Red Mars book review

I’ve just finished reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Set in the not too distant future, Robinson follows the lives of the “first hundred”, the scientists, workers, politicos and personalities that form humanity’s first attempt at prolonged colonization of Mars. I downloaded the book for free both through Stanza and the iPhone Kindle App, so I can’t really complain too much. Red Mars is a pretty easy read, and thanks to Stanza I was able to define any words I wasn’t sure of. At times the writing became a little slow paced, but nothing that ever made me give up on the book.

Really fascinating to me (and to you too) is many of the devices and schemes that the humans in the book use to change Mars into Earth’s image are being used in the here and now. As I finished Red Mars, I came across this article about Russia planning to build floating nuclear platforms for oil drilling in the arctic. Being self sufficient for 12 to 14 years, these are exactly the mobile, self-contained kind of power plants which would be necessary in transforming Mars from a thin atmosphered rock into a water covered oasis.

The scary part is that while in Red Mars the scientists had to contend with UN oversight on their various terraforming projects, here on Earth there is no such oversight. We’ve been dumping carbon and nitrogen into the air since the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been until fairly recently in our history that we’ve come to question the repercussions of our actions. Robinson’s book makes terraforming Mars seem like a real possibility, and even though I probably won’t be alive to take advantage of the Martian frontier perhaps one of my descendants will be Martian. I just hope there’s still an Earth for them to send their snapshots back to.

The day after reading, I saw Mitchell Joachim on Colbert, also a lot of similar technology one would need to terraform Mars.

Trying out Off Camera Flash

So yesterday Kelsy and I went to the fabulous store Calumet. I’ve rented lenses from them before and the staff is always friendly and pretty knowledgeable about cameras and stuff. Recently I added Strobist to my Google Reader, so I’ve been aching to do some off camera flash.

For around $40 I picked up a hot shoe mount and a flash trigger cord. Unfortunately the cord was only about a meter long, so getting really interesting off camera flash would be difficult. Fortunately I just saw an article on Make about extending flash cords with cat 5. $5 at home depot got me two cat 5 wall jacks, an hour later I was cooking with a cat5 cable that came from some piece of network gear I’ve bought. I wanted to go the whole nine yards, so I took some cat5e that I’ve had for a while for wiring my apartment network, measured out 50 feet and terminated the ends.

It didn’t work.

So I cut the cable down to 30 feet. Eureka! That’s a lot of room to move around with the camera and keep the flash on a tripod with an umbrella. It’s quite a bit of fun shooting this way, and I figure all in I spent about $50 to $60 on the parts needed to achieve this. I could have spent $190 each on a pair of Pocket Wizards (one transmitter and one receiver), but I think for now I have all the tools I need to have some fun. You can see some of the early test shots by clicking on the photo above.

I’m shooting on a Canon Rebel XTi I got for Christmas 2007. The flash is a Canon Speedlite 430 EX I bought open box at Best Buy for $100. The tripod is a random tripod I have (I think I have 3 or 4 of them floating around), and the umbrella is part of the Lowell DV Creator Kit Kelsy bought a few years ago. My Cat5e isn’t shielded or of the highest quality, so I bet if I got a little bit nicer cable I could extend the reach to 50 feet or so. All in all it was a fun little test and I’m hoping it’ll help me in taking some more interesting photos in the future.

Happy New Year for 2009

So…

My two weeks of daily blogging hit a snag when I got to Lancaster. There are always too many friends to try and see so I didn’t find the time to write or to read.

In this coming year, I hope to find the discipline to spend more time on self improvement. I’ll try and keep this blog updated more with both the specifics and the broad strokes of this endeavor.

Best of luck to everyone in 2009!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all, may your day be bright and your family be healthy and prosperous in the coming year!

A love letter to Kelsy

Kelsy,

I love you.

I don’t know how many times I can say it, but it’s never enough to do justice to the love I have for you.

Our love has mostly been an easy love, one without need for letters or notes.  We  haven’t been more than a stone’s throw apart since our earliest days of flirtation and infatuation at Park la Brea and the LAFSC.  From there we’ve seen each each other every day save two weeks at Christmas time our first two years together.  You’ve pulled me through in the worse times for almost three years, and I hope I’ve done similar for you.  Our love has mostly been an easy love.

That’s not to say that loving me hasn’t been hard, Lord knows sometimes I can be difficult.  I can’t say the same about you. Every pout, every cross eye, every raised voice only deepens my love for you.  I once told you so and you couldn’t understand.  ”That doesn’t make any sense,” you said.  It doesn’t have to, just know that loving you is easy.

I’d be crass or hollow, sometimes not at all nice.  You’d still forgive me and wrap your arms around me.  I knew everything was going to be all right.  Thank you for making it so easy to love you.  Without you I wouldn’t be a quarter of the man I am today.  Your honesty and love make me want to be the best person I can be for you.

Thank you again, love. I love you and I hope you carry my love with you wherever you go. Always know I love you. Even when you don’t have a letter saying it, I still do.

I love you.

Alburn

My Sailor Dad, a book review

This latest book review is not only biased, but also is not focused on the words but on the illustrations.

My Sailor Dad is illustrated by Kelsy’s uncle, Marvin Jarboe. Marvin is an artist living in Kentucky. His usual medium is stained glass windows, but in this book he paints scenes from navy life. While I may not agree with America’s recent use of military, My Sailor Dad would be a great title for any child who’s parent is in the armed services. All politics aside, the book does a good job of explaining to the reader that even though Dad may be gone for many months at a time, he still loves his children. The illustrations are painterly and carry a rhythm with many different borders and inserts focusing on different parts of Navy life. They have a life and style unique to Marvin.

I got to know Marvin and his wife today as we shared dinner and holiday spirits. They’re both great people, very friendly and warm. Marvin showed me around his studio (yes, he’s a mac user) and his home (he even has an Apple TV). The more I get to know Kelsy’s family the more I’m sure that I’d be happy to join them one day.

Ender’s Game, a book review

Today I finished Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

I picked up the book from a Barne’s and Noble while searching for Anathem.  Reading books this year hasn’t been easy and this is only the second one I’ve finished.  The first was the graphic novel, Watchmen.

Ender’s Game is the story of a future world plagued by an alien menace, the Buggers.  In this world the most gifted children are ripped from their family at five or six years old.  They attend Battle School, learning techniques for military command in space.  Ender is a boy who excels at the games and quickly becomes the best hope for humanity against the Buggers.

I enjoyed this book immensely.  The reading was easy and I had a hard time putting it down.  Themes of family, honor, and morality play against a backdrop of political intrigue.  While Ender’s reasoning skills don’t match the prescience of Paul Atreides in Dune, I found his internal conflict over killing to be more realistic.

One day I’d love to see this on the big screen (maybe even make it myself), though the cast of children might make it difficult.

Two Weeks of Daily Blogging

So I have a fancy netbook that’s been stitting in my room for the last month and a half.  That’s OK, though, because I really bought it for the next two weeks.  My Asus 901a is the ultimate portable computer.  So in honor of that, I’m going to attempt to blog at least once a day for the next two weeks.  I’m not always sure if I’ll have internet access everyday.  When I don’t, I’ll still try to Asus 901awrite and update when I return to the internet.

Heading back east.

IMG_5620, originally uploaded by alburn.binkley.

Kelsy and I are leaving tomorrow morning to go back east during out winter hiatus at work. In preparation, I uploaded the pictures from the last time we were back that way.

Enjoy.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Wacom.

Photo by Ryner12

Two birthdays back my mother and brother were in Los Angeles visiting and we decided to go to Las Vegas for the celebration.  Even though Vegas was fun with my family the one thing to come out of it that’s still with me today was Kelsy’s present to me, a brand new wacom tablet.

I had flirted with using tablet input, borrowing smaller ones from friends and coworkers.  The first few times trying it out made me a little ill trying to coordinate the new hand movements with what I saw on screen.  Mouse mode is definitely for suckers, pen mode opened a whole new world of photoshopping and general ease of strain on my wrists.

It wasn’t until a few months ago, however, that I moved to the day shift at work and finally had an edit bay that was pretty much mine.  The first thing I did was find some older drivers to run the tablet on Mac OS 10.2.6. It took a lot less getting used to this time around and I didn’t fully realize how nice it is to use a pen until I needed the wacom at home for a few days to work on a freelance graphic project.  About two weeks after using the mouse again at work the old familiar strained feeling in my wrist came back.  I immediately returned the tablet to my day job and haven’t looked back.

I work in an industry where computer input is going to be a part of the daily routine forever.  There’s one editor I work with who developed carpal tunnel in his right wrist so learned to use his left.  That’s not some place I want to be in ten or twenty years, so I’m sticking with the pen.  For me, there really is a difference between the mouse and the pen after a twelve hour day of string outs, imports, grouping, and all the other repetitive tasks that an assistant editor has to do to keep his editors happy.