Jan
16
2011

Let's Ride This Crazy Train All The Way To AJ!

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSunday, January 16, 2011 - 07:08:37 PM
(Posted Under: This Desert Life This Desert Life)
So after getting lunch at Fuddruckers, we were in Superstition Springs. And it's not like the hours leading up hadn't been ridiculous anyway. So, why the hell not ride the crazy train all the way east and hit AJ? We were basically there anyway!

Photobox ImageIt'd been such a nice day, and pretty clear, so Superstition Mountain looked particularly good today. Drove up the Apache Trail a little way, tromped out in the desert for a little while, and checked out the Desert Mining Resturant (well, the outside anyway). And stood out the front and tried to work out which mountains in the valley were visible from there. Not very successfully it seemed though. It's interesting how difficult it is to get your bearings from that far east.

Photobox ImageFun times. And I must say, I don't know why Apache Junction gets the reputation that it does. Actually, I absolutely do. But that's only one side to AJ, and in reality it's flat out awesome. And moreso exponentially the closer you get to Superstition Mountain. I could easily do the AJ thing. Somewhere like here would be fine. [wink]


Some more of the cooler photos from this afternoon...

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Jan
16
2011

P.F Chang's Rock N Roll Arizona Marathon

Mimosas For Breakfast

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosSunday, January 16, 2011 - 11:57:49 AM
(Posted Under: Tempe Music Scene Tempe Music Scene, Music Music, Live Shows)
Early morning this morning, heading out to Camelback and 40th in Phoenix to catch Strange Young Things set at the P.F Changs Rock N Roll Marathon. Up at 7, and out the door at 8:15. At Camelback by about 8:45.

Photobox ImageOur timing was pretty great, as was getting a ridiculously awesome parking spot right before the fuzz shut down that portion of 40th street. Walking down to the U-Haul parking lot on the corner, we heard It's A Drug and hence expected there'd been a mix up with the stage locations of The Moods (who were were also intending to see) and Strange Young Things. Alas not, The Moods were just part of the pre show mix - pretty cool - as our boys were on stage setting up.

Photobox ImageRidiculously fun time, even for 8:30 in the morning! And furthermore, the boys sounded remarkably good for that hour of the morning. Especially since the poor bastards had to get out there at 6am to set up. There is something about seeing these guys in an outdoor during the day setting, and today wasn't any different. The combination of that plus the stream of marathon runners provided for a real cool and unusual show. Corey played up to his passing audience wonderfully, at times jumping off the stage and running out on to Camelback to really bring the rock 'n roll to the runners. Glorious. The guy is pure unadulterated rock 'n roll! Only once did the microphone cable give out. Not bad, considering that it's less often than what will typically happen at Yucca only feet from the stage on any given night.

At the end of the first set, we checked out Dan's other band for a bit before deciding to see how feasible it was to walk from there to Osbourne and 48th Street to catch some of The Black Moods. The plan was aborted once we got too 40th and Campbell, as there is no way we'd get there and back in time for SYT's next set. Hence we turned around, deciding to catch another set of SYT, and then go over and see The Black Moods afterwards.

That turned out to a wise choice, as the marathon ended (at least at Camelback) earlier than expected, and so SYT's next set was the final one at that stage. Definitely wouldn't have wanted to have missed it.

Lonely And Call It. Or Not

Photobox ImageDespite it all ending earlier than scheduled, the final runner still hadn't made it by the time Lonely Hearts Are Wild ended, and hence organizers called for the band to keep going. A nice change from the norm, where it's last call and they (or particularly a certain someone) almost needs to be dragged off stage. [wink] Two more songs until they got the all clear to retire for the day. For something that we didn't even know about until Glodie mentioned it on Friday night, I can't think of a better way to spend this Sunday morning.

From there we attempted to get down to see The Moods. Getting down to Osbourne and 48th, while not that far away, was a major headache in light of all the road closures due to the marathon. It seemed to take close to an hour to get the two blocks south and four blocks east. I guess we also had a walk from Indian School to Osbourne in there as well. Not completely shockingly, once we got there, the band they were alternating with was playing their final set. If things had been on schedule, we would have made it in plenty of time for the final Mood's set, but just like at Camelback, things were finishing up earlier than excepted. A shame. But not as much as the news of the apparent Moods line up change.

Still, it was a hella fun morning. Definitely a hearty rock 'n roll breakfast! It's actually a shame there were no mimosas being served. [wink]

Jan
15
2011

Life's Certainties

(Add / View Comments) (0)Saturday, January 15, 2011 - 11:14:16 PM
(Posted Under: No Category)
Death, taxes and there always being someone wanting to get their fire for free.
Jan
05
2011

Zoo Lights

(Add / View Comments) (0)PhotosWednesday, January 5, 2011 - 11:50:32 PM
(Posted Under: This Desert Life This Desert Life)
This year we've wanted to do Zoo Lights, in light of the half price admission on Wednesdays thanks to our SRP bill. However, we simply had no time to do it before Christmas. And plans to do it last Wednesday were thwarted thanks to the rain. Though, thankfully Katie didn't have to work tonight, so we made it out there. Good thing, since it ends this week.

Generally speaking, we don't hold the Phoenix Zoo in high regard. And hence, wasn't really expecting that much. Especially since both last year and this year what we've been able to see from Galvin Parkway, and last year from Papago Park, it didn't look like it was much. However, for once, the Phoenix Zoo has surprised us. We were quite impressed, and had no trouble spending the 3 hours between 7 and 10pm there. Hilariously, when we first visited the zoo during the day in 2005, we struggled to fill in the same amount of time.

It's shocking to me that I took 477 photos. And similarly that once I culled them, fairly ruthlessly, still ended up with 189!

Photobox ImageOnce we were back at the car, I was able to put the telephoto lens to the test for this photo taken from the car park. I've got to say, the lens was worth the money! Not too shabby, considering the distance from the car park to where this sign was situated inside.

The rest of the photos can be found through the Photos link above. Given the sheer volume, it's a cryin' shame that I'm still in the middle of slideshow development for Photobox.
Jan
02
2011

Losing EXIF Data

(Add / View Comments) (0)Sunday, January 2, 2011 - 10:35:35 PM
(Posted Under: Web Development, Photography)
Over the break in Warsaw, I started work on a new slide show feature for Photobox. It can already do a slideshow, but the code was developed a long time ago, and it's clunky at best. It's time for a new fancy one, using all sort of eye candy easily available through extjs. It's going quite well.

As part of that, I've redesigned the interface for viewing photo EXIF data, which I like a lot better. Which highlighted something to me - with this new camera, there is a lot more photo metadata that I care about, but am not seeing. Largely that was due to the limitations in the third party EXIF code I am using in Photobox, particularly when it comes to Nikon Maker tags. And as such, I've spent a good portion of the weekend writing a wrapper for that library, which fills in the gaps. At the moment, just the gaps I care about, like the detailed lens information. Thanks to using the exiftool perl code as a reference, I've been able to port over a lot of the functionality.

Sweet. But in doing so, I've discovered that a many of my photos are missing a whole heap of EXIF data. Seemingly randomly. And annoyingly, the lens information is part of what is missing.

Unfortunately I cannot find any pattern to what is lost. Ir seems fairly arbitrary, as some photos taken in the same set are okay, others are not. The obvious first thought was the software was destroying some of the information in the tags, however since I'm using the exact same work flow for both photos that are okay, and photos that aren't (transfer using Nikon Transfer, import, editing and export in Picture Project), I can't necessarily see how that would be true.

Thus far I'm at a loss, and have been unable to reproduce the problem with different camera settings, or different work flows, so I unfortunately don't know what not to do to avoid this. Similarly, I don't think it's a problem with my code, since exiftool is giving the same results.

I guess I need to put diagnosis of this problem on the back burner, but I'd really love to know what is causing it.

Not cool man, not cool at all.

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