Devauld.ca

Today Reader showed me a posting that Sourceforge was now using OpenID. I headed over to the login page and sure enough there was an entry field for my URL. I immediately identified myself, and when I returned to SF, I was presented with a button stating that pressing it would create a SF account.

This is Excellent.

Then, I pressed the Create SF Account I was presented with a standard registration form, the top half of the form pre-populated with identification that was pulled from my OpenID registration. Towards the bottom of the page I saw fields for passwords, confirmations and a super secret question one could only suppose would help me recover the above password.

Idiots!

Top marks for Marketing and Promotion, but no score for Creativity, Usability or THE POINT. OpenID's sole purpose is to leave the responsibility of the identity at http://wes.devauld.ca in my hands. Using only the registration portion of the specification is like clapping with only one hand.

It's broken.

The architecture supports the idea of less passwords, super secret questions and usernames. What SF has implemented is a methodology of reserving usernames, and again instituting the archaic standardized practices that have been forged for usernames and passwords. The super secret password is the worst practice to spread over the network.

The more places that know my Mother's maiden name, and where I was born, the less I need to be socially manipulated for that information. It is like when the bank asks for your passwords. You either use the same one everywhere because it's easier, or you forget it and you have to go the long way around verifying who you are. Why not use OpenID for it's intended purpose? Set up a single online identity that fits in a text box and leave the responsibility for passwords, resets and secret questions your my hands.

Sonja and I took a weekend trip down to Las Vegas, NV. It was a nice deal, as Corus picked up the bill, and our biggest concern was our entertainment.

The trip was a welcome change, as we left this scene to arrive 2.5 hours later and see this. I've never been a sunny weather lover, but even this nice warm climate felt nice on my pasty white skin.

Saturday morning we went out to the premium outlet mall. We spent hours, and several hundred dollars in the mall, which was a plethora of deals. Unfortunately, they were the Costco kind of deals, where one would save 30% on an item that was already a few hundred dollars. That evening we went to The Wynn to take in Le Reve. The show was amazing.

Sunday, we spent a lazy morning next to the pool soaking up the sun, and in the afternoon we explored Las Vegas and I made good use of my camera.

All too soon, Monday was upon us, and we started our voyage back to Calgary and the Day-to-Day.

Last night the Flames brought the Stanley Cup playoffs to Calgary. Fortunately I was able to attend the game, and right from the start I could tell it was going to be a different kind of game.

Upon arriving, the front of the Saddledome was crawling with tailgaters having a great old party. The weather this particular Sunday was poking at the twenties and I'm sure a lot of the crowd was there all day. Just walking up to the Saddledome was deafening. Even before the warmup the place was already over half capacity. The majority of people were sporting an authentic game jersey. The opening was electric and you could feel the energy in the air. The stadium almost ripped in half when the announcer said: "Let's show the Sharks the true meaning of: Home Ice Advantage".

Despite the rush of energy, jitters got to the Flames and the game got off to a terrible start. Not even four minutes in and the visiting team was up 3-0. At this point we pulled our mainstay goalie, the legendary Kipper, and inserted our substitute: CuJo. Here they managed to hold the Sharks back, and then the hit was layed. The crowd exploded, and the team turned around. The second period of play was some of the best hockey I've ever seen from the Flames. Coupled with the energy of the playoffs, it was some very exiting hockey.

Against the odds, the replacement goaltender and a field of dedicated Flames managed to pull out a 4-3 win against the Sharks. After the first four minutes of play not a single puck made it past CuJo and we managed to create some amazing opportunities with enough capitalization to pull off the win.

The fourth game of the round is on Tuesday night, and I'm pumped to see another amazing game

Calgary weather stations recorded a high around 10 degrees yesterday at high noon. On the drive home the temperature dropped down to freezing, and when I went to bed last night it looked more like fall than it did spring. This morning we awoke to a snow covered wonderland.

My commute into work today took an hour and a half. The largest hangup, besides every buffoon that has their summer slicks on their powerful rear wheel drive sport car, was a semi that had jackknifed under the Pagan overpass. In fact, it had only jammed up one lane, and ideally traffic could have managed to move around the blockage. Instead an army of idiot volunteers had conflicting ideas about how to handle it, and usually their lack of communication caused traffic in the two remaining free lanes to be stopped.

The silly part of this freak weather, is that in a few days you won't even know it happened. They are predicting a high of 20 degrees for Sunday.

Moments in time don't just happen, there is an entire sequence of events, sometimes an entire lifetime, that lead up to them. A gentleman named Barry inadvertently sent me down the winding path that would lead to the moment I picked up a new D3.

I started with a film camera manufactured by Nikon. At first I was overwhelmed with the camera at first. Aperture, Depth of Field, ISO, telephoto, chromatic aberration, monochromatic, metering, dynamic range, motion blur and a plethora of other new ideas all rushed at me. It became quickly apparent to me that there was more to photography than I would ever understand.

My first fun piece of glass was the 28-105mm macro, which introduced me to photography up close. The lens has a 0.22m minimum focus distance from the film plane, which means that you can basically photograph things that are touching the lens. I love macro photography, and found that if my photos didn't look very good, it was because I wasn't close enough.

After some time, binders of film were filling my closet and I found myself strangely addicted to eBay. My auction sniping addiction led to the purchase of my first wide angle lens: an 18-35mm. I still hadn't learned at this point that certain lenses were sharper than others, and that the zooms never compete with the primes, but I did find that I love shooting wide angle even more than I liked macro photography. The natural distortion of everyday things that could be created using wide angle lenses swept me up, and has never let me go.

A few years later, some friends and I started experimenting with high speed photography, and a couple digital SLRs had started making appearances at our gatherings. I was dead set against it. The mainstream digital SLRs at the time used APS sized sensors. Mass produced, easy to QA and in absolutely everything. The problem being: an APS sized sensor cuts out the middle of a 35mm picture and as a result magnifies your picture by 1.5 times. As a result, by beautiful lens at 18mm on a digital camera would behave like a 27mm. Moving the lens out over a critical 9mm and rendering my superwide into a simple wide. I was steadfast that I would wait until digital would provide me with the wideness I desired.

I was broken within a year. Seeing the convenience my fellow photographers had when shooting digital ate at me. I still preached the superior quality of film, the larger dynamic range as well as the high quality resolution were facts constantly crossing my lips as I defended my still using the dated and much more expensive version of the art.

Late in 2005, Nikon announced the specificiations of the much anticipated D200, and I was only marginally disappointed that it again would sport a 1.5 crop factor. I knew that the Full Frame sensor would be showing up in the Professional line first, and as is par it would be 6-8 months before any store would have a D200 in stock, I started my digital foray with Nikon's Mark had purchased a D200 - 18-200 combination, and soon after Neil had an 18-200 as well. A single lens that replaces three that I have to support the same range, as well as built in vibration reduction made the lens unforgettable. Looking back I can see that part of me was convincing the rest that breaking my no-DX lens rule was an extremely good idea. The digital conversion was nice, and Nikon hadn't made any sort of move in ending Canon's 3 year control of the Full Frame digital market (Yes, I know about the Kodak, go away). In 2007, with a trip to Europe coming down the pipe, and my subconcious raging about not wanting to pack three different lenses, I followed a price reduction and purchased the 18-200 lens.

Not even a month after my purchase, Nikon comes out and announces the D3. I'm sure Lady Luck gets a lot of laughs at my expense.

As Christmas approached, I found the money in my camera fund, collecting dust, and I made a speculative play with the money, knowing full well that even as of December, very few D3 cameras had crossed into Canada. The risk payed off, and I had made a decent profit by the end of January, and in a delirious moment did agree to get my name put on a waiting list at The Camera Store. I was somewhere in the eighties at that time, and considering the going delivery rate was one or two a week, I figured it would be fall, or optimistically mid summer before I would have to decide if I wanted to honour the agreement.

I was surprised earlier this week when I received a call, ironically while taking photos at Flames Central, that after a slew of cancellations I was next in line for a D3. Thinking too fast, I told them I was out of town, and that I couldn't pick it up right away. I was told that they would hold it for me until midday on Friday, kicking off a week of deep contemplation, hand wringing, prioritization, and back and forth logic I have ever subjected myself too.

I consulted with anyone that would listen to me, and have never been so on the fence in my whole life. On one hand, I had been waiting for this camera for over five years, was prepared to receive it, knew that I wanted it, and on the other hand was a massive price tag. A price tag roughly equivalent to a dozen 14 inch bandsaws, 2 years of gasoline or my Buell Motorcycle.

The tipping point was during the monthly Calgary Photographic Society meeting. Kevin told us the story of how he got to where he is today. Mentioning that you need to do what you love to succeed, and that he once used a D70 but it didn't cut it lingered with me all evening, and I figured out while showering the next morning that I would be really pissed with myself if I didn't jump on this opportunity right away.

Leaving work a bit early to fight traffic, struggle with parking, verify with Visa and attempt to haggle; I managed to obtain my treasure. Excited as a kid on Christas Eve, my head was split in half with my smile. As soon as I was home, I had the box open and I was sifting through it's contents. But, my dreams of a full frame digital image needed to be put on hold, as my new digital camera had a new type of battery. A battery which needed to be charged before I could use the camera.

Longest three hours of my life.