During a commercial break I heard an X-Factor ad that made me wonder whether my vote actually counted at all. The announcer in the ad said, "You voted. Tomorrow you'll find out who you voted for!" I nearly fell over laughing.

I thought I already knew for whom I had voted, but apparently the X-Factor is much like countries run by tyrants and one cannot know for whom one has voted until one's leaders announce it!

On a similar note, the local evening news did a piece on some graffiti that had been painted on a bridge abutment. The headline they read was, "Graphic Graffiti". Seriously? I mean; is there any other kind? A casual examination of the root words in play here might give one enough insight to realize that Graffiti are by their nature, Graphical.

One sometimes wonders where all the teachers of English have gone.

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How Facebook Screwed With Everyone's Privacy And What It's Doing About It
Today Facebook finally reached a settlement with the FTC over privacy concerns that have been haunting the social media behemoth as of late.

Facebook can't just up and change its privacy settings whenever it wants to. It must now obtain express consent from its users, first.

Since the settlement, Zuckerberg has penned a blog post outlining the Facebook features that the site has launched, which include friend lists, the ability to review tags before they appear on a profile, mobile versions…

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Reshared post from +Bill Gekas

'The baker's apprentice' I shot this one on Sunday.
Inspired by the light of Vermeer and the works of DeLone.
I'll get around to a lighting diagram on my blog in the next day or so!

#PlusPhotoExtract

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Peter has been shooting for over 40 years, and he is as accomplished an amateur photog as you are ever likely to encounter.  Over the course of his life, he has tried, and generally mastered, pretty much every photographic genre there is.  As you can tell, I have great respect for Peter.  When he speaks, I listen.

Her first idea was for me to build something that would expand for use and contract for storage; sort of like the old fashioned clothes bars my mother used to dry clothing in the house years ago. (I should mention that my 93-year-old dad still prefers them to our dryer, and has a set in his apartment downstairs.)

After a bit of thought, she settled on the idea that the rack should turn. The other stipulation was that it had to disassemble for flat storage. The rack I built does exactly that. There is no glue, and there are no metal fasteners or parts of any kind. The pieces fit snugly, but the top, the post, and the base can all be disassembled and laid flat. At the moment, even the dowels can be removed, though I am not certain that will be a lasting feature. This piece is 100% Maple. I didn't apply any finish. She didn't feel she needed it. We'll see whether that was a wise decision after she has used and cleaned it a few times.

To make this, I began with a square piece of four-quarter Maple. I found the center of this piece and laid out sixteen evenly spaced lines, which would eventually become the marks for drilling the holes for the sixteen dowels you see in the image below. Once the lines were in place, I cut the piece round and then continued each line down the side of the stock. I then marked a line all the way around the circle exactly in the center of its thickness. Where that line and each of the dowel markers crossed was the center point for drilling. I set the piece up in the drill press and drilled each hole about three quarters of an inch deep. The rest of this project is pretty easy to figure out.
As always, I welcome your comments and questions.

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Pasta on the Floor: Spare a dime….or a quarter?
Welcome to Pasta on the Floor. Pasta on the Floor began as an idea from my cousin Derek while vacationing at their family home in the 1000 Islands of Upstate New York. We are an Italian family with al…

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In part that has come about for one of the reasons +Scott Bourne points out in his latest post over at Photo Focus. (See the link below) You're going to put a $35 filter on a $1000 lens–REALLY!? In addition, I have found in practice that dust gets trapped between the filter and the front element on my lenses. A third reason for my change of heart is that I generally don't remove the UV filter when I want to add a circular-polarizing or other filter. That means filter stacking and can result in increased vignetting and greatly adds to the chance that lens flare of one type or another will adversely effect photo quality.

So my position on UV filters? Just don't do it. Surf on over to Photo Focus and see what Scott thinks.

http://photofocus.com/2011/10/31/the-problem-with-using-filters-on-your-camera-lenses/

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The Problem With Using Filters On Your Camera Lenses

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Photography Show for Hospice of CNY
I am very pleased to announce the date and time of the opening reception for a Photo Exhibit I was asked to do for Hospice of CNY.  Hospice made a big difference during the last few weeks of my si…

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Nasir Khan's Videos | Facebook
Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, post…

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