Matthew Botos

Amusing bit from Wil Wheaton:

While I was signing books, a girl about my age walked up to the table. She extended her hand and said, “Hi, Im Gina.” “Hi Gina,” I said. “Its nice to meet you.” “Im a blogger,” she said. “Oh? Cool” I said. “Whats your blog?” “Its called Lifehacker, and –”

It makes me wonder; if you could get your favorite bloggers in a room, would they get along? Would they have anything in common beyond your eclectic interest?

After test riding a singlespeed 29er last year, I knew one was my next bike, but it took until now to put one together. Since the price and weight points of off-the-shelf and bike store custom jobs weren’t what I wanted, the project became a custom build.

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I know a few people in the market for their first DSLR, so here’s my take on where to start. It’s easy to spend a lot of money and still not get the photos you want, so here are two sayings to consider:

1. It’s not the camera, it’s the lens.
2. It’s not the lens, it’s the light.

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I had a blast photographing the 2008 Rally in the Valley last weekend; mountain biking gatherings are always fun, and so is capturing them in photos.

Preparation was easy for this one since I’ve volunteered at the event before and ridden the location many times. A test ride with all my gear in the backpack was enough to convince me I wanted to do minimal shuffling while loaded down like a sherpa, so I picked a few spots within a mile of the start off the main trail.

Another useful activity was making up signs; one saying “Smile! Photographer ahead.” and a few more letting people know where to find my photos on the web. The smile sign really worked; people actually looked at the camera, smiled, and gave thumbs up, peace signs, wheelies, & jumps!

Since the leaves on the trees haven’t come in yet, there was more light than I expected. It was enough to get fast shots along Forbidden Drive, though people’s faces still ended up in the shadows sometimes. On the trails, flash was more of a necessity, but took a bit of trail and error to dial in manually. I think the truth of event photography is that you have to have an automatic, through-the-lens (TTL) metering flash.

I found I took wider shots to make sure I got people in motion, then cropped them down afterwards. As the day went on, though, it became easier to get tighter, more emotive shots.

With so many people around, it was also great networking. I met a few fellow photographers, both beginners and established pros, some potential customers, and got a few ideas for new opportunities.

Other useful odds and ends: bungees to tie signs to existing posts, water and snacks, hat, music for the slow spells. Given my minimal riding, street clothes and shoes were definitely the way to go. Wearing my IMBA jersey even prompted someone to ask me if I had flown out from Boulder for the event. Maybe they’ll come next year, after they see my photos

See the 2008 Rally in the Valley Photos

Netflix is one of the few annual reports I bother to read as an investor. Last year’s has some interesting bits.

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The amount of spam I get on the blog has been going down, and most continues to be caught by Akismet. A German trackback spam slipped through today, though, and even through it was in German, I could tell it was spam. The use of short, phrases in bold and something about a free film transcended any language barriers.

This could actually make for some hilarious sci-fi parodies; imagine if they had to negotiate all every tense intergalactic situation metaphorically using home mortgages and natural male enhancement?

We have a Websense filter at work that is an alternating source of amusement and frustration for me. Last week, it started trashing the layout of Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Upon closer inspection, it was actually blocking gawker.com, which is where these sites get their CSS, Javascript, and images. An odd decision on the part of their web architect, but easily fixed using my latest Greasemonkey script:

Unblock Gawker Media sites (Gizmodo, Lifehacker, etc.)

I met a cool bunch of guys from Eastern Woods Research at the Rally in the Valley. They’re local Pennsylvania frame builders making steel hardtails, with a 29er version in the works. The bikes look great; here are a few more photos.

I went into Home Depot to order new countertops this week, and was impressed to see they have nice widescreen LCD monitors for their kitchen designers. I was less impressed to see them running a massively oversized terminal window into some archaic back-end ordering system.

Still, I figured they must be nice for sketching out layouts and calculating all the costs. Not quite; it’s all still done with worksheets, graph paper, and a hand calculator. And sometimes it’s done twice since different materials are priced by the linear or square foot.

I wonder if Home Depot has an opening in their CIO office; I’d be happy to take a set of granite countertops as a signing bonus