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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Fri, 28 Aug 2009Tonight is the last night of Penguins at Annex Theatre, and what a run it's been. Our biggest house was 83 people, out of 99 seats, and tonight's set to break that record with a sell-out audience. As of this afternoon, pre-sales were already up to the mid 70s. One of the reasons? Maybe something to do with this:
Yep, one of the most-consulted "What shall we do tonight?" publications for our intended audience not only featured Penguins at the top of the list, but my photograph integrated with the headline. We win. I'm immensely happy to be part of the juggernaut. Posted at 19:08 permanent link category: /theater Fri, 21 Aug 2009
There it is in black and white
First time I've actually captured my own byline in a print publication. Pretty cool. On top of that, it's a fantastic review. Sure, it's just a sidebar in a throw-away free weekly, but it's a sidebar that will probably increase audience. I'll take it. Granted, that text over there is teeny-tiny, so click on it to see the huge-size version. Whee! Posted at 16:31 permanent link category: /theater Thu, 20 Aug 2009So, one of my initial (and continuing) gripes with the Canon G10, which is now my carry-around camera of choice, is that 14.7 megapixels is just too much. I don't need that much data. I'd be so much happier with a smaller number of pixels that work way better in low light. To my complete and utter surprise, apparently Canon agrees. They just announced the new G11.
The thing that caught my eye? 10 MP sensor, supposed to be way better in low light. Right on! Also, boo, because now I really really want a G11. I'll still probably wait until dpreview.com does a thorough review; I have a G10 already, so unless the G11 is actually quite noticeably better, I won't bother. Of course, this could be very good news for anyone wants to buy a used G10 from me in a few months... Posted at 16:19 permanent link category: /misc Wed, 19 Aug 2009
Penguins is up, and it's getting good reviews. Time and again, Penguins shocked its opening-night audience -- a late-night Capitol Hill crowd, no less -- into hysterics. And, Helping things immensely is the cast, a uniformly excellent crew directed by Bret Fetzer, who keeps things fast, sharp, and funny. And, perhaps one of the best bits for me personally, my name is under the photo at the top of the page. I think that may be my first actual byline in a real (ie, on paper) publication. There's also a very positive review by The Examiner, a paper I hadn't been aware of until finding this review. The examiner says, Not for the easily offended, and not intended to be, Penguins plays with the kind of tongue-in-cheek violence and euphemistic humor you might find in Death to Smoochy. And, For those interested in the bawdy nightlife of comedy, it's well worth the trek down to Annex Theatre for an affordable evening of laughs Two out of two? Right on! I haven't been able to find any other reviews yet, but I'll certainly post them here when I do. If you want to come see Penguins, you'll have to act fast. It's only running this coming weekend, then next Friday, and that's it. This Friday and Saturday (the 21st and 22nd) are Pay What You Can, while Sunday's show is full price ($10 general admission, $7 TPS members, $5 students w/ID). The closing night show, on the 28th, is also full price; after these reviews and the positive word-of-mouth I think we're generating, don't be too surprised to find closing sold out. To buy tickets online (which I highly recommend, although you can't do PWYC online, only at the door), hit Brown Paper Tickets. It's the only way to get advance tickets and ensure that you'll get in. Posted at 14:29 permanent link category: /theater Wed, 12 Aug 2009I recently ordered one of these things, a converter lens for the Canon G10 that gives it a .20x fisheye view. The results are pretty interesting:
Not bad for a $60 lens. If you look at the Amazon link, you can see my thoughts on the lens. Posted at 14:37 permanent link category: /misc Tue, 11 Aug 2009Go here for more pictures taken by fellow rider Tim O'Mahoney, including a few of yours truly. It's on some kind of "you must sign up" service that I'm not willing to sign up for, so I don't have a demo picture to show you here. Look for bike #823 with a yellow number plate -- that's me. These were taken at the kart track on Friday. Posted at 15:00 permanent link category: /motorcycle Sun, 09 Aug 2009I had a really good time at the race this weekend, although I seem to have plateaued at 2:14 as my fastest time. There were a bunch of folks up from California, and Aaron Frank, a staff writer for Motorcyclist magazine, was there to do an article on 160 racing. He was a really nice guy, and a fast rider. I'm glad I got to hang out with him over the weekend. I ended up actually getting to race, with some of the Californians. It was cool having other people around who are about my speed, although my lap times suffered from it -- I couldn't concentrate purely on doing it exactly right, and had to split my attention to also figuring out how to get around the guy in front of me. A new wrinkle, but a welcome one, and if not getting my time down a second or two is the price, I'll take it. There was also a day at the kart track on Friday, and there's nothing quite like a go-kart track on a 160 to produce the following effects: incredibly sore legs; painful wrists; face-splitting grins. Since there's no possible way to ride more than 10-15 minutes at a time on the kart track, I ended up spending a lot of time photographing as well. I kind of wished I had brought my SLR, but the G10 put in a good showing for itself:
I also took pictures over the weekend, but not very many, and none of people racing -- if they were racing, I was out there, too! Marcia (I think that's her name, in any case, Tim O's girlfriend) put on an amazing spread on Saturday night, after the Sounds of the Past races. It was a real blow-out, and garnered universal praise. There's nothing better than being served a feast, unless it's being served a feast for free. My riding was alright, but nothing too special. I switched main jets on Saturday night, and ran with the new jets on Sunday. They should have made a noticeable difference, but I didn't notice anything, so who knows what happened. I did get an opportunity to ride the bike Tim prepared for Aaron, and it was a real eye-opener. My bike is a dog. That thing is fast, and I'm making it my project this winter to build a motor to Tim's plan. He did it in three weeks, a winter's probably enough time for me to try the same thing! I seriously think I'd pick up 3-5 seconds just by having a bike that performed that well, without changing anything else. I also had a couple friends come down for Saturday, which was a really cool surprise. Andre showed up, and was my assistant for the Le Mans start race (on which, duh, the camera completely failed to work, I swear I'm about to give up on the whole video thing); he held the bike ready to go, so I could sprint to it once the cannon went off. Jeniffer also showed up, and the money quote from her was, "I swear, coming down here is like crack," as she looked at all the vintage race bikes, obviously lusting after at least half of them. Andre (who you should vote for as Seattle Public Schools board member) also took video and pictures of me riding, which he said he'd post later, and I'll include a link here when he gets those things up. For the pictures I took of the non-kart-track portion of the weekend, click here:
There's my quickie report. If you weren't there, you should have been. This was a really fun weekend, and I'm glad I got myself down there despite schedule entanglements. Next, of course, I dive into tech week for my next show, Penguins, which is a delightfully sacriligeous romp of a latenight at Annex, but also means that I don't actually get any breathing room until next weekend. And next weekend, I'm going to sleep for 17 hours straight. Posted at 21:41 permanent link category: /motorcycle Wed, 05 Aug 2009On the way into work this morning, I noticed this Tesla Roadster. It was sitting in front of the Fremont Google offices, naturally.
Posted at 10:00 permanent link category: /misc Mon, 03 Aug 2009Not that we're producing any posters for Penguins, the upcoming late-night show at Annex Theatre, but I had this idea for a poster. At the photo shoot yesterday, I got a couple of the actors to pose in about the situation I'd imagined, and today I spent a few minutes dinking around in Photoshop. This is the result:
Penguins opens on Friday, August 14th, and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 11, and Sundays at 8, until the 28th. You will kick yourself if you miss it. Posted at 14:27 permanent link category: /theater I recently bought an 8 GB compactflash card for my camera. I'd run through the 4 GB card before, and wanted to not have to repeat that experience, particularly when I was shooting RAW images, which are 5x the size. So, I bought this one:
No problem, I thought. Good stuff. It got put in the camera bag as a backup for when I'd need more space. That occasion arrived yesterday, in the form of a press photo shoot for Penguins, the show for which I'm designing props. So, I set the camera to shoot RAW for maximum flexibility, and went at it. My usual habit is to shoot a series of 5-10 pictures, then review them quickly to see if I got anything good. I tried, but when I hit the "play" button to go back and review, the screen showed "Busy..." And it stayed like that. For a long, long time. Finally, it started playing back pictures for me, but the little CF light (which indicates activity either reading or writing to the memory card) was on solid still, and it was sluggish. Pictures I knew I'd taken weren't showing up. I realized the card must just be desperately slow to write. Over the course of the shoot, it was absolutely agonizing waiting for this thing. I'd swear my 4 GB card wasn't this slow. So just now I did a test. I shot 5 RAW images in quick succession, and timed how long it took until the CF light turned off. For the new 8 GB card, it took about 39 seconds. For the old 4 GB card, 15 seconds. Seriously? What the hell did you build this card with, Kingston, molasses? I bought the card in part trading on the Kingston name, which I'd generally thought trustworthy. It's rated for 133x speed (aka 20 MB/s), which is in theory faster than the 15 MB/s rated 4 GB card. Obviously not the case. I think this one's going back to the factory, if Amazon will take it without the original packaging. If not, it's going to some worthy charity. I certainly don't want it cluttering up my life. Posted at 09:15 permanent link category: /misc Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |
