Zero Light

Yashicaflex and Instamatic cameras

2011-02-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

Polaroid Land Camera Automatic 100

2011-02-15T05:09:00.000-08:00

Polaroid 100!

2011-02-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

I got my model 100 today! It's a beater but it's been refurbished and converted to the 3xAAA battery usage by option8@instantoptions.com and it works! Very cool RF folder and great to have full images on the pack film.

So far it seems indoors if there is an overhead light between me and my subject then the electric eye is confused and gives me a shorter shutter speed than required. The light must go into the eye or something. Shots, as suggested in the manual, with the light behind me turn out OK with the 3000B film. I burned through a whole 10-pack of 3000B trying things.

Then I thought I'd try electronic flash with 100C film. I heard it doesn't work but it does! In fact it works almost too well, it took a few shots to dial down the flash power so my shots weren't too bright. I don't think this camera has had an electronic flash mod but somehow my old Canon Speedlite 199A flash's manual 1/60-30s mode fires at the right time while the shutter is open so I'm very pleased.

I love family Instant pictures (we used to call them Polaroids)

2011-02-12T13:36:00.001-08:00

My wife probably doesn't want her in my blog in her pajamas but luckily few people read it ;-)

Color crops

2011-02-07T20:17:00.000-08:00

Trusty steed

2011-02-02T18:59:00.001-08:00

Stash of instant film by Fuji

2011-02-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

More instant pictures

2011-02-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

Once again I'm behind on my blog...

Another darkroom picture

2011-01-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

Not very creative, I know...

Forgot the blog again...

2011-01-21T02:49:00.000-08:00

Oops, forgot to post here again. My project has continued:

2011-01-08T04:38:00.000-08:00

The kitchen sink, day 3 of my instant picture a day project.

Making coffee... a few dishes left from last night.

Lit just by the tube above.

1/30th, f/5.6, 3200 EI on Manfrotto tripod with cable release. I could have used 1/60th f/3.8 hand held but I thought I'd use the tripod for once. I do love the indoor versatility of this FP-3000B film for that though, so fast like Ilford Delta 3200 which you can also get in 120 size if you want to use this instant film for previews and lighting checks instead of silly one a day projects like mine.

35 seconds developing before I peeled the picture out. The picture got stuck at the end in the rollers as I was pulling it out as it was against a cupboard door and it was on a tripod so there is a bit of a lighter streak in the dark strip to the right because it got more developing solution for a few seconds before I got the picture out.

2011-01-07T04:46:00.001-08:00

The Polaroid a day thing has been done a long time ago so this is nothing new but I still thought it would be fun, hopefully my ending won't be as sad:
photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/

My project will probably be a dog's breakfast of subjects so what better subject for the second day than my dog eating breakfast, which happens really fast so I had to work quickly here. I'd prefocused and metered beforehand and considered using a tripod but my dog ate at a different angle than he usually does so I was glad not to be tethered to a tripod, I usually am.

This is Fujifilm Instant Black and White FP-3000B, a 3200 ISO film so I was able to shoot hand held for 1/30th of a second at f/3.8 with my Mamiya RB67 Professional S using the standard Mamiya Sekor C 90mm f/3.8 lens.

2011-01-07T04:43:00.000-08:00

I've started an instant film picture a day project. Felt I might as well resurrect the old blog too...

I love instant film. A picture right away. Almost as fast as digital but a real picture.

I love the system medium format camera. Polaroid back, back with B&W film, back with color film, if I had $10000 I could add a digital back, change lenses, change finders, add a flash bracket grip. So versatile.

Been a long time - お久しぶりですね

2007-12-18T04:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated this blog in ages, almost a year. I'm sure no one reads it but oh well, it is more for myself anyways, a wall off which to bounce ideas. Here are some of my thoughts on Zen Bhuddism.

I'm drawn to Zen even though all people who know me will tell you that I'm a very logical person. Zen on the other hand serves to break out of logic. I find I am too logical and would like to escape from the trap a bit if I could because it is indeed something which paints one into a corner on occasion.

Zen also shows that words are just words and have no innate meaning. Aside from a few symbols which seem to be universal (if there are any) Zen says that the answer to the question of kouan of "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is not a logical one. The answer "it is the sound of air being pushed by the hand," is not wrong but it is not right either. An answer of, "it is the sound of a tree falling in the forest with no one there," is more correct as is, "the sun rising in the west." Zen is not logical and its words trascend their usual meaning. This Zen dialogue or 禅問答 (zenmondou) in Japanese also means incomprehensible dialog for to the lay person, it seems not only without logic but completely illogical and nonsensical.

In Japanese I've found cases where English cannot be translated to Japanese or vice versa. Onomatopoeic words are different for cases which should be the same. The Japanese can say "meow" but for the sound of a cat they say ニャー "nyaa" instead (which reminds me that Chewey is outside and I must let him in). Dogs say ワンワン "wan wan" instead of "woof woof" even though I know of no dog that says "wan wan". Some of this may be attributed to the phonetic differences between the languages but not all of it. It really does show that words are just symbols, not tokens that can be universally used for understanding. If they cannot be universally used then perhaps they should never be used to convey meaning. This is Zen dialogue. When it is understood along with the breaking out of dualities (limiting the world as right and wrong, you and me, true and false), out of logic, when the self is no longer seen as unique you are said to be awakened,　悟り or satori which is the purpose of Zen. Read some D.T. Suzuki if you are interested.

More basic Buddhist ideals also interest me. I've written before how things were much simpler when I was just a student in an apartment with almost no possessions. Ironically, this is a very Bhuddist way of thinking and existing. The Buddha said that all suffering comes from cravings. That even when you satisfy the cravings the satisfaction is short lived; once you have something you'll want something more. I agree with this; there is never enough money and having possessions only makes you worry about them and insure them and maintain them. Many days it does not seem worth it. The overall ideas of living without cravings, without suffering from these cravings (which are the root of all wars, though ironically the Buddhists have endorsed wars and assassinated people throughout history), of being kind to everyone, of being honest at all times, of avoiding lust and other bad qualities are all very appealing to me. Some are very much against our nature, or against mine at least so I struggle with them daily. I have hoped that Buddhism might help me with them though I may be too logical to follow through with it.

Buddhism is overall a very reasonable religion, if it even is a religion at its heart (it certainly is practiced as a religion by most of its believers). While most consider vegetarianism a part of it, if you give meat to a Buddhist monk he will eat it; he shouldn't kill it himself but that is where their philosphy on life taking ends for the most part. They believe you should not become intoxicated because it leads to bad things and limits your ability to understand the wisdom of Buddhism but they do not ban intoxicating substances outright. I enjoy my whisky so it would be hard for me to follow it if it weren't so reasonable.

Stephen Bachelor's book "Buddhism without Beliefs" (see Chapters, Amazon, et al) is very interesting to me because it gets rid of some of the initial problems I saw with Buddhism. Buddhism also includes the ideas of kharma and reincarnation which are both very Indian and found in Hinduism as well. These ideas are fairly well known, though often in a slightly perverted sense as many people in the west seem to believe in "instant kharma" while it was originally intended as a next life effect. Stephen would remove these from Buddhism saying that they are holdovers from the Indian religion where the Buddha lived and even one who is revered as being so very wise as the Buddha cannot take himself out of his time. He saw suffering in his time, much caused by India's class system and saw a way to break out of it, which was his great wisdom of the time.

I would also argue that like most 'prophets' his writings are in fact the writings of his disciples from generations after his death. Much of it may have been modified to make useful some of the standard aspects of religions which are control. By using kharma and the threat of coming back as a worm in the next world if you are evil, Buddhists are able to convey the same sense of fear as eternal hell and brimstone in Christianity and the usual consequences of other religions. Many organized Buddhist religions believe you are reborn to be a monk in the last one or two of your lives where you still have an individual self. The lay persons, landowners are able perhaps at minimum to only perform one thing to improve their kharma: the giving of alms, especially to the monks. In this way behavior was controlled to be 'good' as per the teachings and as well like other religions the dana, alms or tithe ensured that the monestary like all other churches had a source of income.

The Tibetan monks do a "black hat dance" (which is a bit odd anyways as many other monestaries ban dancing outright) which celebrates the assassination of a lord who was unkind to the monks and others. A monk hid a bow in his robes and killed him. They justified it by saying that the lord was doing more harm to his kharma alive than dead. This kind of thing reeks of the many evils done in the name of god by other religions and serves as another example as to why the idea of kharma is bad as it can be twisted in this way by one of the Buddhist sects considered the most devout of all.

If you remove kharma and reincarnation from the equation as Stephen suggests then it simplifies things quite a bit and even removes Buddhism from the realm of religions. It says you should be good just to be good, just to be unselfish and a problem I have with kharma in Buudhism is thus removed: my problem is that doing something on purpose to improve your kharma is not unselfish; it is selfish. All the stories of people cutting off their own heads to give a poor man the bounty on their head and giving away their own children to childless couples to remove the suffering of others moves from unselfish acts to very selfish ones as they hope to improve their prospects in the next life so they can move onto the perfect selfless state. If you remove this promise of the next life then basic Buddhism simply becomes a nice way of living, going beyond the standard golden rule to one in which you also have suggestions for your own wellbeing. It becomes simply a philosophy and a set of heuristics for daily life which is what most people really want from a religion anyways. A philosphy I can certainly accept as an ideal to strive for.

The Buddha was just a man and did not want to be revered as a demigod or even as a prophet and yet many Buddhist sects chant his name and most of them revere him as a god. They do blessings and weddings, neither of which are from Buddhism but which shows again that people want in a religion a set of standard things, laying out the way they should live in their society. These common themes of religions really show human needs. They need to believe in something more than a man for they themselves are men and they seemingly cannot believe in themselves alone. Nor can they believe in their own rules alone, they need to believe they come from a higher source.

Enough for today I think.

I was born with a silicon spoon in my mouth

2007-01-09T14:40:00.000-08:00

When I think about it, I was really fortunate for a child of the seventies as far as computing experiences went. My father was the Head of Computing Services at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters. My first 'computer' was a TI Silent teletype (with thermal printer) connected to a Control Data Cyber mainframe running NOS and later NOS/VE.

I've always had computers around and didn't even consider one for a career until my first year of university when I discovered that chemisty and physics were really just math once you got up to a high level. Not loving calculus, I went for the more practical math of computer science and have never looked back.

Along the way I used many of the earliest forms of networking (BITNET and USENET) and mailing (manual forwarding with the same networks) and online forums (called bulletin board systems or BBSes back then) . I've used CDC and IBM mainframes, UNIX workstations and X terminals from a wide variety of vendors, many different home and personal computers. I can remember when I was very happy to have just two floppy drives and then how ecstatic I was with a 28MB hard drive. Your average toaster or watch has more RAM these days. We've come a long way, baby, but we aren't finished yet.

Business litmus test: eating your own cooking

2006-10-03T05:06:00.000-07:00

In my experience, the test of the products a business produces in this navel gazing industry of developing software tools is whether or not the company eats its own cooking. Does a visualization company use its own tools for its employee update meetings? If not, then why not and why isn't it a critical priority item to make sure that the tools are feature rich enough to display what they need to convey and easy enough for the executives and their assistants to use in preparing their talk? Why is it easier for them to use PowerPoint?

Similarily, with software tool companies I find it questionable if a company doesn't use its own tools for development. If you have a specification tool, why aren't you using it? Why are your developers still using other tools to write them up?

If you won't use your own tools then no one else will. While good sales people can sell anything, shelfware is never good. Getting people to use the tools is the only way to ensure a long lasting product from a long lasting company.

Just the opinion of this software developer...

Third strike at writing attempts

2006-10-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

Once again my writings just haven't worked. Decent ideas -- if there's an SF paragraph writing contest, let me know... but nothing will develop properly even into a short story. Once again I wonder, does that mean it was the right thing to take a B.Sc. instead of a B.A. or would I have become a writer if I'd been an english major? Now I suppose I'll never know but I believe I chose the right track.

Golf, canoeing, fishing, rockets, Japanese

2006-10-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

Looking back that was a great summer. My oldest child is my five year old son and he's now old enough to really do stuff with him instead of just supervising him. This year we enjoyed many things I enjoyed as a child and it was great to do it more as father and son than as babysitter and child.

Like when I went fishing with my Dad, I still spend so much time helping my son out that I don't catch anything but that's OK. Harrison enjoyed catching bass, sunfish, catfish and perch this year up in North Bay and out near Picton where we also had fun canoeing and for a five year old he does great in a canoe. We had our 20 month old and my wife in the canoe as well which didn't work quite as well as our little girl just couldn't sit still. Luckily my father's old St. Maurice canoe is wide and stable so nothing dramatic occurred.

I've been flying model rockets since I was ten years old and Harrison now enjoys it as well. I helped him build a couple of rockets this year which we flew many times. He's been lucky so far, no losses, while I lost a rocket, The Pegasus, that I've been flying for 23 years but I guess after 17 flights it doesn't owe me anything. Too bad I didn't have any B engines left that day; the C6-7 was just too much for the wind. The AIM-54S landed in the Speed River on the same day with a D12-3 but was recovered by a couple of boys who probably planned on taking it home but handed it right over when I walked up and claimed it.

Golf is another thing that I'm now able to do with my son, not just at the driving range but on a course as well. He doesn't last 18 holes of course but we have fun on most of the front 9 anyways. Kid club sets at Play it Again are under $40 so the equipment is cheap at least and so far most courses have let him play for free which is nice. Boys love to hit things and for once I'm not yelling at him about it so he really does enjoy it.

I've always wanted to learn Japanese and have had my father's old Teach Yourself Japanese book for years which I brought out now and again. With some work done on a Japanese version of software last year and this year I really swung for the fences this summer and I've managed to pick up quite a bit of reading skills at Japanese. Speaking I'm sure I'm terrible and anyone who's seen my english handwriting knows kanji calligraphy will never be for me but with a computer I can write fairly well. I've bought a few Japanese books which I'm now struggling through, the originals of some manga I've enjoyed for the past fifteen years, Gun Dream Last Order. See http://www.yukito.com Graphic novels are not a new art form in Japan as their literature has long relied on illustrations to aid in the understanding of a writing form which was borrowed from the Chinese and developed over many centuries. I'm enjoying the material in it's original format and have been enjoying some anime on DVD as well, as most of them allow me to choose the language and whether or not to provide subtitles which is much simpler than old VHS where you had to pick dubbed or subtitled (for some reason more expensive) when you bought.

Overall, a very good summer.

The only constant is change

2006-04-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

This page isn't exactly a diary. I certainly don't use it enough. Still, it is interesting to look back over even a short time and see what has stayed the same and what has not.

I went all gung ho for astronomy in the fall but then abruptly dropped it again. I'll probably get back into it but the new position at work in January and family life realities have made it difficult to be out late into the night with the telescope and CCD camera.

With the nice weather the bicycle and canoe are out again. It is good to be active outside. I still can't bring myself to exercise in a room.

I haven't tried to write any more fiction but I feeling like writing again, both to continue my fictional stories and to write some non-fiction about whisky which seems to be my main hobby these days.

"Whisky List, cooking and drinking with scotch" and "Alcohol for Better Living" are the titles I have in mind for non-fiction.

For fiction I want to continue my stories of the solution to world population crisis, the genetically engineered baby that never grows up. Part of the inspiration for this is my wonderful daughter Halle who has grown up at a more usual rate compared to the accelerated one my son went through. She seems to still be a baby at 15 months compared to Harrison who was walking at 8 months, speaking full sentences and in a real bed by 12 months.

The other fictional story I still want to finish is my story of future space travellers who reduce themselves pretty much to just a brain in a head which can interface with their space ships and temporary bodies to explore the questions of existance, of love emotional and physical and the boundary between, the idea that a kiss is more sensual than other physical acts of love since the others are really about procreation, something which is given up by these bodiless pilots. If only I had the time and aptitude for writing!

Approaching buddhism

2006-04-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

Reading back some old posts and old thoughts of mine on how it was much simpler before I had any possessions, it's interesting to see the parallels with buddhism. That is, the "Dukkha: All worldly life is unsatisfactory, disjointed, containing suffering." as mentioned in the wiki page for buddhism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism

I'm not quite ready to give up my, "...privilege, rank, caste, and [his] wife and child, to take up the life of a wandering holy man in search of the answer to the problem of birth, old age, sickness, and death" just yet but some days it sounds nice...

Natural vs. Artificial

2006-02-20T04:39:00.000-08:00

Why do people say things made by people are artificial? Why are we somehow outside of nature? Why is a skyscraper unnatural but an ant hill natural? Why is Nutrasweet unnatural while honey is considered natural? We made one, bees made another so why is there a difference?

Man-made is still natural in my opinion. Like yeast in an enclosed area we may be using up all the resources and poisoning ourselves to death but like the yeast, it is a natural process.

CCD camera, weather

2005-12-12T04:20:00.000-08:00

I finally got a GOTO drive, a Vixen Skysensor 2000-PC, and a new CCD camera, an MX716 from Starlight Xpress. I also got an Optec Bessell V filter for some serious magnitude photometry of variable stars and supernovae. Of course the weather has been terrible since I got my new equipment but that's fall in southwestern Ontario I guess.

Weather was very cold this morning but I saw Mercury for the first time in years. I still love viewing the innermost planet, even though it is little more than a phase, more than half lit today. I used my quick view setup, an 80mm f/9.4 refractor on a camera tripod so I could set up, view and break it down before my fingers froze off at -17C.

Blogspam

2005-12-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

I thought just limiting comments to blogger users would mean no spam but of course I was wrong. It's easy to sign up just to spam, apparently.

I've added word verification and moderation. If that isn't enough, Zero Light will be no more.

Up for over an hour already, no coffee and the kids will be up soon

2005-08-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

The remnants of Katrina passed over us today. Not much rain but my wife likes to sleep with the window open and the light shower woke me up this morning so I thought I'd go check and see how much we'd received. Not much, as it turns out but I'm tired and my day has just begun. Must get the coffee on...

Looks like it will clear up well tonight but unless I get overtired I don't know if I'll be able to get the scope out. I really should, as 6 rolls of Konica Centuria Super 800 are itching for starlight in my camera bag.

I'm still flip flopping on what to do, camera wise. I know the right choice is to do film work for at least a while longer but as always, a replacement CCD camera or digital SLR is always something I want to get. They say film is more expensive in the long run but with the depreciation in value of DSLRs and the desire to upgrade every few years I think that is a false economy.

At least it is true that the longer I wait, the cheaper they get though thoughts of trading in my old FD system have just about gone as the value of manual focus equipment has really dropped. I could still get something for it on eBay but the pure buy-out value at Henry's was insulting. I'm told the trade-in value is better.

I could get a Digital Rebel with a lens for $1300 now which is pretty good. I could also get an FD/FL to EOS EF lens adapter(s, could get one with infinity focus and one for macro) to use my old telephoto lenses on it instead of buying new lenses right away; in fact, 1.26x for the infinity-focus adapter my 300mm f/4L lens becomes a ~400mm f/5.6 and this would be a good savings as the 300mm f/4L EOS EF lens is $1800. For family snapshots the included zoom autofocus lens would be great. Or I could just use my Canon FD cameras and lenses to spend no more money.

CCD: I'm thinking about getting a used ST-7 with a filter wheel -- this would allow me to do some serious work though the Hamilton RASC centre has a nice scope and CCD camera I could use without spending any money.

Went to the liquor store pondering some $80-150 scotches and got a $22 bottle of Forty Creek Barrel Select Canadian Whisky instead so I'm being a good boy!

OK, the coffee is on and my son is up. He wants to play Hot Wheels Micro Racers so I must forgo the fast computer for the slow one.

Changing gears

2005-08-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

I have found, over the years, that I only have time for one hobby at a time. I throw myself into that hobby, full force, and find switching time between a few is hard UNLESS I can combine them, like astronomy and photography. Years ago it was astronomy, then rally driving, then whisky tasting (yes, as a hobby more than just a drink). Now I am switching gears once again.

OK, tried the writing fiction thing AGAIN, found out AGAIN that it just isn't for me. I'd love to but permanent writer's block seems to be my affliction. Reading can be a hobby but writing is work, for me at least.

I'm BACK into astronomy! I've been out observing more in the past couple of weeks than I had in the past couple of years. It's all coming back now, so check my website for new sketches now, and photos and CCD images soon. I've mostly been sketching the sun and Mars lately, plus doing deep-sky observing but the film and CCD cameras will be out again shortly.

Dropping out of the whisky tasting club. Just not enough going on, just whisky from one independent bottler of late, James Macarthur.

With enough caffeine, you can do anything!

2005-06-02T04:38:00.000-07:00

I sure hope so anyways... Why is it when you stay up late to get work done, the kids wake up early? Not always I guess, the old anecdotal evidence thing again but last night I could have used more sleep, that's for sure.

Not a midlife crisis

2005-06-01T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm too young to have one so please don't see the below postings about being trapped as an indication of that. I already have a midlife crisis car, the MINI Cooper, but unless I want to transplant some of the hair from my back to where it is now missing on my head I don't think I'll be looking for a 20-year old wife any time soon, LOL! Seriously, I like my kids and wife too much to screw around like that. We had some 'Desperate Housewives' sort of action on our street recently and I just don't get it; hopefully I never will.

Evolution, Part II

2005-05-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Once again, I wrote a lot but didn't say all I meant to say so here is some more on evolution.

Overall, you can think of evolution as life attempting to solve the survival equation. That is, how does a species make certain it will survive? The solution space is vast and it is quite possible to end up in suboptimal solutions. As well, there are many solutions possible and it is impossible for the organisms, either individually or as an entire species, to 'see' the solution space. All they can do is change and try it out, see if it is better or worse.

It is about energy efficiency and conservation. If you can be very lazy and survive then this is better than being very active whilst surviving.

The only way to survive those big cataclismic events is either to be EXTREMELY adaptable, EXTREMELY robust or to be able to control your environment. Bacteria are extremely robust, with many species able to survive as spores for long periods, perhaps thousands or millions of years while conditions are too harsh for active life. Many other animals are not so adaptable so they die quickly when changes occur too fast for them to change. Humans, able to control our environment and even leave our biosphere in limited capacity, represent perhaps the highest level of survivability, though we are also intelligent enough to create weapons of mass destruction. Those weapons could wipe us out (as could a large scale comet or minor planet impact) unless we colonize other planets but the lowly bacteria would survive both a nuclear war and have already survived multiple impacts. It has been postulated that bacteria are ejected into space during impacts, and could actually survive and travel through space, something we think of as the realm of humans alone.

So the answer to why there are still simple organisms around is: they represent another solution in the game of life. Which one is the optimal solution? Who knows? It is impossible to tell yet. We haven't out-competed them and probably never will.

Trapped, Part II

2005-05-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

I wrote a lot about being trapped while missing some main points. Quickly, I also meant you get trapped in a career! You can't switch easily as your resume will be filled with jobs that have nothing to do with the one you want to enter. With bills to pay, you can't afford to take time off to get a new degree or certificate unless you want to break open your retirement 'savings'. Without those things holding you down, you could do it but those things trap you in your career unless you are very lucky, either wealthy enough to enter and leave the workforce and education at will or lucky enough to get a sideways-transfer at your current employer.

Evolution

2005-05-17T20:08:00.000-07:00

Evolution is in the news a lot these days. Many people don't believe in it, which is OK if they at least understood what they claimed had never occured. For such a fundamental theory in biology, it is greatly misunderstood.

Being just a theory is fine too. That just means it is a model which can be refined, improved or even superceded if enough evidence comes to light. Just because it isn't a fact or a law doesn't mean it isn't the best explanation we have for why we see such a variety of creatures in the world today, and fossil evidence of others.

Evolution simply means things can change not just because of the will of humans (livestock breeding) or perhaps the will of a god (what intelligent design proponents insist) but on their own as a response to outside influences.

Many say that because all simple life forms haven't evolved, evolution can't have occured but this is just plain wrong. There are more bacteria, algae and insects than all vertebrates. In sheer numbers and biomass there are orders of magnitude more of them than those of us with backbones. If being a vertebrate is so great, why haven't they all evolved? And why when a species breaks off from another don't all the original ones die out? Isn't the new species better?

Evolution comes about because of competition. It turns out that being a bacteria or algae or an insect is a pretty successful life. That's why there are so many still here today. So why are there other life forms? Why bother? Because some bacteria, algae or other simple life forms became a little different than their neighbors and the only way for that difference in genetic code or whatever it has to store its 'plan' is for it to outcompete at least some of its neighbors. If the difference is only worse then it will need to adapt to an environment NOT inhabited by something else.

Cells alone had to do everything while cells together could divide up the work. This is great sometimes, but not as great at other times. Cells not gathering food still need to eat. If food is not abundant then they are a drain on a multicelled organism when they would merely be competition in a single celled world. After a while, the size of a multicelled animal became large enough that communication was a problem and nerves were necessary; those that developed them were quicker to react and did so in unison but for creatures in abundant food supplies it was probably enough to bumble around every which way and nerves would just take energy and food. Eventually this nervous system became specialized into a single large nerve bundle, the notochord because it was more efficient than an amorphous network. Once you have such an important bundle, it helps if you can protect it with cartelidge or bone; otherwise it is easily injured though in places where there is little danger it would be wasted energy to construct such armor so soft ones still exist. With internal support, the inflexible exoskeleton and difficult and dangerous molting (when the exoskeleton is soft for a period and the organism is vulnerable) is no longer required and many new advances are possible but the old exoskeleton has its uses too.

For the first fish to walk on land, life was good! There was no competition. But then fish on the shores became abundant and the ability to stray farther from water became more and more appealing. Amphibious creatures do a better job of this and arose from fish. With even drier environments, reptiles which don't need to live in water at all came about. When land animals became commonplace some reptiles returned to the sea; mammals repeated this later. Evolution is all about keeping your genetic code around for future generations. This means competing for space, food, water, resources in other words. Often this means only a small population will live but as long as a population does live, perhaps in some remote corner unclaimed by other species, its genetic code, its offspring will continue. That is the sole purpose of life: to continue itself.

New species likely come about at first from a single individual with new traits. Fully sexual species will need this new individual to be able to breed with its own species still to pass on the trait but not all species are fully sexual. Some can reproduce asexually when necessary. Some only 'resort' to sex under dire circumstances. The evolution of sex is not well understood but some liken it to an arms race with parasites. The parasites would figure out a way to attack and the only defense was to change your characteristics, or those of your offspring slightly so that they wouldn't be as susceptable to the parasites. With exact copies but for random damage there would be no defense but a sexual reproduction would shuffle the deck.

So why wouldn't this new, more successful species completely take over? I'm sure it did sometimes, but not all the time especially when the new characteristics were only an improvement in some environments. If the new design is just a bit better then it won't take over soon, if ever. Remember that evolution affects species, not individuals. Since individuals don't evolve, those not involved in the new attributes will continue to live and reproduce, hoping to keep doing so forever. Only time will tell if they will survive.

Evolution can easily get trapped in local solutions to the problem of survival. It can take something radical to push it on to a more optimal solution. At many times through the long history there have been major upheavals due to the introduction of an oxygen atmosphere, cosmic radiation bombardments, volcanism, impacts of large rocks from space, ice ages, other climate shifts. At these times, the greatest advances are made when many species die out and competitions begin anew.

Large creatures put all their eggs in one basket but small creatures are limited. There is more than one solution to the game of life. Evolution happened, and continues to happen. Don't expect bacteria to go away any time soon, unfortunately.

I'm not sure this came out in much of an order but I wanted to get it down. I'll come back and revisit it later.

Trapped!

2005-05-17T19:24:00.000-07:00

Trapped by what? Things! In some ways I swear I was at my happiest when I was a student in university and my possessions consisted of a computer, a tiny B&W TV, a used bass guitar, a used 12-speed bicycle and some old furniture. Lived in a rented apartment that I could leave pretty much any time, no fire or theft insurance because I lived above a bar and a dance club and no underwriter would stop giggling long enough to even send me a quote. If the place burned down I'd only be sad about my cat anyways. Didn't have much money but didn't need much. Worked co-op terms every other semester and was in school the rest. I said, and believed at the time, that I could do that for the rest of my life, becoming the living embodiment of the perpetual student. Universities probably wouldn't let me do it, after all you can only drag your masters on for so long (I know, I was there) and PHd's only last so long. They only give you so many postdocs before you have to 'join the club' and become a professor, the sort of part II of the perpetual student life.

But that wasn't for me. After wishing for that I got sick of school during a long M.Sc. programme and started wanting things. I wanted a car and a house. First I got the car, a brand spanking new Geo Metro! Purple, 3-cylinders. Years later at Yuk-Yuks a comedian (I forget your name, apologies) told a joke about a gay superhero in a purple Turbo Sprint, the Chevy version of my car only with a Turbo so it wasn't quite as laughable. It was good on gas and it was mine, dammit. A car is freedom as they say, but then you have something to care about. Where to park the damn thing. It's not like someone is going to steal a Geo Metro but I still cared.

Then the renting thing started to get old. The place above the dance bar got to us after a while and then we lived above a Dr.'s office which sounds cool and it was a nice place but eventually you get sick of being told how to park, where you friends can park, when the heat and AC can be used (because they were included) and so on. Off to buy a house then so no one can tell me what to do!

But houses are even more worrying with things to fix all the time. And your car parked outside. And now all of your furniture inside.

Then you have kids! And you love them and they're great but you worry about them more than anything. They get into trouble but you can't tell them what to do and do it for them all the time. They have to learn on their own. And often they wreck your stuff, like I wrecked my parents stuff.

So now I worry about my kids, my house, my car, my stuff, my job, my health. I swear all this worrying is going to be the end of me but it is hard to let go, very hard. I just said bad habits can be broken right now, didn't I? Hmm, guess I'll start right... uh... not as easy as it looks. Because I'm trapped. And not all the worries can just be sent away.

You can't stop worrying about the job because then how do you pay for the house, the car, the kids and the stuff? You can't just get rid of the cars as you have to get to work, the kids have to get to school, etc. You can't get rid of the house, well I suppose you could move back to an apartment but I really don't see it.

There are kids books written about it, moving to the city from the country into a little apartment and no matter how they try to sugar coat it, I think even a 4-year old sees right through it. To me at least, there is nothing like a house with a yard, gardens to explore, plants to watch grow, animals to see and hear. But you do worry about it all.

In some ways a man with nothing must be happiest of all. Not in other ways I'm sure, and I hope I don't find out but in some ways it is nice not to worry about these things. Let it go... They're just things... just things... things...

It's never too late...

2005-05-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

...to drop a bad habit. It may be too late to avoid the consequences of said bad habit but it's never too late to actually change it. I didn't say it was easy! It isn't! But today, right this minute is in fact a good time to start. Not tomorrow or next week but today! It is funny how procrastination really plays into the habit thing. Can't I have just a little bit more of the bad habit? Just a smidge? Just say no...

Cycles, unfinished business, everything old is new again

2005-04-19T04:08:00.000-07:00

It's funny how things seem to run in cycles and sometimes old unfinished business comes up again in a way and lets you finish it. Years ago I did a ton of porting and public domain programming for a cheap UN*X clone called Coherent (I almost went to work for the maker, Mark Williams Company, before it went bust). If you search on tcsh and MGR you'll find my name still plastered all over the place in the man pages and acknowledgements even though I bet no one has run that software for a decade. I never got involved in Linux because the bar was set pretty high by the time Coherent went away and they had a tyrannical structure for development; this structure has served them well over the years as you can see by where Linux is today but I just wanted to port and write free software and that shouldn't be work IMO, it should be fun and the level of professionalism required by Linus made it unfun at the time. I wrote a little text editor and everyone in the Linux groups was always harping for one so I said, "here, use mine," and they said, "but it doesn't do kanji or sanscrit or hebrew, no thanks." Tough crowd, high bar as I said. At work lately I've been adding international support to our vi editor (yes, my brother recently said "the '70s called and they want their editor back" so I've heard that joke already). Yesterday I finished adding support for simplified chinese. On to test japanese and korean and check out some hebrew and sanscrit... I was always a vi lover and prefer it to WYSIWYG editors which is what I made years ago. Seeing kanji in vi is an interesting experience.

Speaking of the '70s, did disco ever die? The Village People wrote one of their final songs called "Ready for the '80s" which was ironic as the '80s were not kind to disco but it seems to have made a return, though not quite in sync with bell bottoms which are already out of style again, I think. I saw a video for a remake of ABBA's "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man after Midnight)" the other day. My parents played a lot of ABBA in the '70s and while my father would cringe to read this, I still like disco (don't worry, Dad, I still love the blues too). I'm also enjoying Alcazar's rendition of "This is the World we Live In" but I can't seem to find the original. Anyone know?

I lost my original hardcover edition of The Matter for Men by David Gerrold so I bought a soft cover edition a year or two ago and finally got around to starting it again (lately there are only a few SF authors I enjoy and they only write a book a year or so, which means I have lots of time to re-read old favorites). I originally read it around twenty years ago when it first came out. The softcover edition says "uncut and uncensored for the first time," which is kind of surprising as I didn't think written fiction was sensored badly in 1983 when it was originally published. That said, I don't remember the male shower scene and wonder if it was present and I've forgotten or if that was censored; it could well have been censored. David Gerrold is openly "alternative lifestyle" and I enjoy reading BGLAD SF by him, Melissa Scott, Nicola Griffith, Spider Robinson and others but I didn't know that about him twenty years ago and I wonder if it was something kept out of print at the time? I'll have to ask him. In the second book of the series, A Day for Damnation, the character with whom he has the shower scene becomes a psi-agent where they pool their bodies and use the one most suited to the job; the male main character has sex with his friend in a woman's body and I guess that was OK for the censors as I remember THAT scene but not the other one. David is still writing that series with volumes five and six coming out later so my blog-pal Jeffrey Carver doesn't have to feel bad about taking so long to finish the Chaos Chronicles; David has a decade head start on you!

Finally, spring seems to be here

2005-04-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

Bulbs are coming up, including the grape hyacinths that again fooled me into thinking they were dud crocuses. I didn't put them out or anything but I was making plans on where to move them before I saw the flower stalks starting to come out.

Another weekend spent mostly outside but I remembered to wear my hat this time. More garden work. No story work -- I'm obviously not a writer.

Where does the time go?

2005-04-11T04:36:00.000-07:00

Had a good weekend of yard work and playing with the kids, plus some TV (BSG Finale just went on up here in Canada and the UFC finale). Had hoped to pull the telescope out for a nice, dark new Moon weekend but just never happened. Too tired these days with all that goes on during the day, which is kind of sad but its just easier to be a couch potato these evenings. I will have to start going out just for a couple of hours from 9-11pm or something to get at least some viewing in which hardly seems worth it but is better than nothing, I guess.. Now back to the work week and I still have to put out the trash this morning...

More time with the kids

2005-04-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

I've rediscovered time with the kids in the mornings. With my son especially I'd gotten into the bad habit of plunking him in front of some toys or the TV so I could get some time to myself on the computer but lately I've rediscovered the joy of playing with them by myself in the morning. This allows my wife to get some more sleep, as she's often still tired as our two month old daughter gets her up some during the night for feedings. It's nice to spend more time with them. I wish I could spend more than an hour or two before work and an hour or two after work before it is time for them to go to bed but that's the way our world works.

Thick skin required

2005-04-09T06:56:00.000-07:00

Your online identity seems quite anonymous. It seems like you can say things and since no one really knows its you, it doesn't matter. But this seems backward to me. Online you post your thoughts and rather than having an idea shot down unceremoniously by five friends over lunch or at the pub, you can have your idea shot down by hundreds or thousands of people all over the world, calling you an idiot or worse since they're anonymous too so they aren't worried about what some might consider fighting words. Even though no one else may know who "EagleClaw5" really is, YOU know and you know that no one likes your ideas. Anonymous or not, posting in blogs and forums requires thick skin some days...

Food poisoning

2005-04-04T04:15:00.000-07:00

Had food poisoning over the weekend. Not really sure what was the culprit but a fast-food burger joint with a scottish clan name is a prime suspect. As usual it came on fast but went away pretty quick too which is a good thing at least. If only I could put to paper the bizzare dreams I always have with a high fever like that. Wacked out stuff for sure...

April Fool's Day!

2005-04-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

Gotta watch those news releases. Already there is a marshmallow shortage and G.W. Bush has cancelled the Space Shuttle Programme. What next???

When I grow up...

2005-03-31T07:16:00.000-08:00

When I was in my last year of high school I was torn between getting a degree in science to have a successful career or a degree in english to be a starving writer. The logical, practical side of me (probably 99% of me, I might have been born on Vulcan) chose science, and picked the subject in which I'd received the highest mark, chemistry since the first year of university in a science programme is the same regardless of your major subject. I ended up at the University of Guelph's wonderful interdisciplinary physical sciences MPC^2 (Math, Physics, Chemistry & Computing) programme, sadly dismantled after only a few years. There I remembered that computers were my real best subject, much to the chagrin of the chemistry, mathematics and physics professors; especially my math professor who told me, now rightly I know, that I should have taken math as everything else is a derivative or specialization of math. I quickly realized that he was right and that university level chemistry and physics is just applied theories surrounded by math. Rather than do the right thing and follow him to the math department I saw that computer science is much more practical so once again, that side of me won over and here I am today, a software developer for MKS Inc. I took some required and elective biological science and english (including SF) courses, plus psychology and philosophy of science, one of my favorite all-time courses. Through all this I mostly forgot I wanted to be a writer.

One of my favorite authors is Gene Wolfe. He wrote a sort of fifth book for his tetrology, The Book of the New Sun, called The Castle of the Otter (in the same style of title as the other four). The book was about The Book and writing in general. It was good advice to me on who should be a writer. At the time, I was not one who should have written according to his advice; I agree with that. He said unless you find yourself unable to stop writing, you aren't a writer. If you have to fight for every word, you won't make a good writer. So aside from programming code, emails and that sort of thing I haven't written much in ages.

Recently I got the writing bug again and I've got it bad, almost late for work today trying to put thoughts to paper. I always used to write down ideas for stories that were cool but I'd start writing and after a paragraph or two I'd be done. The ideas were too small and had almost no room for expansion whatsoever. My new idea is much better and I've already written ideas and even some preliminary work in longhand to the tune of several pages. I will start typing it soon as I write so little in longhand these days that I get a hand cramp quickly while I'm used to typing for 8-12 hours a day.

Wow, I think I may have the title for it! That is often the hardest part.

I have some grand notions of having it published in Analog or Asimov but looking at the pay scales I don't know if it would be worth it. Perhaps I'll publish it here instead in serials to see if anyone will actually find it and/or read it.

Harry

Two months old

2005-03-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

Today my daughter is two months old. Amazing how time seems to fly, and how much she can grow and advance in such a short span of time. Children, especially very young ones, remind you of what life really means and what it's all about. Some people choose to go through life without children and honestly, I don't understand why; to me it almost seems as if a life without children is not a life worth living. As an atheist, your creations including your works of art, science and your children are all you leave when you die; they are your legacy.

A favorite author of mine is Henry Green (nom de plume of Henry Vincent York) and the main themes of his books (as I see it) are that you can never know someone else's point of view. Even when you think you've walked a mile in their shoes, you really haven't -- there are subtle differences which mean the experiences and the resulting wisdom are different too. In the same way I'm sure couples who decide not to have kids can't understand why people have kids, and wonder how they ever get anything done, have time for themselves, etc. This would seem to be an opposing view for the truism that the grass is always greener on the other side though I'm sure there are some in both camps who wish they had kinds and vice versa.

Harry

And then there was no light

2005-03-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog, named for a little joke I made about photography with no lights (compared to photography with one or more flashes or studio lights) and calling it Zero Light Photography instead of the usual available or natural light photography. Of course you can't take a picture without any light (even infrared photography involves the recording of electromagnetic radiation, even though it is outside of the visible spectrum). I created the yahoo group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zerolightphoto for the purpose of that discussion and don't really mean to use this blog to discuss techniques but thought it was a cool name, so I used it.

I like reading, cycling, scotch malt whisky, carnivorous plants, F1 and rally automobile racing, computers, and more.

Today, my Sarracenias are flowering. My 'Scarlet Belle' hybrid's burgundy flower is just about done, the lower petals are now dry and it has released all its pollen, but my purpurea (possibly var. venosa) has started to open its deep red flower. My Venus Flytrap's flower seems to be rotting, unfortunately, so I may not get to see any and hope that the effort the plant put into the flower stalk will not deplete its energy enough to kill it.

Harry