Here are some quick test shots from my new Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 D AF prime mounted to my D90 in manual mode.

These were taken with shutter between 1/500-1/640, f2.0-2.2, ISO 800, no fill flash. I could have reduced the ISO to around 400, but I wanted high sensitivity to capture as much motion as I could. I also could have upped the shutter for a few of the shots, but what the hey.

I'm tremendously impressed with this lens. For about $125, it's a quality (and underrated) piece of Nikkor glass, shunned by many in favor of the more expensive f/1.4 prime. It produces tack-sharp images (noticeably sharper than my 18-105mm and 55-200 VR DX glass), offers great low light performance, and is very fast to focus. I was told this is one of the hidden gems in Nikkor's modern lens lineup, and from everything I've seen so far, it's true.

This was introduced in 2002 to replace the classic Nikkor f/1.8 50mm prime that debuted in the mid-1980s. The main difference is compatibility with today's DSLRs and D-spec lenses. Other than that, from what I can tell, this lens is very close to original glass -- which is a good thing.

Standard caveat about primes: they're a fixed focal length, which means you can't simply twist the zoom ring to change subject composition. You have to get up and move your feet to compose the picture properly. Pain in the ass, yes, but in the process it makes you think about composition more than you ever probably did. That in itself is a strongly recommended exercise for novice photographers. The fact that you get a nice, affordable piece of glass along with it is a nice bonus.

RATING: 5/5 stars. Highly recommended.

             

Click here to download:

Quick_Test_Nikkor_50mm_f1.8_D_.zip (3123 KB)

Loading mentions Retweet

I voted Republican in every election since this last one.  Since making that decision, I've been called a liberal (which I am not) more times than I can remember, both in jest and with venom.  I've been told I am a bleeding heart, someone who doesn't appreciate the value of personal achievement and hard work, and someone who believes government should be larger, not smaller.  I've been called far worse, epithets commenting on my perceived affinity for our current President's racial origin.  Basically, I've been told that I'm everything the modern GOP opposes, because as their problem-child poster-boy GWB says, you're either with them or against them.

I suppose, then, I'm against them, only now it's occurring to me as to why.  And this is on a true ideological level, not the level that makes such a decision easy.  Listening to Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin is too easy, and quite frankly unfair: anyone can use the bombastic morons as examples of why something is broken and stupid.  For more rational folks, it runs deeper than that.  It has to.  We're talking live-perspective framework value systems here, not who makes the best margarita.

For quite some time since making the egregious decision not to vote GOP in 2008, I've tried to explain to people that I'm a moderate, a centrist, but in today's polarized, polemic view of social and fiscal stances, moderates are looked at as Libertarian loonies and relegated to either irrelevance or Leper Island.  It's hard to fit in when you have to wear a red or blue label to do so.  And in my experience, most people who claim to also be moderates are anything but, and a quick five-minute conversation usually reveals the plumbing.

I do believe in smaller government, but I don't believe privatization run amok or unregulated corporate GDP engines are the answer. 

I am smart enough to know free markets aren't always free.  I don't trust corporate interests as far as I can throw them.

I believe there is some form of climate change problem despite the actuaries flinging shit at one another over the data and its proclivity to be shared openly -- or not.  I do question exactly how much humanity's occupation of this planet is contributing to this.  My position in this debate is susceptible to the whims of new evidence, data and discoveries.

I think that overt consumerism and greed was the ballroom partner to predatory lending and loan schemes that securitized so many mortgages that made it impossible for banks to know who they owed and who owed them. 

I believe that Obama's fiscal policies are trending off course but he's inherited a hell of a mess and everyone seems OK with ignoring that. 

I believe that in order to affect meaningful change -- of which time and history will be the judge and jury -- there will be pain and gnashing of teeth and calls for military coups so that the superwealthy entrenched firmly in the beltway's ass can remain so.  I believe like everything that requires hardline change, difficult decisions have to be made, and difficult decisions, by definition, mean people get pissed off.  Anytime someone has to look out for the long-term welfare of a group people will be pissed.  That's leadership.

As I'm learning, in the two-node political spectrum we have today, I don't really fit in.  I've spent the last year watching all sorts of news channels and reading blogs of all stripes, and it finally occurred to me that maybe, during what I consider my political awakening, my old party moved away from me as much as or more than I moved away from it.

So it's apropos that today I come across The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan saying he's leaving the right.  His reasons are his reasons, and his claim that he's been resistant to partisanship and cliquery is certainly true, in my experience.  Nonetheless, his manifesto as to why he's leaving nicely crystallizes what I've been struggling with for quite some time.

So here goes.  I thank Mr. Sullivan for putting words to the thoughts and frustration I've been feeling lately, but at some point, you've got to look it in the eye and call it what it is.

Below is Sullivan's manifesto in its entirety.

I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.

I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.

I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government's minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.

I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.

I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.

I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.

I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.

I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.

I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.

I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.

I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.

I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.

I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.

I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.

I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.

I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

Does this make me a "radical leftist" as Michelle Malkin would say? Emphatically not. But it sure disqualifies me from the current American right.

To paraphrase Reagan, I didn't leave the conservative movement. It left me.

And increasingly, I'm not alone.

Loading mentions Retweet

One of the most entertaining games I have ever seen. Z gets a hat trick, Rafalski with two points and Getzlaf whines to the refs at least 30 times.

Good Saturday night in my book.

         

Click here to download:

Pics_Red_Wings_v._Ducks.zip (338 KB)

Loading mentions Retweet

I've been having some recent email correspondence with Kit, an old grade-school friend with whom I've recently reconnected.  He's is, and always has been, a phenomenal artist.  Stumbling across him some 20+ years later through the magic of the Googletubes, I'm happy and thrilled to see his talent has afforded him a full-on art career.  But let me tell you a story about contrasts, embedded in which is all the proof you'll ever need that I'm a horrible artist.  Not that you asked or anything, but it's Friday, so just go along for the ride, bokay?

Four million years ago when I was in my early teens, I was envious that Kit could draw anything you wanted on command.  I’m not talking a simple line drawing, or some lame demonstration of perspective ("Look how these lines converge on the horizon!").  Oh no.  Kit could whip up something nearly photographic in under two minutes that would take me a solid month to try to match.  I’d say, “Hey Kit, draw a stapler,” and Kit would grab a pencil, looking utterly bored, and perfectly whip up a perfectly-shaded sketch of a perfect stapler that would fit into a design catalog.  To this day, people with this talent rank only slightly below ninjas to me.

I decided, upon seeing this a few times, that I wanted to be able to draw like that too.

Through sheer force of will and being what's known as an 'unrelenting pain in the ass,' I harangued my parents into art lessons, which were (a) expensive and (b) an utter waste of my and the instructor’s time.  I simply wasn’t good.  Turns out that in the business, what I had was called 'very little talent' mixed with 'the inability to realize it.'  My short art career – which led me to create some horrible colored pencil-on-textureboard drawing of a wolf’s head and some variety of retarded panther prowling on some sort of mesa or something – lasted about six weeks and cost my parents roughly $500.

I tell you this story because a few months ago, during a relatively boring meeting, I decided to try and draw a picture of a dog or wolf or hyena or something I had approximated in my mind.  The result was was so horribly bad – so laughably fucked – that it actually became funny in its horribleness.  It wasn’t something someone looks at and goes, “Wow, that’s a pretty bad mess, whatever that is,” but instead looks at, nearly chokes on coffee, and starts to laugh audibly.

Here:

What IS that?  It has three front paws, an optical-illusion grade pig snout, a one-dimensional mouth and eyes that are set in some sort of trench on the right side of its face.  Not to mention it looks like it’s been in Vegas for the weekend.

And so there you have it.  All the proof in the world that I am a horrible artist, wrapped nicely in one blog post.

Loading mentions Retweet

I have a preternatural fear of skeletons.  The origins of this fear go like this: when I was 8, on some nondescript day leading up to Halloween, I was walking past my father’s darkened den, which was situated at the end of a long hallway.  Back then, house phones were beige and weighed the same as a mature watermelon.  As I was walking rapidly down this dark hallway – convinced, on some level, that something was shambling after me – I glanced into the office at the huge beige phone that normally sat perched on the desk next to the door.  All at once, in what to this day is the most bizarre visual trick I have ever played on myself, the phone morphed into a giant skull, its jaw disturbingly askew, with horrible eyes too large to be human.  I remember literally yelling and running down what was left of the hall into the kitchen, convinced beyond all reason that there was a huge, wet-eyed skull sitting on my father’s desk, waiting for me. 

Fast forward 32 years.

Strange, then, that I decorated my house for this Halloween in an almost pure skeleton motif.  I have a 4’ skeleton hanging from a tree outside my office with landscaping twine, an unintentional, amateur approximation of a noose.  My walkway is lit with little plastic skulls, their frozen grimaces chained together with electric cord.  I have a latex pirate skeleton – or at least half of one, as he has no lower body – perched on a stone bench leading up to my porch, a strobe light situated underneath him.  I basically have skeletons and skulls everywhere, mainly as a result of my son going as a skeleton for trick-or-treating tomorrow night.  And something being wrong with me.

The confession comes like this: when it gets dark and I’m outside amongst this spectacle, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t recall The Desk Skull.  I’d be lying if I said I don’t get a little irrationally afraid.  I’d also be lying if I said that I’m not embarrassed by this and wonder what deep-rooted unexorcised demon made me go whole-hog with the skull business.  I’d also be lying if I said I’m 40 years old and if you think any of this is funny, then you are sadly mistaken, because once you see a giant skull on your home office desk, nothing is quite the same.  Ever.  I don’t wish this curse upon anyone, so get that smirk off your face.

So.

In non-skull related news, I have decided to parse the Internet for its most precious harvest this week, so you don’t have to.  Here’s the bounty:

• So much for the Pre saving Sprint.  It’s latest quarterly results showed a loss of $478M and 135,000 subscribers.
• Excellent feature in Wired by Amy Wallace regarding the confusing social movement to skip childhood vaccinations.
• 37signal’s Jason Fried with a speaking tip that should be common sense, but isn’t: don’t tell the audience you’re not prepared.
• In keeping with the Halloween theme, here’s a great primer on H.P. Lovecraft, one of my childhood favorite authors.  All the required reading is here.
• Here’s an awesome, 3D-zoomable demonstration of cell size and scale, bounded from everyday to infinitesimal by a coffee bean and carbon atom.
• Apple’s 2009 advertising budget is huge, but Microsoft’s makes it pale by comparison. What’s working better?  See also: you can’t brute force everything.
• Google singlehandedly shrinks the dedicated GPS market by announcing a free turn-by-turn navigation app for Android 2.0/Motorola Droid.  A version for the iPhone is also in the works.  Translated: the standalone GPS market just got marginalized.
• The iPhone is still runner-up in terms of smartphone marketshare, but the trend is more than promising.  How long will it be before it overtakes the #1 spot?
• Om Malik’s karma can destroy MacBook Pros. Three of them, to be precise.

Loading mentions Retweet