I’m a jQuery-fan and I recently wrote some forms for CrazyLikeThat using jQuery and AJAX. The goal was to use a Rails application I wrote as a service.
I hit a few roadblocks, though and in solving them, learned some things:
While ‘application/javascript’ may be the recommended type attribute to source in Javascript with the <script /> tag, IE doesn’t follow it. Regardless of what MIME-type your server sends JavaScript as, you have to specify ‘text/javascript’ to IE.
IE8 has three rendering modes, and there are implications for how to interact with the DOM based on which mode you’re in.
My proposed session for Ignite Raleigh didn’t make the cut. But, for where I want to go with Acting as a Submariner, I like that outcome. I’m refocusing my thinking of it as a longer presentation as a BarCamp RDU session.
I’ve refined the pitch as follows:
We can be continuously online, and that presents two problems. One, we expect to constantly drink from the fire hose and two, we train others to interrupt us at any moment. I’ll talk about why it’s a bad scene and a way I’m working at fixing it.
The 2009 edition of BarCamp RDU will be August 9th at RedHat. Unlike previous years, session pitches are starting early online. Check out the existing session pitches and add your own.
Ignite Raleigh and BarCampRDU are coming up August 5th and August 8th respectively. This will be my first Ignite event and my fourth BarCamp-style event. They’re fantastic.
There are already a number of Ignite Raleigh sessions I’m interested in. Taking my own make locally advice, I’m pitching an Ignite Raleigh talk, Acting as a Submariner, to discuss focus and productivity in spite of constant connectivity.
Here’s my pitch:
We have constant connections and myriad ways of communicating. However, this typically means a spike in both interruptions and distractions. There is some benefit to being disconnected and unreachable – for set periods of time. This presentation will discuss improving your productivity by running silent and deep.
In other words, I’ll be using submarines, and how they operate, as a metaphor for productivity and focus.
If you’re attending Ignite Raleigh or BarCampRDU, please do two things. First, vote on the sessions you want to hear. I want your votes for my presentation. Second, consider pitching your own. These presentations are thought-up by your friends and peers. Preparing to talk about something is one of the best ways to master the material. Share your insight and perspective with us.
If you aren’t attending either event, reconsider. These events are the great networking and I always come away charged with some new piece of knowledge.
North Carolina has something of a budget crisis going on. Not as severe as California’s, but one where there are a lot of tax proposals being floated as potential solutions. Here are some of the ones I’ve heard since mid-June:
These items may, or may not be in a budget passed by the legislature. I’m curious about why these particular tax proposals make sense, or do not. I’m motivated by three factors:
I’m a business owner, and I’m very interested in what might be coming that will affect how I operate my business.
It speaks to the part of me that got a journalism degree 10 years ago.
I like making sense of data.
The News & Observer has an ongoing series, The Generous Assembly about how various programs and practices consume a large amount of resources. That’s a start at what I’m looking for.
I’m not approaching this with the assumption that all government spending is good or bad. I do want to know if we are getting our money’s worth. I want to know if there’s a better way to do things. I want to know what the special-interest obstacles are and the motivations behind them. I’m not interested in getting angry at anyone. I’m not interested in political gamesmanship. Talking points do not interest me. I want well-sourced information to make an informed evaluation.
Here’s an incomplete list of questions I’m interested in seeing addressed:
Is the spending we are trying to pay for effective spending?
Are we paying for things that we shouldn’t be?
Are there programs – Global TransPark comes to mind – that have not met their stated goals?
Is there a possibility those programs could be fixed?
Is there good process to determine if a program is ineffective and shut it down?
Do these tax increases make sense?
Are these items that are convenient to tax because they’re harder to justify?
Because some of them are purely discretionary?
Because they’ll make a meaningful dent?
Are there alternative tax structures to examine?
Is there an alternate way of resolving the issue?
Could we spend less money?
How?
What programs would be affected? Are we talking about eliminating kindergarten to make that happen? (Yes, hyperbole, but consequences are important considerations)
Is this the best possible solution?
Are we getting the state’s financial house on better footing or merely staving-off disaster?
If we’re just staving-off disaster, what do we really need to do to set things right?
How is this going to affect me?
How much are these tax increases going to cost me?
I don’t have comments here, but if you find information that would add to everyone’s understanding of the budget and tax situation, write-it-up and tag it with ‘budgetnc’ on your blog or with ‘#budgetnc’ on Twitter. Thanks in advance for helping me understand our state’s situation at least a little bit better.
I shot a sequence of roughly 75 images in the course of 20 minutes during the fireworks display at the NC State Fairgrounds in western Raleigh. I used a remote trigger for everything and had the exposure locked in at ISO 400, f/11 and five seconds of exposure.
As I was editing the photos, I was pleased my tripod performed admirably. No appreciable shake. No one dislodged the tripod (likely to have been me). What I noticed – through the sequence – was the sky darkening, clouds drifting and people moving. So, while there are a few stills I like (and have uploaded to Flickr), I saw the whole sequence was worth sharing.
While I like the sequence as a whole, I’m not thrilled with how the rendered video pixelates the transitions. I’m unsure of the cause or solution.
As a result of the experience, I have extended notes in two areas, night photography in general, then detail on my workflow of creating the video.
Night photography notes
I wasn’t exactly sure what a good exposure value was going to be for the fireworks or how far away from them I’d be. My selected values of f/11 and ISO 400 were intended to first give myself a lot of focal latitude, minimal grain and the ability to get a longer exposure. The exposure time of five seconds was a good guess, confirmed with a couple of test exposures. After moving to Beryl Road upon realizing we were in a bad position to view fireworks, I used the remote release attached to the D300 and set-up bursts of exposure, four at a time.
A tripod is essential to night photography. Mine is one I formerly used for large-format photography, so the legs are extremely hardy and the head adjusts on three axis individually. If I was getting a replacement now, I would probably get something lighter. But, something heavy that won’t blow over easily or has a tendency to jump when you adjust the camera is good.
About the remote shutter release: Once exposure and composition is dialed-in, it’s nice not touching the camera for shutter release. During a long exposure, particularly those long enough to require tripod support, but less than a couple of seconds, touching the camera can induce shake and yield a sub-optimal image.
Unfortunately, with many dSLRs, using a cable release that threads into the shutter button is not an option. With cameras like the Nikon D70, D90 and such, there’s a infrared remote release. Fine, but that required triggering within view of the IR receiver. On the D300, there is a threaded release into a PC port, but that means a minimum of $15 for just a button on up to $150 for Nikon’s multi-function cord. While it works on Nikon’s top-end dSLRs, it isn’t compatible with the consumer models.
I use an off-brand release, with the ability to set a release timer, multiple exposures and probably a few other things. The main thing is, in this instance, cost aside, the ability to trigger multiple exposures without touching the camera itself was a bonus.
If you don’t have a remote release option, use a self timer.
Video creation and export
I used Aperture, iPhoto ‘08 and iMovie ‘08 to create the video. I imported the photos from my card, per normal process, and then opened iMovie. Within iMovie, I started a 4:3 project. I set the images to scale within my selected project size. Each photo is fully onscreen for two seconds, with a crossfade of .15 seconds. I was initially going to upload video to Flickr, but even at one second of video, I had 17 seconds more than Flickr’s 90 second maximum. I didn’t want to drop images from the sequence.
My initial difficulty was photo quality in iMovie. I keep my Aperture previews small, so the first run of video that used the RAW images directly was not very good. I exported the images as full resolution JPEGs. I tried importing the freshly exported photos into iMovie’s media browser, but no go. If it isn’t in Aperture, iTunes or iPhoto, iMovie won’t see it. Rather than import images I already had in Aperture, I imported them into iPhoto, which I’m using to catch my iPhone 3GS video. That allowed iMovie to see the JPEGs.
I wanted to output High Definition video. iMovie ‘08’s direct export settings aren’t accurate in terms of what YouTube will accept, so I ignored those. Instead, I exported with QuickTime at 720p, 30 frames-per-second, presuming a 1-Mbit connection.
While exporting, I was not surprised my MacBook Pro was going to take a while to render the video as MPEG-4. But, it did seem excessive, and I remembered, my MBP has a discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT card. I typically use the integrated GeForce 9400M graphics since using that card offers better battery life. This export made logging out and switching to the discrete card worthwhile.
I’m a very infrequent user of iMovie, but it seems to be agreeable to my prodding and poking about settings to (mostly) get what I’m after.
