@Randem

I've got a few more observations to share regarding the way people write their personals ads:

• Don't say you're recently divorced, or that you just broke up, or anything else to give an indication that you're fresh out of a long-term relationship. The only guys looking for rebounders are the ones hoping for a one-night stand.
• Find some new words. You all say the same damn thing! "Fun woman looking for nice guy," or "I like a guy with a sense of humor." Look, I don't think I've ever met a girl who said "Gosh, you know what I hate? A sense of humor. That really pisses me off." Okay? See, we know you like a sense of humor. It's about as retarded as requiring a pulse and a love of oxygen. Hemmingway could read these ads and wish for more description. Fun? Nice? If that's as hard as you're willing to try, then get used to being alone.
• Use some common sense. (I know women are from Venus, but men are from Mars and that's who you're trying to attract.) If you say "I like being treated like a lady, having doors opened for me and dinner paid for, etc," and then follow it up later with a line like "I'm just looking to date and meet people, nothing too serious," you're not going to have much luck. Men are logical... we can all put that together and figure out the truth, which is that you want to go out and have fun, but you want other people to pay for it. User!
• Don't say the reason you're looking for someone on a personals site is because you're too busy to meet people. In fact, just don't ever say that you're too busy. Think about it, gals... why should some great guy waste his time trying to get to know you if you've already admitted you're not going to have time for him? The truth is, if you're that busy, you don't need a man, you need a vacation.
• Most personals sites display a short summary of your description — the first few sentences, usually — with your photo on the results page. Don't waste those first few sentences on useless drivel! That may be the thing that means the difference between clicking and moving on.
• Be alone in your photo, retard. When looking at a photo of two girls, how is a guy supposed to know which one is you? And better still, if you're in the photo with your arm around some guy, how's a fellow to know that's your little brother? If we see a guy in your photos, we move along.
• And one last thing, since we're talking about photos: Don't scan your driver's license photo from when you were 18 and blond and use if for your profile if you're not still eighteen and blond! What? Do you think you can write build type: athletic in your profile, and I won't notice when some dark-haired fat girl shows up? And furthermore, you're hand-picking the best available guys... do you really think they're going to let it slide that you're a deceitful person? I don't know who you think you're fooling, but it isn't me.

Labels: fun

“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” -Che Guevara

Labels: qotd

...popcorn will be banned from office buildings. In fact, there will be no microwaves in any area where people have to work and smell that nasty food some fat-ass wants to shovel into their mouth. Try a slim fast, they're good for you and I don't have to smell it.

Labels: life, rant

There are two types of polarizing filters - linear and circular - and there are a lot of misconceptions and confusion in understanding the differences between the two, and which one is right for you. Because questions about polarizers come up so often, I will try to lay out the differences here for easy reference.

BASICS
Before you can understand the difference between types of polarization, you must first understand what polarization is, and that requires a basic understanding of the properties of light. A detailed understanding of light and polarization would require knowledge of quantum mechanics - which I won't get into - but a basic understanding can be had without getting carried away.

Light is an electromagnetic wave. It travelles as a wave form. Most of the primary light sources you'll encounter - sun, light bulbs, strobes - in photography are unpolarized. That is, the EM waves that make up the light travel equally and randomly in all directions away from the source.

LINEAR POLARIZATION
Polarization is the orientation of the electric field of an electromagnetic wave. When the electric field vector is oscillating in a single plane, it is defined as linear polarization. Linear polarization commonly occurs in nature when light is reflected off of a surface, such as a wall or a lake.

Reflected light is often polarized at the angle of the surface it is reflected off of. If it is the surface of the lake, the light will be polarized horizontally. If a vertical wall is the reflector, the light will be polarized vertically. This is the technology behind glare-reduction filters or "Blue-Block Sunglasses." The polarized lenses can block out this reflected light since it tends to be polarized the same way.

A linear polarizing filter allows only light that is oriented a certain way to pass through. Because any photon can be oriented to any angle, most photons will probably not be oriented in the direction that the lenses allow. Thus, linear filters can block as much as 60% of the light from reaching the film.

CIRCULAR POLARIZATION
The concept of circular polarization is similar to that to linear polarization. Circular polarization is a combination of two perpendicular linear waves that are 90 degrees out of phase with each other.

A circular polarizing filter is nothing more than a linear polarizer, with the addition of a quarter-wave plate (QWP) which converts the linear polarization of light passing through the polarizing filter to circular polarization. A circular polarizer is able to block all photons rotating in one direction while allowing those going in the other direction to pass.

Although not scientifically correct, a circular polarizer more or less restores the natural 50/50 vertical/horizontal balance of polarization, without affecting the initial pictorial result.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FILTER
Linear polarizing filters seem to have a greater effect on the final image than circular polarizers do, and in spite of many misconceptions, you can use either type of filter on any camera. But there is a catch: if you use a linear polarizer on a modern camera, you may not be able to use your built-in metering, or autofocus, or both.

Modern autofocus systems use mirrors that act as beam-splitters: most of the light is reflected to the viewfinder for metering and viewing, while the rest (typically 25%) is transmitted and then reflected by a secondary mirror to the autofocus sensor, which is in the camera body. With a polarizing filter attached, the ratio of reflected/transmitted light (fixed for non-polarized light) varies with the polarization plane orientation of polarized light, relative to the beam-splitter, causing the amount of light reaching the autofocus sensor to vary. This effect can be particularly troublesome if your front element moves with the lens, as it would cause the amount of light reaching the sensor to change while the lens focuses.

While you can see (rather easily) when your autofocus system has been confused by a linear polarizer, there isn't such an easy way of knowing whether or not the internal light metering system has been stumped. The same loss of light principles that affect the autofocus system can also affect a camera's built-in meter, and obviously this is never good. What use is a light meter if it receives the wrong amount of light?

In both situations, a circular polarizer corrects the problem. Having removed the effect of linear polarization, the light functions normally inside the camera, in the beam splitter, and reaching the autofocus and metering sensors properly. Therefore, for your convenience, you should use a circular polarizer if your camera has autofocus or built-in light metering features. However, if you focus manually, and use a hand-held light meter, you can use a linear polarizer on any camera you wish.

USES FOR POLARIZING FILTERS
Polarizing filters have a number of uses, among them:

• Reducing haze.
  Since light comes from all over, at random polarizations, adding a polarizing filter will block the crossing polarization patterns of scattered and reflected light to reduce haze.
• Removing reflections.
  As mentioned above, light is naturally polarized when it is reflected, so by rotating your polarizing filter to cross-polarize the reflected light, you can effectively remove the reflection from the photo.
• Increasing color saturation.
  By reducing haze from scattered, random light, saturation of color is dramatically improved. The effect is particularly evident in skies and in foliage.
• Neutral density.
  The natural loss of 1-2 stops of light, without shifting color, makes a polarizing filter a good ND filter as well.
  

NOTES
Here are a few other things to keep in mind when using polarizing filters:

• When stacking filters, the polarizer should always be the last (outermost) filter on the stack. Passing through a polarizing filter further down the chain may alter the results of other filters you had used.
• Lenses with rotating front elements will mess up your polarizing filter's rotation. If your lens has a rotating front element, you should adjust the polarizing filter after you've set the focus.
• The effect of polarization (outdoors) is most prominent at a 90-degree angle to the sun.
• The angle of polarization varies continuously with the angle from the sun. With a lens wider than about 28mm (in 35mm film terms) the sky will be unevenly polarized. If you like the effect, go ahead and use it.
  

LINKS
DP FWIW
U Penn
SCEC
Luminous Landscape

Labels: photography

I'm kind of excited. The Buccaneers signed David Boston earlier this week, which gives Chris Simms another talented receiver to compliment Joey Galloway and Michael Clayton — all first rounders. Along with a first round running back and a young and talented offensive line, I can't help thinking the Buccaneers offense should be exciting to watch this season!

Labels: football, sports

“El amor y la tos no pueden ocultarse.”

Labels: qotd

“If all the animals along the equator were capable of flattery, then Halloween and Thanksgiving would be on the same day.”

Labels: qotd

...can be a real pain in the ass! You watch and watch for that one perfect moment and by the time you hit the shutter release the moment is already gone.

One thing I learned to do is to keep giving the shutter release a half-press to keep the autofocus where I wanted it, and to keep the autoexposure adjusted to any changes in lighting.

Ultimately, I managed to get a couple of incredible photos... but it was a lot of work.

Labels: photography

...pretty much sucked. I didn't read the book, but in a way I'm glad I didn't. Everyone loved that book, and at least now I can read it and see it for being much better than the film, unlike my friends who read it and could only be disappointed in the movie.

Furthermore, I'm ready to swear off of Ron Howard completely. He's the perennial cock-tease of the film industry — always giving you something that's almost good but not quite, and then leaving you to finish the job yourself. He did it with Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Backdraft... all the way back to Willow, Cocoon, and Splash.

In fact, it's interesting to me as I look over Ron Howard's credits as a director to see how often he's worked with another perennial loser: Tom Hanks. Some actors, when surrounded by talent like Jean Reno and Ian McKellan, step it up and bring their “A” game. However, while I'd hate to think that what I saw from Da Vinci Code was Hanks's “A” game, I can't help believing that Philadelphia was a fluke, outside of which this loser has never done anything to impress me.

Bottom line? The movie was far too contrived and the story too spoon-fed. Subtlety is sacrificed completely, almost as if they don't think we could keep up. The “surprises” and “twists”, if you can call them that, were easy to see coming from miles away. And the whole experience is capped off by a painfully long ending that reminded me of Return of the King and my 45-minute ass-ache.

My friends who read the book have informed me that this is not the way it was written. Now I suppose I'll have to read it, and get the taste of this travesty out of my mouth.

Labels: movies, reviews

“De todos los animales de la creación el hombre es el único que bebe sin tener sed, come sin tener hambre y habla sin tener nada que decir.”

Labels: qotd

All of you young ladies who might be reading this owe it to yourself to do what I'm about to suggest. Seriously.

1. Step 1 - Just imagine for a moment that you're a single guy. Just think of the type of guy you'd like to meet... maybe even marry. Now imagine for a moment that you're him.
2. Now, got to your favorite personals web site -- Yahoo! works.
3. While you're pretending to be this guy, sign up for a new account and fill out the information. You know the answers to what he's looking for because you made him up. Just do it.
4. When you've got your shill account all set up, click search.
5. Now, spend an afternoon looking at the kind of rubbish that we have to pick from. Start making choices now that will keep you from being a 25 year old divorced mother of two who waits tables at Applebees. You'll thank me.

I mean it now. If I have to read one more profile that says "I'm a Christian and I expect you to be too" on the profile of an unwed mother, I'll puke. If I have to read one more time about how "you must like kids because mine are important to me", I'm going to commit murder. I fucking hope your kids are important to you! Moron!

I'm a very successful, very healthy, physically fit guy. I've got a good sense of humor, a nice car, a sense of adventure. I like romance and I love to travel. Do you really think I'm looking for the girl of my dreams to be a used-up-and-thrown-away mother of two who can't even practice what she preaches? Get real!

Labels: fun

You're not seeing things, there really is Spanish starting to show up here. What good is knowing another language if you don't use it, right? Get used to it. It's a big world out there, and it doesn't only speak English.

Y también, por cualquiera que sabe leer español, quiero decir “¡bienvenidos a la nueva época de mi sito!” Ojalá que mejore mi conocimiento del español.

“¿Por qué tomar por fuerza lo que sería regalado libremente con amor?”

Labels: qotd