Monthly Archives: February 2013

Children, Children

Posted on February 27, 2013 | Leave a comment

Sometimes you just have to give people some perspective. For the record, I enjoy all three – but the title of “Greatest Science-Fiction Franchise” really shouldn't be in doubt.

Star Wars vs. Star Trek - The Doctor sighs

The original TARDIS image is by Elliott Brown.

 

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Look Ma, No Wires!

Posted on February 27, 2013 | Leave a comment
My son dressed up

Harry Potter apparently lives at my house

I was given a wonderful present for my birthday, a first generation Canon EOS Rebel DSLR. It's my first “real” camera, and getting a DSLR for free took away the obstacle of, “How can I justify getting a camera I don't even know how to use?” Now I can learn on a great device, and if/when I out-grow it I can always move up to a newer model.

I love using the camera, the ability to do depth of field, manually focus, and set my shutter speed and f-stop make taking pictures a lot of fun. White balance is difficult, and I don't much care for the “auto” settings, but I'll learn. In fact, after owning the camera for a couple of weeks there was only one thing which bugged me.

Wires.

Ever since I got a smart phone my point and shoot had been all but retired. Aside from the convenience of the form-factor, the ability to move images off my phone without wires was super appealing – especially after Photostream debuted (even if it can be a bit confusing). With the Canon, though, I either had to pop out the memory card or plug a USB cable in order to retrieve images from the device. I didn't like this even a little bit. Even worse, the camera takes compact flash memory, which meant my MacBook's built-in SD slot was useless. I needed a card reader. How 2003!

This led me to seek a solution for my wire problem. I was familiar with eye-fi, an SD card with wifi and GPS on it – so I went searching for something similar in compact flash format. Instead, I found something I'd never seen, an SD to compact flash adapter. It didn't take me long to figure out the adapter worked with eye-fi cards, so off my went my order to Amazon. I chose to order the 8GB pro x2 card, because it came with GPS included and could also transfer Raw images wirelessly.

The card arrived today, and after some testing, I had it transferring images from the DSLR to my MacBook, Nexus 7, and iPad. It's pretty amazing to have my camera send the pictures to my devices, and I can set it up to transfer only images I mark as “protected” on the camera. Additionally, when I transfer the images to a mobile device I can have them automatically transferred to my MacBook as well (though on the iPad this doesn't make much sense given the presence of Photostream). I don't know what impact this is going to have on battery life. I know it will certainly have some, but eye-fi seems to have done a stellar job implementing power management on the card.

Configuring the card requires either a Mac or windows computer, also, the eye-fi cards needs to be inserted into the SD card reader which came in the package, without it the card cannot be set up. While this is a pain, and a non-starter for people who have gone entirely mobile, I understand the limitation. Configuring the card via an on-board interface might be too much for to ask for such a compact device. The card also requires users to set up for an account with the eye-fi service. This is used to upload images temporarily to their web-service, as well as for pairing different devices with the card. This web-service keeps photos online for seven days (it can also be disabled), where they can be shared and downloaded. Long-term storage in eye-fi's system costs $49.99 a year and includes unlimited storage – that isn't a bad deal for a cloud backup of every image taken with a camera! In addition to eye-fi's service, users may also set the card to upload images to a variety of web sharing sites – including Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa.

My one issue with the eye-fi mobile apps is the location data obtained by GPS doesn't seem to be applied to the pictures. I noticed this on the desktop manager as well, pictures would appear in the manager and it would take a bit for the location data to be applied. This is because the geotagging seems to be accomplished on eye-fi's servers, but I do hope the ability to have the geotagging data applied to the photos comes to the mobile apps soon. It is, after all, one of the reasons I purchased the more expensive card. Also, the lack if geotagging data on the photos imported to iOS makes Photostream less useful – it seems to get the location data images have to be passed through the desktop software, or downloaded from eye-fi's web-site. This is kind of a bummer. If the eye-fi app can't apply the geotagging data to my images I'd almost rather it not add them to Photostream. I could simply automatically upload my images to the Mac when I returned to it. That way all the data would be attached to my photos, and I wouldn't end up with multiple copies of the same image. I can turn on the automatic upload, but keeping eye-fi images off Photostream isn't something I've figured out yet. I could turn Photostream off completely, but it's an essential part of my iPhone workflow at this point.

Despite this hiccup, I am quite pleased with the card thus far. If you use a DSLR and have been looking for a way to avoid wires when transferring you images, this is a stellar solution.

 

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Come, ye sinner, poor and needy

Posted on February 15, 2013 | Leave a comment

One of my favorite hymns is Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.  I sometimes get some flak for selecting it because people see it as a “downer,” but I’ll take this hymn over 90% of the praise music we sing.  It also ranks up there with some of the great theological hymns of the faith like A mighty fortress and How firm a foundation in terms of my fondness for it.  The hymn is a stark reminder we are sinners and must trust in the bounty of God in order to be relieved of our burden.  In the refrain worshippers get to declare, “I will arise and go to Jesus, He will embrace me in his arms.”  There is something absolutely beautiful about being reminded of sinners running to the savior, instead of away – and also with re-inserting ourselves into the place of “sinner,” which we too easily forget as we become “respectable.”

I often like to look at older versions of my favorite hymns, in order to see what verses have been dropped out, or what language may have been changed over the years or through translation.  Oddly enough, I’d never done this for Come, ye sinners, poor and needy until this morning. I found two verses which our hymnal doesn’t contain, the first of which strikes my heart to the core.

View Him prostrate in the garden;
On the ground your Maker lies;
On the bloody tree behold Him;
Sinner, will this not suffice?

In those words I can hear the voice of God.  Too often we treat grace like a cheap commodity.  We “get saved” like we’re subscribing for a magazine subscription.  I think folks who are outside the faith take notice of how cheaply we treat grace, and how quickly we forgive our own sins while condemning others, and come to the conclusion the faith is of little actually worth in our hearts and in the world. In the above verse I hear the voice of God reminding us of how precious the price was which purchased us from sin and death. God speaks, “Sinner, will this not suffice to release you from brokenness, pain, and despair?  Will this not suffice to  quench your thirst for righteousness and your longing for love?”  And in response to that glorious question worshippers are privileged to respond, “I will arise and go to Jesus, He will embrace me in his arms.”

How beautiful.

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An introvert’s ideal season – Lent

Posted on February 13, 2013 | 3 Comments

Lent has come and I’m quite glad for it’s arrival.  Over the years I’ve come to appreciate Lent more and more.  It’s given me the opportunity to add disciplines to my spiritual life, set aside some good things in order to do other good things, and Journey with Christ on the way to the Cross.  Lent has become, for me,  a time of growth and renewal in a way no other season in the Christian year quite matches.  Don’t get me wrong, I adore the celebration of the Easter season and the awe of Christmas – but as Lent begins I find myself taking permission to breathe.  It’s a beautiful time.

I have noticed as I get older my introverted tendencies are becoming more pronounced.  Crowds feel more draining, and busyness more oppressive.  I still need to be in a crowd, lest I end up imploding on myself and becoming a recluse.  I also still need to experience busyness, because it stretches me in ways I wouldn’t naturally tend to bend (figuratively speaking).  Lent, though, is like an introvert’s dream season – an entire season which consists of largely holy introspection, and contemplative service.  How many times during the year, either inside or outside the Church, do we say, “Hey, let’s do less and instead go deep?” It’s that permission to slow and reflect which makes me embrace the season of Lent so openly.

This year, I wrote a devotional for Central Baptist.  This is going to be my added discipline for the season.  I will be committing to do pursue this devotional at night before bed, when I’m typically catching up on news or puttering around on social networks (which I’ll be not accessing even the evening during Lent – though I need to explore how to turn off those notifications in Android).  I’m also committing to keep the devotional journal in hand-written form (on my iPad – not even Lent will cause me to love writing on paper).  Why hand-written?  For the simple reason that it takes more time for me to write out my thoughts by hand.  I can type out paragraph after paragraph without thinking, but writing my thoughts it is much different experience.

I would also like to add back in some exercise (a discipline I’d like to continue through the year following Lent).  I went through Couch to 5k last year, and it went well – but allergy season hit me hard and I couldn’t keep up with running (which, try as I might, I simply don’t enjoy).  I’m considering spending lunchtime on Monday, Wednesday, Friday exercising instead of eating a meal (yes, I’ve already missed today, I didn’t plan ahead enough).  Either way putting my body to work will make me a better servant, so it’s a good discipline to keep up.

Welcome to Lent, read my blog less.

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