Borrow lenses (and sports photography)

I received this e-mail:

Trust this finds you well. I am hoping I can impose upon your photography expertise with a question. My wife has been shooting our son’s high school football games (played at night under the lights) with our basic Cannon SLR rebel and using a borrowed Sigma telephoto lens that I think is an 18-200mm and there were some other specs but I can’t find my notes.

Anyway – knowing that the prime purpose is to shoot football games at night where the lighting is ok at best – and wanting a good amount of zoom capability – can you recommend some options in the $500 – $750 price range for me? Also a good retailer or place to buy such an item?

There are really two questions here: what is the ideal lens to buy for night (from the stands) night sports photography, and what is the best lens to buy in a given price range. The answer to the second question may be…nothing at all.

You can read on, or read an four-year-old article on the subject here.

Continue reading about sports lenses and lens rentals after the jump

Posted on by tychay 5

PHP Without PHP—Automattic

Take a simple PHP trick and follow it on a huge tangent to the philosophy of good web architecture.

Presentation was given as Flash Talk at Automattic Meetup in Seaside on September 2010. Presentation originally a long form, but in the spirit of things, I have cut it down.

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

This is based on a PHP Advent article I wrote almost two years ago and formed a low key presentation I used to give in 2009 at conferences. I thought it’d be nice to give a more “traditional” PHP talk—but one which I felt the audience at large could relate to—at the meetup

I hope you enjoy it.

PHP Without PHP—Automattic

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Update

Posted on by tychay 1

Broken Jewel—Automattic

Presentation given as Flash Talk at Automattic Meetup in Seaside on September 2010

Presentation is supposed to be Pecha Kucha style. But due to preparation constraints, it’s given as a short form.

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

I started writing this talk a couple years back, and I have never found a venue to actually deliver it. Matt claims that, “You will not find a friendlier group of people to present to in the world” and that “Everybody has a story.”

This is mine.

Hope you enjoy it.

Broken Jewel—Automattic

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I’ll pare it down from 20 minutes down to six eventually. BTW: there are two major errors: Pecha Kucha is pronounced closer to “peh-katch-u-ka.” And I meant “treatable” not “preventable.”

Update

19651222-chay-wedding

December 22, 1965
Posted on by tychay 1

From Photo to Finished—Automattic

10 Minute Lightning Talk for the Automattic Meetup at Seaside, September 2010

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

For this presentation I chose the subject of photography. Specifically, taking one photo from start to publish describing how I took the shot and the editing steps I chose.

Like many bloggers—Automattic is also known as WordPress—I’m passionate about photography and I felt that many of the other people it the room might be interested in it also—our founder and CEO’s online handle is “photomatt.”

I hope you enjoy this presentation!

This was the second presentation I gave that day. I composed it just after I finished the first.

Photo to Finished

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This presentation will be expanded into a post around Christmas. Look for it!

Posted on by tychay 4

Tales of Virality—Automattic

Presentation given as Flash Talk at Automattic Meetup in Seaside on September 2010

Presentation is given as an Ignite Talk format (20 slides x 15 seconds/slide = 5 minutes. Autopush.)

Automattic is the company I work for. The company is distributed worldwide and once a year we gather at a remote location and meet face-to-face. This year, all the employees are taking a little time during the meetup to compose and give at least one presentation for each other, talking about any subject we are passionate about.

In the e-mail requesting submissions, Matt mentioned that Scott Berkun “did a very cool post and video on giving ignite talks, so I modelled this talk after that.

Sorry, I don’t have the audio file for this—I forgot to record one!. But this is the only talk that is fully scripted out and I included that with the file. 🙂

Hope you enjoy it.

Tales of Virality—Automattic

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Update:

Posted on by tychay 1

Plaxo Office Space

When I worked at Plaxo’s offices on Crittenden (now part of the GooglePlex), there was a door to our server closet inside the handicap stall men’s bathroom of the third floor.

Plaxo Crittenden Bathroom Layout

I can picture this like a scene in the movie: You are minding their own business, taking a shit on the toilet when the mysterious door opens, a sysadmin walks into the stall, says to you, “Oh, Excuse me, our wifi was down.” He then opens your stall door and leaves.

PC Load Letter

One day a VP went to print something out, and started shouting, “PC Load Letter? PC Load Letter! What the heck does that mean? PC Load Letter?! Does anyone know what that means?”

He was deadly serious—the entire office was busting up because unlike him, they had actually seen this movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ8SefiNEcs

Posted on by tychay 5

Nikon D3100

Last month, a friend asked me purchasing advice on a Nikon D5000. I told him, “Don’t. Nikon will be introducing a new D3000 replacement before Photokina.”

Today, Nikon has officially announced the Nikon D3100 entry level dSLR camera.

353_25472_D3100_front

If you recall the big spreadsheet in my complete guide to purchasing an entry dSLR camera (etc), the big specification upgrades are: 14 megapixel, 1080p video and continuous AF.

Two other overlooked features of the D3100 are the improved ergonomics: the shooting mode is now chosen with a dial, and a lever now activates the movie mode. Both are going to be very welcome (for reasons I explained in my guide above).

Continue reading About the D3100 after the jump

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Weapons-grade wingnut

The comments on Balloon Juice can get quite witty. I love the imagery and alliteration in the following:

Wow. That’s some real weapons-grade Wingnut there.

That was used when talking about a purity purge going on over the “ground zero mosque” which is actually a community center with a prayer space. Another commenter wrote:

Calling this a mosque is like calling a casino in Las Vegas a cathedral because it has a wedding chapel.

Posted on by tychay 0

Cisco looking for PHP engineer

Kristen sent me this job posting:

Cisco has a small team that focuses on building a hosted social-networking/media platform (Cisco Eos) for media companies and the fans. They are looking for an experienced PHP developer to help lead the technology development of their advertising platform. This is a big opportunity with enormous reach and importance. The platform you help craft will be responsible for monetizing the future of content delivery — and more — for the biggest music artists, TV shows, movies and sports sites in the world. This a fun, start-up kind of mentality team with the backing of Cisco. This project is the direction that Cisco wants to move towards.

If you like to write software that scales, addresses atypical challenges, helps the world be more entertained, and is even revenue-producing, this is a dream job.

Continue reading responsibilities and requirements after the jump.

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