I apologize for the vertical panorama here. They can be really nice but the format is a bit unusual and can be annoying at times. If you have a lower resolution monitor, you'll have to scroll through this one.

 

Anyway, as usual, there is a back-story here. (Two, actually.) I went to lunch with a guy I met in the spring, I'll call him FSB. He works in the music business, plays guitar and keyboards and we catch up occasionally. So I went over to have lunch with him today. His office moved recently and it was a blast (literally). Most of the floor he's on is just roughed out space - they are literally building it out around his offices. When I finally got all the way back to the office, his asked me if they had given me a hardhat. It was a joke, but barely. But the office was spectacular. Really, really nice. Anyway, we had lunch and talked about music and technology and the usual stuff. I'm not that familiar with the South End, but FSB introduced me to the South End Buttery. Man, was it ever good. By the way, FSB tells me that they have the best macaroons in Boston. I had a great chicken parmesian over rotini. It brought me back to my London days, I tell you.

 

So I told him the story about CNN and he told me about The Brain Police - a local band out of Berklee College of Music that plays Zappa covers. I mean, we talked about a lot of other stuff too. Anyway, to say they are a cover band is very misleading. In order to actually play a cover of Frank Zappa, you need about 10 musicians, including a percussionist (vibes and marimba), horn section and so forth.

 

Anyway, we get back to the office and as I'm leaving he asks if I'm going to take pictures. And I thought, why not. I saw this sealed up window in a brick wall in the outer foyer of the office and I had been thinking about snapping it. So I did. If you hover over the picture, you'll notice it's named, "Don't Defenestrate." I forget where I learned that word, but I'll never forget sitting around the Trellix lunch table talking about silly words with the staff. When I brought it up, one of the guys around the table started laughing even before I finished saying it. His name was Ed, but there were three Ed's there, conveniently named EdA, EdB and EdH. Leave it to a bunch of developers to parameterize nicknames, eh?

The CNN Video site now has yesterday's segment on the New England Baptist Church available online for viewing.

 

I just watched the CNN Prime News on Tivo (I had to put the kids to bed, you know?). The focus was on the provocative nature of the signs. In the segment, the pastor of the church, Thomas Michael, debated a Rabbi over the use of potentially divisive or condemning messages. Frankly, I though Michael got smacked down pretty hard by the Rabbi. Anyway, I should add a bit of additional context to the photographs just to keep the record straight.

 

The first photograph was taken in July of 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. As you may recall, there was widespread angst about a possible terror attack and massive security. As a result, I set about blogging the impact of the DNC on Medford, Massachusetts. In the course of doing that, I drove by the church many, many times. It was then the sign read, "Jesus loves the little children that Kerry votes to murder before birth." At the time, my comment was that...

When I said 'genetic research', I was talking about stem cells. It's probably long forgotten now, except for Mitt Romney's postion change on abortion, but stem cell research was a serious wedge issue during the 2004 campaign. The CNN segment referenced abortion in the introduction, but I believe the sign was actually about stem cell research. This distinction may not really matter to a strict Baptist, but I thought I'd make it really clear. I have not verified this with Thomas Michael, by the way.

 

The second sign read, "Earthquakes are God's warning to repent and trust Jesus." This sign went up in March of 2005. This was around three months after the Asian tsunami (Boxing Day tsunami) that was caused by the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake. However, I didn't make this connection at the time even though I read coverage of the Asian tsunami very closely. My feeling at the time (and I still stand by it) was that the two were unrelated. But if you read the original post you'll find an amusing story about an earthquake that might be related.

 

The third sign I blogged was done for balance. It was taken in August of this year (2007) and reads, "Our prayers go out for the victims of the Mineapolis bridge tragedy." I put this photograph up because the story had started to circulate in the local media and I wanted to make sure somebody pointed out that they are not all controversial.

If all goes well, at least one of my pictures will be on CNN's Prime News with Erica Hill tonight. Of course, it's one of the New England Baptist Church photos.

There was a marketing snafu with Canon recently. Canon is notoriously secretive about new camera models. But information and pricing was just accidentally released via Amazon for two new models: the Canon EOS 40D and the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. Of course, the information was quickly pulled down, but Engadget snagged screenshots.

 

The summary: EOS 40D is a jump up to 10.1 megapixels from the EOS 30D, still with a sub-full-frame sensor (1.6 magnification factor) for $1299.

 

The EOS 1Ds Mark III is a whopping 21.1 megapixel full-frame sensor for $7999.

 

Hat tip to Tucker at Synthesis Studios for passing this on. We were both lamenting the problem with buying Canon: you never know when they are going to release something new so it's hard to commit to a multi-thousand dollar purchase. Imagine if I had bought a 30D last week? Man, would I be upset.

OK, it's a long story. But it starts with me sitting in a server room working on a Windows 2003 Server install. This was complicated because the system I was installing was actually running Vista, and Vista don't like to run anything but Vista, if you know what I mean. No? Well, it involves having to find on-board ethernet drivers with wonderfully complete names like 823xx, where xx is a really important number, but I have no idea which number it is and Dell (in this case), didn't see fit to say anything more about it than refering to the thing as 823xx. Or whatever. I needed a snack and a soda.

 

So I walked across to the gas station and noticed a police car blocking the road. OK, so that's interesting. I thought about it and watched for a minute, then went into the store. I emerged with a soda, having forgotten about the snack because I was distracted by what the police might be doing. I saw a police car go down the blocked street with the lights on and I decided to talk a little walk. This is what I found:

 

 

As far as I can tell, two cars hit pretty hard. Obviously something hit the fence on the right, but there are also two signs down - the pedestrian sign and another one just to the left of center. Very strange. I'm still not sure how that all happened. Anyway, at least one of the cars was pretty torn up.

 

 

There was quite a bit of cleanup to do as well. Good thing there were something like six police cars working this accident. Four are visible here, but there is one at the next interection in both directions on this street.

 

 

So let's take a closer look at that fence, shall we?

 

 

Ouch. The road-sign didn't fare much better. I'm sorry, this is kind of a silly shot, but I couldn't resist.

 

 

And finally, how many Waltham Police does it take to...never mind. There really did seem to be a lot of Waltham police cars around. You have to wonder, if there were six of them here, how many were left for the rest of the town?

 

Taking high-contrast photographs of abandoned interiors seem quite popular these days. I read recently where there are even people who break into old hospitals, asylums and so forth for the thrill of taking pictures of the rough-shod interior. In issue No. 71 (5.51MB preview PDF) of Lenswork, Joe Lipka gets over a dozen photographs of the inside of Fort Warden printed, but there's a catch. These are very cleverly spliced triptychs. He took a whole series of photographs and then put them all on the floor to see where different photos might line up. You end up with three photos side-by-side, spliced very carefully into a whole panorama. The three panes of the triptych are not necessarily the same part of the fort, but they line up so well that you really have to look closely at them.

 

Anyway, I didn't have time for that kind of craft, or a tripod either. So with two kids, the wife, dad and auntie in tow, I had about three and a half minutes to take a shot at it. These are not triptychs, obviously, but still represent Fort Warren quite nicely, don't you think?

 

Under Overlook 1

 

Under Overlook 2

 

OK, so if you made it this far, I will tell you that these are deceptively hard to take. The most significant problem being the contrast and the darkness of the room. I had to hand-hold these at pretty ridiculous shutter speeds (sub 1/30 second) at ISO 800 to even have a chance. You also have to watch your histogram very carefully on a shot like this to make sure you don't blow out the highlights. I got lucky, this was a good location by accident - just good enough for me to bag a few rip-offs. Thanks for the inspiration, Joe.