The Cynic Gazette

I’m in the middle of a programmer’s paradigm shift that, frankly, most of the Windows development world took 7 years ago. I’m switching from Classic ASP to ASP.NET.

This of course has me searching for books on learning ASP.NET, a programming language is like a foreign film to me. I can figure out what’s going on, and know who the main character is, and more or less what they’re trying to accomplish. But I can’t tell if he’s whispering sweet nothings to his lover, or asking his sister to bring over some 10W-30 for a quick oil change. In a nutshell, I get it, but not really.

Luckily, I found an eBook on Amazon for sale which describes in just under 40 pages what the big deal is about ASP.NET, how it’s different, and why I should care.

However, herein lies the dilemma: I don’t like slowly working my way through a PDF on my laptop in bed, and I sure am not bringing it into the bathroom with me. So, I turn to my favorite eBook reader as the best solution at hand … my iPhone.

I’ve read books on my iPhone before, but a PDF… this is new territory. So I googled my way to a few solutions to see how the people who write about things get on reading other things when they’re PDFs, on an iPhone.

Jailbreak/SSH/install PDFViewer app
Too much work. I’m looking for an easy solution and the inherent problem with jailbreaking your phone is that every time you upgrade the firmware, you have to reinstall ALL of your apps. Lame. And I don’t want to have to use SSH to zip files to my phone. I want to just have the damn thing be available, and not lose EVERYTHING just because a firmware update came out. Which leads us to our next solution…

E-mail myself the PDF in an attachment
This seems like it would be easy-cheesy-1-2-threesy, but now my PDF’s only available in portrait mode. Great if you want to swipe left-to-right, up-and-down, and work your index finger harder then that day in 6th grade when you thought nobody was looking and you just wanted to breather a little easier. NEXT.

Google Documents
I can’t believe I didn’t come up with this one right out of the gate. Upload your file to Google documents, and view it in glorious landscape mode in Safari. Done and done. It’s free, and you can even e-mail Google Docs the PDF/DOC/RTF/XLS/whatever if someone sends it to you. Oh, exuberance. Oh, exquisite WIN.

I’m off to read my ASP to ASP.NET pdf now, instead of just writing about how I’m going to read it. Hopefully, this will keep my nerdy appetite sated until my Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 with C# book arrives on Friday.

Joisey Mike Technology, The Internets asp.net, ebooks, iphone, pdf, programming

The fellas at the This Week in Photography blog posted an excellent entry about the 7 P’s, which I feel so strongly about, I’m going to bold-type: Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

When you go out to get a photograph, there are two ways you can set out. Prepared and unprepared. When I was in Basic Combat Training (Basic for short) I heard all about the “7Ps.” At the time, I thought it was just my instructors being, well – you know….difficult.

Full entry at TWIPPhoto.com.

This was illustrated in a most exquisite photography FAIL of mine at my fiancee’s MBA graduation.

Accomplished Checklist:

• Camera battery fully charged
• Flash batteries fully charged
• Perfect framing, focus and light settings from where I was sitting.

Things that should have been added:

• Knowing she would be graduating from the management college instead of the business college like I’d assumed. 10 seconds of research in the graduation pamphlet would have told me this.
• Paying attention when the correct college for her graduation was called to the stage so that I would have noticed she was the second person in line, and not in alphabetical order.
• Leaving the flash and camera ON so I could wake it from sleep mode and get the shot, instead of fumbling through “OMG WHY WONT ANYTHING WORK?!”
• Zooming out first (70-300mm lens) so I could find her quickly on stage and zoom in to quickly frame, instead of trying to find her with a super-zoomed-in 1-person-at-a-time frame.

So yeah, lack of proper prior preparation resulted in piss poor performance. I missed the shot which would have looked great framed next to her diploma. For me, heartbreaking; for her (luckily) a funny story of what a camera geek I am.

And to think, before all of this I was kicking myself for not bringing my Canon 70-200 f2.8L because I thought I’d need the extra reach of the crap Quantaray 70-300. Everyone’s said it a million times, the best gear in the world doesn’t matter when you miss the shot.

Lesson = learned!

Joisey Mike Photography FAIL, Photography

[Cross-posted to the Shangri-La Diet forum]

I’m another half-pound down today! Hopefully by Tuesday (end of week 2) I’ll turn that into a full one, or one and a half. 

I’m starting to think that my initial weigh-in might have been high from eating a big dinner the night before, being really really hydrated, the planets lining up and screwing with the gravity on my 2nd floor, or any other reason. Well, whatever. It make my total  weight loss higher, and I think that’s important.

When I lost a bunch of weight before (Atkins + exercise), I learned that there’s an event horizon where you cross that certain line on the scale–or the right pair of pants fits, or the stairs in the parking garage don’t make your pulse go up–that something almost magic happens. You get to the point that on your super low motivation days, keeping your weight loss total you’re so proud of is your only motivation.

We all have those days from time to time, some more than others, some almost never, when you’re depressed, you’re thinking “oh what’s the point… I have to fight so hard just to weigh this much. I shouldn’t HAVE to work this hard to look the way I want. I’m so mad at my body for not processing food the way Tom in accounting’s does. I just want some pizza and ice cream because that will at least make me happy.”

On those days, the only thing that keeps you out of the freezer case at Safeway is thinking to yourself, “but I lost 35 lbs. on the last 5 months… if I quit, I ruin all of that, and I’ll be so mad that I don’t have what I have now. I’ll move my next scheduled cheating day 2 weeks closer, but I can’t quit.”

At least that how it worked for me. I’ve bounced around the scale a lot in the last few years, bouncing my way up to 295, losing 10 here, gaining it back there, and so on because “It’s only 10 lbs in 3 weeks. I’ll do lines of mashed potato and gorge on mozzarella sticks, and to hell with it, it’s only 3 WEEKS. I can re-do that any time.”

Momentum does the rest after your cross that event horizon. It’s like pushing a broken down car down the street and out of harm’s way. Pain on the butt getting it moving! But once it’s moving, you can keep it going by pushing lightly on it. People don’t usually quit halfway to a big goal, they quit when the progress doesn’t come fast enough, when they can’t handle that initial push that gets the ball rolling. I don’t care if you’re dieting or quitting smoking; that opportunity cost of quitting has to build up to allow you to relax and get cozy with your diet.

So I don’t really have to fight my ass off to lose 85 lbs. I just need to fight my ass off about 15-20 lbs, or maybe 2 months. Then I’ll cross MY event horizon, the momentum will kick in, and then I just have to lightly push to make those pounds go away; it’s less of a bare-knuckled-boxing-against-godzilla, and more of a flicking-a-bug-off-my-arm.

Oh, and Tom in accounting? He’s thin because he has such severe IBS that you can hear him crying from outside the bathroom. Glad I’m not him.

Joisey Mike 4th Wall Dieting, momentum, shangri-la diet

A couple of pretty good shows are coming up in January and February, and I’m doing what I can to try to get photo passes into ‘em. So far I’ve generally not needed them since the Ottobar and Sonar have pretty non-existent photo policies, but a few are coming up at Ram’s Head Live and Ram’s Head OnStage, and they’re a bit stricter. I’ll record how the attempts fare as time moves on.

Requested Passes:

• The Pietasters – 1/30 @ Ram’s Head Live
• Johnathan Coulton – 2/21 @ Ram’s Head OnStage
• Cynic – 2/20 @ The Recher Theater

I’m crossing my fingers; my show shooting so far has been pretty well received, so I’m hoping any of them pan out. They’re one step closer to trying to get backed by a media outlet (mags, radio) to shoot freelance and use their name (which gives more access).

And for the hell of it, here are a few shots from the Pietasters a year ago at the 8×10 Club in Federal Hill.

Joisey Mike Photography concert, music, Photography

Busy, busy, busy, Bokonon would say.

That’s been me. The last three months have been a landslide of activity, and I’m starting to remember that I used to have things I liked to do which beyond watching Heroes while Meg and I had a quick dinner before delving back into wedding planning, or running upstairs to my office to do some freelance work while trying to remind myself that I didn’t just do this for 9 hours before driving home.

I’m remembering that before all of this I used to blast through a book in a few week nights, I would use my camera instead of just buying equipment for it, and I would create for the sake of creation.

So, the short version is lately it’s all work and no play; but that’s ending soon. I’m close to finishing a freelance contract, and I’ve decided not to take on any more clients for a while, to try to tweak the work-life balance a little more in my favor. 

I have a few plans for this blog (yes, they all involve actually using it) once life slows down a little:

• Coverage of photo projects, like shooting shows, and out upcoming new car shoot
• SEO case studies of web sites (as requested)
• Actually, I don’t know, making a custom design for the blog
• More skeptical rants! Surprisingly, my homeopathic birth control post got a lot of traffic
• My try-every-diet-until-one-works project (currently on the Shangri-La Diet)

Joisey Mike 4th Wall Bokononism, goals, personal time