Mark’s Blog

I bought a video camera last week (Canon HF100.)  I’m fairly proficient with an SLR, but video is a whole new ballgame.  Editing video is slow and comparatively clumsy process… (makes fast hardware seem slow, chews up disk space in a hurry, unfamiliar software, and lots of arcane options to deal with an compromises to make along the way.)  So much more to deal with, so much to learn.

Deb and I took a short walk near our home in Bourne End.  It was my first chance to really try out the camcorder.  I dragged my Nikon D300 along to handle the still photography.  Walks are now starting to seem like expeditions with all the gear.

So to the video…  Shot in 1920×1080p (30fps), edited in iMovie ‘09, and encoded in h.264 @ 960×540p, 3200kbps (file size ~80megs)

The high quality option: Bourne End Walk 720p (It’s about 500MB)

Updated my Wordpress install. During the upgrade process it touched the rss feed, bringing old, moldy posts back to life.

No promises, but I may start blogging in earnest* again soon.

*(I know)

I’d probably have a lot of explaining to do…

While I’m too much of an elitist to consider myself a yinzer… I do love Pittsburgh and I’m happy to say I like this blog about Pittsburgh: http://stuffyinzerslike.com/

(I’d swear I went to high school with the guy pictured in the uppper left corner of that blog…  Fred F. is that you?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_Hangers

Monkey Hanger is the affectionate term by which Hartlepudlians are often known by other residents of Great Britain.

According to local folklore, during the Napoleonic wars, a French ship of the type chasse marée (literally, tide-chaser) was wrecked off the coast of Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey, wearing a French uniform (presumably to provide amusement for those onboard the ship). On finding the monkey, some locals decided to hold an impromptu trial on the beach; since the monkey was unable to answer their questions, they concluded that it was a French spy. The animal was thus sentenced to death and hanged from the mast of a fishing boat on the Headland. Nowadays, many Hartlepudlians have positively embraced the term, and only a small minority still consider the term ‘Monkey Hanger’ offensive. It is often used to refer to supporters of Hartlepool United Football Club by supporters of their arch rivals Darlington.

In 2002, Stuart Drummond campaigned for the office of Mayor of Hartlepool in the costume of the local football team’s mascot, ‘H’Angus the Monkey’. He narrowly won. His election slogan had been “free bananas for schoolchildren”, a promise he was unable to keep. Despite this, he stood again three years later and won with a landslide victory.

Had to drag my ass out of bed after 4 hours sleep.   I was up ’til 2am installing new seats (from a 2004 Lotus Elise MKII 111s).   My seats are pretty thin on padding but the new ones are a little more generous with the foam, and have perforated leather for breathability.

Sad part is: they fucking kill my back.   The originals are nearly perfect, and all reports said these would be even better.  I can’t see the difference in shape, but it puts the pressure in just the wrong place.  *sigh*  Compound that with loss of time/effort/£/sleep and a horrible commute to the conference and my mood was pretty grim

Was is the operative word:  I opened the conference hand out and saw on the first page, in red:

“At any point in the day, customers are welcome to go and try the F1 simulator.”

Oh, did i mention that the conference is at the RBS Williams F1 factory/campus?

This realization is not new to me.  In fact, it’s a deliberate tactic.  Buy the car…  and then the fun part begins when you buy tons of new shit for said car.  I first did this many years ago.  A $750 Alfa Romeo eventually led to thousands of dollars of tools, a milling machine, a lathe, a mig welder, two air compressors, etc.

I’m quite happy to report that I don’t use this to sneak purchases past my wife’s veto.  She couldn’t care less.  We have a tremendous amount of respect for each other.  What she wants she buys, what I want I buy.  We trust ourselves to be responsible.  And that’s where I need to employ the tactic…  my personal responsibility filter is surprisingly conservative.  When I begin lusting after a new toy, a part of my brain lights up and dutifully raises the red flag.  That’s when I mobilize the rest of my brain to rationalize those red flags away.  This weekend I’m actually employing multiple tactics towards that end.

Trojan Horse tactic:  Buy something which does not trigger the filter, but almost certainly will require subsequent purchases.  In aggregate those purchases will certainly not pass muster… but considered individually, they sneak past.

Now or Never justification:  Have some event coming up that would benefit from some new purchase.  Where your responsibility filter might have let you postpone the purchase indefinitely, now you have a way to counter it.  “If I’m going to buy it eventually, I might as well buy it now so I can get good use out of it.”  This is also handy for justifying expedited shipping.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate gambit:  This takes advantage of the synergy between some goodies.  This is another aggregate trick… but this time it’s used to pass the responsibilty filter by stacking the deck on benefits over cost.

New crystal for my Cristal :  If you buy something really nice, you can’t pair it with things below it’s status.  A nice suit demands sharp Italian shoes, a nice Swiss watch, etc…   again there is a synergistic effect between high status items.   Each new addition highlights the contrast between the ok and the sublime.

The Sistine Chapel:  Michelangelo didn’t do a half-assed job when he painted that chapel…  This looks at the synergy between various purchases from the other direction.   If you are going to do it, do it right.  Or to put it another way “Go balls out”

The Lexus approach: Their tagline was “The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection”  It hints at the asymptotic nature of perfection.  Each step closer to perfection is a smaller step, but one that requires exponentially greater effort to reach.   Buy something nearly perfect, and then spend a lifetime (or a fortune) making it more nearly perfect.

(I’ve got more but you get the idea.)

Concrete example:

• Buy a clean, nearly perfect Lotus Elise…
• Plan a “must do before I die” trip to Nurburgring
• Long trip justifies some creature comforts: order new Alpine stereo
• Long trip justifies: snatching good deal on new perforated leather Lotus Elise S2 111S seats (and crucially ones with just a little padding) on E-bay
• Long trip + track justifies: new tires, CG-lock seat-belt harness, maybe some driving shoes, gloves, etc.
• Also justifies: shift & throttle linkage upgrade, which requires a low-profile jack (car is damn low to the ground.)

Ok…  I’m going to stop there before my house of cards logic topples under its own weight.  As I’ve said before and will now say again:

I HAVE THE MOST TOYS!  I WIN!!

Catch me if you can…

Fate has really been fucking with me lately.  Every single good thing that has happened in the last month has not gone according to plan, torturing me in the process.   Buying a car was no different.   I thought I’d have one to call my own, almost two weeks ago.  But everything that could go wrong has (only after appearing that it was going well for maximum soul crushing effect.) This has been especially annoying as I’ve been without a car since the beginning of April when I had to sell the Alfa.   It rained a lot, which sucks when backup transportation is a motorcycle.   And when it was sunny (all week has been the absolute best weather) it tortured me, because I could have had my car two weeks ago.

Last night was no different really…  The keys were no sooner in my hands, when a cloud appeared in a previously cloudless sky and dripped just enough to torture me while at the pub…  the rain again coming just as I pulled into the car park.

But fate can go fuck a fox in a flaming forest fire for all I care, ’cause I’ve got a Lotus Elise, and what might be a permanent Joker-esque grin.

Oh, hells yeah.

My bloated, British doppelganger, Boris Johnson, won the London Mayoral race.

I don’t agree with many of his positions, but I wish just once that I had the chance to vote for a presidential candidate that was as literate, intelligent, and honestly human as him.

His excellent victory speech here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7381585.stm

(Can you imagine a speech like that being made in the US…  nah, I can’t either.  He mentioned drinking!  Think of the children!)