Photo Milestones
I put cameras through their paces. My last camera, a Sony DSC-H1 12x superzoom, has taken well over 23,000 pictures in the last two years or so that I've owned it. I made the jump to a Canon DSLR about six months ago, and my EOS 40D has now served up 6,400 images of its own. Even my iPhone has taken 305 pictures during its last year of service. In all, iPhoto catalogues 43,715 photos and 276 movies for me.
I was talking to a friend who spent years as a film photographer and he remarked what a milestone it was to pass 5,000 photos on a camera back in the film era. It is amazing to think just how different things are now. I have a jar of old film that never was developed because of the cost of developing 35mm or APS film (especially the latter). Now, it hardly costs anything to take pictures. I've been taking most of my shots as of late in Raw so that I can submit them to a stock photography seller who said he would try to sell them for me. Assuming my camera lasts just 100,000 shutter cycles with me saving every image in an approximately 10mb Raw file that is then stored on my primary hard disk and an external backup drive (courtesy of Time Machine), I figured the total cost of taking and storing photos comes out to just over a penny a shot. That's with the photos backed up even! Remember how much double prints used to cost?
A penny per shot, camera wear and tear included, and almost all of that very small cost is from the cost of storing the photos. What a marvelous era it is to be a shutterbug!
Requiem to Sharper Image
The Sharper Image is dead, it seems. That's too bad. For all the bad press they have gotten, I rather liked them.
An example is worth recalling. A few years ago, I received as a gift a little iPod speaker dock that performed a light show to the music. Shortly thereafter, I misplaced the AC adapter and after months of searching, gave up and wrote the Sharper Image's customer service, asking if they sold replacement parts. They informed me that they could not sell the AC adapter to me — but they'd send me one for free. And they did; rather quickly even, as I recall. They even apologized that I had lost my adapter!
The Sharper Image always had some interesting gadget for sale. I'll miss that. Alas, poor Sharper Image, I did not know thee well enough.
Focus! Must focus!
It's a nice, peaceful rainy night. I'd really like to be reading — indeed I was while the Internet was down earlier (courtesy of the storm, I suppose). The problem is that I have a bunch of exams to grade that are in an online testing program, and they need to be done by June 1. My mind does not want to focus on these short answer exams at all tonight, but I must keep trucking along.
A few more for tonight, at least. Otherwise tomorrow will be painful…
Back from the Ozarks
Well, I went down to the Ozarks with my family and we had really perfect weather, particularly as compared with today — a day which consisted of at least three different thunderstorms, two of which produced hail. The weather, as I said was great, and it was just delightful to be on Table Rock Lake again. I gave my camera a work out taking nearly 2,000 photos. I haven't been able to download them yet, however, because my hard drive is rather full and I don't want to push it to the max. So, I have taken to cleaning my drive at the moment. We'll see if I can scrounge up some space.
Over
Well, I have been quiet on here for weeks as I tried to survive the ever crazier scheduling of the semester, but as of Wednesday, I turned in my final project, a paper entitled “May Good Win Out in Glory: Towards a Barthian Exegesis of Genesis 22,” which served to wrap up the semester.
I'll perhaps write more about the end of the semester soon. I do hope to return to my regular posting schedule of the past over the next few days as I decompress and catch up on everything.
Groups
This week looks really, really crazy. In part, it looks crazy because I have tons of group meetings all week for final projects. I have no less than three different group projects in motion right now! Of notable interest today is my group for Marriage and Family — we met today to film our project. We opted to do a video project, so we arranged a set and did some acting today. The project still has a way to go, but it feels good to have the video all on tape now at least.
Gas Musings
So, I was standing at the pump the other night, putting nearly forty dollars worth of gas into my little VW Bug. Next to the current cost is a little sign about how I could receive 5% cash back for my gas purchases with the Shell MasterCard. I've noticed Conoco-Phillips has a similar ad on their pumps as well. Admittedly, as prices go up, such an offer sounds enticing, and not necessarily a bad idea, given that I was already paying at the pump with my (non-rewards) credit card.
The problem with this card, like most rewards cards — at least the ones that actually offer decent rewards for something other than air travel — is that they are typically tied to one retailer. I am not a particularly loyal gas purchaser, so a card that offers a 5% rebate at Shell does me little good when I'm at Phillips 66. And vise versa.
I have no particular conclusion to draw from this, mind you. That was just my thought process as the gallons rolled in and the dollars rolled up.
But, I did come to one conclusion. Gas prices are not high enough. The pump was having trouble, so after I pulled in, I had to walk inside before it would agree to start. I then filled up an almost empty tank. During this entire process, another car waited behind me for my pump, and during that entire period of time, the driver let that car idle. That's right, he burnt $3.50 gas for the better part of ten minutes, as he waited while I went inside, stood in line, talked to a clerk, went back out and filled up my car. i hope he did not proceed to complain about the price of gas when he filled up his tank.
Earthquake
I was just awakened by an earthquake. 5.4, centered in West Salem, Ill, about 130 miles from here.
Update (10:42 CDT): They downgraded it to 5.2, but we just had a fairly large, estimated 4.5, aftershock. This is the first noticeable aftershock after a series of 1.5-2.5 magnitude shocks. What a morning… They are also forecasting severe storms today
The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.—T.S. Eliot
Sometimes I think Eliot is right on this. Certainly I agree with Chaucer that April is a month of longing. I think it can be a cruel longing at times. Perhaps part of that is from my past, rather than anything intrinsic to the month. But, at any rate, I walked around the neighborhood surrounding Covenant for about thirty or forty minutes this morning taking in the spring weather. It was great. And yet, something was missing. A few years back, I walked around Lindenwood on April days much the same way, but then joined by a dear friend I have mentioned here before. The quiet seriousness of Lindenwood's gothic architecture amidst the linden trees, and we would just walk and talk — about nearly anything. This time was solo.
Thursday afternoons are my “Marriage and Family Counseling” class. It is a great class. There has been lots of practical advice on counseling, thought provoking ideas and I appreciate Dr. Zink's humor and anecdotes. It is also a hard class. Not in terms of workload, but rather emotional toll. It is interesting, while discussing problems with marriage, the class has actually had the opposite impact on me you might expect. I mostly find it highlights in my mind my status as single and makes me wonder if I should ever be otherwise. Not only do we hear problems, but we hear solutions to many of those problems. The class has made me more optimistic about the prospects of a healthy marriage, and yet…
I have to say sometimes I wonder what God's will is for me. Sometimes, I wish life were like a book with nicely titled chapters. Even if you could only preview the table of contents, you could get some idea of where things were going. I do not think I would really want that, but I have to say there are some chapters it would be nice to know were only a couple chapters ahead.
Some days, at least. April days, certainly. April is the cruelest month.
Post-Modern Absolute Truth
I recently read a book on Francis Schaeffer for class. Being a thorough look at Schaeffer, it inevitably spent time on Schaeffer's critique of Barth — indeed, it expanded the attack. It also applied Schaeffer's critique of culture to argue that Postmodernism is not a friend to Christianity.
Part of Schaeffer's issue with Barth was that he believed that Barth was agreeing to isolate faith from reason — that Barth accepted Kant's division between noumena and phenomena. However, I believe the fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Schaeffer and those like him is that they do not realize how far the postmodern critique goes, and therefore assume this is a discrediting of Christianity.
Rather, leaning heavily on Spirit-authentication and witness to the Word is acceptable, because it offers more certainty within a postmodern framework than we can provide to anything else. Postmodernism critiques not just religious knowledge, but also scientific knowledge. While Barth (and Calvin) both appeal to the primacy of what we might call a subjective authentication of God's Word, this is not relegating religion to some undesirable country, but rather showing it's uniquely authoritative status. Christianity has the singular status of being authenticated by the ever elusive center to which we otherwise are forced merely to circle around. Science, while remaining worthy, is not given such a handy escape and is left to continue to fend itself off from epistemological attacks.
To me, this seems like a satisifying answer to Schaeffer's critique, but I have only started to mull this answer over the last few days. What do you think?
