Finding Yourself

Photographs

Yeah! right.

A linguist was explaining how double negatives in various languages mean different things. In English, a double negative is a positive – a construct beloved of lawyers who always seek to obfuscate clarity in the interest of charging higher fees. Can you say “not dispositive”? In Russia, on the other hand, double negatives act to reinforce the negative. If a single negative is bad, a double negative is doubly so. Doubtless a linguistic rule which is especially useful in describing any of their leaders of the past ten centuries or so.

That same linguist then went on to explain, however, that there is no language on earth where a double positive connotes anything other than affirmation.

Then a voice from the back of the hall was heard to say: “Yeah! right.”

And “Yeah! right.” was very much my reaction on reading this sign in Balmy Alley in San Francisco’s Mission District:


“See yourself seeing yourself”

Usual ’60s claptrap designed to part the naïve from their cash, was my reaction. Then I checked out the web site of this business and it actually proves to be anything but pseudo-psychological bull.

Here’s a snippet:


From Outerbody.org.

Given that a knowledge of how others see us is worth a whole lot more than any amount of education, this seems like a pretty clever idea.

Speaking of linguistics, when I was an English schoolboy one of the more charming expressions of enthusiasm, cloaked as it is in the English love of understatement, was “That’s not half bad”. Meaning it’s really awfully good. Outerbody.org’s idea is really not half bad at all.

Laguna Seca – Vintage 2013

Dining, Photographs

With my boy among the Big Money.


In the paddock at Laguna Seca
with my son Winston.

Next weekend is the annual festival of automotive excess on the Monterey Peninsula. The Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach golf course sees a parade of over-restored vintage cars vying for Best in Show honors. Inland a few miles, Laguna Seca Racetrack holds races where the rich can wreck their multi-million dollar Ferraris and have a good laugh about the experience over a glass of vintage champagne afterwards. It’s all good fun.

I have attended both events on the big weekend and, frankly, neither is any fun. Both are so over-crowded that there is little possibility of enjoyment or for calm discussion with the pressured owners of some of the most magnificent vehicles ever created. Strictly for the ‘See and Be Seen’ set.

The smart money – and very little of it at that – goes to Laguna Seca the weekend before and enjoys an uncrowded paddock and relaxed owners and their mechanics, only too eager to discuss their babies. Everything used to be free, but this year entrance was $20, though parking remains free. And my 11 year old son got free entry. Not at all bad. It’s a charming throwback to the days of the true racing amateur, OK, the days of the truly wealthy racing amateur, and pretense is nowhere in sight. It’s a genuine pleasure to mix with the Ferraris, Coopers, Bentleys, Porsches, Lotuses and any number of distinguished marques with great racing provenance, along with their friendly owners.

This year saw more Porsches than you could shake a stick at, including the frightening 12-cylinder Porsche 917 which dominated Le Mans after first killing a lot of drivers. A couple of Ferrari GTOs would leave you no change from $5mm for the brace and I could not help drooling over a 4.5 litre blower Bentley, massive supercharger and all mounted up front for all to see and hear.

I took my 11 year old son this year as it’s high time the boy got some exhaust fumes in his system before we are all reduced to driving gutless electric cars charged with electricity from massively polluting coal. Such is the environmental lobby, suckered in by Big Coal. Enjoy your Tesla while the miner in West Virginia dies early from lung cancer, after a life of subsistence on coal dust sandwiches.

Anyway, visiting the practice weekend Laguna Seca paddock is truly starting at the top for the lad.


Click the image to download the slideshow.

The slideshow is some 72MB and takes 45 seconds to download on my 16Mb/s broadband. The slideshow will fade from image to image once you hit the play icon, and contains 18 images.

All that traipsing around the huge paddock is guaranteed to work up a good thirst and hunger and I urge you not to eat at any of the positively poisonous concession stands at Laguna Seca. Instead, on exiting the main gate turn right and drive a couple of miles down the road to Tarpy’s Roadhouse which has been here since 1917. Make sure to sit on the patio and its beautiful dappled sunshine will take you as close to Monet’s France as anything can on this side of the pond. Well set back from the main road, all you will hear is the sound of the birds – no piped Musak – and you can revel in the excellent food and service. So the burger and fries are $14. Two main courses and two beverages, plus the obligatory ice cream for my son set us back $45 with a 20% tip. And you are going to take it with you when you croak?


Tarpy’s Roadhouse is on the left, west of the race track.

All snaps on the Nikon D3x and the 35-70mm f/2.8 AFD Nikkor zoom. It’s specious to describe any full frame DSLR outfit as compact, but this excellent zoom on a D3x is as close as you get to an all purpose kit with just one body and lens, the latter further aided by a handy macro range, activated at the push of a button. Not only is the lens beautifully crafted and reasonably compact, it also lacks the plastic and bulk which define Nikkor’s current crop of ‘pro’ zooms, not to mention being a used bargain. Balance on the D3x is just about perfect.

Nexus 7 2013 tablet – Part II

Android

Photos and GPS.

Part I is here.

The still camera:

The camera in the Nexus 7 Google tablet is mediocre at best. As good – or as bad, if you prefer – as the one in the iPad Mini. If you care little for your work and are happy to confine its publication to small web images, fine. But if you want decent web art or paper prints, then forget it. Ther is no built in flash, which his probably just as well.

Still images are around 1.9MB and when emailing I cannot find any option to change size, unlike with iOS. The size is 2000 x 1500 pixels. If your subject has a broad dynamic range, you can forget the highlights, which will be burned out mostly past saving. What is needed is the HDR function provided by Apple for the excellent camera in the iPhone5.

The N7 has the same focus function as the iPhone5 – touch the area you want to focus on and the guide box moves.


Highlights burned out, excessive contrast.

If your subject has lower dynamic range, then you could squeeze out a decent 8″ x 10″ print:


Pastrami and sauerkraut on rye with a wheat beer at Alice’s Restaurant.

There’s also a well engineered panoramic mode (2000 x 394 pixels) where you hose the N7 around as shown by the arrow display on the screen, but the same excessive contrast and blown highlights, along with a healthy dose of lens flare, will prevail:


N7 panorama.

The results were so unimpressive, and cannot be saved by the N7’s neat processing controls (garbage in, garbage out) that I have not bothered to test the movie mode.

GPS:

Things look up considerably with GPS. I procured an Arkon windshield mount for $20 from Amazon and can recommend it. It holds the windshield well, and you are provided with four sets of gripping ‘feet’, two deep, two shallow. I found the tightest grip on the NZ was obtained by using the four shallow feet. These attach to the sprung plate which is opened to insert the tablet. The device is robust, well executed and cheap.


Click the image to go to Amazon.
Shown with two deep and two shallow feet fitted.

Here you can see the four shallow gripper feet with the tablet installed:


N7 installed in the Arkon car mount.

After tethering the N7 to the hotspot celluar signal from your iPhone (the N7 has GPS built in), you fire up Google Maps, tell it your start and destination, hit Start and you get excellent vocal turn-by-turn directions. I mentioned in Part I that the N7 goes to quite ridiculous levels of brightness. In a car on a sunny day with the sunroof open and sun falling on the display, you will appreciate that feature, even though you may glow at night after using it.


In the car.

I’ll debrief my son, for those of you with 11 year olds, and report on gaming performance in Part III.

Suffice it to say that the many strengths of this tablet outweigh its weaknesses, and the iPad Mini is going on sale right now. It simply cannot hold a candle to the Nexus 7 and its performance and screen quality leave a lot to be desired, especially at the ridiculous price asked. As I show in Part I, the Apple ecosystem is easily replicated in Android 4.3 on the Nexus 7.

Part III is here.