The Aptly Named, Sam's Blog

LazyEngine is a lazy search engine. If you want to do a search, consider for a moment if you need the results immediately. If not, then this is the search engine for you. This is probably a silly web application.

That’s the idea behind my new web app LazyEngine. Give it a shot. I hope you like it.

I’ve updated my website and moved the blog off to http://blog.samgrover.com/. I will update this feed to splice in more stuff at some point in the future. I’ll let you know when I do that. You may want to move to the blog only feed now or later.

I tried Movable Type over the last two months and didn’t like it much at all. So, I’ve migrated the blog to use Wordpress. Wordpress has a lot of community support and plugins that make it a great choice. It also seems simpler to use and maintain. I continue to support OpenID for comments.

I’m gonna work on tweaking the look and feel of the website over the next few days so come back to check it out later. I’ll also be expanding its focus.

The result of a little informal poll I did after Super Tuesday. There were 151 responses. Mitt Romney has since dropped out.

It was heavier than I expected. I had ignored my cardinal law in purchasing a camera, “Hold it in your hands to see how it feels”. One year has gone by with me using the Bessa exclusively, and I love it.

I bought it along with a 50mm Nokton f/1.5 lens and an adapter. The camera has an M mount, whereas the lens is a screw mount, so I needed an adapter. My plan was that if I liked this enough I could get an M mount Leica lens in the future and it would fit just fine with the camera. I still plan on doing that. Perhaps a 35mm lens, but more on that later. I bought this Bessa at CameraQuest, a website that I haven’t visited since then. I never planned on buying more of this system and I never had any issues.

My early experience with a rangefinder camera was in 2006 when I borrowed a Canonet QL17 G-III from my friend Doug. At the end of that month I was hooked and understood why the rangefinder is the best camera for street photography. A sentiment expressed by many a famous street photographers of the last century. My favorite part about a rangefinder is that since I can see the frame lines, I can see the things that I’m not including in the frame. You can never do that with an SLR. That allows me to frame the shot best, especially on the street when I have only a fraction of a second to frame and shoot a photo. I don’t have to worry about focusing because I pre-focus and set a high depth-of-field. When I bring the camera to my eye, all I have to do is frame and click. And I love it when the camera goes “click”. The Bessa has a quick sharp sound that is barely noticeable as compared to the extended louder sound of the DSLR.

Another characteristic of the rangefinder is that you can see the photo at the moment of exposure, while in the SLR you just see nothing. As a result, at the beginning, my timing was a bit off with this camera, but not only did I get used to it, I started to love it. Most of the time I take a photo, I just click one frame. No second chance. So it helps to know if I got what I was going for, even though the suspense remains until I actually get the film processed.

Over the last year I’ve put up 193 photos taken with this camera on my Flickr photostream, about 76% of all my uploaded photos for 2007. That’s not an immense number and probably would’ve been even smaller had I not made the trips to Burning Man and to India. I put up 481 photos in 2006 and 807 photos in 2005. I think the trend is down because the cost of using film has made me frugal.

I like using film because of the texture that it imparts to a photograph. I haven’t experimented a whole lot with different films, and settled quite early with Tri-X. Most of the time I push it to ISO 1600 and gives me just the right kind of contrast I like. It also helps to push the film in Portland, since most days are overcast and higher ISO films cost more ;-) Having said that, more and more manufacturers of are moving out of the 35mm film market. That trend has me thinking of digital rangefinders for the future. We’ll see how that goes.

I think I’ve spent enough time with the 50mm lens to now explore more primes. I would prefer to go wider, as that’s what I find lacking sometimes when I frame a shot. Also, I think it would help me get closer while out on the street. So, sometime this year, I’ll get a 35mm M mount lens, hopefully a Leica one. After all, that was the plan :-)

Ever since I heard “Lawyers, Guns and Money”, I’ve wanted to hear more of Warren Zevon’s music. So this week I bought “The Best Of Warren Zevon” at Amazon’s MP3 store. I’ve listened to it twice and now there are a few more of his songs that I really like.

A new favorite song is Lily Allen’s “Alfie” which I first heard way back, and then again recently on the podcast of the wonderful NPR show, All Songs Considered. It’s quite pop-ish.

Recipe for a smoothie: Two Frozen Bananas, Three Frozen Strawberries, One Frozen Peach, Vanilla extract (to taste), Two glasses rice milk. Blend. Serves two. Experiment with quantities!

Mesmerized by Phillipe Halsman’s Dali Atomicus.

Yay for soups! I got my wisdom teeth extracted and am mostly eating soups.

I don’t like calling any photo of mine a favorite, but some are just more interesting than others. Two years ago I listed just a couple of photos. This year, I’ve gone overboard with ten!

Here are my “favorite” photos from this year. I still have to develop two rolls, so maybe I’ll add more later ;-)

And here’s one that just spooked me out! :-)

I just moved this blog here from it’s previous incarnation at http://samgrover.wordpress.com/. I’m quite impressed at the ease with which I was able to export the previous blog and import it here intact with the entries and the comments. My thanks to the folks behind Wordpress and Movable Type. Subscribe to the new feed!

That move was simple. Now I have to move to my new place in real space this weekend. Unfortunately, that will involve some more work! Portland has five quadrants. Yea, five. Portland is weird. I used to live in the Southwest and then I was in the Southeast for the last 18 months and now I will be moving into a small house in the Northeast. It will increase my daily commute, but overall it will be great! By the way, the fifth quadrant is North, in case you were wondering.

[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch
I’ve been sharing this video with friends since I first saw it some months ago. It’s informative and elegant and the music is cool too. It provokes my curiosity, especially with the way it ends. Take a look!

It’s been a while since I updated this blog. About ten months. I’ve been an intern at Intel during that period and I recently joined as an employee.

Also, now it’s been one year since I moved to the SE Portland. I like it here. I have a hour-or-so long commute each way on TriMet, which isn’t terribly bad as it gives me time to read. However, public transit doesn’t work too well when there are more things to do in a day, especially in different parts of town. Even though my schedule at work is quite flexible, public transit can become a bottleneck. That occurs when I want to do more than go to work in the morning and return home in the evening. I thought that was sufficient excuse for me to go in for a car ;-) and placed an order for a new Mini Cooper S in April. I expect to have delivery within a month and am looking forward to that. It will be my first car.

My photography has been up and down during this time. In January, I sold off my Nikon D70S digital SLR and bought a Voigtländer Bessa R2A film rangefinder. After playing with cameras and photography for a couple of years I had come to realize just the kind of camera that would work best for me. The Bessa fit that bill quite well. It was also quite affordable as compared to another option. My previous experience with a rangefinder was definitely a motivating factor. I will write more about my experiences with this camera in a future post.

Russ wanted to recreate the cover of The Beatles' Abbey Road album cover along with his wife, Patty and son, Riley. He planned the shot and scouted for locations, narrowing them down to two. So, on a Sunday morning we went out to take the shot. We were a bit early for the chosen locations. The light wasn’t right. After a brief time looking around, we decided to go get breakfast and then return to take the shots.

On our way to LaurelThirst, we spotted an intersection on Stark Street and as fate would have it, it was better than the others and just right for the shot. Russ parked his Bug on the wrong side of the road and we started taking shots. They walked through the intersection once and I took some sample shots. After correcting their spacing and rhythm, I took shots of a few more passes with digital and film cameras. About fifteen minutes later, accomodating for light traffic, we were done and headed for a tasty breakfast. I had never tried to recreate a photo before. This was fun, and hopefully I’ll do more in the future. We left out some details, like Paul’s cigarette, Ringo, etc.

After going through the photos, Russ and family selected this shot as their favorite. Click on the image to see the larger version on flickr. There you will also find a link to the exact location on a map.

Amazon started offering downloadable movies a couple of weeks ago. That’s great, especially since they offer rentals. I prefer to rent movies since I usually only see a movie once. If I feel like watching it again and again, I would buy it. In that case, I wouldn’t buy a restricted downloadable file and wouldn’t recommend it either, especially with draconian agreements. I’d rather just buy the physical DVD at an affordable price. You can’t just give a restricted file to a friend and say, “Hey, check this out. It’s cool”. The same is true for restricted music.

The hassle of maintaining my own digital store and backing up stuff is another deterrent. Hard disks will fail, so one needs a more comprehensive backup policy than just saving the data onto a second disk. With movies, that’s a lot of data. There’s no way I’m going to put money into a backup system for that. Amazon’s videos won’t play on the Mac, so I can’t even rent it if I wanted to. That’s another side-effect of the restrictions. Apple is also offering movie downloads through their iTunes store, but they don’t offer rentals. So, I’m off to Movie Madness these days. If someone figures out a convenient way to offer downloadable movie rentals, I’ll sign on.

I was on my short commute today when I got a text message from my father in India. It said, " ... All ok in Mumbai. You may not be able to contact them as lines jammed ...". He was referring to my sister and her family. I didn't know what to make of this. I thought that perhaps the Sunday incident had flared up. I hadn't read the news this morning, so I called him and he told me about the bomb blasts. Seven bombs went off on board various trains of the western lines within one hour (Mapped locations). For more info and details from the blogosphere, see Ultrabrown, Vantage Point, Sepia Mutiny, MumbaiHelp, and Metroblogging Mumbai. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time this beloved city has been a target.

Just the other day, in conversation with friends, I was reminiscing my experiences with riding the trains in Bombay. I grew up there through most of the nineties, mid-teens to early twenties. Rush hour travel is the kind of thing you'd remember fondly only if you were nostalgic. The train cars are sometimes packed so tight, one could travel upright without either foot on the floor. 4.5 million people commute on the trains everyday. With that in mind, the horror of these events is inescapable. Emotions will run high, we'll all mourn, but the people of Mumbai will not be terrorized.

In 1993, in the days after the thirteen serial bomb blasts in two hours, there were billboards proclaiming that the city got back on it's feet within 24 hours. In memory of those who died, I hope that spirit prevails, that the aftermath is peaceful, and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

From the comments to this blog:

• "Very Very nice information here… Thanks" - Double 'very'! I'm humbled. Thank you!
• "I love this site. Good work…" - Thanks! I try. It's not really work :-)
• "This is one of the best sites I have ever found. Thanks!!! Very nice and informal. I enjoy being here." - It's great having you here too. Stay as long as you like. Would you like a beer?
• "Great job guys… Thank for you work…" - Wow! You actually thought that there was more than one person here. I must be doing an excellent job. Thanks!
• "Hello, Admin! You are the best!!! Congratulations. Best regards from regular visitor of your site. ;)" - Thanks, regular visitor! It's as if I've known you forever; call me Sam.
• "beautiful online information center. greatest work… thanks"
• ...

I guess those medicines these spammers are linking to must be quite euphoric. ;-)

I've set up a personal domain at samgrover.com. It is quite simple for now. I've also set up a photoblog there called "As It Is". It is about street photography and will have some of the photos I put up on flickr. Other sections remain to be filled and imagined.

I will move this blog to that domain when I've figured out a simple way to migrate it with all posts and comments intact.

P.S. I'm using DreamHost for hosting. Check them out and if you like their services, use the promo code SAMG to sign up with a large discount. Depending on the plan you get upto $97 off making this a really cool deal. I'm paying only $30 for an entire year using their Level1 plan.

I don't have any major need for spreadsheets, so I'm definitely not inclined to buy some software for it. But there are a few little things for which I could use one and that is why it's great to see a free web application from Google that provides it.

I started to use Google Spreadsheets yesterday and found it very convenient and simple to use. It offers some basic functionality for now but that's ok since it's only a limited test. It can import and export XLS and CSV files at the moment, so I converted my few files from a simple text format into CSV and they were smoothly imported. The application looks quite slick. This is the first application from Google that looks a lot like a desktop application. It has menus near the top with similar items as a standard desktop application. There are buttons for the usual suspects; Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo and Redo. It has collaborative features to let multiple users edit the same file and provides a chat interface too. I haven't tried that yet. I'm looking forward to more such applications. I'm guessing that I'll use some of them while others I won't, picking and choosing depending on usage, usability and desktop alternative availability.

And now for the idle speculation part, which kinda builds on what I first read a long time ago. This new product makes me wonder that with the known and unknown components below their web applications, Google probably has a development platform for hosting applications on their infrastructure. I wonder if they would make it available to developers too. Let's call it the environment for Google Developers, or eGoD ;-). They could potentially let eGoD applications reside on the developer's own hardware, but they can't really fulfill their "mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" if it's not on their own infrastructure*. A reason for developers to let Google host their eGoD applications may be to guarantee good performance by utilizing a large scale distributed system that is managed and maintained by Google. Another reason would be that all eGoD applications would be "local" to each other and to Google services so if they wish to exchange information, they would be able to do so very efficiently. I've read time and again that infrastructure is one of Google's main strengths and I think that is absolutely true.

A Google branded word processor based on Writely will surely come out soon. I don't know if these applications are the beginning of a challenge to Microsoft Office, at least not until the technologies and interfaces are more mature. However they demonstrate the capability of this imaginary eGoD platform. Such a development and hosting environment is bound to be disruptive in the desktop application ecosphere. Google may go after a big slice of the pie with Office, leaving the niche products to the small developers. Just like Microsoft did with their platform, Windows.

• By the way, they provide Google Base for people to give them their deep web information.

I borrowed a rangefinder camera from a friend a couple of weeks ago. The camera is a Canonet QL17 G-III. I've gone through one roll on it and it's been fun to use so far. I had been using SLR cameras until now and the rangefinder is quite different in operation. The major difference being that the image viewed through the viewfinder is not the same as the one that is seen by the lens. In an SLR you see through the lens, so it's more of a WYSIWYG interface. Here are some of my impressions with using this camera.

• It's a little bizzare to see the lens through the viewfinder, but I got over that pretty soon.
• It is well known that rangefinders are quiet because they don't have a moving mirror. Even so, I was surprised by the quietness of the mechanism.
• The shutter priority operation threw me off for a while because I'm used to shooting with aperture priority. It makes me think in terms of time, while I'm used to thinking in terms of depth of field, or rather not thinking much in terms of either by setting the parameters once and not messing with it unless really needed.

The hardest thing to do was the focusing. The viewfinder has a very small area to check the focus accurately, and its not something I could manage to do quickly. I found myself pre-focusing most of the time by reading the distance marking on the lens. So, I used the viewfinder only for framing, just before taking the picture. I like the speed of such operation, but have been reluctant to do pre-focusing before now. This camera kinda forced it upon me and I'll try to do it more often. I think it is a good skill to have for street photography, especially when using a manual focus mechanism. There is usually no time to focus.

It's been raining again for the last week, so I haven't had any chance to shoot more with this camera. Hopefully things will clear up next week!

I like reading, but unfortunately, I don't get much time to read for pleasure these days. Adding to that sorry state of affairs is the fact that I'm a slow reader. When I do read nowadays, it is more of non-fiction. On those rare occasions that I do read fiction, I love a good short story.

Apart from being concise, short stories stay focused and leave a lot to the imagination. They appeal to the minimalist in me. They build around a key idea or theme and my favorite kind have a twist or climax at the very end. An extreme and wonderful example is Ernest Hemmingway's six word story: "For sale: Baby shoes. Never used".

Here are some short stories that I came across on the internet in recent times. I think they are marvelous and recommend them to you, my imaginary readers. One for each of you three :-D

• The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Last Question by Isaac Asimov
• Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

If you have a short story recommendation, leave a comment! :-)

Meet Liz. She likes to travel. When she isn't traveling, she might be in Portland or Nepal. Right now she is in Asia where she is on assignment from Village Focus International. Through her words and photography she will bring to us a taste of the life in Cambodia as she documents the grassroots development efforts of village folk. She will put nuggets of it on her professional blog.

Her personal blog is Galactic Traveler. There you can read her story and experiences over the years. Many of the posts tell interesting stories about her time in Afghanistan working for the UN for the last two years. See the one about the changes in Afghan society, the one about the bombing outside her office, or the one about Kabul, which has a really cool photo.

She has a wonderful spirit of adventure and discovery, coupled with courage, resolve and that elusive human quality that makes instant friends of strangers. As one of those erstwhile strangers, I wish her the very best in her endeavours.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=845880604433234913&hl=en
An animation time-lapse movie of people coming into Stumptown Cafe in downtown Portland. I took a bunch of photos with the camera on the table and made a movie out of it. I like the effect but it’s mostly just an experimental first attempt.

Camera: Nikon D70s. Software: iMovie.

I got a promotional email from Netflix today. They would like me to forward an offer of a free month of service to my friends and family. A few months ago I would have sent it out to some people, but Netflix's service has gotten progressively worse in recent times. I'll continue to be a subscriber for a while to see how it goes, but there is no way that I'm recommending it to others at this time.