Did you know that for $2, the Oneida Nation will sell you a one-day membership in its poker room club? With a membership, you can play at tables as cheap as $2 for the big blind in Texas Hold ‘em, with ten seats.
Oh, at that table they also take $3 from each winning pot, so I guess they are making quite a bit of money on this enterprise.
It was the first time I played a ten-seat game; it let me play very tightly, and bet aggressively when I had good hole cards. Because I played so tightly, I think I won more than half the hands in which I saw a flop.
I came with $18 and left with $64.
Overall, I think I have done better than most in gambling because I don’t make a habit of it, and if I thought about it really hard I could probably figure out whether I have a lifetime net gain or net loss; If I divide that figure by the number of years I have been gambling, the gain or loss becomes a very trivial sum. A lot of people lose their lives to gambling addictions; I probably will not venture into a casino for another few years.
But next time, I have a pretty good idea what game I want to play.
Since Apple began offering video downloads at its iTunes store, I have been reading a lot of comparisons between the video available there versus the video available on DVD. This article is about why it’s not smart to generalize when comparing the videos. (more…)
In an earlier post I noted that I had been promoted to Videographer and Photographer at the Star-Gazette.
Well, once again I am going to break the rule I have about blogging about work, because I have done everything I possibly could do in the first week:
- Had four front page centerpiece photos, two local section centerpiece photos, and one sports centerpiece (that ran five columns wide!).
- Shot and edited two video stories.
- Was called in on a day off to help cover some spot news (this was one of the front page centerpiece photos and videos)
- Sent video I shot the month before to a nationally syndicated newsmagazine show, Inside Edition, and saw it air, with a credit to me.
- Uploaded two photo galleries to stargazette.com.
- Learned how to capture moving subjects in mid-air outdoors with a still camera (easy).
- Learned how to capture moving subjects indoors with yucky lights with a still camera (hard).
- Learned that I sometimes have to shoot the still camera in manual mode in order to get the results I want (hard, but necessary).
I am still not 100% up to speed on the still camera, but I am overall pleased with my progress in learning it. It has nicer lenses than my video camera, and it is a different discipline. Photos are about freezing moments. Videos are about replaying them.
update: One other thing. I also gave the spot news video story I shot to the Star-Gazette’s broadcast media partner. They have few newsgathering operations on Sundays, but even their competition with a Sunday night newscast didn’t send someone. Anyway, instead of cutting my piece up to suit their needs for the next morning (which I would have expected since the story is 8 hours old), they just ran the whole thing and credited the Star-Gazette.
“Jason, I’m sending you a photo. It is 300dpi which should be really good for your needs.”
“Yes, but how big is it?”
“300dpi.”
I have had this discussion with so many people it’s not funny anymore. I’m usually polite about it. So here’s the deal.
300 dpi means 300 dots per inch. Telling me that your image is at 300 dots per inch tells me only that you can divide the total number of dots in the image by 300 in order to make the dots appear close to each other. It’s the same as giving me the following equation:
n/dpi = n(inch)
You’ve told me that dpi is 300, but you haven’t told me what n is yet. What if n is 87? It will mean the photo is really tiny.
Since I can print your photo at any dpi I choose to, telling me the dpi you selected is irrelevant anyway. (Another way of saying that is changing the dpi doesn’t change the total number of dots. the numerator is the important part. The denominator is arbitrary.)
It’s easiest if you tell me the dimensions of your image (such as 640×480) beacuse I can do some quick calculations to know that your photo is 3.2 inches wide at 200 dpi.
Erin and I took the opportunity this weekend to catch up on some housework. We washed every dish we could find that needed it (which was most of them, sadly) and then I set about the various energy-saving projects I swore to finish this weekend.
First I finished cutting the insulating material to place over the windows in the storage room on the second floor. It’s a cellulose board with mylar or foil on the outside of it. I don’t know enough about it but I managed to make it fit snugly with only a few gaps. I don’t know whether this will reduce our energy bill drastically. Keeping the door to the storage room shut would probably do a lot more for the temperature, but it keeps coming open.
After that, I reglazed the last remaining storm window that had yet to go up. We inherited it broken with the house, and it was in the shed; I didn’t realize what it was until well into the last heating season. So I reglazed the window with a new pane, and hung it on the front of the house. It faces our enclosed porch, which is pretty cold, so I think it was a good idea to finally get it up.
We now have storm windows on every window except for the ones in the back, which are all on a part of the house that looks like it was an uninsulated expansion anyway.
All that’s left is blowing in some insulation, and I will have done everything possible short of replacing the furnace.
Once again I am breaking my rule about not blogging about work to note that I have been promoted to staff photographer and videographer at the Star-Gazette.
The last time I was promoted to “multimedia news specialist,” I was very quickly reassigned to my old gig as news assistant because the newspaper realized it needed me more in my previous role than it needed me to do video. I didn’t mind because I got to keep the raise.
Right now video is very hot at Gannett newspapers, and since I have been doing it off and on for 19 years, I have been the point person in the Star-Gazette’s video coverage. Since the last few days of October, I have created eight videos of the 10 posted at the link above. And I am proud of most of them.
(Caution: in order to see the video page, you need the following: Internet Explorer and Windows Media 9 or later, or Firefox and Flash 7 or later. Javascript must be on in both cases.)
What I’m noticing about my videos is when there is humor, I keep it. Maybe it’s just my style. On these videos I have written no reporter track, but that’s mostly because I don’t think Avid would recognize USB audio.
If you have problems watching the videos, let me know. I don’t know that there is a lot I can do about it, though.
OK. one blog down. a whole bunch more to go.
Eugene posted an interesting account of a party scene in Korea. It makes me wish I had been there. Go read it if you haven’t done so already.
The chants of “maekju jo” and “kogi jo” he wrote about reminded me of some chanting I heard the time I was at the CN Tower in Toronto. In the elevator, the tourguide had British, French and Italian flag pins on her shirt.
As the elevator went up, she gave us the English speech she gives about the height of the tower, when it was built, yadda yadda yadda. Then these people on the side of the elevator started jumping up and down, raising their fists and chanting “En Francais!” over and over in unison. So she apologized to them in French that she would say it again in French when she was done in English.
After about 80% of the ride was done, she gave a condensed version of her spiel in French. We all piled out of the elevator when the door opened. I was the last one out. I turned around to thank her.
“Grazie. Ciao,” I said, trying my best to sound like my Italian professor from college.
The “Oh crap, I just screwed up” look on her face was priceless. “In italiano?” she asked me, as the doors shut between us.
Some people think that was mean. But I think it was funny, and harmless.
I didn’t proclaim this week culture week for any particular reason. I just think that so far the week has been full of opportunities for me to get cultured again.
On Monday night, I listened to Jeff Shaara, author of Gods and Generals and a bunch of other books talk about the historical fiction writing process and a bunch of other stuff. This guy knows how to talk. It makes me want to pick up one of his books. The two things I remember most about the lecture are that he’s essentially walking in the footsteps of his father, who got the ball rolling but died before he could see the benefits, and that in order to write a single book of historical fiction he tends to read about 60 or 70 books as research, most of them original sources like memoirs and letters.
Then on Tuesday night I saw Jackass: Number Two. Believe it or not, there are some redeeming qualities about the film, though I think I prefer the first film because I like pranks better than stunts, and I think there were more pranks (or more time spent on pranks) in the first film. I could be wrong, though.
I have no idea what I will do with the rest of the week. Post some suggestions, if you’d like.