Everything is connected to everything else: the world is a seamless web. As Sam put it:
A body might stump his toe, and take pison, and fall down the well, and break his neck, and bust his brains out, and some-body come along and ask what killed him, and some numskull up and say, 'Why, he stumped his TOE.'
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
M
More after the jump - click here!
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Another Riveting Update
For those of you keeping score at home:
I now have eight external hard drives in my home office.
I'm going to give my parents my PC, since I don't use it any more, and it had a big hard drive in it that I wanted to keep. So I took it out and put it in an external enclosure.
I think I'm insane.
M More after the jump - click here!
I now have eight external hard drives in my home office.
I'm going to give my parents my PC, since I don't use it any more, and it had a big hard drive in it that I wanted to keep. So I took it out and put it in an external enclosure.
I think I'm insane.
M More after the jump - click here!
Monday, September 15, 2008
Brief Thoughts and Updates
1) Jill Greenberg is a very clever idiot.
2) The economy is in terrible, desperate trouble.
3) My photo mojo is not workin'.
1) From my comment on Rachel Hulin's blog:
(See http://www.rachelhulin.com/blog/ for the backstory.)
While I dread a McCain presidency even more than I dread an Obama presidency (and I dread a potential Palin presidency far more than either) that was a low-down, dirty trick to do to a subject she was being PAID to shoot by a client, who she then publicly called irresponsible and implied weren't very smart. Not to mention that now the client has to deal with the consequences of sending McCain to Greenberg and having her pull this crap.
Yes, let's all insult our clients, belittle and trick our subjects, and leave the steaming heap behind for other people to have to deal with. THAT'S a good way to encourage people to pay professional photographers rather than just send a point-and-shoot camera along with the interview journalist.
Brilliant, Jill, brilliant.
Also that crap she pulled with the Photoshopping and the monkey poo? Juvenile. Totally juvenile. No wonder she empathizes with little children who've lost their candy so much. She basically views the whole world as one big exercise in stealing her candy and her life is a tantrum in response.
2) We're already at 5x the amount of losses from the sub-prime, excuse me housing, excuse me general risk-management EPIC FAIL, crisis that was first projected less than a year ago and there's no bottom in sight. From five major investment banks we're down to two. The Big Three automakers are going broke at a rate that surpasses human comprehension. The USG has done NOTHING to mend its financial idiocy and whoever wins in November we will spend more, not less, next year than we did the year before and we will take in less, not more, in taxes than we did the year before, guaranteed. There's an old saying that if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. What we've always done is spend more than we have, and what we've always got is more debt.
There's another saying, however, that receives much less press, and that is that if a trend is unsustainable, it will not be sustained. Accruing more debt is an unsustainable trend. The USG is going to collectively wake up some morning in the same place that Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns and Countrywide did, and at that point it has two options, no more and no less. Bankruptcy, or monetization of debt. That second one is a fancy way to say, "Print the money to pay the bills." This leads to a phenomenon called hyperinflation. If you want to know what that looks like, hop on a plane to Zimbabwe, or read a book about the Weimar Republic or the economics of the Confederacy. This is not a new story and it always, always, always ends the same way.
If you want to learn a little about how this all works, and don't like math, try PJ O'Rourke's book on economics and business, Eat The Rich. Trust me, any book which discusses cow howitzers and Courtney Love on permanent tour in Japan is worth reading. Your local library will have it, as PJ is quite popular, and it's probably also available in audio form. Read it, seriously.
3) Between the PhotoShelter Collection going teats-up and the fact that I just can't seem to get any joy out of it, I don't remember the last time I took pictures for fun. I take 'em at family things and so forth and they're good, it's not like I don't have the chops, or at least as many chops as I ever had, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.
M More after the jump - click here!
2) The economy is in terrible, desperate trouble.
3) My photo mojo is not workin'.
1) From my comment on Rachel Hulin's blog:
(See http://www.rachelhulin.com/blog/ for the backstory.)
While I dread a McCain presidency even more than I dread an Obama presidency (and I dread a potential Palin presidency far more than either) that was a low-down, dirty trick to do to a subject she was being PAID to shoot by a client, who she then publicly called irresponsible and implied weren't very smart. Not to mention that now the client has to deal with the consequences of sending McCain to Greenberg and having her pull this crap.
Yes, let's all insult our clients, belittle and trick our subjects, and leave the steaming heap behind for other people to have to deal with. THAT'S a good way to encourage people to pay professional photographers rather than just send a point-and-shoot camera along with the interview journalist.
Brilliant, Jill, brilliant.
Also that crap she pulled with the Photoshopping and the monkey poo? Juvenile. Totally juvenile. No wonder she empathizes with little children who've lost their candy so much. She basically views the whole world as one big exercise in stealing her candy and her life is a tantrum in response.
2) We're already at 5x the amount of losses from the sub-prime, excuse me housing, excuse me general risk-management EPIC FAIL, crisis that was first projected less than a year ago and there's no bottom in sight. From five major investment banks we're down to two. The Big Three automakers are going broke at a rate that surpasses human comprehension. The USG has done NOTHING to mend its financial idiocy and whoever wins in November we will spend more, not less, next year than we did the year before and we will take in less, not more, in taxes than we did the year before, guaranteed. There's an old saying that if you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got. What we've always done is spend more than we have, and what we've always got is more debt.
There's another saying, however, that receives much less press, and that is that if a trend is unsustainable, it will not be sustained. Accruing more debt is an unsustainable trend. The USG is going to collectively wake up some morning in the same place that Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns and Countrywide did, and at that point it has two options, no more and no less. Bankruptcy, or monetization of debt. That second one is a fancy way to say, "Print the money to pay the bills." This leads to a phenomenon called hyperinflation. If you want to know what that looks like, hop on a plane to Zimbabwe, or read a book about the Weimar Republic or the economics of the Confederacy. This is not a new story and it always, always, always ends the same way.
If you want to learn a little about how this all works, and don't like math, try PJ O'Rourke's book on economics and business, Eat The Rich. Trust me, any book which discusses cow howitzers and Courtney Love on permanent tour in Japan is worth reading. Your local library will have it, as PJ is quite popular, and it's probably also available in audio form. Read it, seriously.
3) Between the PhotoShelter Collection going teats-up and the fact that I just can't seem to get any joy out of it, I don't remember the last time I took pictures for fun. I take 'em at family things and so forth and they're good, it's not like I don't have the chops, or at least as many chops as I ever had, but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.
M More after the jump - click here!
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Well, Poop.
PhotoShelter Announces closing of the PhotoShelter Collection.
And after I went to all the trouble to rearrange my blog to use the PhotoShelter Widget, and everything. Damn.
Oh, well. I sold a picture to Richard Leakey. That was pretty cool. I feel sorrier for the staff - having participated, more than once, in the closing of a business, I know how much it well and truly sucks. The Archive portion of PhotoShelter will continue in business and is doing well, but they just couldn't make the stock side work.
Things fall apart: the center cannot hold. First the Patry blog, now this. Bah. Bah, I say.
M More after the jump - click here!
And after I went to all the trouble to rearrange my blog to use the PhotoShelter Widget, and everything. Damn.
Oh, well. I sold a picture to Richard Leakey. That was pretty cool. I feel sorrier for the staff - having participated, more than once, in the closing of a business, I know how much it well and truly sucks. The Archive portion of PhotoShelter will continue in business and is doing well, but they just couldn't make the stock side work.
Things fall apart: the center cannot hold. First the Patry blog, now this. Bah. Bah, I say.
M More after the jump - click here!
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
BTW, Here's Why Bristol Palin is Relevant
Because her pregnancy proves that Sarah Palin is either a bad parent, or stupid, and either way, that's a very relevant thing to consider when asked to vote for the potential vice-president of a candidate who's in his seventies and has a history of cardiac incidents and cancer as well as other serious health risks.
Here's the logic underlying my conclusion:
Sarah Palin has stated unconditionally that abstinence-only programs are the only acceptable sex-education for American children in public school, despite the clear statistical evidence that they don't work and safer-sex education programs do. The only two reasons one could advocate such a proven failure are that one is stupid, or that one believes that sex-education is the responsibility of the parents.
Sarah Palin went to college, has been the governor of a state, and has many other accomplishments (did you know she's a pilot?) I don't think she's stupid. So let's give her the benefit of the doubt and say she honestly believes sex-education is the responsibility of the parents.
Well, Palin, as I said, isn't stupid. She's had several kids. She knows what causes them. But apparently she utterly failed in her duty to her daughter Bristol, who got so little sex-education that she finds herself pregnant at 17. Either Bristol's too dumb to be allowed to run around where there are boys - in which case Palin failed her by deciding to pursue her political career instead of caring for her and, by the way, Palin's own four-month-old child who has Down's Syndrome - or Palin couldn't be bothered to teach her daughter not to let boys put their thingies in hers. Either way, especially for a true-blue social and religious conservative, EPIC FAIL.
And still, confronted with seventeen-and-knocked-up PROOF that such policies DO NOT WORK, Palin is presumably still all about family responsibility and abstinence-only educational policies. Unless she admits either her failure or her idiocy, she's not only either a failure or an idiot, she's also a hypocrite. And ALL of those are very relevant to somebody who is asking to be put a faltering heartbeat away from the Presidency. Bristol's not running for Vice-President, and she should be strictly left alone by the media and the public. What's important is not the choices Bristol Palin made, but what Bristol Palin's choices tell us about Sarah Palin.
And as many others have pointed out, Palin sees no contradiction between pointing out how proud she is of Bristol's "choice" and the fact that if Palin were Queen, Bristol and the millions like her every year would not HAVE that choice. It's one thing for Bristol, whose parents are kind, supporting, and financially secure, to go into such a situation, and quite another for a poor girl from the projects with no support network and no resources to face it. But Palin wants to treat them just alike.
The whole thing irritates me so that if it were not for the fact that states are all-or-nothing and there is no way on Eris's sweet Earth that Obama will not win Illinois, I might reconsider my policy of not voting for anything but rejection of tax referenda.
M
PS: Several researchers have pointed out that it is almost statistically certain that Palin and her husband were having unprotected premarital sex based on the date of her marriage and the birth of her first son, but while I find that very Amusing it only shows that Palin herself was not properly educated and made foolish choices when young, which should NOT be held against her in any way. More after the jump - click here!
Here's the logic underlying my conclusion:
Sarah Palin has stated unconditionally that abstinence-only programs are the only acceptable sex-education for American children in public school, despite the clear statistical evidence that they don't work and safer-sex education programs do. The only two reasons one could advocate such a proven failure are that one is stupid, or that one believes that sex-education is the responsibility of the parents.
Sarah Palin went to college, has been the governor of a state, and has many other accomplishments (did you know she's a pilot?) I don't think she's stupid. So let's give her the benefit of the doubt and say she honestly believes sex-education is the responsibility of the parents.
Well, Palin, as I said, isn't stupid. She's had several kids. She knows what causes them. But apparently she utterly failed in her duty to her daughter Bristol, who got so little sex-education that she finds herself pregnant at 17. Either Bristol's too dumb to be allowed to run around where there are boys - in which case Palin failed her by deciding to pursue her political career instead of caring for her and, by the way, Palin's own four-month-old child who has Down's Syndrome - or Palin couldn't be bothered to teach her daughter not to let boys put their thingies in hers. Either way, especially for a true-blue social and religious conservative, EPIC FAIL.
And still, confronted with seventeen-and-knocked-up PROOF that such policies DO NOT WORK, Palin is presumably still all about family responsibility and abstinence-only educational policies. Unless she admits either her failure or her idiocy, she's not only either a failure or an idiot, she's also a hypocrite. And ALL of those are very relevant to somebody who is asking to be put a faltering heartbeat away from the Presidency. Bristol's not running for Vice-President, and she should be strictly left alone by the media and the public. What's important is not the choices Bristol Palin made, but what Bristol Palin's choices tell us about Sarah Palin.
And as many others have pointed out, Palin sees no contradiction between pointing out how proud she is of Bristol's "choice" and the fact that if Palin were Queen, Bristol and the millions like her every year would not HAVE that choice. It's one thing for Bristol, whose parents are kind, supporting, and financially secure, to go into such a situation, and quite another for a poor girl from the projects with no support network and no resources to face it. But Palin wants to treat them just alike.
The whole thing irritates me so that if it were not for the fact that states are all-or-nothing and there is no way on Eris's sweet Earth that Obama will not win Illinois, I might reconsider my policy of not voting for anything but rejection of tax referenda.
M
PS: Several researchers have pointed out that it is almost statistically certain that Palin and her husband were having unprotected premarital sex based on the date of her marriage and the birth of her first son, but while I find that very Amusing it only shows that Palin herself was not properly educated and made foolish choices when young, which should NOT be held against her in any way. More after the jump - click here!
Against the Assault of Laughter...
nothing can stand.
So we went to my parents' house for the holiday weekend. On the way home we stopped at McDonald's...
... and ahead of me was this raggedy-looking fellow who, upon receiving his order, immediately said, "I wanted this to go." It was like three Happy Meals (which come in bags no matter what) and a Big Mac deal, which was on the tray loose. Okay, fine. The counter person had the sandwich and fries in a bag in the blink of an eye. But then...
"Since my order's jacked up, I want to be compensated. I want a free cheeseburger or something."
The girl taking orders said, "Are you kidding me?" I don't blame her - she didn't say it in an obnoxious way, but the guy's demeanor was so manic that she very probably thought it was a joke.
He replied, "No, unfortunately I am not. I want two free pies. Give 'em to me now or your manager will do it." He repeated this four or five times in slightly different ways, getting more and more upset by the second.
The guy next to me and I were literally laughing out loud at this guy and making no attempt to hide it. I have not been so well-entertained by incidental street theater in I don't know how long.
Eventually the manager came out and, upon hearing the situation, said calmly, "Sir, the mistake was an accident and took ten seconds to fix. I apologize for the small delay but I am not giving you anything for free. If your order is complete, please move so we can serve other customers."
Rag-boy flounced off in a huff, obliterating any shreds of dignity he may have retained. I mean, really, he said, "Fine, I'm never coming back here again!" How cliché is that? I swear to Bog, his affect during the entire affair was that of a spoiled six-year-old girl.
My order came up just after and the manager counted off the items: he said, "Three-piece Chicken Selects" when I had ordered a five-piece. I immediately said, "That's wrong! I ordered a five-piece! I want the whole thing for free! And I want the keys to your car! Right now!"
He looked in the bag and said, "I was wrong. It is a five-piece. And I don't own a car. Sorry."
I snapped my fingers and stage-yelled, "Darn!" I then laughed and thanked him. He thought it was funny and hopefully it broke up the tension a bit.
M More after the jump - click here!
So we went to my parents' house for the holiday weekend. On the way home we stopped at McDonald's...
... and ahead of me was this raggedy-looking fellow who, upon receiving his order, immediately said, "I wanted this to go." It was like three Happy Meals (which come in bags no matter what) and a Big Mac deal, which was on the tray loose. Okay, fine. The counter person had the sandwich and fries in a bag in the blink of an eye. But then...
"Since my order's jacked up, I want to be compensated. I want a free cheeseburger or something."
The girl taking orders said, "Are you kidding me?" I don't blame her - she didn't say it in an obnoxious way, but the guy's demeanor was so manic that she very probably thought it was a joke.
He replied, "No, unfortunately I am not. I want two free pies. Give 'em to me now or your manager will do it." He repeated this four or five times in slightly different ways, getting more and more upset by the second.
The guy next to me and I were literally laughing out loud at this guy and making no attempt to hide it. I have not been so well-entertained by incidental street theater in I don't know how long.
Eventually the manager came out and, upon hearing the situation, said calmly, "Sir, the mistake was an accident and took ten seconds to fix. I apologize for the small delay but I am not giving you anything for free. If your order is complete, please move so we can serve other customers."
Rag-boy flounced off in a huff, obliterating any shreds of dignity he may have retained. I mean, really, he said, "Fine, I'm never coming back here again!" How cliché is that? I swear to Bog, his affect during the entire affair was that of a spoiled six-year-old girl.
My order came up just after and the manager counted off the items: he said, "Three-piece Chicken Selects" when I had ordered a five-piece. I immediately said, "That's wrong! I ordered a five-piece! I want the whole thing for free! And I want the keys to your car! Right now!"
He looked in the bag and said, "I was wrong. It is a five-piece. And I don't own a car. Sorry."
I snapped my fingers and stage-yelled, "Darn!" I then laughed and thanked him. He thought it was funny and hopefully it broke up the tension a bit.
M More after the jump - click here!
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Perpetual Motion Machines
Or, as most people refer to them, "Toddlers." A co-worker of mine asked me to shoot pictures of her daughter, who'll be a year old next month, for the birthday announcements. I took her birth announcement pictures, and apparently she was pretty happy with those and asked me to do it again. "Why not?" I thought.
Well, this year we took the pictures at Grandma's house. (Grandma has a really nice back yard.) I wanted to start early, both because the light is better before the sun is too high, and because I don't like being hot. :) After bravely navigating the path to Grandma's (my co-worker's directions had a MAJOR error that I only avoided because I knew roughly where Grandma's house was already) I waited the half-hour that I knew I would wait* and they arrived...
Surprise #1. Another couple, with a baby about the age of my co-worker's. Huh? When did I agree to shoot two families?
Surprise #2. They brought their dog. Their very large, extraordinarily slobbery dog. This dog nailed my lens with goo from ten feet away. Impressive.
Anyway, into it we went. One of the great "secrets" to child photography is to get down to their level. Pictures of the kid looking up at you - and I'm over six feet tall - are not very interesting. However, the getting up and down is wearying when you also weigh over two hundred pounds. And up and down for two kids. Whee!
Her kid is just adorable, and was very cooperative for a one-year-old. I can't complain, really. The dog was not. There were just too many people running around and he couldn't stay put. Oh, well. You do the best you can with what you have where you are.
Used quite a bit of fill-flash until the batteries in my strobe died (some knucklehead forgot to swap in fresh batteries.) It helps a lot, especially in direct sun. The yard had lots of shade and lots of sun and the kid was constantly running between, which made the exposure work fun. I did go two-gun and wear a camera with a zoom lens and one with a fast prime.
My favorite pictures, by far, were from the prime. I shot in AV (Aperture Priority) mode with the lens opened way up. I got quite a few pictures that were a little fuzzy (although I have auto-focus on a priority button and switched to Servo mode, so not as many as you might think.) But the ones that were good were great. Soft, buttery backgrounds with lovely circular highlights. And with a lens opened to f2.2 or so, even in deep shadow and at ISO100, I got shutter speeds low enough to freeze the kids and the dog. In direct sunlight I was almost maxing out the shutter! (Fastest shot I saw was 1/4000.)
Here's grandma's backyard with the prime opened way up. (f1.8 for lighting test, lens's max aperture is f1.4.)
Darn, I just love a fast lens. I only shot a few lighting tests without anybody in them and my co-worker hasn't given me permission to post any pics with people, so that's all I got for now. I'm out.
M
*My co-worker is hardworking, intelligent, and talented, but amongst her many gifts, "punctuality" does not lie. Her husband, so far as I can tell, is even worse. More after the jump - click here!
Well, this year we took the pictures at Grandma's house. (Grandma has a really nice back yard.) I wanted to start early, both because the light is better before the sun is too high, and because I don't like being hot. :) After bravely navigating the path to Grandma's (my co-worker's directions had a MAJOR error that I only avoided because I knew roughly where Grandma's house was already) I waited the half-hour that I knew I would wait* and they arrived...
Surprise #1. Another couple, with a baby about the age of my co-worker's. Huh? When did I agree to shoot two families?
Surprise #2. They brought their dog. Their very large, extraordinarily slobbery dog. This dog nailed my lens with goo from ten feet away. Impressive.
Anyway, into it we went. One of the great "secrets" to child photography is to get down to their level. Pictures of the kid looking up at you - and I'm over six feet tall - are not very interesting. However, the getting up and down is wearying when you also weigh over two hundred pounds. And up and down for two kids. Whee!
Her kid is just adorable, and was very cooperative for a one-year-old. I can't complain, really. The dog was not. There were just too many people running around and he couldn't stay put. Oh, well. You do the best you can with what you have where you are.
Used quite a bit of fill-flash until the batteries in my strobe died (some knucklehead forgot to swap in fresh batteries.) It helps a lot, especially in direct sun. The yard had lots of shade and lots of sun and the kid was constantly running between, which made the exposure work fun. I did go two-gun and wear a camera with a zoom lens and one with a fast prime.
My favorite pictures, by far, were from the prime. I shot in AV (Aperture Priority) mode with the lens opened way up. I got quite a few pictures that were a little fuzzy (although I have auto-focus on a priority button and switched to Servo mode, so not as many as you might think.) But the ones that were good were great. Soft, buttery backgrounds with lovely circular highlights. And with a lens opened to f2.2 or so, even in deep shadow and at ISO100, I got shutter speeds low enough to freeze the kids and the dog. In direct sunlight I was almost maxing out the shutter! (Fastest shot I saw was 1/4000.)
Here's grandma's backyard with the prime opened way up. (f1.8 for lighting test, lens's max aperture is f1.4.)
Darn, I just love a fast lens. I only shot a few lighting tests without anybody in them and my co-worker hasn't given me permission to post any pics with people, so that's all I got for now. I'm out.
M
*My co-worker is hardworking, intelligent, and talented, but amongst her many gifts, "punctuality" does not lie. Her husband, so far as I can tell, is even worse. More after the jump - click here!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
This is Just Fascinating
This Frequent Flyer miles thing is a whole new subculture to wonder at, now I come to learn about it. It started with "Buy X tickets, get a free flight," but quickly - literally within a few months - became, "Fly X miles, get a free flight." Ironically, Southwest, the only really profitable airline right now, got off that boat and now offers - you guessed it - "Buy X tickets, get a free flight." (Or an upgrade.)
More stuff...
Here's an article on why FFP can be viewed as a meme, or mind virus. Note at least one error - the article says that AA wishes FFM "would just go away," but that's not true. Airlines make huge profits from their FFM programs. They just don't like it when people actually, you know, use miles.
http://www.memecentral.com/mu/mu0028.htm
Here's the Wiki on FFP, including some history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequent_flyer_miles
Here's a humongous forum devoted to FFP and related topics:
http://www.flyertalk.com
M More after the jump - click here!
More stuff...
Here's an article on why FFP can be viewed as a meme, or mind virus. Note at least one error - the article says that AA wishes FFM "would just go away," but that's not true. Airlines make huge profits from their FFM programs. They just don't like it when people actually, you know, use miles.
http://www.memecentral.com/mu/mu0028.htm
Here's the Wiki on FFP, including some history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequent_flyer_miles
Here's a humongous forum devoted to FFP and related topics:
http://www.flyertalk.com
M More after the jump - click here!
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Gaming the System
We went to Hawai'i last year for a week - we won a trip at my company's holiday party. (Always fold your entry in a wacky way, that's the key.) We'd really, really like to go back, but tickets aren't cheap and aren't getting cheaper. Hotels aren't cheap either, but if you can get there, that's way more than half the battle.
So of course my devious little brain has been trying to figure out how to get somebody ELSE to pay for it.
My wife loves contests and has been entering all the ones she could find - we both entered the Hawai'i Magazine photography contest last month, so that's worth a shot. But there is a slower but more certain way to get other people to buy you airplane tickets: Frequent Flyer Miles programs.
Originally, you got frequent flyer miles by, well, by flying frequently. But no more! Of course, you can still do it that way (and that's the best way) but you can also earn them by doing various things or even win them in contests and promotions. I signed up for a Hawai'ian Airlines Frequent Flyer account and commenced to gamin'. So far:
1) Play games on Microsoft's promotional site for its new search service and trade prize tickets for miles: up to 2500 miles/redemption. It takes about four days to earn enough tickets for the maximum award. If Microsoft leaves this site up - which they won't - you could theoretically earn a one-way ticket from the mainland to Hawai'i every twenty-four days! If you want to play, it's at http://club.live.com. There are multiple programs eligible for miles awards.
UPDATE: Apparently this has been going on for quite some time and while Microsoft encourages you to redeem your points frequently, people are reporting having collected over 20,000 FFM this way. That's a domestic ticket to anywhere! The math:
Largest award you can redeem tickets for: 2500M/4300T
Max T/Day: 1000T
Cost T/M: 1.72T/M
Days to earn 20KM: 34.4
Days to earn SuperSaver Fare on HA: 30.1 (Obviously my estimate above was a little optimistic.)
But still, if you were nuts about it - and ask anybody, I go nuts about stuff - you could earn six roundtrips a year doing this.
2) Subscribe to "Hawai'i Magazine." 250 miles for a discounted rate on a magazine my wife buys anyway. :)
3) Open an account with Sharebuilder. 2500 miles after first securities purchase. If you do this right you can set up, make one purchase, and then cash out after you get your miles.
4) You can get a wide variety of credit cards that award miles for each dollar spent. However, these aren't necessarily the biggest bang for your buck - if your credit is good, you're better off getting a rebate card that pays cash back directly and using the cash for your tickets! The nice thing, though, is you can often heterodyne purchases on miles cards with purchases from "partners" who also give miles for dollars spent, and get several miles per dollar spent. That can add up fast.
5) You can wait for the Pudding Angel to reach down from heaven and give you millions of miles. I'd be all over this one but the Pudding Angel is notoriously hard to get hold of.
Interestingly, you can buy miles direct from most programs. For instance, Hawai'ian sells them for $15/500 miles plus a $4/purchase fee. That works out to just under a thousand dollars a ticket, and tickets go for about $400ea. Not really very economical. However, if you're 500 miles short and want to book a trip, as a convenience fee it's quite livable.
Here's a picture taken just outside the Kahului airport on Maui. This is the freaking AIRPORT. It's not fair, I tell you.
M
More after the jump - click here!
So of course my devious little brain has been trying to figure out how to get somebody ELSE to pay for it.
My wife loves contests and has been entering all the ones she could find - we both entered the Hawai'i Magazine photography contest last month, so that's worth a shot. But there is a slower but more certain way to get other people to buy you airplane tickets: Frequent Flyer Miles programs.
Originally, you got frequent flyer miles by, well, by flying frequently. But no more! Of course, you can still do it that way (and that's the best way) but you can also earn them by doing various things or even win them in contests and promotions. I signed up for a Hawai'ian Airlines Frequent Flyer account and commenced to gamin'. So far:
1) Play games on Microsoft's promotional site for its new search service and trade prize tickets for miles: up to 2500 miles/redemption. It takes about four days to earn enough tickets for the maximum award. If Microsoft leaves this site up - which they won't - you could theoretically earn a one-way ticket from the mainland to Hawai'i every twenty-four days! If you want to play, it's at http://club.live.com. There are multiple programs eligible for miles awards.
UPDATE: Apparently this has been going on for quite some time and while Microsoft encourages you to redeem your points frequently, people are reporting having collected over 20,000 FFM this way. That's a domestic ticket to anywhere! The math:
Largest award you can redeem tickets for: 2500M/4300T
Max T/Day: 1000T
Cost T/M: 1.72T/M
Days to earn 20KM: 34.4
Days to earn SuperSaver Fare on HA: 30.1 (Obviously my estimate above was a little optimistic.)
But still, if you were nuts about it - and ask anybody, I go nuts about stuff - you could earn six roundtrips a year doing this.
2) Subscribe to "Hawai'i Magazine." 250 miles for a discounted rate on a magazine my wife buys anyway. :)
3) Open an account with Sharebuilder. 2500 miles after first securities purchase. If you do this right you can set up, make one purchase, and then cash out after you get your miles.
4) You can get a wide variety of credit cards that award miles for each dollar spent. However, these aren't necessarily the biggest bang for your buck - if your credit is good, you're better off getting a rebate card that pays cash back directly and using the cash for your tickets! The nice thing, though, is you can often heterodyne purchases on miles cards with purchases from "partners" who also give miles for dollars spent, and get several miles per dollar spent. That can add up fast.
5) You can wait for the Pudding Angel to reach down from heaven and give you millions of miles. I'd be all over this one but the Pudding Angel is notoriously hard to get hold of.
Interestingly, you can buy miles direct from most programs. For instance, Hawai'ian sells them for $15/500 miles plus a $4/purchase fee. That works out to just under a thousand dollars a ticket, and tickets go for about $400ea. Not really very economical. However, if you're 500 miles short and want to book a trip, as a convenience fee it's quite livable.
Here's a picture taken just outside the Kahului airport on Maui. This is the freaking AIRPORT. It's not fair, I tell you.
M
More after the jump - click here!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Lightroom Update
I am still a little nervous about Lightroom 2: Adobe seems to have caught Microsoft Disease. ("Ship it: people will buy it even if it's buggy and we'll gradually get it to where it's livable sooner or later.") However, they have finally posted a script that fixes the keyword bug, which was totally unacceptable. And as I said earlier, some of the features are nifty. But wait..
A photographer/programmer has created a LR plugin that allows direct export to the PSC or the PSA from Lightroom. O frabjous day! This takes a very annoying step right out of my workflow. It seems to work fine both with LR 1.4.1 and LR 2.0. Here it is
http://pka.xs4all.nl/index.php/lang-en/lightroomexportpluginphotoshelter
M More after the jump - click here!
A photographer/programmer has created a LR plugin that allows direct export to the PSC or the PSA from Lightroom. O frabjous day! This takes a very annoying step right out of my workflow. It seems to work fine both with LR 1.4.1 and LR 2.0. Here it is
http://pka.xs4all.nl/index.php/lang-en/lightroomexportpluginphotoshelter
M More after the jump - click here!
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