Politico

One of these days I need to outline my list of ridiculous political beliefs. I generally identify myself as a libertarian but I'm kind of a mutant offshoot. For example:

• I'm socially left and fiscally right
• I don't believe in any political party pandering to unions as a whole
• All marriages are equal whether same gender or opposite - polygamy is still out :p
• Sex with anyone under 13 illegal no matter what age you are - sex with someone 13 and up legal as long as both within three years and neither in a position of authority
• You can be a church or a corporation but not both. You can own the land your church and facilities is on, but nothing else.
• Legalize government brothels - mandatory screening period on prostitutes including education/assessment (similar on johns), mandatory STD testing on both, you have to have tubes tied to be prostitute or similarly rendered infertile if male. Anyone prostituting outside of this gets 1000 year sentence.
• Legalize government drugs - mandatory screen period on users including education/assessment. Anyone buying/selling outside of this gets 1000 year sentence.
• Criminal code - first criminal offense nets you government training/education, second criminal offense gets you shipped to NWT to work in camp for 5-10 years, third gets you 1000 year sentence.
• People aspiring to political office give up all assets when elected, get returned assets plus/minus bonus based on measured performance in office. That is, if economy tanks, you pay like the rest of us - if you succeed in improving country's lot then your bonus matches this.
• Dissolve any organizations ability to presume guilt - i.e. human rights tribunal, WCB, CRA
• Firearms should be freely available to anyone who passes the appropriate tests. I'm strongly opposed to gun registries.

Those are my quick thoughts but you get the idea. I don't mesh up to any Canadian party by a long shot ;)

What you could sell me...

OK, heads up to all you retail jockies out there: I am never going to buy a $50 warranty plan on a $50 piece of retail electronics. It is stupid to ask and it makes me angsty.

I would, however, give serious thought if you pitched the following:

"Tell you what... for $50 you get priority warranty service. This means that you get direct phone access to a tier 2 support person who doesn't make you walk through a stupid script and has the authority to drop ship you a replacement unit with a prepaid return box for the NFG one. For your $50 we'll honor this up until the end of your three years and if it turns out that your model is replaced then we'll give you a free upgrade, no charge."

Don't get me wrong - I didn't buy the $50 router in question... I understand the difference between low end residential gear and business equipment, and I understand the need for tier 1 to weed out all of the stupid people.

But when I call up and say, "hey, I'm plugged directly into this router. No other devices, no internet connection to the unit. I can't ping it on the default IP. I can plug my computer using the same cable into another unit and have it work. If I hold reset I can reach a firmware flash screen for the router but otherwise it's non-responsive. I've checked out your site, there is no firmware file of any kind or I would have already flashed it." and the response is "Sir, I must know the name of your internet provider and the manufacturer of your modem" it makes me die a little inside. They seriously explained to me three different times how to push a reset button.

Seriously retail vendors out there - I would double the price of any unit on the shelf anywhere if it meant I could talk to an intelligent person and be treated like a normal business support call.

I love ICE

One of my favorite tools in my big bag of photography tricks is Microsoft ICE. Essentially ICE lets you create composite panoramics.

You can take any number of photos and then feed it through ICE and it magically combines them together for you.

I have, for the record, used a number of other tools - i.e. Adobe Bridge -> Photoshop is one way, there are some homebrew filters for GIMP and Hugin is another path. In short, though, ICE is by far the best tool.

A couple caveats:

• If you're shooting with an SLR camera, check if you have an exposure lock option. Autofocus on your first point, set your zoom to manual so it doesn't change, lock your exposure at your median shot and then capture as many overlapping shots as you can.
• If you're shooting with a normal shutter speed, you generally do not need a tripod. That being said, if you're doing late night photography or sunset/sunrise shots then you might want to use a tripod. Tripods are nicer for being able to articulate a set number of degrees per shot but generally speaking ICE doesn't care if you overlap exactly at 5 degrees or if you capture a bunch of shots willy nilly.
• If you don't have exposure lock then use one of your manual modes, ideally a straight M mode, and set your camera for the median shot. Then capture per normal.

If you don't have an exposure lock and can't work around it, generally ICE can compensate anyways. However I find that I get a much better quality picture in general if I can exposure/focus lock.

Here's a concrete example of a shot I did near Kamloops. Something like 20+ 10MP photos which stiched into a ~48 MP shot: