Devauld.ca

My brother produced this pair of Pioneer headphones, while he was looking for a soldering iron.  Our current 'get the GPS working again' state of mind was not congruent with my desire to photograph the set, so I asked if I could borrow them for a couple of days.  After we finished getting the GPS running, Christmas happened, and the SE-L 40's sat atop the refrigerator, thankful to be out of the shop.

On the last day of 2009, I managed to return to the headphones.  Using black fabric as a backdrop, I maneuvered my tripod and camera to a composition that I was happy with.  I put an extension ring between my camera and the telephoto lens, ensuring that I would be able to focus on something that close to the camera.  Then came the boring part.

On manual exposure and white balance, I painstakingly moved the focus ring through ten different positions, sat and waited until the camera wasn't shaking and then triggered the camera using my cable release.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

Patience is only needed when trying to steady the camera.  A lens that long will magnify any shake in the camera.  Furthermore having an abusively large camera on the end of a stick doesn't help all that much either.

The reasoning for my madness is to defeat depth of field and produce the image I wanted.  At 200mm focusing 30-40cm in front of the camera means that your focal plane is thin.  In practice, when I was focusing on the tip of the plug, where it morphs into fabric wrapped wire started to show some comfortable bokeh.  Sharpness at the front of the image resulted in a unrecognizable, out of focus, blob at the back.

With my sequence of focus planes, I used a focus stacking software to sandwich all the images into a final image.  Focus stacking software detects the sharp portions of each image to use in the final output.  I used a program called Helicon, although if you are looking for some other Focus Stacking software there are more to choose from.  Technically the image is 'rendered', and not really a 'photograph'.  Although I don't see much difference between using one algorithm to sandwich focal planes together versus using another to sharpen all the edges within a photograph.  Is one photography while the other isn't?

Over the holidays, there was a general theme that was briefly touched on by almost everyone that I visited:

You get the basement finished yet?

The sad matter of fact: No, I have not finished the basement yet.  I'll probably spend more time scouring the basement for where I left the tools, than on actually cutting wood and nailing up trim. The basement is functional, and a mess.

This small amount of work fell by the wayside because of prioritization.  After my 40+ hour work week is padded with my time in traffic, the other two businesses, the time I am left with is usually filled with ironically analytical pastimes.  The basement was never given priority, and my assumption the real root cause: No real deadline.  I've decided to change that, and start getting things done.

There is no shortage of good productivity material on the internet, so I decided to start a process by which I can get more of the little stuff done, while not neglecting the big stuff.  After swirling around a fixed schedule, and perhaps allocating all of my time to: Work, Home and Play, I figured the best thing I could do was to create, track and self impose deadlines on myself.

After I had determined my need, I worked on finding a tool to fill that space. I basically needed something that would manage tasks, including re-occuring daily tasks as well as having whatever I use be accessible almost anywhere.  I thought of going with my trusty notebook, and managing the lists of ToDo items that way.  However, I found at work that when you have a daily task (Enter Timesheet or Workout), that writing it out day after day, was a waste of time.  Furthermore, once it was delegated to a 'daily' task list, the familiarity of the list meant that I didn't revisit it and eventually an item or two would be forgotten.  Then I looked for something more technological.

Next, Google Calendar, and its task management, were examined.  The fit using the calendar directly didn't feel right.  The Calendar is more to keep track of events, not so much things that you need to do.  Placing a 'Work on Basement' on Saturday doesn't show progress, or allow me to work on the tasks earlier if I have free time.  Google has also implemented a task list, where you add tasks to a number of lists that get plunked into your calendar.  The Calendar implementation also carries to my iPhone so it's available almost everywhere.  Again, the shortcoming was re-occuring tasks.  In addition, the tasks added additional clutter to my already packed calendar.

Consulting the Internet, I was directed towards Tracks.  Currently, it appears to fill my needs.  It both handles re-occuring tasks very well; furthermore it is online where I can access it almost anywhere, and it has a mobile version that I can access from my phone.  Tracks is also freely available on github, which resulted in me immediately downloading and installing it.  I'll test drive it until my birthday and see how I like it.  The first thing to go into Tracks: four tasks for finishing the basement.

2009 is dead, long live 2010!

As always some reflection happens at this time of year, and I took a look under the hood of this website.  Since the first post in 2006, I've sporadically found time to put up random happenings and thoughts.  2009 was no different, although the content is not uniformly distributed:

It would appear that half of the content for the year came in the first month.  Furthermore, most of the summer filler content was PhotoFriday postings.  I'm going to put my best foot forward try to be a bit more regular on this website.  Towards that end, I've signed up for Project 52.

The goal is simple: New content every week of the year, or you face public shame.  The self imposed accountability should be the stimulus I need to keep things regular.  I'm slotted in at # 506 and already I am formulating plans to ensure that I do not fail.  I'm sure things are going to happen this year that will derail this endeavour, and I need to have some machinations in place to keep moving forward.

Photography stands in centre stage of current topic ideas.  I'm pretty sure I can form an opinion or two about software development as well.  After those topics, I'll pull out journaling of my life; when I can't seem to generate content anymore I can result to link whoring and empty Photo Friday posts.