Just My Two Cents

Photography in 2012

jeffself — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:59:08 +0000

2012 is the year I get serious about photography. I got a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS lens for my birthday and finished up my buying spree by getting a Manfrotto 468MG Ball Head and Gitzo GT3541XLS Carbon Fiber tripod. I love to shoot old things, like barns, houses and automobiles. However, I live in a city that transitioned from a rural community years ago. Fortunately, we still have some old barns standing. I’ve spent the last couple Saturday mornings shooting a couple.

Here’s a shot of an old bar or some kind of storage facility. I’m not up on my farm lingo. It sits right next door to Oscar Smith High School.

Here’s a shot of an old barn about a mile from my house. I’ve been eyeing this barn for about a year. My son used to call this the ‘Twister Barn’ because he thought it was damaged by a tornado.

And here is my favorite shot of the same barn:

My goal this year is to shoot something every weekend. I’ve got several other places in mind. It’s just a matter of getting the time to do it.

College Football Realignment

jeffself — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:52:27 +0000

College Football is in turmoil. Texas A&M has fled the Big 12 and joined the Southeastern Conference. So the Big 12 is now down to nine teams. And Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech are expected to leave as well. Are we witnessing the beginning of the super-conferences? Will the Big 10 expand again? Will they go after the remnants of the Big 12 or will they invade the Big East or ACC? Will the Big East and ACC join forces to produce their own super-conference? And where in the heck does Notre Dame fit in all this realignment mess? Will this be the end of major college football as we know it?

The consensus says we will wind up with 4 super-conferences consisting of 16 teams each. I don’t like that. Too many schools will be left out of this. What happens to a school like Boise State? College football is eating itself. This is capitalism at its worst. Unfortunately, the NCAA has little control over the conferences. In an ideal world, the NCAA would be in charge, and they would decide what conference a school belongs to. What we need is a football czar. Television rights need to be split. Conferences and schools should not be getting their own television packages.

In my own fantasy world, I would be the czar of college football. I would create the following system for major college football. I would have 4 major conferences. Each conference would have 2 divisions with 9 teams in each division. You would play all 8 opponents in your division. You win your division if you have the best record in your division and play the other division winner in your conference for the conference championship. Each of the four conference champions would play in a national semi-final game. The games would be played at the higher seeded schools. A national championship game would be played two weeks later. The money from the national championship game would be split amongst all 72 schools. A playoff! What a concept!

Here is my breakdown of conferences and divisions:

North Conference

Division 1	Division 2
UConn	Ohio St
Pittsburgh	Michigan
Rutgers	Michigan St
Syracuse	Indiana
Penn St	Purdue
Boston College	Northwestern
Cincinnati	Illinois
Nebraska	Wisconsin
Notre Dame	Minnesota

East Conference

Division 3	Division 4
Virginia Tech	South Carolina
Clemson	South Florida
North Carolina	Florida St
North Carolina St	East Carolina
Miami	Florida
Virginia	Kentucky
Maryland	Georgia
Georgia Tech	Central Florida
West Virginia	Louisville

South Conference

Division 5	Division 6
Alabama	TCU
Auburn	Texas
Ole Miss	Texas Tech
Mississippi St	Texas A&M
LSU	Baylor
Tulane	Oklahoma
Arkansas	Oklahoma St
Southern Miss	Missouri
Houston	Tennessee

West Conference

Division 7	Division 8
Iowa	Washington
Arizona St	Washington St
Iowa St	Oregon
Kansas	Oregon St
Kansas St	Boise St
Arizona	Stanford
Colorado	California
Utah	UCLA
BYU	USC

I’m allowed to dream, right?

Early thoughts on Google Plus

jeffself — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 12:11:30 +0000

I was able to get set up on Google+ last week. You can find me here.

I’m still trying to get a feel for it. I love the idea of Circles. I’m all about categories. I’ve never used the lists in Facebook and find it to be about 90% noise now.

I doubt if Google+ will ever achieve the popularity of Facebook, but it might hurt Twitter some. It can do everything that Twitter does and isn’t limited to 140 characters. It might be a little too “geeky” for the Facebook crowd however.

I’m still on the fence with Picassa. Just what I need. Another photo sharing site. I’m already putting my pictures on Facebook and Flickr. Now I’m supposed to upload to Picassa, too? I think I might just get a SmugMug account and be done with it.

I haven’t yet joined any huddles or hung out with anyone. I guess I’m just a little too busy.

Lightning strike over Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel

jeffself — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:50:56 +0000

Lightning strike over Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, a photo by Jeff Self on Flickr.

We were supposed to have fireworks but this storm cancelled them. No problem though. Storm provided plenty of it’s own.

Carova, NC

jeffself — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 20:34:45 +0000

Took the family to Carova, NC yesterday for a day on the beach. It’s a bit of a pain to get there since I have to drive 65 miles south to the Outer Banks then make a left and drive 30 miles north to Carova. But it’s a great place to go. The road ends in Corolla and from there its 4 wheel drives only. We had no one within a quarter mile of us. Only had to look out for passing vehicles since the beach is actually considered a road down there. The weather was perfect. It was about 85 degrees, a few clouds here and there, and low humidity. Beach was a challenge when leaving since the sand was so soft, and we couldn’t find a good set of tracks to follow. I should have probably let some air out of my tires but didn’t. Anyway, here are some pictures:

Software for my iMac

jeffself — Tue, 24 May 2011 15:22:19 +0000

With the new iMac 6 weeks from being delivered, I’m thinking about the software I’ll install. So here goes:

Aperture 3
Photoshop CS5
iLife ’11
iWork ’09 (unless ’11 comes out by then)
Chrome
Firefox 4
Final Cut Pro X (Currently have Final Cut Studio, but think I’ll sell it and buy it from the Mac App store)
Handbrake
VMware Fusion (still need to run Windows 7 and Linux occasionally)
Python 2.7 (don’t like touching the installed version. like to add packages here)
RVM (greatest thing ever invented for development. sandboxed ruby environment)

Hoping that OS X 10.7 will be shipping by then. I will still install from scratch however. I think since I’ll have two drives, I will have to partition the 2TB drive to hold the /Users directory.

New iMac on the way! Eventually.

jeffself — Mon, 23 May 2011 12:13:38 +0000

Just ordered my new iMac this past weekend. Upromise was having a 10% sale for Apple so my wife gave me the green light. Here’s what I ordered:

3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 27″
4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2x2GB
2TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive
AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5
Magic Trackpad
AppleCare Protection Plan for iMac

I’m going to fill up the memory to its maximum 16GB, but I’ll order the memory from Other World Computing to save a few hundred dollars.

Unfortunately, because I ordered it with the SSD, it won’t ship until July 6th and I won’t receive it until around July 13th. No biggie. Have plenty to do until then. Have a house I need to sell.

Harbor Park

jeffself — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:42:47 +0000

harborpark2, a photo by Jeff Self on Flickr.

Here’s a photo I took of Harbor Park last night before an exhibition game between the Norfolk Tides and Norfolk State University.

NCAA Final Four predictions

jeffself — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 13:13:20 +0000

So we’re down to the Final Four. It’s been one of the most exciting basketball tournaments ever. Poor Butler. Last year’s Cinderella team. No Cinderella this year. Oh, they’re back in the Final Four again. But this time, they’re being overshadowed by VCU. Butler and VCU will face-off in the first semi-final game next Saturday. Should be a defensive struggle. And in the other bracket will be a couple of well-known powers, Kentucky and UConn.

Based on my latest rankings, we have two very exciting basketball games in store. UConn is ranked #6 and Kentucky is ranked #8. Butler is ranked #34 and VCU is ranked #41. But ignore the rankings. On March 7th, my rankings had UConn at #13, Kentucky at #29, Butler at #57, and VCU was ranked #76. Here are the current power ratings for each school:

UConn 61.935
Kentucky 61.761
Butler 59.898
VCU 59.543

Based on these ratings, here are the chances of each team advancing to the championship game:

Butler 52.04%
UConn 51.00%
Kentucky 49.00%
VCU 47.96%

Nobody is a clear favorite in either game. These should be tremendous games. So who’s the favorite to win it all? Well, based on my ratings, here is the breakdown:

UConn 31.86%
Kentucky 30.15%
Butler 20.27%
VCU 17.76%

So it seems that the winner of the UConn/Kentucky matchup has the best chance to win the national championship. But I wouldn’t put money on it. Butler and VCU have proven that they not only can play with anyone, they can beat anyone. It should be a fun ride!

Going to PyCon!

jeffself — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 20:52:06 +0000

I just registered for PyCon 2011 today. I did not think I was going this year, since I started a new job and didn’t have any time off. But I realized today that I could still attend as long as I didn’t go to the tutorials. So after getting permission from my wife, I’m on my way. Flight is booked. Conference is paid for. And most importantly, hotel reservation is confirmed.

Looking forward to seeing everyone and listening to some fantastic talks!