsWire|http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/*** at home.

Photo Stuff

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***Amy|http://waltondammerunprwdot.org/g/*** was curious about what type of camera we used to get the photos in our gallery, so I figured I’d share some of that info in the form of a post.

Some of the very earliest photos in our gallery were shot with an APS-format ***Canon Elph LT-270|http://www.sureshotelph.com/elph/lt270/index.html*** film camera, printed, and scanned with a Canon scanner. This was used up through October of 2001. The camera itself was nice, but I had been wanting to go digital for a while, and the quality of the scanned images left something to be desired.

From mid-October 2001 to late-October 2003, we used a ***Nikon Coolpix 775|http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Nikon/nikon_cp775.asp***. This was a pretty decent camera. It took sharp pictures, had good color depth, and was very small and light. Major gripes were its low resolution, short battery life, and slow response time. We might still be using it, had I not lost it somewhere at Logan Airport. 🙁 The first album of photos shot with the 775 is ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/tsongas_center***, and the last is ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/san_francisco***.

After the loss of the Coolpix, I carefully evaluated all of the entry-level cameras on the market, and selected the ***Canon PowerShot A70|http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_a70.asp***. This is the camera we have been using since late October. The A70 is all-around a terrific camera, with some excellent features such as full manual control over shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and focus. The A70 also uses Canon’s DiGIC image processing chip for some really fantastic color. Battery life is terrific, with four 2000-mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries, I can shoot several hundred photos without needing to change. The first album of photos shot with the A70 is ***here|http://gallery.prwdot.org/maine_parks***.

In terms of exposure, many of the outdoor, still landscape shots I take are shot with fully manual mode. I adjust the aperture and shutter settings while watching the scene in the LCD, in order to get the exact exposure I want. Other shots use mostly-automatic mode on the camera, except that I turn off the camera’s so-called “intelligent” autofocus mode, since it often chooses a subject other than the one I want to capture, and ends up making the photo look out-of-focus. I also try to be careful to select the white balance mode appropriately. One of the gripes about the A70 is that it’s AWB (auto white balance) isn’t always entirely accurate. For the laymen, this means that photos would come out looking a bit too yellow, for example. I try to find a white object to calibrate the white balance, or else pick one of the pre-set white balance modes

I also generally try to follow the ***rule of thirds|http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=5*** for composing photos, though as Captain Barbossa would say, “They’re more guidelines than rules”. 🙂 If I feel that a photo would have more impact by breaking the rule, then I go for it.

I hope you continue to enjoy our photos!

In Summary

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All the news that’s fit to blog:

* This morning, on the drive in to work, ***Simon|http://www.pedalpoint.com/simon/home/main.php*** and I watched as ***my car|http://gallery.prwdot.org/my_car*** rolled over to 190,000 miles. The last big rollover was 180,000 miles last July, so that means 10,000 miles in 9 months, for about 1,100 miles per month. We’re on track to roll over to 200,000 miles by January… sooner if we take any long driving trips this year! 🙂

* We watched ***Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/*** on Friday. Not only was ***Jim Carrey|http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000120/*** tolerable as the leading man, he was downright stupendous! The movie had a similar pace to ***Lost in Translation|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/*** and ***Russian Ark|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0318034/***, both of which are also excellent and highly recommended.

* The $10 worth of munch money we had for use at the theater concession got us one regular size popcorn and one regular size drink, total of $7.75. You can’t get any change back from the gift certificates, and nothing else on the menu was less than $3, so it was a total rip-off. At least we didn’t spend any of our own money on it. ***Chunky’s|http://www.chunkys.com/*** is a much better deal all-around, but it’s just a little too far away, and the movie selection is fairly limited.

* This weekend whilst hanging out with the Lowes, we watched ***Radio|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0316465/*** and ***Open Range|http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0316356/*** on video. Radio was a nice inspirational movie, while Open Range was a very slow western. We finished watching Radio, while we couldn’t bear to stay for most of Open Range. Supposedly there was a very good gunfight near the end, but we didn’t really give it a chance.

* The sunrise service at ***Cathedral of the Pines|http://www.cathedralpines.com/*** was good. Getting up at 4:45 a.m. was a bit of a drag, but the service was worth it. The singing was rousing and the scenery was spectacular. The clearing behind the altar afforded an excellent view of Mount Monadnock.

* Sunday afternoon Easter dinner at The 1761 Old Mill in Westminster was good. All you care to eat buffet. I stayed with the breakfasty-type foods… eggs, bacon, sausage, french toast, home fries. Yum.

* I got to take a few nice photos this weekend… ***check them out|http://gallery.prwdot.org/easter_2004***.

* If you haven’t taken our survey already, please take 30 seconds and do so. The link is at the top left corner of most pages on our site, except for the photo gallery.