Ah, the blessed hour between the time I wake up and the rest of the house slips free of sleep.
Quiet. Peace. A chance to read, to write, to meditate, to pray, and — a wonder! — not just hold back entropy, but to make a little progress against it. Worship by making breakfast tacos and picking up stray toys. The solitary liturgy of care for myself and others yet dreaming.
I do not want most of my hours to be this one, but am silently, deeply grateful for this time when it comes.
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At the University where I work, there’s always a ton of Professional Development activity going on around campus, most of which is centered on training sessions for which people can register. That has always been an arduous, labor-intensive process, with real live humans handling every aspect of managing those registrations — reporting on class sizes, processing registrations, processing cancellations, maintaining a waiting list, communicating with attendees, etc.
To ease that chore, I’ve started work on a piece of software that manages all of those common tasks, driven by the requirements of our training organizations. So far, it allows a user to register for a class, cancel a reservation, subscribe to a webcal calendar that shows the training for which she has registered, download an ICS file to put the event on an existing calendar, receive email confirmations of registrations, to sign up for the waiting list for classes that are full, and to receive email notification when they get moved from the waiting list to the class roster. It’s also the most rigorously test-driven development I’ve done to date, so the code should be of good quality.
I’m managing it as an open-source project, so if you’re comfortable with Ruby on Rails and are interested in jumping in, or would like to download a copy to fool around with, you can visit the project on Google Code. I’d be delighted to have other contributers if it turns out to scratch anybody else’s itch as well. It is still very much geared toward folks who know a little bit about Rails and are willing to customize it to their needs. If that’s not you, you might want to steer clear for now.
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Back in the early days of digital cameras, I bought a Kodak DC220 camera. By today’s standards, this camera is wholly unremarkable: 1MP resolution, 2x optical zoom, and a funny shape. But it had one feature that stood out, and which modern cameras entirely lack: a scripting language. Anybody with a modicum of technical acumen could actually write programs for this camera, enabling it to do motion detection, exposure bracketing, various special effects, etc. More ambitious users even implemented games for it, allowing one to play Pac Man while waiting for that perfect shot.
When I last went camera shopping, I tried to find another camera that allowed programming, as I’m forever wanting to try different things while capturing images. But there was absolutely nothing available. I could get cameras with built-in wifi, GPS, a bevy of image processing modes, but nothing that actually allowed me to write your my programs to tell the camera how to behave.
(I would be remiss not to mention CHDK, an alternate open-source firmware for many Canon cameras that allows one to do all kinds of crazy stuff with them, including writing your own scripts. It’s awesomely capable, but lacks the refinement and ease-of-use that make it possible to pick up the camera and just use it. For everyday picture taking tasks, it actually makes the camera more difficult to use, in my experience.)
Enter the iPhone. From a feature standpoint, it’s not especially notable as a camera: 3MP, no flash, no zoom, odd form factor (for a camera). But the thing that sets it apart is its programability and connectivity. One can download apps to provide all kinds of interesting photo-related functionality: panorama stitching, photo-a-day applications, film camera simulations, various specialized effects, retouching tools, and even “Pimple FacePaint”, which lets you add blemishes to portraits. (There’s a market for that?)
Add that customizability to its communication capabilities, which allow one to share and upload images right from the device without bothering with cables, and you have an unparalleled platform for creating and distributing photos. With a traditional camera, for example, to take a panorama, I would have to shoot each of the images, hoping I got them framed correctly, then download them to the computer, then stitch them together, then upload them to a photo sharing service. On the iPhone, I can do all of those things from one app on one device. (And have the image automatically geotagged, since the iPhone has GPS built in.)
There are certainly still situations where it doesn’t make sense. If you need high-resolution imagery for printing enlargements, you’re out of luck. If you need a flash, ditto. If you are shooting from a distance, you’d be better off with something that has a zoom lens. But for day to day photo taking and experimenting with creative techniques, there’s nothing out there that can beat it today. And the recently announced iPhone 4, with its LED flash and higher resolution image sensor, only stands to make it better.
Postscript: no, I don’t have one, and won’t get one until the usurious data fees get lower or I get markedly richer.
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Kathy and I spent this past weekend down in San Antonio to celebrate our 15th anniversary. We had considered traveling farther afield in recognition of the significance of the milestone, but after recently replacing both our van and our home’s air conditioning system, we decided that something more modest would be in order. Since we love the Riverwalk and being able to comfortably walk around a downtown, we decided that would be a great destination for us.
Our plans to start off with tubing on the Comal River — at 3 miles long, the shortest in Texas — were foiled by the recent flooding in New Braunfels. We instead spent the day lounging about the hotel, enjoying some terrific food, and walking the Riverwalk with Adam, my stepbrother, and his wife Celeste. Since we rarely have opportunity to spend time without a juvenile escort from one side or the other, it was a rare treat to simply meander about and have conversations with actual pauses.
I had an idea that on Saturday we should do something truly grand. We started with a game of Carcassonne, got some mexican pastries and a huge glass of horchata to share (yum!), chatted with a photographer we met, did a little shopping for gifts for the kid, and then went back and took a nap. Given how much we have going on around the house most days, the luxury of being able to have a snooze at the same time was a nearly unprecedented delight.
We ate some more wonderful food that afternoon, went out to Mission Concepción for a bit, and then prowled the Riverwalk some more, reveling in the unhurried pace and the chance to soak in each other’s company at length.
Sunday saw us heading for St. Thomas Episcopal Church for a Jazz Mass service, at which our friends Barry Brake, Darren Kuper, and Greg Norris (a.k.a. The Jazz Protagonists) provided the music. We were delighted to also bump into Paul Soupiset and Jason and Erin Young, who had come down for the mass as well. The service was terrific, the music both organic to the service and thoroughly delightful. We afterwards enjoyed the afternoon with the Youngs, Barry and his wife Catherine, with a too-brief stop to visit my dad, my step-mom, and my sister Meara before finally heading back home for a happy reunion with the kiddos.
Our excellent, unhurried, relaxed weekend, full of good friends, good food, and beautiful places was just what we needed. Many thanks to all with whom we got to visit over the weekend, and especially our dear friends who were gracious to take good care of our spawn while we were gone: Faith, my Mom, Steven & Christina, and Sam & Alba. You guys are great, and we deeply appreciate the generosity and love you showed us and our young ones.
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