Maniacal Rage

Month

June 2013

3 posts

People often ask me to show what my photos look like before I post-process them, so I made a small animation of the 14 or so steps a recent photo went through in Lightroom. Gifs aren’t the best for this as the dithering makes color gradients look a little weird, but it should give you an idea of what the photo looked like at each step.

In the near future I plan to do a short video of the actual process so people can see how I use Lightroom to process photos in a real step-by-step way. Until then, hopefully this will be interesting to some.

Jun 6, 201337 notes
#animated #gif #photography #process #lightroom
Jun 4, 201317 notes
#photography #travel #airplane #pov #earth
Jun 4, 20133 notes
#photography #pov #travel #airplane

May 2013

24 posts

May 29, 2013153 notes
#comedy #commericals #mrshow
Shawn's Moving
  • Shawn Morrison: I spend most days removing cardboard from my home. Today I spent $88 to bring a whole bunch of new cardboard in. This makes no sense.
  • Me: And then you'll move and get rid of all the cardboard.
  • Me: And in a year, the same problem.
  • Shawn Morrison: Yep. Over and over again.
  • Shawn Morrison: It's like Battlestar Galactica but with cardboard instead of robots.
May 29, 201311 notes
#ridiculous
May 23, 20138 notes
#ridiculous #adobe #anonymous
The Perpendicular Way
  • Me: Gotta love an hour long bug hunt that ends in finding a FUCKING SIMPLE TYPO.
  • Dan Wineman: Oh those are the best.
  • Dan Wineman: Remember: Cut parallel to the artery, not perpendicular.
  • Me: Do you think there are still people out there who try it the perpendicular way?
  • Me: I feel like every TV show and movie has to have a character point that out when suicide comes up.
  • Me: 1. It seems weird we all keep telling each other the best way to do it.
  • Me: 2. Doesn't everyone know by now??
  • Dan Wineman: Ironically, you've really got to have your life together to keep up-to-date on your suicide techniques.
May 23, 20137 notes
#ridiculous
Quick Evernote Capture via Scratch → log.himynameisbill.com

Karbon’s very own Bill Griesau runs through some workflows for using the new custom email exports system in Scratch with Evernote:

The thing about Evernote is that it is the perfect system for storing and referencing information, but it is not the best tool for quick capture. However, with Scratch custom email exports, it makes including Evernote into my workflow so much easier.

I’ve never been an Evernote guy, but many Scratch users are and this functionality and simple workflow should be quite helpful. And I have to admit, after reading Bill’s post I’m considering hooking it all up because it’s so easy to use.

May 20, 20133 notes
#scratch #workflow #process #evernote #karbon
Maniacal Rage Podcast: Episode 35 → maniacalragepodcast.net

Shawn has issues with his sleep behavior and pitches his next amazing Hollywood script, Garrett goes postal on the US Postal Service and worries about his kid’s future, and we flirt with the possibility of some amazing format changes. Thanks to Bill Griesau for his brief appearance.

Subscribe in iTunes or subscribe to the feed.

May 17, 20135 notes
#mrpc #podcast #comedy
May 15, 201322 notes
#photography #oliver #life #milestones #birthday
On the Subject of GTD
  • Me: That's exactly what I hate about GTD.
  • Me: 10,000,000 TextExpander shortcuts and AppleScripts and rules.
  • Me: So GTD means managing all that shit.
  • Me: Wow, way to get nothing done.
  • Bill Griesau: It's too much. Way too much.
  • Me: For me, I've found the best system is:
  • Me: 1. Add item to list.
  • Me: 2. Do the thing or delete it.
  • Me: And that's it. No really-long-term planning, no complex organizing or categorizing or automating.
  • Me: Just HERE ARE THINGS.
  • Me: And DO or DELETE.
  • Bill Griesau: Let your mind naturally decide what to do and write it down now so you don't forget it then.
  • Bill Griesau: DO or DELETE, and if DELETE and you think it's important, oh well—it will come back up if it really is important.
  • Bill Griesau: Unless it is "pay Bill Griesau for working". Then, don't delete that.
  • Me: And I do have one more stage, which is DO LATER, which happens naturally in that sometimes I look at my list and think, nah, not now.
  • Me: So I just drag something else higher on the list.
  • Me: And when I need something to do, i just look at the list, and do the first thing if I can. If not, the second, etc.
  • Me: I'm certain GTD works for thousands of people.
  • Me: But for me, it's just masturbation.
  • Me: And frankly, I'd rather spend that time actually masturbating if I have to choose between it and GTD masturbation.
  • Me: At least one feels good.
  • Bill Griesau: We already have masturbation, it's called *masturbation*.
  • Me: Man, that quote's got LEGS.
May 14, 201315 notes
#karbon #work #process #gtd #ridiculous
May 13, 201311 notes
#scratch #releases #tech #apps #karbon #work
Amazon Coins: A Terrible Idea For Consumers → amazon.com

Here come Amazon Coins! A place to put your money where you can’t get it back out and it’s possibly worth less over time and it can only be used to buy shitty Android games! Sign up today! (Lots of ca-ching! sounds and cheering.)

Amazon isn’t the only company to do this—Microsoft started Microsoft Points with Xbox and they’ve been tricking customers into spending more than they meant to for years. Microsoft points are currently worth 80 to the US dollar, meaning prices for games and media look cheaper than they are. A song for 79 points? That’s cheaper than in iTunes! Oh, wait, 79 points is actually 99¢. Oops. Amazon started their coins at 1:1 with a US penny, so that’s something, but that could easily change in the future without warning or notice. Take a peek at their coins terms of use, you’ll notice there’s nothing in there about permanence of value or guarantees against rate changes. You could purchase 10,000 coins today and they’re worth $100 USD, but there’s no guarantee they aren’t going to be worth $80 next year.

These kinds of monetary systems are designed to get customers to lock in a bunch of cash they can’t later get back out (no refunds or exchanges in this program, of course), and they’re baited with “discounts” to get people to dump large amounts of cash into the ether. If you buy hundreds of dollars of coins at once, Amazon will give you a discount on them, up to 10%. But at the end of the day, you’re still giving Amazon hundreds of dollars that you might not spend for months or that you have to worry about managing separate from, you know, your bank accounts. And if you buy coins at discounted rates, good luck remembering how much you paid for any of these apps, since your coins will be worth different amounts all the time.

We already have money, it’s called money.

May 13, 201358 notes
#amazon #consumerism #money #spending #tech
May 12, 20139 notes
#photography #wife #oliver
May 12, 201312 notes
#photography #oliver #nj #me
May 10, 201311 notes
#photography #ny #stormking #travel
I've read in a few posts you play some Xbox. Are you still finding time to play with your son/work nowadays and what are some of your favorite games?

I do still play games, though now with Oliver and work piling up it’s definitely a little harder to find time. I generally play in manic sessions where I won’t touch a game for two weeks and then I’ll play 10 hours on a Sunday. These days Xbox 360 is still my favorite console, though I’ve somehow managed to collect every other console and portable gaming system to boot over the past few years. Most of my gaming time is spent on the Xbox, though.

The game I most recently played and finished was BioShock Infinite, which was truly fantastic and will probably end up being my Game of the Year vote. I still think about the story (and most notably the ending) on a daily basis and I’m biding my time until I can fit in a second play through. Before that, I really enjoyed the Tomb Raider reboot and sunk a bunch of really fun time into Far Cry 3. I’m very excited about Grand Theft Auto V in September. Thinking about recent games I’ve played makes it clear I’ve played a ton of Xbox even with Oliver, because I’ve played nearly every major release in the past year.

I haven’t played my PS3 since inFamous 2 (which I didn’t like as much as the first in the series) and I probably won’t turn it on again until Last of Us is out. Everything about the PS3 seems clunky to me and I don’t find myself enjoying the PS3-exclusive titles as much as other games. My PS Vita hasn’t been touched in months either… I keep hearing about how the future is bright for the PS Vita, but maybe one day that will actually include awesome games.

My Wii U sits dormant since launch, after throwing about 40 hours into Zombii U (terrible name, very fun game) I haven’t seen anything else that looks interesting. Maybe one day there will be a new Zelda or Metroid game, but who knows. Nintendo seems to be circling the drain a bit. I have a 3DS XL which is a cute gimmick but I’ve found the size of the controls and their placement very hard to use with my large hands unless I’m in a perfect sitting position, which really cuts down on me wanting to play it. Though I’ve thrown some time toward Ocarina of Time 3D (I somehow never played Ocarina of Time on the N64 back in the day—shameful, I know).

I’m very excited to see what Microsoft has planned for the nex-gen Xbox when they announce it this month.

May 10, 20132 notes
#gaming #consoles #games #xbox #ps3 #nintendo
Horatio
  • Shawn Morrison: I wonder how my mayo consumption compares to the per capita average.
  • Me: I can't believe it's more than mine.
  • Shawn Morrison: It's a lot.
  • Shawn Morrison: Too bad there isn't Nike+ for mayonnaise.
  • Dan Wineman: You guys should volunteer for a study.
  • Dan Wineman: At the...
  • Dan Wineman: (sunglasses)
  • Dan Wineman: Mayo Clinic.
  • Me: YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH
May 8, 201317 notes
#ridiculous #karbon #food #csi
May 7, 20135 notes
#photography #nj #family #sister #oliver
You mentioned in a recent post that you spend a lot of time focusing and taking multiple photos to get the ideal result. Are you a manual focus guy or auto-focus guy? Or a little of both?

Depends a bit on the camera. On my 5D Mark II it’s about 50/50 autofocus to manual because the autofocus is trustworthy. I tend to autofocus and then tweak manually before shooting. But on my NEX-7 I’ve found the autofocus to be lacking so when I shoot with that camera it’s about 90% manual focus, 10%.

In general I have a constant fear of autofocus because I hate the idea of snapping 30 photos while I’m out only to find out they’re all garbage. Granted, the same thing can happen with manual focus, but it’s a lot less common and it’s my own fault in those cases.

May 7, 20131 note
#photography #process #focus
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