The expectations that you have for this debate will surely decide your reaction to it.  If you have been paying attention, you will know that Palin is actually a considerably good debater.  Even though 6 in 10 Americans do not think she is ready to be vice president, she will probably come out strengthening the shrinking base of McCain supporters.  She will do this by providing listeners with vague answers and dropping religious language in what she says, also she will do this by sounding sure of herself.  This sounds counter productive if you are trying to educate viewers about your policies.  However, the genius of this tactic is that many viewers will project themselves and your branding into the gaps of your message. 

Branding is a powerful tool in these debates, Biden will likely try to brand Palin as being aligned with Bush.  Bush, who currently has a 70% disapproval rating if you are a democrat, or 30% approval rating if you are republican.  Therefore, this is a fair move by him.  He will also talk about how the policies her and McCain support are out of touch with the middle class.  Palin, on the other hand will surely get personal and try to brand Biden as being liberal and possibly as somehow sexist.

I also predict that Palin will misspeak and get facts wrong.  These will be landmines for Biden, who if he responds will immediately get branded as an elite who is out of touch.  Watch for this, as I am almost certain Biden will end up stepping on one of them.

Biden will mess up tomorrow by believing that Palin does know things about the economy or the world.  He will most likely say "come on, you expect us to believe that."  This will most likely be countered by Palin with a one liner about how Biden sounds flustered, as she also tries to brand him as an old man.

Both candidates have been preparing, Palin much more than Biden.  However, she has lower expectations on her side, as she has not presented herself as an intelligent person these last few weeks.  It may sound odd, but you want people to be expecting less of you when you go into this debate.  The media will have an easy sound bite, "she did much better than I expected."  Also, not sounding intelligent appeals to any anti-intellectual who will be voting.

I think a fascinating part of the debate will be to see how each tries to gain support from their respective religious base.  Biden will likely try to bring in support from Catholics in this country, while Palin will speak to Evangelicals.  The religious language that they will invoke is what interests me the most.  The religious language will likely fly under the radar of many people, but if you read the transcript you are sure to find some suggestive messages.

There is no doubt that this debate will be an important indicator on whether Obama will win by narrow margins or by a landslide.  If Biden is able to ignore Palin and deliver his message with little debate then he will be the victor and the momentum from last weeks debate will carry through to the election.  However, if Palin is able to fluster Biden, or somehow know something he didn't know, then the momentum will stop and the polls today will likely be how the election will turn out.  At this point in the game though, most people have already made up their mind.

Are you registered to vote?  If you are not registered or do not plan on voting I would like to hear your reason below.

Turning a photo into a glamour photo automatically makes it more enjoyable to look at.  There is really a small mix of things that go into transforming a photo into a glamour photo.

1. Background: the more serious the background, I think makes the resulting glamour photo more fun to look at

2. A bevel goes a long way, you can't just blur things, you also need to add a bevel to the image so that it has an archive.org frontpage feel

3. Framing the subject with a white gradient gives it a great 90's olan mills retro look

So before I show you McCain and Obama in my quick attempt at a glamour photo I will show you a quick attempt at an old photo of myself.  Please realize that making a glamour photo is one thing, but sharing it publicly is quite another.   So please join me in laughing at me in a glamour shot.  After that, look at the ones I made for our dear candidates.

I believe I will have to add this photo to the sidebar on this site, much like Michael Ian Black does for his personal site.

Now for Obama:

And now for McCain and his momma.

I think someone else can do a better job, but hopefully this gives you inspiration for making your own glamour shots.

Only 48 days until the election, are you registered?

I just read this article on whether a family can eat on $100 a week: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/RaiseKids/CanAFamilyEatOn100AWeek.aspx?page=1

With the extra mouths to feed I can understand why this is hard, but for my wife, our dog, and I we are good at staying under $100 a week on food for all of us.  We also buy all organic, free range, vegetarian products, and eat very well, which is why I am surprised that it was so difficult for this family to stay under $100.  That is until I start to think about the supermarket and the things that are promoted in it.

In just about every major supermarket I go to I find frozen fries and tater tots that take up an equal amount of space as all of the frozen vegetables.  Similarly, I find frozen meals that take up more space than any other frozen item.  Also, there is usually an entire aisle dedicated to soda.  Thinking back, I used to buy frozen fries, until I realized it is pointless.  This is something that I now make, and make better than any frozen fries you will find.  I also find that there is a large selection of whipped cream.  Why do you ever need to buy whipped cream when you can just buy whipping cream and make it yourself.  I also find it odd that we have become a culture that forgets how easy it is to make your own popcorn without a microwave or special machine.  You can make your own pesto easily, you can make waffles, soda, pizza.  My point is, that the supermarket has convinced most consumers that the consumer is incapable of making popcorn, or ice cream, or soda.  This happens because there is such a wide variety of each of these items, making it seem as though these are all of your choices.

Whenever you go to the supermarket and buy one of these items that you could have made yourself, for less money and with less processing, it makes you spend more money.  Not only are you spending more money for the item that you could have made, but you are actually spending more to get the equivalent nutritional value as the homemade counterpart.

I think popcorn is a good example, if you look at the ingredients on a microwave bag your will notice a ton of things you won't recognize.  For me, an entire bag of popcorn does little to satisfy me.  However, the popcorn on the stove only has 3 or 4 ingredients.  You have some corn oil, popcorn kernals, salt and pepper.  When you get to this pure state the popcorn tastes so good you really don't need butter.  Not only this, buy I don't need to eat as much to feel satisfied.

Another item that is odd for me is the large selection of instant oatmeal.  You can buy a bag of oatmeal that is not considered instant, and make it in the same amount of time as instant oatmeal.  I like to buy a 10 grain oatmeal and add flaxseed, it only takes 3 minutes in the microwave to make a quarter of a pound.  And a pound of it is much more nutritious and costs half as much as an equivalent pound of instant oatmeal.  It takes 2 minutes longer to mix in the milk, butter, sugar, and fresh fruit.  But it is much more nourishing, more filling, and costs less.

Hopefully my point is becoming clearer.  When people buy instant meals and items they are losing a lot of the nutrients that they would have if they just took the 2 extra minutes to make the item from scratch.  This combined with the fact that the instant meal costs more than making the meal from scratch and you can quickly see why it is hard for a family to spend only $100 a week on groceries.

A tip for you when going to the supermarket is to buy ingredients for specific meals.  We always plan 5 meals for the week and make enough to have leftovers for lunch the next day.  Therefore, we are only buying for breakfast and dinner.  Also, I think it is important to always be adding in new recipes into your week.  You should not be making the same set of dinners every week.  Learning new recipes will help you improve existing food.  This adds some joy to your cooking.  Here is a list of my favorite cookbooks:

• How to cook everything vegetarian
• Moosewood: New classics
• Joy of Cooking

Here is a list of breakfast items I like to make:

• Vegetarian Biscuits and Gravy  (I ate this for breakfast today)
• 11 gain oatmeal, or 5 grain oatmeal.  Add flaxseed, add fresh fruit like bananas or berries
• Yogurt (I like to eat vanilla yogurt, buy organic like stonyfield farms, get it in a large container not little packages, add ground flaxseed)
• Frittata

Here is a list of a few easy to make dinner items that cost you very little

• Veggie burgers, don't buy boca or any of that, just make your own.  I can make my own in less than 5 minutes and taste better than an actual burger.  You can even get creative with them, I add cilantro to the mix, then top with avocado
• Homemade fries, I like to make sweet potato fries
• Tuna burgers are just as easy to make as veggie burgers
• Vegetable curry, Dusti makes an awesome curry dish with rice
• Chili, so easy to make and reheat for later
• Vegetable wraps with legumes
• Fried rice (so incredibly easy)
• Pizza (I like to make caramelized onion with BBQ sauce and garlic slices on it, put some goat cheese on to make it even more delicious)
• Stuffed mushrooms (you can make them quick too)
• Lasagna (throw in mushrooms instead of meat)
• Falafel (easier to make from scratch than you may think)
• Vegetable soups (I like to make my own stock)

Here are some of the drinks we like to keep on hand

• My homemade ginger-limeade
• Cold pressed coffee concentrate
• Yerba Mate (drink this instead of green tea, more antioxidants and caffeine)
• Beer, whiskey, and wine
• Coffee beans for espresso or french press coffee

Here are a list of snacks we like to keep around

• Trail mix, or toasted almonds
• Homemade banana chips
• Homemade pita chips (just make them, they are stupid easy to make)
• Fresh fruit
• Hummus for dipping (this is also stupid easy to make)

Another tip is to not buy treats for your dog, just make them.  You can find lots of easy recipes online.  I occasionally make our dog a veggie loaf, and she loves it, throw some flaxseed on whatever you make to help their coat shine and help them shed less.

I am by no mean an expert on this topic, we spend more a week than we probably need to.  But we are able to eat good food for much less than most people spend on crappy food.  I think a lot of the lower costs come from buying better quality food with more nutrients, organic and fresh foods.  Also, lower costs come from avoiding the frozen section and making food from scratch.  Like I said previously, we also buy food for specific meals, this helps cut costs.  But probably the best thing you can do is not shop hungry.  When you are hungry and shopping for food or are in a rush you will make more irrational choices.

One last point, to save money on food and to be healthier I think it is important to cut back on your meat intake.  I am not vegetarian, but I eat meat maybe once every month, sometimes less.  When I cut back to this level I noticed I had more energy.  Not only this, but I am doing more for the environment than if I was driving a prius.  Plus, the little meat that you do eat tastes so much better when you haven't had it in a while.  I will admit that next year I do plan to go deer hunting, so my monthly intake may increase, hopefully.  If you are concerned about the environment look into cutting back your meat consumption or buy your meat from a local farmer.  A year ago a friend went and helped process a part of a cow he had purchased that was completely grass fed.  That is something to consider as well, if you really like meat you can not only buy it in bulk but help process and package it.

There are some tips out there on installing Firefox 3 after you have Firefox 2 running.  The following explains how to install Firefox 2 after you have Firefox 3 installed.

1. Install Firefox 3 if you have not already

2. Grab the Firefox 2 portable install.  This will allow you to run Firefox on a USB drive (http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable)

3. Close any Firefox instances you have running

4. Extract Firefox 2 portable to where you want it to reside.  Mine is on my external USB drive

5. Create a new shortcut to the Firefox 2 portable exe.  Modify the Properties on this shortcut so that the target looks like this:

FirefoxPortable.exe  -P FF2 -no-remote

6. Go to start->run and type firefox.exe -ProfileManager

7. Create a new profile called FF2 that will be used for Firefox 2.  I also have mine setup to always prompt me for what profile to use.  I have one for Web development, penetration testing, and research.

Now just execute the shortcut you created for Firefox 2 and you are able to run Firefox 2 alongside Firefox 3.  This is good for testing web applications and running addons that only work on Firefox 2.

Last week the lighting in Kansas City was magical.  It seemed like we were in some sort of Truman Show, with the city looking as though it was encased in some controlled lighting experiment.  It was very soothing.  Here are a couple of pictures that I took to show what it looked like at the point when darkness began.

My wife and I were watching HGTV the other day where they were showing off the best 10 kitchens.  During this show we found that many of the kitchens had kitschy items and useless appliances.  For example, fake grapes adorned a french colonial kitchen.  Another kitchen had his and hers wooden fat chef statues, you know the ones with the wooden spoons.  Overall, though, they did a good job of hiding appliances.  The most useless appliance that was shown was a pasta cooker that took up an entire sink.  So you put water and pasta in it, it heats the water, then you push a button and the water drains out.  This is completely useless considering that you have a pot that does the same thing and doesn't take up a sink.

Tonight I was looking at pictures of the most expensive homes in the world, shown on the abc news site.  Here is the picture from a home that has its own golf course, 14 gardens, a 75-foot swimming pool and is in the Hamptons. see if you can spot the bad style.

First, appliances strung about on counters when they are not being used generally looks bad.  Next, 2 coffee pots, why do you want 2 cheap coffee pots on a counter when photos are being taken of your nice kitchen.  The other thing that I think shows a poor style choice are the curtains over the window that match the hanging chilies, this is preference, but I think that it is a little tacky. 

Another home that was on the abc homes feature made a poor choice in hiding their beautiful wood floors with 2 matching worn carpets.  Furthermore, it is also extremely cluttered for my taste.

So my point here is that poor style choices exist at all levels.  Just because someone is wealthy does not mean that they have a good sense of style.  But what really gets me, is that even with all of those resources they must not have consulted an interior designer to help them out.

I logged into my account at Wachovia with plans to change my password.  It is a good idea, I believe, to periodically change your passwords, especially passwords related to financial accounts.  When I went to the change password page, Wachovia didn't ask me my original password, but instead only asked for a new password, and to confirm my new password.

This is a bad practice to not ask for the original password because this allows for someone to deny me access to my account without even needing my password.  If they were able to hijack my session, for example, they could change my password and now have complete ownership of my account.

So my tip to you is, make sure you ask for the original password before allowing a user to change a password.

Wow, so I was looking for items related to web design last night and it was working just fine.  Tonight google is blocking these same searches. what up with that?

That is not the odd part, it looks like searches for items on web security work, just not web design.

So here are my searches:

and

Isn't that strange?  Why protect directories containing items related to web design and not items related to web security.  What about design, without the web, well that fails too.  So perhaps there are key word combinations.

Design is a blocked word when searching with "index of" specified in the title, here is what you get if you try this:

We're sorry...

... but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now.

We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google.

What are your thoughts?

I really love the way that old photo's look, I am talking about photo's from the 60s and 70s.  This is a look that is certainly lost with most modern digital photos that people are shooting.  I think it is the color's of these old photo's that I like so much, and the fact that each one has it's own character.  When you are surrounded by perfect looking photo's you start to appreciate retro photo's and the character they provide.

This absence of perfection is really a taste that I have developed while living in Philadelphia, I think largely due to our apartment.  Our apartment did not have it's bricked power washed to perfection.  Likewise, the floors were not replaced with perfect looking hardwood, but instead the original floors and bricks were restored to imperfection.  This is what I like to see in most photos, a truth about the imperfect subject being shot, unless of course the subject is supposed to be perfect.  I am not saying that photo's should look crappy and have scratches, just that they are more enjoyable to look at when they use technicolor.

photo of brick in our Philly apartment

1. Take the Photo to Convert

First, you will need to make sure that your digital camera can take RAW photos.  You will be processing your photo into an HDR shot.  This is important as you will be using photomatix, and unless you plan to take a series of bracketed photos then you should use RAW.  If you have a canon powershot you can refer to my old post here that explains how to hack your camera to take RAW.  Also, another point about RAW over the jpeg bracket approach is that the jpeg will have less detail than the RAW.

Second, make sure that what you are shooting has a good amount of contrasting color.  It makes for a better picture when the colors are vibrant.

Take the photo.  For this tutorial I am going to use the following photo, which I took quickly from a parking garage in Philadelphia.  I didn't use a tripod or anything, just took the photo quickly before getting into my car.

2. Create an HDR type Image

Now that you have a RAW or bracketed collection of photos, you should create an HDR version of the photo in photomatix or photoshop.  You should use the tonemapping tool in photomatix to generate the desired colors.  This is really where you are going to get a lot of your retro effect from.  you should play with the image until the colors really start to look old school. 

I like to turn down the light smoothing, turn up the color saturation and strength.  Here is a screenshot with what settings I like to use.  But remember, each photo is going to be different, so you really will need to play with all of these settings for your photo.

The result of these settings is the photo below.

3. Apply Retro Color's in Photoshop

For the color you can use a number of different filters or actions.  You can even use a combination of these to produce the desired retro colors.  Alien Skin has a Color Film plugin that you can use to make the photo look more like it was shot on a 1970s Kodak Ektachrome film.  I have not tried this out yet, but it does look like it might work well.  Instead, I have tried a couple of free Action's that are available from deviantArt.  My favorite is the Polaroid Generator, and using the T600 Wide Format action it provides.  But before you do this, you can apply a grain effect to the photo, so it looks textured, like it was scanned in.

Under Filter->Texture->Grain you can create a grain effect.  Here are some settings you can try to create a vertical grain. 

The key with the grain is that you want it to be somewhat subtle.  Therefore, I would suggest copying the photo layer first, and then applying the grain to the top layer.  After this turn down the opacity on the top layer, like the example below.

After you have the photo in good shape, in a retro type look, you should run the polaroid or similar action to complete things.  Here is the result after running the polaroid generator action.

Here is another version of this same RAW image in retro form without a grain:

And if you want you could even apply some funky borders to make it look like it is a scan of a slide.

Another interesting effect is blurring part of the image, so it looks a little out of focus.  Here is what that looks like:

Other Examples:

Finally

I hope you realized from all of the above examples that your content doesn't need to be interesting to generate a unique photo.  All of these photos are of pretty boring stuff, some tree's and buildings and a little sky.  The take away is that you don't have to take photo's of interesting objects, but instead you can get away with taking pictures of interesting color combinations.  Not everything will look good or better with retro colors, but it definitely allows you more flexibility with your subject matter.

My wife and I are moving shortly.  As part of the move I have been trying to order broadband through Time Warner Cable(TWC) so that it is ready by the time we arrive at our new place of residence.  TWC is not my first choice, but it is the only broadband that I can currently find that provides a super fast connection. 

The problem that I am encountering is that the previous resident, who moved almost 2 months ago, is still a TWC subscriber at our new address.  Therefore, for some strange reason, I cannot order any services from TWC where we are moving until the previous resident disconnects their service for the address.  TWC was also unable to contact them to tell them to disconnect the service.  Therefore, I am in an infinite loop;

I can't order broadband without the previous resident disconnecting service, the previous resident cannot be contacted, and the service representatives are no help in coming up with a solution.

Thoughts?

My new online identity is renaissauce.com.  I wanted a site that would allow me to share all (or most) of the items that make me who I am.  The name, therefore, had to express this.  The renaissance was a time when people harnessed their wide range of talents to generate amazing art, literature, and everything else.  To personalize the word, renaissance, I decided to make it fun sounding, thus renaissauce.

Renaissauce.com is where I plan to share my somewhat wide range of thoughts and craft.  You will be able to read my thoughts on a wide

range of topics, see some of the better photos I have taken, try your hand at recipes I have created, or just listen to music that I have made.  While this is not all of me, it will give you a sense of my interests and abilities.