How much is my idea worth to you?

The other day I was talking to a friend and I mentioned that an app that I wished that I had. Now what happens if he builds that and makes enough money to retire? How much money was that idea worth?

Zero. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I don't think that the idea is worth anything. What would be worth something would be the designing, testing, implementing, marketing, support, etc of the idea. That's where the cost is. The cost isn't in mentioning something in passing that popped into my head.

I think that the idea of things like copyright are good: provide someone a temporary monopoly in order that they can have a chance to make back their costs. Something as a reward for putting in the effort of "creating" in the first place and to encourage more creating. If someone is not going to create a product, I don't see any point in a copyright or patients. If they could only grant those based on intent, but how could you judge intent?

What would I ideally like to happen if I acted as a muse to someone? Well, a free copy of their product would be nice, but what I'd really want would be a cold beer on a warm patio. And I'd buy the second round. ;-)

No risk, no work, no reward. I understand and I am okay with that.

When buying photo stuff, what I'd do different

It's not been a long time since we've bought photo stuff, but I think that if I was to provide advice to someone, I'd tell them to do it slightly different than we did it.

1) I'd make sure that the tripod that I bought has a quick release. It's pretty annoying to spend 1 minute putting the camera on, than another minute taking off, all for a picture that might take 10 seconds to take. Slow, annoying, and if it's cold, freezing because using the screw isn't something that you can do with gloves on.

2) I think that rather than buying zoom lens that have a max aperture of f/3.5 I'd get a normal, prime lens with a max aperture of f/1.4 or f/1.8... something really fast. That way when taking pictures of all the children that people seem to have right now I could use available light and have the shutter speed fast enough that the kid isn't blurry. I find that the things that I get most frustrated with any camera that I've used is the low light performance.

3) This last thing I'm still not sure about. We bought the entry DSLR. It's smaller, has less features, but is less flexible by the types of lens / accessories that it can take. For autofocus to work, each lens has a motor that does the focusing. With the next line up in the camera focusing is done with a screw from the body. Our camera body also isn't compatible with Nikon's new GPS attachement. However, it's our first DSLR and if we find that it's actually limiting what we're doing, we can also upgrade / buy another. I mean, disposable income has to go somewhere, right? :-P

If a dollar was a second

I just finished watching an episode of 22 minutes and they were talking about how much debt the Americans are in. They used an analogy of "if a dollar was a second". If that's true, then 1 million dollars would be about 11.5 days. 1 trillion seconds would be 31,688 years.

Now if you look at wikipedia, "As of March 16, 2009, the total U.S. federal debt was $11,042,553,971,450.47". Now that number is 349,925 years. Even if you take the other possible, smaller "public" debt of 6.74 trillion, that still works out to 213,582 years.

It's a bit funny to try and change a number so big into something tangible to understand the scale of it, but it's scary that you end up with an equally large and abstract number. The scale just boggles my mind. To give some scale, the oldest fossil record of humans is from about 130,000 years ago.

The future is now

One of the things that occurred to me as I was video chatting with Laura tonight is just how much "now" - is how the far off future was imagined to be by some. Video phones, huge flat tv's, 100's of channel, instant communication from "anywhere", the worlds information accessible at your finger tips, having robots do our dirty work for us (until the uprising that is...).

Know what the funny part about this is? I had the same impression almost 5 years ago too. I guess that means that the future was then. :-P

What would I do if I didn't have to work?

One of the "general interest" questions that I've heard asked in an interview is "what would you do if you could do any job and not worry about money?". When, an an interviewer I was asked this question as well, I didn't have an answer. I think that I've figured it out though. I think that I'd travel and take photos. Take classes when I felt I needed improvement in either. Rinse and repeat.

For good or bad, I think that if I tried to switch to be a travel photographer I'd starve. I really enjoy eating so I don't think that I'm going to switch jobs any time soon.

Experiment means most of the results are crap

I love our newest addition to the family. Our little niki. I took a walk with niki last night snapping some experiments and playing with things like aperture, shutter speed, lightening levels etc. The key word is "experiments". As with science, I think that the results of most of my experiments were crap and should be deleted. I mean, how many blurry pictures of ducks do I need?

As a self confessed digital packrat I find deleting anything very difficult. I'm working on it though. It's one thing to delete travel pictures, but it's another thing to delete shots that I took while walking in my neighbourhood. In any case, I think that I should be more selective with the pictures that I upload. I should probably be doing more post-processing (cropping, colour tweaks, etc) and just not upload everything. But when bandwidth and storage are effectively free, there is little incentive to be selective.

Telebacon

With Laura in the Sioux Sioux Lookout for four weeks, we figured that it would be weird being away for so long. Before she left we popped over to bestbuy and picked up a 30$ webcam to use with google video chat. The quality is "okay", but it's better than using the phone.

One of the things that we've been doing is eating our meals together. Somewhat weird I know, but nice none the less. It gives a sense to normalcy to the situation. Today we had our normal Saturday breakfast together. We both set up the computer in the kitchen and cooked the same meal together, 1,316 km apart as the crow flies (1,834 km as the driving directions go). I'm finding it much easier if we eat together. I'm not sure why that makes sense, but it's working for me.

Carnival in Rio de Janeiro

This year we were incredibly fortunate to visit Rio during Carnaval. We went to the main attraction at the Sambadrome to see the parade. I'm going to try and explain what it was like, but I assure you that any glimmer that you gain is just a pale shadow of what it was actually like.

It starts are 9 pm and goes to about 6 am (the official schedule says 3:40). The tickets that we had were not cheap, but I've never been packed so closely in with other people for an event before. Since it was so crowded, it was very, very hot. We took things that we could fan ourselves with and it was still hot. The section that we were in was concrete bleachers which isn't the softest thing to stand or sit on.

The thing that I was unprepared for was the scale of the whole event. On a night there are 6 Samba schools that parade down a street that's 700 m long. It takes them 50-60 minutes for the school to pass it's so long. For each school there's about 250-300 members of a band singing, and playing music while they are doing parading. They are singing one song the entire time with so much energy. The coolest part about the song? When they start the crowd joins in and sings and dances as well. I just can't describe the energy that you feel when the crowd and band are just so pumped up. If you want to get an idea of what the songs are, you can find them for each school and have a listen.

For each school I think that there was ~ 20 of the most fantastic floats that I have ever seen for each school. (Wikipedia say 6-8 floats, but I swear that there was more). The floats were not driven, but pushed by a group of guys. Dancers would be in the most impossible places on the floats: they must have been put on with a crane or lift or something. They'd be on a column that's 20 feet high, standing on a platform that looks 1 m round with nothing to hold on to except for what looks like 2 broom handles. No safety lines, nets, rails, anything. Of course they are dancing and singing and shaking the whole float as they go...

The energy, the songs, the colours... I had such a great time. Unfortunately we had been warned so much about the safety of Rio we didn't even risk taking our 4 year old digital point and shoot camera. We purchased a disposable but the pictures didn't turn out at all. Thankfully there's a bunch on flickr (Warning: the pic's might be NSFW) I really wish that we had taken a digital camera. I wish that we could have taken our new camera to be able to zoom in on the costumes, but there is no way that I would have felt comfortable taking it.

For the people that didn't go to the Sambadrome, they rationalized that they wouldn't have liked it. Some of the people that did go said "well, it's something that you do once in your life". Some said that next time they'll pay to be some of the dancers in the parade - such a cool idea. I really enjoyed it and would do it again, but paying for better seats. Since that's not possible every year, I thought that I'd just try and watch it on tv each year. When we got back to our room because we left "early" at ~ 2:30 am, we turned it on the tv and it really isn't the same. I was disappointed. You miss out on the energy watching it without being there. It's better than nothing, but it's just not the same.

If you ever find yourself with a chance to go to Rio during Carnival, take the opportunity. It really feels like no other party on earth.

Not amused at being sick

On our flight down to south america I caught a cold. It took me ~ 6 days to get over it, but I got better. Then we had to come back and I got sick on the flight home. I'm really not amused by being sick twice in less than 3 weeks. Laura's about to take off to work in north on-tar-eye-oh for four weeks. When I should be helping her to get ready for that trip I'm taking up her time being doctored back to health. It just sucks to feel like I'm dragging someone down. I hate feeling like a burden.

Most peaceful place

It's funny how the memory goes. The other day Laura reminded me of something that I tried very hard not to forget in our travels.

First, some background. In June 2005 we went to Europe for 4 weeks backpacking around Paris, Spain and Portugal. One thing about Europe is that there are lots of lovely churches to see and that's almost always the highlight of a city. We saw Notre Dame, the bone church in Evora, and Sagrada FamÌlia among others. We saw lots of churches.

One of the churches that we went to was in San Sebasti·n Spain. There were no tourists other than us. No one else really at all. It was quiet, dim, and somewhere in the church there was monks chanting. I didn't even think that people still chanted, but apparently they do. It was just so peaceful that I have a hard time explaining how calming and relaxing we found it. All the worries and stresses just seem to melt away when we were in that church. I tried really hard to keep that place and that moment close so I would have a calm place to think of, but it slipped away.

I'm blogging this now so that I'll have another medium to trigger that memory and bring me back to that moment where I felt nothing but peace.

10 Lessons learned while traveling

Each time we travel we hopefully learn something that can be applied to the next trip. Small and not so small helpful things that make everything a bit smoother.

1) Interac only bank cards like PC Financial suck. If you call them, they will tell you that the cards will work with the plus system, but we have not found this to be true.

2) Carry cash of the country if you can get it ahead of time. If not, american cash is still widely accepted.

3) In South America, just because a place of business or tourist information has posted hours that say they are open, doesn't mean that they will be or are open.

4) Get a travel book and take it with you. We like the lonely planet series, but find something that works for you. These have good back-up maps in case info places are closed.

5) When going through airport security, have all change etc in your carry on / backpack. Nothing slows you down more than having to empty your pockets each time.

6) When in an airport, keep your passport and a small amount of cash somewhat handy. Only keep the bulk of your cash and credit cards in a money belt so you don't have to take off your money belt to go through security or make it look like you are digging your ID / money out of your underwear.

7) Those dumb looking neck pillows and eye masks are the only things that will allow you to sleep in a plane. Anyone that makes fun of you for using it will only end up exhausted on the other end of the flight.

8) If you have an "interesting" job like Laura and don't want to spend your entire vacation taking about it with strangers, figure out another - boring - occupation that you will be on your trip. That's our plan for next time.

9) The best way to not loose anything valuable is to not take it with you. Keep an eye on what the locals are doing - watch and learn. If it's not safe for them to be walking around with nice rings, cameras, watches on - then it's really not safe for you as a tourist. Same goes for backpacks worn on your back vs front.

10) Enjoy the trip. Don't plan too much for yourself. If you find that you're burning out, take a rest day or 2 and just relax. If you get too tired you'll just get sick.