Tea Leaves

This post can also be called “In Which I Ignore Kelly’s Advice To Buy A Garmin And Pay The Price”.

I just got my DeLorme PN-40 last night. I went for the PN-40 instead of the Garmin because I was lured by the promise of awesome topo maps and easy-to-obtain-and-load aerial photography (and because there was a fire sale on them and I got one at a very good price). There was some criticism on Amazon about the software being not that great. I am here to tell you that criticism is not at all exaggerated. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written before about how much I love the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Tonight, I’m going to do it again.

3 floors of open stacks. 9 floors of closed stacks. Books, magazines, CDs, videotapes, DVDs, video games, audiobooks, graphic novels, downloadable books-on-MP3, as well as a variety of other online resources. Research librarians who can answer just about any question. An electric piano that you can play, with headphones. Coffee. A window that looks out into a room with dinosaur skeletons. It’s like someone sat down and specifically designed the building in which I would most like to be trapped overnight. Read the rest of this entry »

(Part 1 of this article explains my rationale for answering the question “How hard is it for a Canon shooter to go Nikon?)

Conclusion

I set out to answer the question “can a Canon shooter go Nikon?” The best answer I have for this question is a personal one: in writing this article, I’ve been packing up the D300 to send back to Nikon, and I’m mentally tallying up my bank account to see if I can come up with the cash to buy one — and the 17-55 f/2.8, and an SB-800 — for myself.

This is not to say that one can’t get good results out of a Canon. Rather, having decided to address the “what should I upgrade to?” question squarely, I can’t unring the bell. The D300, with the accompanying lens, is a combination that, out of the box, made composing and exposing compelling images practically effortless. When I last used a Nikon — a D70 — I felt like I was quite literally fighting the camera tooth and nail in order to get an image of acceptable quality, an image not overwhelmed by unpleasant ISO noise. Those days are gone.
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We were in Seattle for a long weekend this past week. This is the first time I’ve been back since a trip about ten years ago. As before, Seattle is a great food town, especially for seafood. And, in the last ten years they have finally learned how to make a cappuccino. Here are a few places to try.
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Pete mentioned last week that I was in Paris on one of my periodic visits. These started over ten years ago when a friend of mine got a long term consulting gig over there and we went and visited and got hooked on the place. Now I try to take a trip once every year or two. This trip was much like the others. Mostly what we do is walk around, sit in the gardens, and eat. On the other hand, there were new things too.
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One of the odd things about Western Pennsylvania, as a region, is that there is an urban/rural divide that seems more stark than nearly anywhere else I’ve been. You can travel half an hour outside of town and find people that have lived in the area all their lives, but never been downtown. Likewise, you can find people who live in the city who never find occasion to leave.

This is a shame, because there are things in both places that are eminently worth experiencing. One of the highlights of getting out of town a little bit — especially in the autumn — is the fairly large number of small farms and orchards where you can find great locally-grown produce at reasonable prices. Today, I’d like to tell you about one of them.
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As promised, here is a second list of things that I like about PIttsburgh. Also as promised, no food places.

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Tonight, in a pensive mood, I did something I haven’t done in a while: I picked a direction, started driving, and got myself good and lost. I ended up in Clairton.
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So, it turns out that there are people who are really, really enthusiastic about Mac OS X, as I discovered at the Tiger launch party in Shadyside last night.

And now, I have photos to prove it.

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It was just this past summer, and I was in my favorite French bistro in Toronto: La Palette. It is small, comfortably crowded, and quirky. It was a wonderful day. Kensington Market was closed to auto traffic in a “take back the streets” sort of moment. Live music blared from three different bands. And a summer shower forced us all inside — wet, but happy. I was looking forward to a simple plate of steak frittes. The beer list at La Palette is great, and I was able to enjoy a Hoegaarden Verboden Vrucht, which I haven’t had since the last time I was in Antwerp, nearly 8 years ago now.
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