To the wilderness I wander

The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lonely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

The spirits white as lightning
Would on my travels guide me
The stars would shake and the moon would quake
Whenever they espied me.

And then that I’ll be murdering
The Man in the Moon to the powder
His staff I’ll break, his dog I’ll shake
And there’ll howl no demon louder.

With a host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.

By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end-
Methinks it is no journey.

— Tom O’ Bedlam

#StopTheSequester

The quickest way to rekindle recession is to make this massive cut. Maybe that’s what the GOP wants, but it’s not what their constituents want. The GOP’s sequester will impact cities and towns all across the U.S. in many ways. Stop it, send a letter to your congressperson now while you are thinking about it.

#StopTheSequester – YouTube.

Find your representative and give him an ear full.

Obama Warns Sequester Will Cause Job Losses – YouTube

The GOP threatens to shoot the economy again, just because.

President Barack Obama warned Tuesday that "people will lose their jobs" if across-the-board budget cuts, known as the sequester, take effect as scheduled next week. (Feb. 19)

via Obama Warns Sequester Will Cause Job Losses – YouTube.

Gamma Rays From Thunderstorms and Dark Lightning

There are amazing things happening in the skies above thunderstorms.

Researchers studying thunderstorms have made a surprising discovery: The lightning we see with our eyes has a dark competitor that discharges storm clouds and flings antimatter into space. Astrophysicists and meteorologists are scrambling to understand "dark lightning."

via ScienceCasts: Dark Lightning – YouTube.

Last minute Valentine’s deals: Gift Cards you Can Print

Stuck on what to get and out of time? Here’s something quick and easy that can remove the worry fast, and the best thing is that you can personalize it by uploading a photo:

[amazon-product align="center" alink="0000FF" bordercolor="000000" height="300"]B0062ONBC2[/amazon-product]If you want to go a step better, go here and find a public domain love poem for the inside, and while you are there think about donating to the American Poet’s Foundation.

What’s Wrong With Modern DSLR’s

I do love my camera, but it could be oh so much better. Let’s start at the top with missing features, then we can proceed to grumbling about other things like inflated prices. At the top of the ticket is no built in wifi or blue tooth connectivity. It’s pretty trivial both in cost and economics of space to add that nowadays, and Eyefi chips are not the answer.

Every camera needs to come with blue tooth, wireless N, and on top of that have a GPS receiver. They should be able to be controlled wireless from any pad, phone, laptop, or even display device. They should be able to download to printers and data devices, and they should be able to display photos through wireless to televisions. GPS should be part of the exif data for every photograph, and the camera should automatically set its timezone and time.

You shouldn’t have to add an accessory or fiddle the software by adding Magic Lantern to do extended time lapse photography, that ability should be native. Add an accelerometer and a horizon line in the viewfinder and you are finally starting to get somewhere in the land of “fully featured modern DSLRs”.

If we then add a suite of level sensors  – horizontal in two directions, front to back, side to side, and add in motion sensors then you have the data needed to auto shift and correct in software for motion blur even when it’s bad.

All cameras should be able to download Lens profiles from manufacturers to auto correct for lens distortions and and color aberration in the raw file because every lens, no matter the quality, does have some distortion that can be corrected due to the lenses’ physical factors and build.

Ok, I feel like I’ve vented enough about how things ought to be for today.