Today, I spent an hour digging through junk mail to discover that I had two bills totalling $220 for a doctor visit months ago, which had been rejected by my insurance company at the time, BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts.
I had a pricey plan with BCBSoM, so, thinking that the medical clinic might've simply coded a doctor visit incorrectly, I called the customer service number for the clinic's organization. That rep was decidedly unhelpful, and didn't speak English very well. So I decided to first try calling the insurance company for more info, and then call the clinic back in hopes of getting a more helpful rep.
When I called BCBSoM, to see what they could tell me about how the visit was coded and why that was rejected, I got through immediately, and the rep with whom I spoke was leagues better than the clinic's rep. Turns out that the doctor visit in question was a routine physical exam, and that my insurance plan covered only one physical every three calendar years for my age group.
I'd assumed incorrectly that an annual physical was covered by my plan. I acknowledged my error, and the rep offered to look into it to "see what [she] could do." She came back to say that, under my particular circumstances, they were taking care of it as a one-time thing.
I do hope the BCBSoM person has a nice day, since she just made my day a lot nicer. See, they're not entirely bad, Michael Moore.
Disregard this if you don't care about Canon camera gear nerding.
For photojournalism lately, I've been carrying two Canon 20D bodies -- one with a 70-200 mounted, and the other with either a 50/1.4 or Tamron 17-50/2.8. I thought a 24-70 might be more useful range than 17-50, especially for walkaround, and that a good copy of the Sigma 24-70/2.8 EX might have better IQ than the 17-50, so I picked up a used Sigma that reportedly was very sharp.
After carrying the Sigma on a few assignments, and finding it to be a literal pain in the neck, I'm going to try using lighter and less-imposing fast primes on my second body for awhile.
I've ordered a used Canon 28/1.8, and am going to see how that works as a complement to the 70-200. I know 28mm isn't very wide on 1.6X crop, but it might work in most all cases. The Canon non-L alternatives, the 24/2.8 and 20/2.8, both seem relatively crappy to me, and I'd rather just use the 17-50 I already have than one of those.
Whatever I don't use regularly, I'll sell. Fortunately, it's usually easy to sell used Canon gear for what one paid for it.
Sunday, I shot the second day of the Boston Blues Festival, this time officially (unlike last year).
The biggest act was Sir Mack Rice (official site), author of Mustang Sally. Towards the end of the concert, people were dancing in front of the barriers, and Rice asked -- in a way that an R&B legend might -- whether the barriers could be opened up so that people could dance on the stage. That didn't happen, and Rice came down off the stage to sing the chorus of Mustang Sally with individual audience members. He knew that pretty young white ladies with bike helmets and Treos could belt out "Ride, Sally, ride!"
Photography-wise, the clear skies and glaring sun left us mostly with two options: blown out, or harsh shadow. The good news is that, when I was on the bright side of the stage, I could shoot at ISO 100 handheld with the long lens at f/4 and f/8. I did use my 420EX for fill sometimes, but it has no manual power controls, I couldn't find the FEC adjustment on the new 20Ds, and E-TTL delivered way more firepower than desired sometimes. (I'm more accustomed to the manual controls of my my Nikon SB-28s.) I got some good images, and I'll be doing a proper culling and picking over the next couple days. This was my first time carrying two 20D bodies, lenses, and other gear for eight hours, and I hadn't slept the night before (after shooting the crime scene of the other kind of shooting, in Kendall Square, Saturday night). When I got home after the BBF, I didn't have to submit images urgently, so I set my cameras down on the floor and collapsed instantly asleep on my bed, still in my street clothes. I can only imagine how tired the organizers, crew, and actual performers must've been.
It was a really fun event, even if you're not especially into blues, R&B, or funk, and it got a good crowd. If you'll be in Boston next September, mark your calendars.
Occasionally, while shooting news events, I've wished I could hear the police or fire radio chatter, when that might yield information about the situation I could use. So I recently picked up a used RadioShack PRO-95 handheld scanner.
The PRO-95 is a trunking scanner, which is important for Cambridge, which runs a large Motorola Type I/IIi hybrid trunking system (although some of the talkgroups are simulcast to fixed frequencies). I got this particular model because, among other things, it was the first PRO series model to have text tagging.
One definitely needs the documentation to be able to even minimally program and operate this device. The manual is available in PDF format, but the formatting does not lend itself to browsing on-screen, nor is it useful for keeping as a reference on your smartphone when in the field. Fortunately, I managed to obtain an excellent conversion of the manual to HTML format, which I host on my nascent RadioShack PRO-95 Radio Scanner page.
A few years back, I was reading dozens of newspapers at once, tracking specific issues, and developing an intuition for how stories live and die. That was a full-time job. Then I stopped drinking coffee, and got a real job and a girlfriend. But anyway.
Want an easy weekly dose of inspiring news photography, when you don't always have time to scan lots of news outlets?
Time Pictures of the Week has been my favorite photos-of-the-week source lately.
I just rediscovered the excellent MSNBC The Week In Pictures.
Yahoo News The Week In Photos likes pretty photos. Their current interface doesn't show captions by default, and I haven't decided whether this is a good or bad thing.
National Geographic Photos in the News page is not as gorgeous as you might expect from NG.
The BBC In Pictures page is worth a look.
There's also the Editor & Publisher Photo of the Week.
I also check the Boston Globe Photos of the Week, which draws from a very small pool of photographers. Every now and then, I see an image from an event where I was shooting, which reminds me that Dina Rudick will be kicking my butt for years to come.
Walking briskly along Harvard St. early this evening, I overheard, from the direction of a house on the street, a young man seeming to shout angrily into a telephone. Immediately after I passed, I jotted down a transcription of the fragments I couldn't help but hear, for posterity:
... I'm in college! ... Well, what am I supposed to do about classes tomorrow?! ... I'm not taking the fucking T! I hate the T! ... Mom, I [unintelligible]
Sounds like somebody had a rough day, and perhaps needs a good hug or a good spanking.
Then again, if he's talking about the Green Line, that can be maddeningly slow.
Just for the record, I'm now hosting neilvandyke.org
DNS and Web on a colo server. You should be able to see this blog entry by
Sunday sometime. (Sunday morning, some people will still be seeing the old
server, which does not have this blog entry, but eventually DNS will
propagate.)
Now that half of my weekend has been spent on Internet server admin, I'll be spending a good part of Sunday on photography assignment. Then on Monday it's back to software architecture and programming.
There's a small chance that you'll experience glitches emailing me.
As of approx. 21:30 Friday evening (EDT time), I've moved all my email hosting from Pair.com to a new server. My email address remains the same.
Technical notes: The only DNS MX record should be
mx.neilvandyke.org, and you should no longer see an MX record for
mailwash36.pair.com. mx.neilvandyke.org supports
TLS. I'm self-signed for now. Eventually I'll get signed by an official CA
(though I do need to write up a blog entry on why CAs as currently implemented
are mostly useless, and in many ways security risks).
After well a decade or two of my keychain being a mini Victorinox Classic SD Swiss Army Knife -- first a red one, then a blue for variety -- I've switched to a silver Leatherman Micra .
Pros of the Micra I've noticed so far, relative to my old Victorinoxen:
More tools, including a Phillips screwdriver.
Blade can't close when handles folded (poor man's lock).
Scissors are stronger.
Blade slightly larger.
Tweezers can't be lost.
Slightly greater coolness factor.
Cons:
Larger size and sharper angles make it rougher on pockets.
Slower access to most tools.
Scissors not as good for trimming nails.
Tweezers does not detach for easier delicate use.
No soft plastic toothpick.
Not as much nostalgic charm.
The all-metal handles might have implications for bare hands in cold weather.
To the Victorinoxen, and now the Micra, I attached a key ring large enough to slip around my index finger while keys and tool are attached. This is great for keeping your keys and tool from falling out of your hand (perhaps down a storm drain or elevator shaft) when you need to carry for whatever reason.
I'll see how I like the Micra. If I don't, perhaps one of you will coincidentally be receiving a fashionably "distressed" one for Christmas.
You can buy keychain Victorinox and Leatherman tools cheap on eBay, since the US airline safety TSA people confiscate truckloads of these tools with fearsome one-inch blades from upstanding Boy Scout-type citizens who wish to exercise their right to travel. It is with this in mind that I link to a True Story featured on the Victorinox Web site, "A pocket-knife used as a scalpel":
Passengers on a domestic flight in January 1976 witnessed the terrifying moments in which a young mother cried out for help in desperation because her child had swallowed a hard sweet and was in danger of choking. [...] The hostess appealed urgently for a pocket knife over the loudspeakers. A passenger handed the doctor a clean, new and sharpened Swiss Officer's Knife. The doctor quickly performed a tracheotomy.
Nowadays, sorry, kid.
I recently wasted 3 hours of my life and a Netflix rental slot on the DVD version of Dune (1984).
I'd recently heard someone say something favorable about it, and having not yet seen it, I popped it off Netflix. Only after watching Dune did I Google for reviews, which confirmed that I am not out of line in directing dismissive expletives at David Lynch.
Let the sound of my humble blog entry join the emergent roar of millions in condemning the atrocity that is Dune (1984).
I don't really watch TV, so the surprise hadn't been spoiled for me before I entered Walgreens today and encountered Pur Water Filtration Systems Flavor Options. (Whatever happened to the "Pur" association with "pure"?)
Yes, fellow Americans, we might no longer have a constitutional government, but hey, the gosh-darned kitchen faucet spews fruity water! Raspberry, Peach, or Strawberry! That's good old-fashioned American ingenuity for ya! :)
(Epilogue: Occasionally I say something cynical-sounding, but you have to remember I am a little bit Dutch, and we (I say "we," as if I could find the Netherlands on a map) have a sense of humor about everything. Build a major coastal country below sea level? "Sure, ve haff de gonads big enough to hold back de ocean! Ha ha!" Even their brownies are funny, though I stay away from those.)
The other day I picked up a used Canon EOS 20D, mainly because I need two bodies for event photojournalism (rapid lens changes in the middle of a protest crowd weren't cutting it). This one was owned by a corporate lawyer by day who in a parallel life is a portraiture photographer with a book out. So the camera has some good karma. The 20D's controls are substantially better than the 350D's, and I'm liking the extra AF points. The shutter is louder, and I think I'm going to need mirror lock-up more often than with the 350D.
So I go out for the first test shooting walkabout with the 20D and a 70-200, and wind up on the Boston Esplanade. Some poor guy picked that time to be meandering along a busy Esplanade clad only in a wristwatch and homemade G-string. I'm sympathetic to the desire to enjoy nature and sun, and the American Puritanism is pretty ridiculous, but I wouldn't myself do quite this. This person seemed to want to be seen, and some people were gasping, scowling, and muttering. I pondered for a few moments, mentally decided "newsworthy!" with an exclamation point and a grin, and shot him from behind.
I actually lucked out with several nicely-composed images, but I'll post instead a heavily-cropped image. A lot of the story -- the public context, the blurry bystanders turned towards him, the look of the balding middle-aged man with conservative eyeglasses and beatific smile -- was lost, but I think the crop with the flower still hints at the story. I didn't run after him for a caption.
Mantra Time: the photojournalist must be sensitive to the humanity of the subject, suppressing immediate biases and judgements.
This reminds me of another recent image on the Esplanade, which I also took only after debating newsworthiness. A bit of explanation: in oft-chilly Boston, women in bikinis are not commonplace, and the same on bicycles are quite rare. It might appear that the man in the background is therefore bowing out of respect (bowing away, as if he is not worthy to face her). Or perhaps he is expressing some kind of gluteus maximus solidarity.
Who says humanity can't be humorous.
And that's my review of the Canon EOS 20D.
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