Month: June 2003

Dallas Camera Club

Ashley Bischoff10 Comments

Since buying my new camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700), I’ve been reading various books on photography as well (including the National Geographic Photography Field Guide), which I’ve found very useful).

In that book, they mentioned what should have been obvious to me: many cities have camera clubs. So, I checked Google for “Dallas camera club” and, what do you know, there is a Dallas Camera Club. They have meetings every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of of the month. The 1st-Tuesday meeting is for their photography competitions, while the 3rd-Tuesdays are regular meetings.

The meetings are held at one of the rooms of Parker Chiropractic College, which is just at 35 & Walnut Hill. So, as yesterday was a 3rd-Tuesday, I decided to check it out. The Chiropractic College was easy to find, and it only had a few buildings so finding the room wasn’t tough either.

When I first stepped in to room 226, I noticed that more than half the room were retirees. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, since the field of photography has been around for over a century. But I guess I didn’t expect to have many interests in common with older Americans.

Before the meeting, there were snacks and drinks. The drinks were all 2-liter bottles, but even included Kroger-brand “Caffeine Free Diet Cola” — ahh, the guilt-free brown water I love. Of course, there were also cookies, which probably counteracted any carb-savings I got out of the soda ;).

For what it’s worth, the cookies were of three varieties: those Snackwells Devils Food cookies (ehh), and soft chocolate chip cookies in two sizes (one set about Chips Ahoy sized and another set of about 3” each). Perhaps the cookies are different each month.

The meeting itself was well run and interesting. As with any club of this type, there was the occasional nervous banter of the President between introducing speakers (but, I can live with that, I suppose).

The first presentation was a PowerPoint-based slideshow (using a projector connected to a laptop) of the club’s recent fieldtrip to a Dogwood Farm (it was like a botanical garden for trees, or such). Pleasantly, the slideshow was set to auto-advance evey four or five seconds (woo, no chit-chat between every slide!). As I understand it, the slideshow was made of contributed pictures from club members; so, some were great while others weren’t quite as good.

The second presentation was on creating simulated multiple-exposures using Photoshop. This one amazed some of the Photoshop-newbies, but it basically consisted of sandwiching two photographs over separate layers and varying the transparency between the two. I didn’t mind that so much, but the information wasn’t something that I’d regularly use.

After the meeting, I talked with a few of the members. They were all very friendly and, of course, rather knowledgeable about photography (I counted at least two people who had bought a Canon EOS-10D, which impressed me). I thought the meeting was worthwhile and I’ll probably try to go again.

More on Marketplace

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Yesterday, I wrote about how I had written in to Marketplace about playing music during their midday report. At the time, I was apparently the only one who had written in about the topic, so yesterday’s segment was primarily a call for other listeners’ opinions.

And from the way Tess (the host) was ribbing David (the producer) yesterday, I figured that the music idea wouldn’t really have much of a chance. But, I wrote another short e-mail to them just to offer some encouragement in case they were still considering it.

I listened to the Marketplace Midday report today, as usual. They discussed the background music briefly but I think it’s been driven into the ground (no big deal, really). But, they did mention me by name on the show (around the 6:30 mark), including my call sign ;).

Marketplace Midday Report

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

In case you’re not aware, Marketplace is a business news show on NPR. It airs for me at 5:00 and 5:30pm CST, but those are Sirius Radio times, so it may air at slightly different times in your area.

In addition to their regular show, they also produce several mini-updates on business news throughout the day (a Morning Report, a Midday Report, and perhaps others). They’re each a couple minutes long, and NPR member stations generally air them between other shows.

I typically listen to all of them on the web, out of convenience if nothing else. Ideally, I’d listen to Marketplace on my way home from work, but that only works when I’m able to leave work at a reasonable time (there always seems to be just something that appears at 5:00pm, eh?).

Anyhow, during Friday’s Midday Report, producer David Brown asked listeners whether they’d like to hear some music in the background of the report and to write to (letters (at) marketplace.org) about their opinions. I figured that a little music couldn’t hurt, so I sent off a short e-mail and thought little of it.

Well, during today’s Marketplace Midday Report, host Tess Vigeland was chiding David that they only received one letter about his idea for background music. At this point, I’m thinking “Nah, they must be kidding around. It was probably a few letters, at least…”.

Then, David breaks into “CQ DX CQ DX, we hear your request sir!” and Tess quips back, “What? What are you doing?”. David then explains that “the guy is a ham radio operator” and that CQ DX CQ DX is a request from one ham operator to another for a long-distance contact (in hamspeak, “CQ” is “I Seek You”, while “DX” stands for “distance”).

At that point, I knew that there really must have been just one letter and that they must have been talking about me ;). And, yeah, I am a licensed ham with my call sign (KB3BZG) in my sig.

Flying Saucer in Arlington

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

I enjoyed hanging out with some of Bryan’s New Jersey chums at The Flying Saucer in Arlington on Saturday. The Flying Saucer is well known for having almost 100 beers on tap (and another 100 available by the bottle), so I really looked forward to trying some of them.

Since they have their entire menu online, I spent some time on Saturday afternoon and cross-referenced their beer list against RateBeer.com’s Top Accessible Beers list — it’s a list of their highest-rated beers with at least 300 ratings (that way, you generally have half a chance of being able to find them).

I realized that there was also the chance that some of The Flying Saucer’s beers may have been highly rated but not by as many reviewers. So, I also checked on every other beer on their menu (which didn’t take as long as you might think, since you can search by brand at RateBeer and it’ll show the ratings for all beers under that brand).

I put all this info in my Palm and headed off. Once there, I ordered a Schneider Aventinus to start. It’s in the 98.3 percentile of beers at RateBeer, but also with 8% alcohol. It was strong, but almost had a creamy texture. It was the type of beer that would go well with food (I had a sandwich, in this case).

I hadn’t eaten dinner beforehand, so I looked over their food menu and ordered a Space Club. It’s described as having “ham, turkey, bacon & tomato with cheddar and jack cheese”. Its description made it seem like a club sandwich, but it was no club sandwich. A classic club sandwich generally includes thin toasted bread cut into triangles but the Space Club’s bread was actually a bulky white roll.

And, the sandwich may have been “oven baked”, but that only made it a bit crispy around the edges. The menu mentioned both ham and turkey, but I only detected ham (and no bacon, either). It was like a ham & cheese sandwich on a crispy white roll.

So, the sandwich was a bit of a disappointment, but the beer was still enticing. And, after the Schneider Aventinus, I had an Arrogant Bastard Ale. This “only” had 7.2% alcohol, but it’s in RateBeer’s 97.8 percentile. The label describes the brewer’s philiosophy well:

This is an aggressive beer. You probably won’t like it. It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate an ale of this quality and depth.

One reviewer described it as a “hops bomb” and that’s about right — this beer was chocked-full of hoppy flavor and probably not particularly suitable as a sipping-on-the-beach beer ;).

No subtle use of hops to be found here. Very sharp hoppy aroma (grapefruit/pine), with some raisins. The flavour is pretty full on, hops everywhere, quite bitter and very sharp and a bit sickly, particularly as you work your way through it, the amount of hops throws the balance out a bit. Pretty much everything i was expecting, a massive hop bomb. Did i mention it was hoppy?

I had finished my sandwich by this point, and my intake of the Arrogant Bastard was self-governing. The beer was tasty, but my palette could only take so much at a time. Really, the Arrogant Bastard would have worked better along with food (perhaps a hamburger or… hawaiian pizza?).

I had a good time at The Flying Saucer, and I’d go again. If nothing else, this is one bar where I could order different beers every time — for nearly eternity ;).