backpacking through joshua tree

When I left DC for my week-long getaway trip, I wore a jacket on the way to the airport. When I came back, I started sweating as soon as I left the airport. But the past few 90 degree days here were still cooler than in the Mojave Desert. I spent the good part of last week backpacking across Joshua Tree National Park.

This was my first time backpacking, but following tradition, I went head first into it. Twenty-five miles across sandy terrain with a fully loaded backpack. A couple of challenges I did not fully anticipate: (1) one has to carry their own drinking water into the desert, (2) hiking uphill in loose sand is murder on the feet, not to mention shows how out of shape one is, and (3) afternoon sun and heat in the desert really strains the body.

I think weight and space was the biggest enemy really. The guides suggested about two gallons of water per day, per person. Estimating for 2.5 days on the trail, that's five gallons of water. A blue office water cooler jug is five gallons -- it's not small, and it weighs 41.65 lb. And this is on top of all the regular gear: tent, sleeping bag, clothes, food, etc. Now I understand why people pay top dollar for the expensive gear -- it weighs much less than the entry-level gear. The weight and bulk just compounded the difficulty of the terrain and the heat.

The experience, although painful, was rewarding though. Too tired to talk, I put every ounce of energy and focus into moving one foot in front of another and managing the pressured pain of the blisters on my feet and trying to breathe enough to not get dizzy. It gave me a lot of time to think and reflect on things as well as clear my head a bit. And I did think about a lot (maybe more to come on those things in later writings).

I still got up at 4:30-5:00am (without an alarm clock) for first light and shot pictures. It was easier to feel inspired before wearing myself out with the desert hiking. Not to mention, the colors and shadows at twilight, sunrise, and sunset are more interesting than the harsh light at high noon. So, here's a sample of my favorites (click for larger version). All of the pictures I took in Joshua Tree were with a fixed 30mm lens (that is, no zooming), so what you see is what my eyes saw, no magnification.


Blackrock Canyon in Post-Sunset Twilight


Gnarly Joshua Tree in Covington Flats


My Tent in the Backcountry


Flowers in the Sunrise


Enjoying the Sunset at Belle Campground


Upside-Down Stair at Jumbo Rocks


Yucca


Leaves of a Young Desert Palm


Leaving Long Beach on the Red-Eye

I shot several hundred frames, but the 80 or so best are in my Joshua Tree flickr set.

bay to breakers

Bay to Breakers is a 12K (about 7.5 mile) run in San Francisco every third Sunday in May since 1912. It starts at the Embarcadero (on the bay) and finishes where Golden Gate Park meets the ocean (breakers). I never heard of it before, but it's part race, part street party. By the time I showed up with my camera, it was more or less just a street party. I figured it would be a good chance to get some interesting pictures, try out the new camera lens (Sigma 24-70mm F2.8 EX DG), and try my hand at taking some shots while in motion. My original goal was to capture some action shots of interest and have the people pictures be candid. That didn't work out so well. I found that as soon as people saw the camera lens, they really enjoyed reacting to it, so I decided to roll with it. No pictures from the sidelines here -- I took my pictures from smack in the center of the race/party route on the street, a lot of it walking backwards. I also didn't prompt anyone for a reaction, although sometimes a prompt isn't necessary when the diameter of the end of the lens is 82mm (it's intimidatingly large compared to my standard lens, which is 52mm). On to the photos -- the full gallery is in my Bay to Breakers flickr set, but my favorite reactions and poses are below. A little cropping will do these good, I'm sure.

















Good times. Next up, the desert.

may 2006 hodgepodge

What a month May has been. I'm hitting the road for a little to widen the gap between me and burnout. But before I do, here's a hodgepodge of strange things that have been rattling around for a month or so.

Shatner, In Concert, Has Been
About a month ago, I caught William Shatner In Concert on TV. It definitely had Shatner in concert, but it went beyond that as well. It profiled Shatner's life and career, including his recent successes. In fact, I think his career is just peaking. Maybe it was a combination of his role in Miss Congeniality and the Priceline commercials that really kicked it all off. I don't know why, but I'm just entertained by Shatner -- it's the only reason why I bother to sometimes watch Boston Legal. The piece really captured a lot of the real Shatner.

William Shatner In Concert also prompted me to find a copy of his 2004 album, Has Been. I have to say, it's actually a good album. Shatner teams up with musicians like Ben Folds for a spoken word album. I'm not sure why, but it really works. Shatner's lyrics and his performance of them comes across as genuine -- you can tell a lot of the songs are a reflection on things in his life. So much better than his 1968 debut album "The Transformed Man," which included a track of Shatner blasting (yeah, I mean blasting) out trippy versions of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and Mr Tambourine Man.

What can't this guy do? Act, write, direct, sing. Talent, I tell you!

Masters Program Kickoff
After finding my motivation, a long search for a program, several failed applications, and some realizations along the way, I finally am kicking off my masters program. I'll be starting a part-time program at University of Maryland University College, working towards a Master of Software Engineering. Classes kick off at the end of the month and if everything goes on track, I'll wrap up in the spring of 2008. First up: Issues in Software Engineering and Software Project Management.

Book Project Kickoff
It's been a goal of mine for a while to write a book and I think I'm finally ready to start writing. Well, at least outlining and prewriting. I've started to dig out some research papers, notes, and books I've collected over the years to synthesize some material. I'm hoping it will be a pretty unique primer on issues in software engineering, presented in a holistic context. (It's going to include topics not commonly talked about in software: psychology, linguistics, mathematics, philosophy, art and design, history, and sociology.) I'm going for substantive, but readable by a broad audience. I'm avoiding alienation and oversimplification. Gotta find the balance.

Business Books
I don't know if it's just me, but most of the business books I've read turn out being a waste of time, money, and trees. It seems like business schools teach a lot about analytical thinking, but business writers (namely, business executives and their ghost writers) ignore analysis and prefer fallacy instead. Business books tend to make their point using anecdotal evidence, appeal to the majority, and non sequitur, among other sleights-of-words. An executive faces some problem with a set of circumstances and makes a decision. The problem gets resolved, which means that decision was a great one, therefore the reader should imitate that decision to solve their problems. Um, could it be possible that the decision was the right one just given the circumstances? How do we even know it was that particular decision that solved the problem? If one answer solved all like problems, life wouldn't be so hard, would it? Oh, and the other fallacy: an executive makes a decision. That executive happens to be rich, successful, and famous. Therefore, they must be doing the right thing, so take a page from their playbook. Example: his name starts with a T and rhymes with chump. If people believe that what he says and exemplifies on his television show is good business practice, we're in for a whole lot of hurtin'.

digital rebel xt buying guide

Canon is offering a $100 rebate on the Digital Rebel XT (8 megapixel) SLR camera right now, so all of your local retailers are doing their promotions. However, I do have some advice (based on my lessons learned from previous purchases) for first-time digital SLR buyers and hopefully this piece will be of some help.

Most retailers sell the Digital Rebel XT in a kit that includes:

• Digital Rebel XT (8 megapixel) camera body (silver or black)
• EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens
• battery charger
• battery pack
• camera strap
• camera-to-USB interface cable
• camera-to-video cable
• lithium date/time battery
• software CDs
• documentation

Note that the camera kit does not come with any (Compact Flash) memory. Some independent retailers might offer it as part of the kit, but most of the mainstream retailers do not.

Problem: The lens that comes in the kit is not-so-great.
First, what does EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 really mean? EF-S is a series of Canon lenses that work only on certain digital SLRs, 18-55mm indicates the focal length range of the lens (think of it as the zoom range),
and f/3.5-5.6 indicates the maximum aperture of the lens (think of it as the minimum amount of light necessary to use the lens well). Now for some gritty detail about lenses...

EF versus EF-S
EF lenses fit all modern Canon SLR cameras, film or digital. EF-S lenses fit only certain consumer digital SLR models, specifically the Digital Rebel XT and the 20D. The Digital Rebel XT is capable of using both the EF and EF-S families of lenses.

18-55mm focal length (zoom) range
On the Digital Rebel XT, 30mm (normal) focal length is roughly equivalent to what your eye normally sees. So 18mm (wide) to 55mm (telephoto) gives you roughly +/- 2x of zoom towards wide or telephoto (so I guess that's 4x total). 18-55mm is generally considered a mid-range wide-to-telephoto zoom.

f/3.5-5.6 maximum aperture
This is the real problem. Zoomed out at 18mm, the lens is f/3.5. Zoomed in at 55mm, the lens is f/5.6. The higher the f-number, the more light you will need to take a decent picture. This means, don't plan on zooming in and taking pictures indoors very well -- you'll need bright sunlight or a powerful flash to take good pictures. We know what happens on our point-and-shoots when we use the flash indoors: any trace of oil on skin reflects flat bright white light, skin tone looks horrible, the blood vessels at the back of the retina reflect red light and cause red-eye, and the photo is most likely overexposed (too bright). Nothing wrong with fun pictures like this, but if you're paying the big money for a digital SLR, I figure you want a little better. Just remember, the lower the f-number, the better. With a low f-number, you can take pictures in either low light or bright light, where with the high f-numbers, the lens requires bright light.

Solution: Buy the body and lens separately.
The body comes with everything in the kit mentioned above, except the lens, and usually costs about $100-150 less than the kit. (Body-only sells for about $680. After the $100 rebate, it's $580 for the body only.) This lets you buy a lens of your own choosing. The lens is the technical limiting factor of the quality of photos your digital SLR can take. With a low-quality lens, you get 8 megapixels of low quality images. With a high-quality lens, you get 8 megapixels of sharpness and color. (The other limiting factor is the human element: composition skills of the photographer.) Chances are you'll have more than one lens in the future, but let's assume you want just one lens to start with. Some of my recommendations:

A Better Zoom Lens
The Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC is a third-party lens that sells for around $400. Note that the lens has constant f/2.8 aperture, regardless of the focal length (zoom). Compared with the kit lens, this lens not only performs better in low light, but performs consistently regardless of the focal length. Examples tagged as 18to50mm are in my flickr photostream.

A Normal Fixed Lens
By normal, I mean normal focal length, 30mm. As I mentioned earlier, 30mm is roughly what our eyes see. The Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM sells for around $400 performs really well in low light without a flash. This lens requires eight times less light than the kit lens to take a picture. By fixed, I mean there's no zoom. The lens is fixed at 30mm. Step feet forward to zoom in, step back to zoom out. However, giving up the zoom wins you a benefit: spectacularly sharp photographs. As in magazine-quality sharp. Examples tagged as 30mm are in my flickr photostream.

An Inexpensive, High-Quality, Fixed Lens that Does Portraits
If you're looking for quality bargains, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 sells for around $80. (Even cheaper than the kit lens!) It feels like a cheap piece of plastic, but the optical quality of this lens is hard to beat -- the resulting pictures are also magazine-quality sharp and it works well in low light. Being fixed at 50mm means that you will always be at 1.5x zoom relative to your eye. If you're in a small room, this might be an issue because you might not be able to back up enough to take a group photo, for instance. However, because it is slightly telephoto (zoomed in), there is some compression in the image, which means that when you take portraits, facial features (particularly noses) will be slightly compressed. Your subjects will probably agree to that. Not to mention, if you are taking a picture of a baby or a pet, you won't have to stand quite so close to get a good portrait shot. Of course, you can use this as a general purpose lens too, not just for portraits.

The key is not buying the kit lens. If you look at some point-and-shoot cameras, some of their lenses are actually better than the kit lens in terms of range and aperture. If you're going to get a digital SLR, you might as well get a good lens so you can feel good about your purchase and know that your camera is taking better pictures than a point-and-shoot that's less than half the price.

searching for half-smokes

Philly cheesesteak, Chicago-style hot dog, New York-style pizza, but what about DC? If DC has a signature street food, it has to be the half-smoke. If you've been to Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street, then you'll know what I'm talking about. But what is a half-smoke, exactly? It's not quite a hot dog, but not quite a sausage either. (Do I really want to know the answer?) And where can I buy them to grill on my own? It turns out the answers aren't so easy to find.

To satisfy a craving for half-smokes over the weekend, I went to several local grocery stores to try to find half-smokes to put on the grill and that's when it all started. Should I be looking in the sausage section or the hot dog section? At Ben's Chili Bowl, they were well-formed like hot dogs, but tasted more like sausage. It didn't really matter because I didn't find it in either section at any store. I picked up some sausage that looked like hot dogs, which ended up tasting nothing like a half-smoke. Despite good times grilling, I still had more questions than answers.

Where does every research dig begin nowadays? Google, of course! Man, was I disappointed. Even trusty wikipedia came up empty! Turns out the bulk of what I found were forums where people were asking (1) what half-smokes are, and (2) where to find them in the store. After going to some hot dog fan sites like watchmeeatahotdog.com, I figured out a few hints, albeit unverified. So here is the unconfirmed information, as if it appeared on a truthful PowerPoint slide.

Half-Smokes are:

• some kind of spicy sausage that looks like a hot dog
• part pork, part beef
• ubiquitous at downtown street vendors
• rumored to appear at RFK soon
• virtually unknown outside of DC
• produced by some company named Briggs
• unhealthfully delicious

This week, I found out that half-smokes are also served on many golf courses in the area. Through a friend of a friend who works on a golf course that serves half-smokes, we now know that half-smokes can be ordered through Sysco food distribution. Yeah, the mega-corporation with the silver semis driving around to every restaurant, dining hall, and snack shop. Through a restaurant connection, one can order a six pound, 30-pack of half smokes. That's a lot of half-smokes.

I'm convinced that the casual griller at home isn't going to be able to have half-smokes available in retail. The only solution is to buy the restaurant-sized pack and throw a half-smoke party. (Note: For you out-of-towners, half-smoke is not the same as half-bake.) So if you're looking for the real deal half-smokes, head over to Ben's Chili Bowl or some street vendor on the National Mall and make yourself comfortable with the pigeons on the park bench.

This really begs for an in-depth story on half-smokes though. What's the history behind the half-smoke? Who is Briggs? What's the story at Ben's? Really, what is in a half-smoke? The search for answers is on... Think of it as my first photojournalistic foray.