Anybody want a poster?

I'm trying an experiment - offering a couple of posters for sale.

Happy birthday

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
I just turned forty,
Oh shit.

Want to cheer me up? Buy some prints. Here's an incentive - for the next 24 hours I'll include a free signed 8x10 of my choice with your order (it will be something I have on hand - I always have some extra prints around because of minimum orders at the lab).

Nom nom nom

Sigh

Blogger sucks. They're discontinuing the kind of blog I have - where I use their tools to write it, but then it's pushed onto my local site. Using the surviving options it's possible to set it up using a custom domain - but not into a subdirectory. One thing I like about the current setup is that the blog's just another part of the site with basically the same look, etc. and this is going to be a step away from that. The good news is that it appears that I can use a subdomain, so basically instead of

www.san-francisco-nudes.com/blog it becomes
blog.san-francisco-nudes.com

It's not quite as clean but it's doable. One obvious disadvantage is that I won't be able to use my current stats package but since I just updated it since September obviously I don't pay too much attention to that anyway. I suspect there will be a lot of other little annoyances but we'll see.

It's not clear yet if I'll be able to keep my existing templates or if I need to start with a modern one and tweak it to make it look basically like the site. Probably I'll need to start with a new one which would give me the more modern/useful archive column in the sidebar and such.

There's supposed to be a migration tool available at the end of February, so I'm not going to do squat about it until then, but sometime between then and March 26th when they kill service I'll be moving over. In theory it's supposed to be pretty transparent with redirects from the old URL to the new one but we'll see.

Just checking in

I'm still alive and all that. I have a couple of models lined up to do stuff if it ever stops raining (three or so where it's vague, one where we're basically checking in every weekend to see if anything looks good in the next few days). If it keeps up a whole lot longer I'll book some studio work, but between portrait work and my "to do" list being outdoor heavy I'd really like to shoot some models outdoors.

The whole "getting everything that was on my PC working on my iMac" thing continues to go well. As an example I run awstats locally to keep an eye on my web stats, but not that often so I just now got around to installing it and updating my data since September. There were no real surprises - traffic's been pretty stable over the long run with the occasional spike if some popular site links to me. I'm really happy with my iMac - I have it set up now to boot in either MacOS and Windows 7 and it's really eased the transition back to the Mac.

eBay's decided to make massive changes - they're eliminating the stores as we know it so there will be only one kind of fixed price item, which has its pros and cons. It's really not obvious what I should do - probably I'll just keep a token presence there since it's been less and less of my sales anyway, but I haven't made any decisions yet. They're trying to get everybody to commit to an expensive store subscription package by Feb 16th but they're awfully vague on exactly why you should do it so early. Sigh... but it looks to me like I should maybe just have it set so a couple of fixed priced items end every day and eliminate auctions entirely. The big reason to keep some kind of presence there is it's where a lot of my new customers from from.

Other than that I'm trying to keep the newly mobile baby from causing too much chaos (watching her is much more full time than it was when she slept more and stayed where you put her), and finishing off some of my apparently neverending homeowner to do list.

I've been posting the occasional little funny thing that's not worthy of a blog post over on Facebook - if that sounds interesting, check it out (I know the whole "fan" language irritates some people but it's the best way to keep both a private and a public page on Facebook - the wording wasn't my idea.)

The iPad

I know a bunch of people who are going to want that. People who are going to want to keep it on the coffee table to play around or look stuff up while they're watching TV and other netbook functions (who would never buy a netbook because they're clunky, or a real laptop because of the expense). For students who also have access to a computer lab for the heavy lifting (which is true at most schools now I think) it would be very useful. It's certainly the best electronic book reader out there, and I bet I'm going to see them on the subway. OK, it won't fit in your pocket, but it slips into a backpack or briefcase even easier than a laptop, and it's a heck of a lot easier to deal with on the train.

Obviously it makes an amazing photographer portfolio - I already get a lot of mileage out of my iPhone when I try to explain to people what I do. It's also great for baby pictures. But I definitely have an image of some grandmas I know who would love it for baby pictures and videos and showing them off at church but also being able to do some email and web surfing without dealing with a real computer. Maybe drop it off at the kids place occasionally for more pictures. (I know somebody who does this with an iPod touch - she has a charger so it only needs to be docked very occasionally.)

Obviously it doesn't do everything, and it's not even attempting to replace the MacBook lineup, and there's going to be a better/faster/cheaper version in a year. I doubt I'll get one any time soon because I have a recent MacBook and an older iPhone already and at some point you only need so many devices. But I'm not necessarily representative of the market, you know? Other than first adopter folks I actually see it being more popular with non-geeks than geeks, but you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.

(Disclosure: I'm long AAPL)

It's bacon

Hey, it actually made bacon. Really good, too. These bits look a bit odd partially because they're test strips right from the edge of the slab. The idea at this point is if it's too salty it gives you one last chance to try soaking or blanching the bacon before you slice it up. It was really good though - a nice sweet, smoky kind of taste.

It ended up taking about 5 hours smoking with charcoal and apple wood to bring it up to about 150 degrees, and then I pulled it out and let it cool. (it ends up looking a bit cooked on the outside but when you slice it, it looks pretty much raw. At 150 the fat hasn't really started to melt or anything.)

Done curing

After a week of curing, it's ready for the next step. Basically the way you tell that it's done is that the meat should be relatively firm - you can still squish it but it's not floppy or anything. You wash the cure off at this point. I've put it on a drying rack which is sitting in an old cookie sheet and it goes in the fridge for yet another day. This lets it dry out a bit and form a nice surface to take the smoke when I smoke it tomorrow.

There are toothpicks in the one on the left so I can tell which is which later (I used two different curing recipes). The one on the left also looks much fattier because of which side happens to be up in this picture - that's the side that used to have the skin.

Interestingly enough it has no scent at all - no hint of not being fresh, but also it doesn't smell like maple at all.

More Monday after it's been smoked and I've fried up a test piece. If it's too salty you can blanch it, otherwise I'll slice it up and probably freeze most of it. That timing should work out well since Tuesday I have a shoot scheduled and I'd hate to be trying to keep one eye on the smoker and the other on a beautiful naked woman!

(Update - the smoke went fine, I'll try frying some up tonight. I'll blog it Tuesday since as it turns out I'll have more time then - the potential model was getting less and less responsive and I don't know if she intended to come or not but I finally had to pull the plug on the shoot. I just can't be confirming with babysitters if I'm not confident that the model's coming, and this is a pattern I recognize with first timers who are getting cold feet. Basically if you're a first timer and you're interested in this kind of modeling you have to have some basic communication skills or I'm just going to assume the worst and move on to the next person in line. Speaking of which I'll go ahead and schedule somebody else for the studio in the next week or two and then in mid-Feb if it's warmed up a bit I'll see about arranging some of the outdoor shoots I have candidates lined up for. On the plus side the portrait folks have been absolutely wonderful lately, no complaints there.)

Best Product Name Ever

I was half jokingly Googling to see if they make baby helmets after our little one smacked her head and not only do they exist but this one has the perfect name - Thudguard

Love it!

Progress

It's 5/7th cured now. It doesn't look much different to the eye - some fluid forming, more so on the one that had more syrup (this is the one with less). Sunday I'll wash off the cure and let them dry for a day in the fridge, uncovered. Yes, I do have an extremely patient wife, thanks for asking. Monday I'll smoke them and I'll update then.

By the way - I know in places where they put things like mustard in their bacon cure the idea of maple syrup is horrifying - "You Americans and your candy bacon." It's actually not the way we usually do it either, but it's good, especially with a sweeter wood like apple instead of hickory for the smoking part. And it's the kind of thing where they don't do a good job with commercial bacon (because good maple syrup is expensive) so it's a good candidate if you're trying it yourself.

I installed Windows 7 on my 27" iMac. Apple recently put out new drivers and such to make it easier. The only gotcha is that the video card doesn't get along with old drivers on the Windows DVD, and you have to do things to get around that.

1. Make a USB stick with the right drivers and have it plugged in while Windows is installing. Windows will find those and use them instead.

2. When you install the BootCamp off of the OSX disk, make sure you use the one that came with the iMac, not some random Snow Leopard disk you have around, or it will cheerfully install the wrong drivers (and you'll get a black screen until you boot off of a recovery CD and roll them back.)

(3. Then you can go ahead and install the 3.1 drivers via Apple software update.)

I also found that somehow Windows recognized my wireless keyboard right away, but not my wireless mouse, so I had to plug in a USB mouse to get things rolling.

Anyway, it works, and until I can get just a couple of remaining odds and ends running on the Mac side it will make my life easier.

Gonna be bacon

Continued from yesterday...

That's the two raw pork belly chunks. One has 1/4 cup pre-mixed maple sugar curing mix and 1/4 cup grade B maple syrup, and the other has 1/4 cup Morton Tenderquick (a general purpose curing mix) and 1/2 cup of maple syrup. They get to spend a week in the fridge, being flipped every two days. I'll have a quick update in a day or two, but they won't be done curing until the 24th.

Scott Brown

Now, I've always kept this as a politics free zone, mostly because I find it incredibly irritating to be reading a blog by, say, a daddy blogger or BBQ blogger and suddenly they're ranting some dumbass ill informed political BS because they assume everybody reading them must agree with them on all points, and I don't want to be "that guy".

But one interesting aspect of today's election is that Scott Brown posed nude in Cosmo. And apparently he's won. As a Republican. First one they've elected in MA since 1972. And you know what? Nobody cares. Barely was a point of interest. Helps it's an implied nude (if you didn't click the link - his hand's strategically positioned), but still, that's interesting stuff.

I mean, you're a 19 year old college student thinking about modeling nude, you're probably wondering if these pictures will haunt you some day. I don't think I want to go so far as to say the answer is "no, it's just that mainstream now". But it's interesting. And it does confirm a general trend I've seen with more and more people wanting nude portraits.

Now, if your concern is your friends might see your pictures hanging on the wall, this doesn't address that, or a variety of other concerns. But still, I have to think it would have been a bigger deal back in the day...

Not just another piece of meat

Raw pork belly, two chunks (7.5 pounds total), $2/pound. The first shot is skin side up, the second side is after it's been trimmed (skin removed, squared up some) but it's the other side of the meat as well.

More tomorrow.

Rain, rain, I'd like you to go away but I guess technically we're still in a drought...

The local paper's predicting massive storms and flooding all this upcoming week. Of course, they did that a couple of weeks ago and we got a light drizzle, but they could be right. The thing about rain here is if it's raining it's from a storm coming in from the Pacific. There's a couple of scenarios - cold storms from the north, warm ones from the south, but point being you can see them coming a couple of days out on the satellite. So mostly the weather's pretty predictable in the sort term, but they do sometimes speed up or slow down or deflect a bit. For some reason we've just been catching the southern edge of some of the storms lately so depending on the exact angle sometimes it's hard to predict exactly if it will hit us or not.

But the article comments are hilarious - OH MY GOD!!! ITS GOING TO RAIN!!! with 148 up thumbs and 5 down thumbs sets the tone, with some snarky comments about the hyping of the non-drought following. (We've had three years in a row with 70% rainfall which means reservoir levels have been iffy but it's not exactly a dustbowl.) I wonder if newspapers wish for the good old days when the readers couldn't talk back?

Anyway, I have three potential shoots waiting on better weather - if we have our usual warmer February pattern I'll start seeing if I can book some of them then. And I have a model shoot scheduled for late in the month, so if that goes well I should have some new pictures soon, although as regular readers know it's a bad idea to count the models before they're hatched (so to speak).

Haiti

There are already so many scams appearing that folks are making nice lists of reputable charities for those inclined...