Ed's Technobabble

Let’s set the scene. It was a cold and rainy morning….. Wake up.. Check.. Get ready for work .. Check.. Walk out to car… Check.. wait a minute. What the hell happened to my car? Someone ripped the license plate off and stole the trim and light assembly. They left the license plate next to the car. I guess that at least was a positive. I called Everett Police. I get the automated prompt. If this is an emergency or you want to report a crime, call 911. Well, this is not 911 material. I get through and find out I’m not in Everett after all, and need to talk to the sheriff. They transfer me to 911. “911. What’s your emergency?”  “Uh… Someone stole the trim off my car.. I guess it’s not an emergency really… But I didn’t want to call 911, the police made me.. Really I don’t want to waste your time dealing with this. You should be saving lives or something.” Okay. Maybe I’m taking a bit of creative license here. That’s not *exactly* what I said. Get all that taken care...

I have Photoshop Express on my iPhone. I decided to take the crappiest photo on my phone and see what I could do with it. Last August we went to a cabin on Loon Lake and I ended up with this picture. Not sure if it was an accident, but it’s of a bottle of Aleve and diet doctor pepper. Spending about 60 seconds on the photo, from my iPhone, it now looks like this. Not that the picture is very interesting in the second iteration, but it’s more interesting. I have a DSLR, and honestly I don’t pull it out as often as I’d like. I love the camera to death, but it pretty much take a backpack to lug it around with the filters, lenses, flash, and other accessories. Unfortunately, I think the phone camera is more and more going to be the camera of choice. My biggest problem with that is that I like the ability to uses lenses because you can get better shots. The depth of field is the strongest reason I like the better lenses. So I decided to look up lenses for iPhone…. They exist in...

I really missed playing music. Music used to be a big part of my life. I even went so far to major in music for the first three and a half years in my college career. I’ve been practicing for the past few months, and listening to old jazz recordings (both bands I’ve been in and recordings of the greats). One saxophone player that has stuck with me since high school, thanks to the exposure of my band director Jim Sleator, was Don Menza because of his famous Menza Cadenza. What I didn’t realize then is that the music that Jim exposed me to then, would become the foundation of my musical preference for life. I now will occasionally listen to the radio. I really like Rage Against the Machine and System of a Down.. But I also preferred some Buddy Rich or Maynard Ferguson. Don Menza played with Buddy Rich for awhile, and although Steve Marcus who played with Buddy Rich was a great player, the solo that Don Menza took with his brief time with the band was just amazing. Channel One Sui...