Jersey tagged me on his 5 people lunch meme, and as a good blogger, I feel compelled to answer.

My first answer would be to have lunch with five geographically-distant friends, as having lunch with famous people (who, let’s face it, would be complete strangers) would be an awkward situation for both me and the other party. Furthermore, I’m not a fan of this question because it begs you to impress everyone by naming a lesser-known, non-celebrity-but-famous-for-a-reason answer. I might as well be out tutoring some bartender on how to make “my” drink.

Since the friend answer defeats the fun of this question, I’ve answered below (in no particular order). I wasn’t sure if dead people were acceptable (otherwise it’d be Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed FTW), so I kept it with the living.

1. Shigeru Miyamoto. The Walt Disney of the video game industry deserves my thanks for a happy childhood.
2. Steve Jobs. The Willy Wonka of our generation can’t be off this list.
3. Bill Watterson. Of anyone who could tell me the joys and pitfalls of creating comics, this is the man.
4. Warren Buffett. Last year, Zhao Danyang paid $2.1 million to have lunch with the Oracle of Omaha. If offered, why turn down something so valuable for free?
5. Gordon Ramsay. Someone has to cook the meal!

It looks like this message is making the rounds, but in case any photographers around here missed it, The Yellow Wall Gallery (located in the Midtown Scholar Bookstore), is accepting submissions for their upcoming exhibit, “Summer in Winter: A Visual Escape”, February 5 – March 26, 2010. More details are available at the The Yellow Wall Gallery’s Website.

It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since I’d done one of these, until I remember I spent all of last December moving and painting.

This is one of those equations I always seem to forget, so I’m posting it here for my own selfish benefit (though it’s free for anyone to use).

It’s a range converter method that can be particularly useful for sliders, etc. (code is in ActionScript 3.0).

/**
* Translates a value between two numeric ranges.
* Usage example: trace(translateRange(0, 10, 0, 100, 5)); // returns 50
* @param a1 (Number) minimum value of original range
* @param a2 (Number) maximum value of original range
* @param b1 (Number) minimum value of new range
* @param b2 (Number) maximum value of new range
* @param num (Number) number from original range to translate
* @return Number Value of num in new range
*/
function translateRange(a1: Number, a2: Number, b1: Number, b2: Number, num:Number):Number {
var c:Number = ((num - a1) * (b2 -b1)/(a2 - a1)) + b1;
return c;
}


I’m a little late to post this, but BarCamp Harrisburg 2 has been officially announced. It’ll be on Saturday, April 10, 2010 from 9am to 5pm at Harrisburg University. Attendance is free–just make sure to bring topics to discuss! I was hesitant to begin promoting this so far in advance, but there’s already been a decent amount of signups, plus we already have more sponsors at this point than last year (to be announced soon).

Hopefully, the weather will be better this time around (for those not in attendance, BarCampHarrisburg 1 was held in January during an ice storm). The venue has changed, too–Harrisburg University has a tremendous facility, and the wireless and projector hiccups from last year will won’t be an issue here. Frankly, it’s awesome that they’ve been so open and enthusiastic about hosting the event.

Also new is the Website and registration process. Gone is the confusing Wiki signup, as we’re now using Eventbrite (I’ll confess to cherry-picking some of the features of BarCampPhilly’s Website approach, as it’s one of the few examples of Websites hosted outside of barcamp.org).

A common question asked by potential attendees unfamiliar with the format is whether or not they will be forced to present. The answer is no. Personally, though, I hope we have so many attendees that it’d be impossible for everyone to present. Even if Especially if you’re not in the tech or education industry (but have interest in it or the social aspects of the Internet) I recommend you check BarCamp Harrisburg 2 out.

This past weekend I made it out to BarCamp Philly, and as you can see from the photo above, the turnout was 200-300 people–pretty good. Little did I know that WordCamp NYC was going on at the same time, but I think I made the right choice.

I’ve attended so many BarCamps now that I feel like an aficionado; you start to immediately recognize what works and what doesn’t at these events. Fortunately, Philly’s version of this unconference was well-sponsored and well-organized. They had a Website, pins, t-shirts, an online/mobile schedule, a photographer, and a great turnout. Here’s a hit list of what I liked and what I didn’t like:

Liked:

1. Open Source Cupcakes. ‘Nuff said.
2. Carl Leiby’s online schedule. I’m against developing iPhone-centric sites, but this certainly came in handy.
3. The pamphlets (above). It included a handy grid for you to write out what you wanted to attend. Definitely a nice touch.
4. The diversity of attendees. There were attendees from education, medical, and insurance sectors–not just Web developers, which made it refreshing for conversations.

Disliked:

1. The venue layout (Nothing against UArts whatsoever). Hosting a BarCamp on multiple floors of a building proved a bit disorienting–and wasn’t conducive to camper interaction out of sessions. Of course, free space is what it is.
2. The logo. Bring back the Liberty Bell, or at least make the logo Philly-centric!
3. No breaks between sessions. This was a scheduling boo-boo, but I think the organizers caught onto it. They also didn’t schedule time for a closing session, but that was promptly remedied.
4. Name tag holders. They’re a personal pet peeve, I suppose. They’re a one-time use item, yet I have some odd sense of guilt that comes over me when I think about throwing them away.

This could reflect my session choices, but it seemed as if all of the sessions I attended were hosted by people interested in discussing a topic, but not necessarily qualified in leading it (by their own admissions). Granted, there’s nothing wrong with this approach, but I prefer that happy balance of workshop and discussion.

Overall, it was pretty cool. I’m starting to get the sense that BarCamps are essentially those great discussions you had in college that you don’t get post-academia. After all, once you’re out, how often do you place yourself in a room with a group of diverse and intelligent strangers to discuss a common topic?

My sister and my brother-in-law were obviously trying to one-up my wife for my birthday party, so they showed up with a chessboard they painstakingly made out of chocolate.

The two of them are known for coming up with pretty wild pet projects, though I think they’ve trumped me on anything remotely cool for their birthdays. The board itself is made of Matangos candies, while I’m told the pieces were made of melted chocolate and peanut butter fudge 1/2 molds.

I teach digital imaging at HACC, and one of the projects I assign is a low-light/night photography series. The assignment usually yields some pretty interesting stuff.

I give a brief presentation on abstract photography beforehand, where I mention painting with light, but I never actively tried it (if you’re not familiar with what this is, it’s basically doing a long exposure and taking a light source, such as a flashlight, and playing around). This semester, one of my students expressed their interest in this technique, and it got me wondering how difficult it is to not appear in the photo. Since I couldn’t remember ever seeing light grafitti on Beyond Second, and I figured it was about time to post something, too.

As I prefer to teach with my own examples (and not stock photography), I went out the other night and did some shooting. My wife noted that it was the first time in ages I’d done so . . .

I was trying to get a skyline shot for a site design. I never used it in the design, but I started playing around with 20-30 second exposures.

You can see my head above the statue. I tried to work quickly, as I didn’t want to wake the guy snoring on the nearby bench.

I think it’s good practice to take a standard exposure of the subject matter, just in case you want to do tonal mapping to the image. I tried doing this to eliminate the ghosting in the above shot, but in this case, merging the two yielded too clean a result for my taste.

It’s pretty addictive, and one soon finds themselves wanting to experiment with different colors, patterns, etc. I’ll probably go out and do this again at some point, and I’m wondering if I’ll ever see someone doing the same at 2 a.m.

Hauck Interactive recently launched a new Website for Events, Etc., the catering company from the folks over at the Hershey Pantry. The new site features some of my photography–and had me running out to all of the really nice wedding venues in Hershey and Dauphin county. Check it out.