Schierer Space

I have just added Vincent Laforet’s blog to the links below because I have so enjoyed reading the Olympics photography blog he has produced with Newsweek.

If you have interest in photography, or the impact of new media on traditional media (newspaper, magazines), you’ll find his blog interesting. He’s just getting started as a blogger, but it looks like he’s on the right track to explore an interesting niche. He seems to recognize that while opportunities seem to be fading for the traditional ’staff photographer’, considerably more freedom and opportunity is available working directly for your audience (us!).

To share one tidbit, in a posting after his return from Beijing he posts:

In Beijing, with a total of 6 cameras, I shot: 28,444 files for a total of a whopping 480 Gigabytes of Images! That’s INSANE! Even I am shocked.

I thought my photography archive was getting out of control. I’m just pushing that many images in my entire career at a third of the storage space.

Wow.

If you haven’t been following the adventures of Newsweek photographers Vincent Laforet, Donald Miralle ad Mike Powell at the Olympics, you’re missing a great opportunity. As all of you readers know, I’m an amateur photographer with aspirations for a few great shots. These guys are the best in the world shooting in a two week marathon of photography moments. They talk about the technical, physical and emotional challenges involved in capturing emotionally and literally dynamic events in still frames.
I posted about Vincent’s packing exploits to start off the series, but I think the posts have gotten even better as we’ve gone along.
They’re sharing a unique perspective on what it takes to get unique perspectives on this media circus of a sporting event: the technically strategic challenge of being in the right place (or several places) at the right time after hours (days!) of planning the perfect shot, the emotion of ‘discovering’ a new sport, the catharsis of introspection… it’s just been a great ride so far.

Keep it up guys!!

With NBC providing thousands of hours of Olympic coverage with broadcast, cable and online viewing available there is an overwhelming amount of viewing available. Now I hate watching the 45 second highlight clips intermixed with 45 minute human interest stories that make the prime-time Olympic magazine show. I want to sit down and watch some event to see what it is, or how it works and become an armchair judge (or in the case of Laser sailing… maybe learn something).

So I’m VERY disappointed in the NBC broadcast listings on their website. At first glance it seems like a lot of thought went into organizing the event and broadcast information, but extracting useful information from the NBC broadcast megaplex is nearly impossible.
(more…)

Vincent Laforet, who is shooting the Olympics for Newsweek, is running a blog documenting his experiences. I’m not sure if I will follow this throughout the games, but his post about packing for the trip is pretty interesting.

If you can’t be bothered to read the post, at least flip through the image gallery of his packing.

All I can say is: “Mmmmm….. gear.”

Thanks Robert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDA9NbPAK8o

Some of you may have heard about a related study on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, but for those that haven’t, here’s a brief overview.

Some people are neurologically tone-deaf (and these people are generally known as flute players*), such that they can not distinguish between one musical phrase and a different slightly altered one.

I know I have a particularly musical audience, so check out an online tone deafness ‘test’.

For the record I was 80.6% correct. It seems I’m pretty accurate on positively identifying the errors, but I seem to have a high false alarm rate also (this was true in the rhythm test also.).

Check out the other tests too:

• Adaptive tone test: 2.1Hz
• Rhythm test: 80.0%
• Associative Musical Visual Intelligence test: 90% (87,88,94,86,87.6)

It would seem that I’m musically above average. Maybe that trombone playing did do something permanent to my brain.

* Please do not flame me on the woodwind jab. I am a trombone player (even if I haven’t touched it in over a year) and it is my sworn duty to bust on the musical ability of woodwinds. No matter how stereotypical or inappropriate…

I will carefully dodge the blog taboo by blogging about someone else’s cat. Bad Astronomer has broadcast the social inadequacy of his cat on www.icanhascheezburger.com. I had never heard of this site, and once again I am relieved to discover that despite what TV writers would have you think, there are still funny people in the world.

I browsed through a few pages and found the following which I very much enjoyed:

As seen on SlashDot:

Unreleased Infocom games found including a sequel to the text adventure classic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

If this doesn’t give you little chills in your cerebellum, well, then I just feel sorry about your childhood.

A couple of months ago, I read a blog post about gDiapers, the disposable diaper you can flush or compost. I thought they were an excellent idea, so I looked into trying them out. I could order them online, but the closest store that actually carried them was in Ithaca. I didn’t really want to get into a situation where I had to drive an hour and a half, or pay outrageous shipping and handling to get diapers.

Fast forward to last week when I went grocery shopping. I walked thru the new expanded health food section at Wegmans, and what did I spot? gDiapers. I made an impulsive decision to buy the starter kit and try them out. So far I’m really liking the idea. Nate and I haven’t completely figured out the finer details yet (we’ve had a lot of leaks), but we’re getting better with them. The downside: a)Our toilet isn’t quite powerful enough to flush them. b)Wegmans seems to always be out of the M/L refills. Tomorrow I’ll try the other store that has recently started carrying them. If they have them and we can continue our experiment, I’ll have to set up a system for composting the wet ones.

I am excited about doing something better for the environment. I really hated throwing out all those disposable diapers.

Most of you also read the Bad Astronomer, but this was so fun to watch I have to plug it also.

Although somewhat visually reminiscent of the Brady Bunch theme song, this is a very nicely choreographed video.