My blog starts its second year. Calendar year, that is. My new year's resolution is to become more awesome. A tough job indeed, but might be possible. We'll find out. Stay tuned.
And if your curious, this blog has been partially inspired by Travels With Samantha, a book by Phillip Greenspun, at the time, a CS grad student at MIT. He has the ultimate praise about this book:
"You make me sound like a world-class caustic nympho bitch."
That's some tough praise to beat.
Archive:
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
I have created a new website on my own domain: www.mikeseeman.com. Everything from this site moved to that site in a more-modern layout. All new blog entries will appear on that site only. The new server allows me to do several things that I've been unable to do until recently. Most importantly, it lets me run PHP scripts to make custom (and flexible!) photo and blog browsers. In the short-term, I'm hoping to implement a commenting system for my blog entries and photos. Future projects include a store for my photography and a user/login system. Suggestions and comments on the website design/contents are welcome. You know my email.
Sunday, February 5, 2006
The yosemite trip (version 2) went well, although I was tired as shit when I got back. I was also sick the two days following. Figures. Anyway, the weather was still poor: when does Mostly Cloudy ever mean Essentially Completely Sunny? The only saving graces were the fog that stuck around for two hours in the morning and the few clouds sneaking into the view during sunset. I added five pictures to the yosemite page.
Another thing I tried was an imitation of one of the shots from Zion. Compare the Yosemite shot to the Zion shot. Besides the sharper (and un-color-corrected) yosemite image, the two are interesting to compare.
God, I really need to get more research done. I think I probably did 5 hours of research last week, and half of it sucked because the server's password file was corrupted, so i couldn't log in. Better luck this week.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
I got a new lens this week (on Thursday). It's a Nikkor 300mm f/4, an older version of the lower-professional-grade lens. The f/2.8 version is nicer and $3000. At less than $500, I consider my lens to be quite a decent deal. It replaces the 80-400 I returned and the 70-200 f/2.8 that I'm going to sell. I tested it out yesterday, and am very happy with its performance.
The squirrel photo (to your right) was taken with this lens and a 1.4x teleconverter a stop short of wide-open. It appears that I photoshopped much of the background out, but this is simply straight out of the camera. I overexposed to get a good exposure of the highly-backlit squirrel. The thing that is most impressive with this photo is the complete lack of flare. Usually, the high brightness would result in a loss of contrast in the shadows, or circular bright spots on the image. None of these exist! This lens is definitely a keeper, but i'm still debating whether I should replace the not-so-hot 70-200 I'm selling. The f/2.8 yields tasty images. Maybe I should go for a 85mm f/1.8 instead. Tasty Tasty!
I shot two sports today for the Daily Cal. Men's rugby and basketball. Rugby was wet, but we kicked the crap out of UC Davis (well, we do have the best Rugby team in the nation), even though I totally don't understand the game. It seems halfway between soccer and football. My 300mm lens did well, although it got a bit wet (but meh -- it'll get over it). The Daily Cal suddenly lacks lenses. They have 4 now -- all the rest are in repair. And just one telephoto. So I used my 300mm for Rugby and the 70-200 for Basketball.
Basketball was kind of cool -- Alison called me and said they had an extra pass, so I grabbed it and showed up at halftime. The floor was pretty crowded -- only one spot was reserved for photogs -- the endzone (what is it really called?) to the left of the basket on one of the ends. We sat one-deep in a tight horizontal line on the floorboards about 4 feet from the court. You really have to be on the ball all the time! Sorry for the pun. A few minutes into the second half, one of the Washington State players practically fell on me and I had to get out of the way. I got a shot of a Cal player throwing the ball right at me -- good thing it was to another player, and he caught it! Oh yes, and I got plenty of shots of the ref's ass.
Yosemite: The trip last weekend was fun, and I got a number of decent shots. However, the nights were really cold (I didn't have a thermometer, but I was cold in my sleeping bag) and the skies were clear. Clear skies are probably the worst for photography. But check out the photos! Anyway, I'm not doing anything tomorrow, and the weather promises to be more interesting, so I think Scott and I will get up early and spend the day in Yosemite! And it's gonna rock!
Friday, January 20, 2006
Relief. The first and really only feeling in my mind when I found I passed prelims. The feeling of taking prelims, the studying beforehand and the worrying afterwards really took a toll on my mind, especially the second time around. But it's finally done. I'm going to get my Ph.D! And I can be a grad student for another 3 years. Failure is not an option.
As an excellent way of relaxing, I'm currently in Yosemite. I checked the vital email on an internet kiosk at Yosemite Lodge, at a whopping 25 cents per minute. The valley is nice -- snow everywhere. It might be stormy on Sunday, which will give some interesting cloud patterns. It'll be a fun trip. And well-earned!
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
blech.
Friday, January 13, 2006
PhD Comic of the day:
I again am studying for my prelim. Like it never ends. Fortunately, I know what material I really need to study (they ALWAYS ask a feedback question or two), and know how to calm my nerves for the test (cough) alcohol (/cough). And I'm doing a better job at procrastinating, too.
And nothing represents procrastination better than PhD Comics. This comic strip is written about me, and I don't even need to pay anyone! So every blog entry this year will feature a different PhD comic based on my life at the moment or some other mental stimulus. This one is brought to you by National Geographic's: the Grad Student: Call of the Wild. Well, yeah. Maybe I'll be able to go on a non-awkward date sometime in the future. (cough) alcohol (/cough).
Copyright 2000-2005, Mike Seeman.
Last Updated: June 10, 2005