Monthly Archives: March 2005

general ramblings, photographic, today's new thing, toys

productive day

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today was quite the productive day. so many things have just been thrown by the wayside lately and many things have been piling up to do. this morning i finally went to home depot to pick up some things to build out the storage gear for my lighting equipment. paul has been pondering about what equipment to get and that finally prompted me to finalize on what i wanted to do about my lighting gear.

you see, transporting my lighting gear has always been a bit of a hassle. the lighting stands i have are too tall to fit in my backpacking backpack and it is not big enough to carry the stands, my umbrellas, flashes, and other such nonesense. so i’ve been looking around trying to find a bag big enough to hold everything i have. this actually is harder than it seems.

i did find a golf bag cover for $10 at sportsmart, but the prospect of having to lug all of that heavy gear on my shoulder scared me, regardless of how cheap the bag was.

i did contemplate briefly making my own bag, but i’m not so nimble with cloth-like materials. i am, however, reasonably decent with PVC pipes.

my original idea was to build canisters out of PVC pipes that will hold my lighting stands and umbrellas. it turns out, however, that i would have needed a 5″ PVC pipe to hold the lighting stands and those pipes start to get pretty heavy and thick. so i opted not to make canisters for the lighting stands and just let them be in the cardboard boxes that they came in.

now, my umbrellas are a different story. they came in a cheap flimsy soft plastic shell and it offers no protection at all. i wanted to get 2.5″ PVC pipes for this, but home depot didn’t have it. (i doubt that they even make any of this size, actually, in home depot’s defense. the 3″ PVC pipes just looked HUGE though and a little too heavy to really make it worthwhile, so i crossed my fingers and bought 2″ pipes and caps.

i got home, measured the pipes, cut them, and cemented one of the caps on each and let them set. now i’ve got two containers that the umbrellas *JUST BARELY* fit into.

next was finding the bag. i went to sportsmart to check out their duffle bag selection. most of the duffle bags were just too small and couldn’t fit the 36″ light stands. i was disheartened and about to go home when i spied a wheeled duffle made by alpine design. they are probably some generic brand nobody has heard of, but they offer everything that i could want in a duffle bag. reinforced bottom, wheeled base, and an extending handle so you can comfortable roll the duffle bag anywhere you need to. it is GREAT. and it fell in my budget. (i had sworn that i would not pay the outlandish costs of specialized bags made to hold lighting gear that start at around $80. that’s ridiculous! it’s just a bag, people.

AND the wheeled duffle has this extra compartment on the top that is separate from the rest of the duffle bag. it UNZIPS from the duffle bag to become a separate backpack! how cool is that?!

so this bag now carries everything i need to become a portable studio: 2 light stands, 2 umbrellas, 2 flash brackets, my tripod, 2 reflectors, 2 optical slaves, 2 slave flashes, and enough batteries to light up a christmas tree.

so this is what i ended up with:

[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8344.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8347.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8348.jpg]

[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8353.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8355.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8354.jpg]

[imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8357.jpg] [imgthumb=/images/2005/0312/IMG_8359.jpg]

entertainment

dr. who

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i cannot believe that dr. who is being start up again. i was never a real big fan of the show growing up, but i watched the series premiere and i have to say that it is actually quite good. i never really apprecitated the british humour but it’s actually quite good. i’m looking forward to watching more episodes.

i also like how everyone has an english accent in the show…because, you know, it’s a british show. =P

ponderings

a night out

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diana convinced me to go out bar hopping with some of the vball crew. i was pretty reluctant because it’s thursday and i just am not in the mood. but we went bar hopping throughout san jose’s bars…who knew that there was such an active nightlife here in san jose?

we went to club deep, blue monkey, and the vault. i had all my drinks at deep, and tonight was probably more than i usually drink. am i drinking my sorrows away? i don’t know.

a part of me felt good about getting out instead of sulking at home, but while i was out and about, my thoughts drifted and there were pangs of sadness felt throughout the night. maybe it’s too soon for me to be going out. i did have a few laughs and the company was great, but there was still a part of me that just didn’t feel right. i guess i had to find out if this was the time for me or not.

i think that i’ll probably spend a few more quiet nights by myself though. there’s still some stuff that i just need to sort out before i think i can really let myself go.

rants, techie

last complaint, i swear

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sometimes i have a love/hate relationship with technology. for the most part, i do love technology. from computers, the internet, tivo, and just about anything else you can plug in, it’s cool. but every so often i do have this hate relationship with it too.

lately, it’s been pretty painful because of the server issues i’ve been having. i was debating between redhat or slackware for my linux distribution. i’ve always sort of liked slackware for my servers, but i decided to give redhat a try. but man…redhat has really screwed up their distribution, in my opinion. i don’t really agree with a lot of their default configurations and i’ve actually basically recompiled most of my apps on that box to get it to work the way i want it to.

the BIGGEST pain has been perl. i had decided that you can’t really mess up perl so i installed the package that came with the distribution. then i started to install all the various modules that i use only to find out that something doesn’t work right. now, ordinarily, i wouldn’t care, but it turns out that moveable type (and the two users on my box that use it) needs this feature. so i recompiled perl and all the modules i use tonight just to get things back to working order.

blah.

anyhow, the next server i set up is probably going to be back to slackware. it isn’t as fancy as redhat, but at least i know what i’m getting with it.

ponderings

is it fate?

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as i was going home today, i started taking detours because traffic was pretty heavy. i was pretty low on gas and i had to make a bit of an emergency stop at this random gas station. as i was filling up, i was getting pretty hungry and i spied this mexican restaurant and i decided to check it out.

as i pulled into the parking lot i saw something that surprised me. a q-cup! it had just opened up and it is only a mile and a half from my home!

i think it was fated for me to find it today.

speaking of fate, i was just thinking that i needed to get some blank DVDs and i came across this deal at compusa for a spool of 100 blank DVDs for $20. i bought two spindles and just tested them out and it burned fine.

just when i had started to give up on fate, just when i thought that there really wasn’t any kind of sense of order or anything, something like this happens to remind me that maybe, just maybe, all is not lost.

or maybe i’m just reading too much into things.

either way, i got my pearl tea fix for today.

ponderings

should i stay or should i go?

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i’ve been trying to figure out whether or not to go to a friend’s get together later tonight. i haven’t really been in the much of a mood to go out these days, and i feel like i’ve been forcing myselt to not hole up in the apartment and just let the hours go by. i’m reluctant to go out though for a few reasons:

1) it’s thursday, so if i get trashed tonight, going to work tomorrow is going to be very unpleasant.
2) i don’t really know anyone who is going to be going to this thing except the guy who is throwing it.
3) i don’t know if i can really be in that kind of a friendly mood to go and talk to people and hang out. i…just…don’t…know.

a big part of me doesn’t want to go. a small part of me knows that if i go, it is a step in the right direction. i can’t just hole myself up forever and let the world pass by, no matter how much i want it to. today was supposed to be poker night, but i just am in no shape to entertain. maybe that should be reason enough not to go tonight.

maybe all i really need is some more dawson’s creek. right now andie and pacey have just started their courtship. andie found out that pacey isn’t as pure as he let on.

i remember a long time ago, i had told my girlfriend at the time that i was not really as pure as she had thought. it devastated her. for a long while i wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to weather through it. these days, i think about it and i just remember how easy it used to be. how innocent and naive relationships used to be. it just seemed so easy for everything to just work out.

whatever happened to that cheery optimism that i once had? reality, i guess…

general ramblings, techie

pMachine to MT, MT to WP

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after a comment was left by a visitor, i decided to check out the pMachine to moveable type import script. it looked pretty straightforward and i quickly got my entries from pMachine to MT.

then wordpress has a MT ==> WP import feature, so i used that to get all my old entries back into the blog. man, talk about going through hoops.

unfortunately, i had pMachine rewrite my links to its internal format, and so all of my links had this weird notation in it. wordpress’ impressive plugin feature saved the day and with some headscratching and some regular expression work, everything seems to have come out for the better! i’m really digging wordpress now, the possibilities seem endless now, and i’ve now written my second plugin for wordpress. pretty easy, actually.

general ramblings

weak

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i’m weak. i can’t help it. i went to krispy kreme today with the full intention of getting a dozen donuts, but somehow i managed to leave the store with 2 dozen.

there’s the daily double dozen special where you can get 2 dozen donuts for a mere $12. how weak am i?

the sad part is that i’ve only eaten 2 donuts today. what am i going to do with all of these donuts??