What would you do with two extra seconds?

Before going out the door in the morning, do you ever think "Boy, I sure spend a lot of time tying my shoe laces. I could be doing so many other things right now!" Umm, OK. Me neither. But since most of us can't bear to wear velcro, there is another way. Check this video out on Rocketboom.com. (Quicktime player required)

Wedding photography for fun and profit?

Well, the wedding season is in full swing with the bridal hordes flocking to the altar in massive numbers. I've been privileged to attend a few weddings this year and I'm happy for all of my friends who tied the knot. It's indeed a joyful time. Now I've been experimenting with wedding photography this year and I've learned quite a few things. I felt I should share them with my regular readers (the both of you).

1. Being successful with a wedding shoot requires complete competance with photographic technique, equipment, and most of all, people skills. That means I'll never do wedding photography as a full time job, since I'm rather lacking in these skills - especially those involving fellow human beings. "Hey you, in the white dress! Move over there! Now smile, and look happy!"


2. You need to pick out a good location beforehand. For instance, Parliament Hill in 35 degree weather during a protest march is a good example of bad location. So is a park infested with mosquitos.


3. Poses are very important during formal shots. Watch out for wierd hand positioning and 'unbalanced' placement of subjects. Be careful to avoid situations where a tree in the background appears to stick out of the grooms head. Most of all, be very, very careful when the bride wears a strapless dress. They look very nice, but when the bride is posed behind a bush or a low wall, only the shoulders and head will be visible. This in turn makes it look like she's wearing nothing. Unless the bride is an exhibitionist, she won't be pleased.


4. Techie tip: If you're using a DSLR, shoot RAW. During the fast-pace of weddings, I guarantee that YOU WILL SCREW UP. There will be times that you will mess up the metering mode or the exposure compensation. Or you may have set the wrong ISO. Or even worse, you left your camera at the wrong white balance setting. In these cases, RAW can save your butt. It's hard to recover from these mistakes when shooting JPEG, especially white balance errors, but RAW allows you to easily correct these mistakes. RAW files are big, so you'll need lots of memory card capacity. Don't have 2 Gigs? Well, beg, steal or borrow more cards. You'll be glad you did.


5. Storing wedding photos on cheap CD-Rs is not a good idea. Wedding photos are supposed to be memories that last a lifetime. CD-Rs only last for 2-5 years. If there are any pictures you want to keep, PRINT THEM OUT. I don't mean on a photo printer either, but at your favourite film processing lab. Those prints will last for decades. CD-Rs won't.

This isn't an exhaustive list, but it's the best I can do at 12 midnight! Feel free to suggest more tips.

Fight AIDS and Malaria at home

Some of you may have heard of SETI@Home, a project that puts together the computing power of thousands of computer to help compute the signals from the SETI program. The SETI program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) utilized the screensavers of thousands of computers to create a virtual super computer. This type of technology is now being used for some worthy humanitarian purposes. Sure beats looking for little green men! :)

World Community Grid
This is an effort by IBM to create the world's largest computing grid, and is used to design new HIV drugs based on molecular structure on the Fight AIDS@Home project. It has also been used to predict the shape of human proteins for the Human Proteome Project. I've been running this on my home computer for about a year.

Africa@Home
This is a new grid computing project aimed at humanitarian causes in Africa. It was just released to the public this week, and the first project is to tackle malaria. They are trying to involve African students and university to develop and run these projects. Using normal methods, it would take 40 years to complete the required calculations. With grid computing, this can be completed within a few months. I'll be installing this on my home computer shortly.

For those who are curious about using massive computing grids to solve humanitarian problems, I encourage you to take a look at these projects and participate.

[Great news: The World Community Grid is starting to tackle a cancer project too!]

Viva Portu... Oh, never mind.

After being pre-occupied with the World Cup throughout the past few weeks, I can actually go back to Real Lifetm . Much to my chagrin, my two teams, Portugal and England, were soundly eliminated. My hats off to Portugal on a successful run; they did much better than I expected. On the other hand, my jeers and boos to England for their lackluster performance and the poor behaviour of Rooney.

Now with that out of my system, next up, Euro 2008!

Perhaps I set my expectations too low...

Well, after running a Canada Day 5k, it's time to train some more. I really need to improve my running times. My time was 28:46 and I managed to beat my goal of running under 29 minutes. So you'd think I'd be satisfied.
Errr... perhaps I should have set my goals a bit higher. I realized this while being passed by a mom pushing a baby carriage. With twins. Oh yeah, and the fact that I was 24th out of 25 in the 30-39 age category was a pointed reminder that I've got a ways to go. Alright - time to hit the trails again and prepare for the September races!

All that Jazz

I'm back from attending the Montreal Jazz Festival. This is the third or forth time I've attended and I've always enjoyed it. I strongly recommend it, even if you're not all that familiar with jazz music. The breadth of styles is vast in Jazz, and Montreal does a fantastic job showcasing everything.

I managed to catch a Molly Johnson concert at Club Soda, and I was very impressed. I was introduced to her music not too long ago, and it was a real treat to see her live. For those who like female vocal Jazz, and who want to support Canadian talent, check out her CDs.