The big news is that the coach is interviewing with the Jets for their head coaching job and BC has indicated that they will fire him if he continues with the interview.

At first glance, the above situation looks very poor for BC.  How could they be so punitive about an interview?  The issue gets much more dicey when you look into it and realize that the coach Jags is potentially ditching BC less than half way through his contract.  He has been successful at BC and the college took a risk in hiring him since he was relatively unknown.  Here we are two years later and he has essentially indicated that he would rather work in the NFL then honor his commitment.

The other irony of this whole situation is that it is highly unlikely that coach Jags will get the Jets job.  New York is a major sports town and the Jets need to choose an established coach with a strong record.  You could imagine Bill Cowher, Mike Shanahan or Brian Billick, but not coach Jags.  The coach choice is critical given that the Jets flamed out with their previous pick of the inexperienced (as a head coach) Eric Mangini.

In short, Jags is essentially ditching his college job where he makes $1 million per year for an interview that is unlikely to result in a job.  He is also renegging on his contract and commitment to BC.  Hmmmm, something seems odd.  Maybe he has plans for an assistant coaching job in the NFL, but that will still result in a major pay cut.  Is the BC coaching job really that bad for Jags?

Shutter Speed - This parameter controls how long the sensor (or film) is exposed to light.  The longer the exposure, the more light reaches the sensor and the brighter the image.  However, long exposures bring challenges particularly when photographing items that are not stationary.  This is measured as a fraction and so smaller number are slower shutter speeds.  For example 60 is 1/60th of a second and is slower than 1000 which is 1/1000th of a second.

Aperture - This controls how how much light the lens allows through.  Think of it as a door into a dark room.  A wide open door will allow much light while a cracked door will allow very little.  Like shutter speed, it is measured in fractions and so f4 is a larger lens opening then f11.

ISO - This controls the sensitivity of the sensor.  By changing the ISO, you adjust the sensitivity of the camera's sensor and can thus take pictures in darker situations without a flash.  Higher ISO's will lead to more noise in the picture and so there is no free lunch.  ISO is measured in 100's with the higher the number the greater the sensitivity and the more noise.  Most people shoot their DSLR's at around 100 - 200 while most point and shoot cameras shoot around 80.

This post only provides the very basics.  I hope to cover each of these topics in greater detail in the future.

I completed a thorough analysis and decided to migrate DNS to free service called everydns.com.  The new service is currently up and running and the migration should be transparent.  So far so good.  I recommend these folks to anyone needing a free DNS provider although they do request a donation.

When using a camera you are limited by the minimum shutterspeed you can choose to avoid camera shake.  If camera shake occurs, the result will be a blurry photo.  Image stabilization can help solve this problem somewhat, but still is only a partial solution.  A tripod solves this problem; with it you can set any shutterspeed offered by the camera.

Access to slower shutterspeeds may not seem like a big deal, but it is.  It allows you to do all kinds of interesting things that were not possible hand holding.  It also allows for you to take two of the same shots that differ only by exposure.  This is a requirement for high dynamic range photography.

I highly recommend the addition of a tripod to any serious photographers kit.

I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

The one thing that I was missing on my Slingbox was a way to stream the video to my new 3G Blackberry Bold.  How cool would it be to be able to stream video to my Blackberry wherever I am?  Well, it appears that I am in luck.  Sling Media appears to be launching an open beta of the Blackberry Client for Slingbox late this year according to this post.  I am definitely going to try this out.