Archive for February, 2009

With this horrendous weather we’re having in California, I realized that my simple “stick the camera in a plastic bag” solution wasn’t going to address the problem of rain getting on the lens and mucking up the photos of the race tomorrow. I figured a hood might be my best bet, but after checking out the only camera shop I could find that was open on a Sunday, I was out of luck. They had a hood for my lens, but it was $40 and was an off-brand accessory. I set about trying to think up what sort of improvised hood I could come up with, when Joey’s friend Andrew stumbled upon the answer: red drinking cups usually synonymous with alcohol consumption!

Rather than using a bag for the camera, I rigged up the hoods for both lenses and decided to attach and tape a bag to each lens to make sure there will be no leakage between the hood and the bag. Now I just need to run to the store and get another bag for the second lens. That way I’ll have both lenses as options tomorrow.

Friday night: Cooking dinner

Saturday afternoon: The new camper has arrived.

Sunday morning: flew on the Oregon themed plane.

Sunday mid-day: Arrival in San Francisco

Sunday afternoon: Mac party

Sunday afternoon: raining cats and dogs

Sunday afternoon: still raining

One of my regular assignments from my aunt and uncle has been pruning trees on their property. At this point, after 8-10 trees, I’d consider myself a near-expert. So yesterday and today I decided to tackle the big tree. Here’s the pile I ended up with:

And the highest branches aren’t even cut yet.

Today’s weather was similar to what’s forecasted for the Bay Area next Monday, so I spent some time adjusting camera settings and taking some test shots panning on cars going by. I’m sure I weirded out a few passing motorists by taking pictures of them. Don’t worry motorists, I didn’t actually want your photo.

It looks like at ISO 400-800 I can get away with 1/125th of a second for objects moving under 20MPH and 1/200-320th for approximately 30MPH. It creates a nice minor action blur while maintaining clarity. As far as zoom, the 70-300mm lens is only useful if I’m at least 30-40 feet away. Any less than that and the 18-55 is my only viable choice. Wondering what on earth I’m talking about? The Tour of California next week, of course!

It started as an idea planted in my head a mere four days ago (thanks Mike!) – the Tour of California is coming up, you’re unemployed and free to travel, and California isn’t that far away…

That in combination with hearing of recruiters at the finish line of stage 2 got me at least considering the possibility of finding my way down there.

Talking with Joey the other day really solidified the idea, and I decided I wanted to go.

I set about looking for transportation options, but after no rideshare options appeared and train/greyhound options took the better part of a day each way for absurd prices upwards of $200, I was about ready to write it off. Until I checked airline prices, that is. Kayak.com is a great resource, just so you know. Round-trip flight to Oakland for $170 with an hour and a half travel time. Now we’re talking.

That price sounded just about right, and it sounded even better after I calculated my tax refund (read: not being claimed by anyone else as a dependent makes a HUGE difference when you don’t make much money). I booked the flight leaving early on the 15th and returning late on the 17th and will be crashing on Joey’s very familiar couch.

So then I set about viewing options… and the best I came up with was hopping the BART to the Daly City stop and walking a couple miles to the beachfront highway the race goes by.

It’s a decent viewing spot with a slight grade that would be considered a hill if it weren’t for the fact that we’re talking about professional cyclists. 3% won’t be enough to slow them down. I decided I really wouldn’t be doing myself justice.

I started looking into car rental options, but quickly became frustrated as renting a car while until age 25 is far too expensive. Then I found another option: rent-a-wreck. Not a nice rental car by any means, but cheap, and only a $5/day under 25 charge. As long as it can manage to drive 150 miles or so, we’re good.

So now I’m in the process of planning my viewpoints during the race. I think I’m going to try to make two different stops – one at approximately mile 52 at the top of the biggest climb of the day, and then head to the finish line in Santa Cruz. Now I just need to double-check road closures and where to find parking.

And of course, I’m bringing my camera. I need to get some practice getting clear shots of fast-moving objects in the next week. And as much as I’d like to be able to shoot in RAW, I think I’m going to have to go back to Jpeg for the race due to the massive number of pictures I’ll be taking within only a minute or two. The buffer just can’t handle more than 6-7 RAW+Jpeg shots in a 15 second period. I’ll likely be taking upwards of 100 in a two-minute period. I’ll just need to make sure I’ve got the camera set perfectly before the race gets there. Let’s hope there’s a break off the front up the hill.

Here’s a link to the full course profile

Exciting times. More to come!

So if you checked out the blog between Friday and now, you will have hopefully seen my new website. As is the case with everything in the times of modern technology, that website was already far too obsolete as of oh… this morning. Here’s what it looked like:

And this:

And this:

Not bad, right? Right – for a fourth grader with a mouth full of cookie dough ice cream!

So I spent a good number of hours this afternoon whipping something new up, and I’m pretty pleased with what I whupped. I’d take it a bit further if I had access to flash and some other fancy web programs, but as it it’ll do.

So once again, check out www.adamedgerton.com (that’s right, my own domain!) to see it.

If for some reason you see the old page, you probably need to clear out your cache. That or type in www.adamedgerton.com/index.html.

Hey look, my very own webpage!

Or at least the start of one. It’s got a little ways to go.

Today was one of those days that was really productive, but with not much to show for it. I spent all day building an greater online job-hunting presence, which included:

-Creating a business card and profile at BusinessCard2

-Creating an online CV at VisualCV and submitting it to various companies through the site

-Creating a profile on JobFox

-Reading strategies on personal branding and online social resume formats

This, in addition to the normal job hunting routine which includes:

-Checking Linkedin job listings
-Checking Craigslist jobs for a bunch of different metro areas
-Doing a bunch of different job term searches on indeed.com
-Checking the sites of 15-20 local companies that I’d like to work for in search of new job listings
-Looking at several different outdoor industry job sites
-Searching through my ever-increasing list of nationwide companies I’d like to work at for new job listings
-ideally finding maybe one (2-3 if I’m lucky) jobs to apply for

Throw in catching up on the news, social media websites, and online ad/marketing publications and my day is pretty much full.

Both ads.

First, my vote for most entertaining ad of the Super Bowl. Not necessarily the most memorable, or the funniest, but an amazing job of creating personality for two anonymous subjects. The fun party atmosphere and total aloofness of the commercial had me laughing and and wanting to go joyriding with them on the moon. Too bad their ride got jacked. Check it out.

Bridgestone Joyride

The other is unrelated, but is a great ad from Heineken that I saw the other day.

Walk-in closet

And wasn’t the game today great? It’s too bad the last 20 seconds ended up somewhat anticlimactic.