Wow, it was a lot warmer this time of year last year.  Right now it’s in the 40s-50s outside.  Couldn’t dress like this now.

See the photojojo page on the web.

Enjoy your day off government (and other) employees!

I came to a disturbing realization the other day - I’ve come to feel that whatever isn’t online isn’t real.  This came about thanks to the Wii’s insanely stupid online policy.  Everything about playing online with the Wii is an exercise in frustrating the user.  Rather than always be connected to the net when the console is on (like modern computers, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3), the Wii attempts to connect to the game servers at the time you wish to play the game.  This leads to the very frustrated experience of wanting to play online, loading up into the game you want to play and then realizing that the system is having problems connecting to the Internet.  So you have to back out to the Wii menu and trouble-shoot the problem.  This wouldn’t be so vexing if it didn’t take the Wii ages to load games, including the “don’t throw your effing Wiimote around” warning every time!  Even in games where it doesn’t make sense!  (Like Rock Band)

Things have changed a bit since last time, so I decided to once again cover what flickr thinks my 20 most interesting photos are.

Tetris is the first video game I was unable to shut off on command.  Players of Sid Meier’s Civilization are familiar with the problem of “one more turn”, similar to the bookworm’s “one more page”.  Tetris was my first “one more turn” game.  I first played Tetris when I was five or six and received my Gameboy for my birthday or Christmas.

A few days ago, Mai told me that photos of landscapes make her feel lonely.  That really caught me by surprise.  The usual response to photos such as the one above is one of awe.  People usually feel a new appreciation for nature and/or that spot.  And, sometimes, people express a desire to visit that place too in order to experience it themselves.  But I never thought someone could look at a landscape and feel a sense of loneliness.  (Unless, of course, the photographer meant to invoke loneliness by selecting a certain type of photo or white balance)

My latest Photojojo capsule.

One in 1,600,000.  That’s odds of randomly meeting someone I know in NYC excluding my wife’s family.  And yet, due to construction on the Q line, Danielle and I found ourselves on the bus with Katy Ho, who we hadn’t seen since graduation.

I’ve often remarked to my wife that it was odd we hadn’t seen any friends in New York.  And she always reminds me that New York has eight million people and the likelihood of anyone we know being in the same place as us is pretty slim.  I know this is true, but I strangely feel as if New York is a more intimate place.  I think it has to do with the fact that because there are eight million people there, you’re almost never walking alone on a street.  The city seems to be overflowing with people and it seems inevitable that you’d meet someone you know by chance.  But that’s just an example of how bad the human mind is at figuring out probability.  Katy was coming home from yoga and dinner with some friends.  And if the train tracks hadn’t been under construction, we would never have met up.

I’ve been wondering about a peculiar aspect of human motivation. Why do we require a present of some sort in exchange for a donation? Let’s take NPR for example. During membership drives a donation will net the donator a hat or tote bag or something like that. But why does there have to be a prize for donation? The point of donation is that you realize some organization or cause needs your money. So why waste some of that money to get a mug? And if you wanted a mug emblazoned with the NPR logo, you could just go to the NPR store and buy it. But getting gifts must entice more people to donate or organizations wouldn’t waste money on it when they could be using all the money to cover their costs.

Recently I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot of people repeating some version of the mantra, “a great photographer can make a great photograph with any camera.”  They’ve then been following this up with, “therefore, why not just use an iPhone or point and shoot.  There’s no reason to buy an SLR anymore.”  Like everything else in life, the truth is gray rather than black and white.