Playing Around With My New A100

High School, Photography — Alisa on September 29, 2006 at 8:06 am

Humble Bee
Title | Humble Bee
Camera | DSLR-A100
Exposure | 0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture | f/5.6
Focal Length | 70 mm
ISO Speed | 100

Poser
Title | Poser
Camera | DSLR-A100
Exposure | 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture | f/5.6
Focal Length | 60 mm
ISO Speed | 100

Lizard Watching
Title | Lizard Watching
Camera | DSLR-A100
Exposure | 0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture | f/5.6
Focal Length | 70 mm
ISO Speed | 400


Title | Untitled
Camera | DSLR-A100
Exposure | 0.8 sec (1/80)
Aperture | f/5.6
Focal Length | 60 mm
ISO Speed | 100

National Debt in Perspective

Crumbs, High School — Alisa on September 19, 2006 at 11:49 am

One of the problems in trying to comprehend federal spending is that the units involved–billions of dollars–are so large as to be almost meaningless to many citizens. To visualize what a billion dollars means, imagine that some organization had been spending a thousand dollars a day every day since the birth of Christ. They would not yet have spent a billion dollars. In the year 2000 they would still be more than 250 million dollars short of one billion dollars. Government agencies of course spend not one but many billions of dollars annually. HEW alone spends about 82 billion dollars annually. To get a figure comparable to what the entire federal government spends annually, change the one thousand dollars per day to half a million dollars per day, every day since the birth of Christ. At the end of two thousand years the grand total would amount to less than three quarters of what the federal government spent in 1978 alone.

–Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions, p. 306

That’s a lot of money. And to think that the National Debt is 8 trillion dollars right now.

Through the Viewfinder Photoset

High School, Photography — Alisa on September 16, 2006 at 4:21 pm

This photoset was taken Through the Viewfinder of another camera. I used the viewfinder of a Canon Z155 for these photos. I also used an Imperial Mark 27, but those pictures didn’t turn out so well.

IMGP2312
Title | IMGP2312
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.1 sec (1/10)
Aperture | f/3.8
Focal Length | 12 mm
ISO Speed | 100

IMGP2309
Title | IMGP2309
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.077 sec (1/13)
Aperture | f/3.7
Focal Length | 10.5 mm
ISO Speed | 100


IMGP2307
Title | IMGP2307
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.067 sec (1/15)
Aperture | f/3.7
Focal Length | 10.5 mm
ISO Speed | 100

See also: Through the Viewfinder Flickr Group

The Stroke Judge Who is Just Pretending

Arizona, High School, Swimming — Alisa on September 14, 2006 at 8:36 pm

This high school swimming season we’ve had a stroke judge at our home meets. This is a little abnormal for us, considering we haven’t had a stroke judge for the past couple years. No one knows anything about this man except that he is narcoleptic, and he used to be the principal of the high school.

Having a stroke judge is usually a good thing, because it stops people from cheating on starts and turns (and etc). Having a narcoleptic stroke judge is a different matter altogether.

Not only did he randomly fall asleep, but when he was awake the only thing he did was threaten to disqualify swimmers based on how close their team mates stood to the edge of the pool.

When I was counting someone’s 500, Antonio volunteered to replace me half-way through (I had to race immediately afterwards). The stroke judge hobbled over (he uses a cane) and started hitting Antonio with his cane.

Antonio: [winces a little] Yes?

Judge: Young man, if you don’t want your team mate to be disqualified, I suggest you go stand somewhere else.

A: But I’m replacing Alisa so that she can go get ready for her race.

J: He who starts the counting must finish the counting.

A: Whaa?

J: How long have you been swimming?

A: Uh, about two years or so…

J: Then you should know better. Get along.

Poor Antonio was by now very upset. I told him to go tell Coach Jack. Jack’s response?

“Don’t worry about it. Look, he’s asleep again! This means that you can start your leg of the relay a little early.”

Antonio

In the Bathroom Photoset

High School, Photography — Alisa on September 13, 2006 at 9:55 pm

I wanted this photoset to be extremely sharp and have very high contrast. Mission accomplished.

Bathroom i
Title | Bathroom i
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture | f/3.3
Focal Length | 6.3 mm
ISO Speed | 100

Bathroom ii
Title | Bathroom ii
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture | f/6.6
Focal Length | 6.3 mm
ISO Speed | 50

Bathroom iii
Title | Bathroom iii
Camera | Pentax Optio WP
Exposure | 0.033 sec (1/30)
Aperture | f/6.6
Focal Length | 6.3 mm
ISO Speed | 50

The Restroom Observation Lab

High School, School — Alisa on September 11, 2006 at 12:24 pm

So the other day I went to Chase Ball Park and did an observation of 66 women in the public bathroom. I wanted to see how many washed their hands, how many used soap, and how many did nothing at all (except walk out with dirty hands).

My hypothesis was that women ages 5 through 26 were less likely to wash their hands than women ages 27 through 65.

Over all, 80.3% of the women washed their hands, 51.5% used soap when they washed their hands, and 19.7% did not wash their hands at all.

As for my hypothesis, I was right. Women who were ages 5 through 26 washed their hands 9% less than women ages 27 through 65. Interesting.

My favorite part was the women who didn’t use soap and said, “I can’t believe people don’t wash their hands. Gross.”

See the full write-up: The Restroom Observation Lab Complete.rtf

The ABC’s of My URL’s

Crumbs, High School, Lists — Alisa on September 7, 2006 at 9:08 pm

Here’s what you do:

  1. Go to your URL field and type the letter “A”
  2. Copy + Paste what comes up
  3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you get to the end of the alphabit
  4. Post for others to see

So here are the ABC’s of my URL’s:

A. alistapart.com
B. blogofalisa.blogspot.com
C. centralaz.facebook.com
D. digg.com
E. en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Humboldt_Current
F. flickr.com
G. gmail.com
H. hotmail.com
I. ie7.com
J. jonswift.blogspot.com
K. krisandapril.us
L. last.fm
M. myspace.com
N. nationalgeographic.com
O. odeo.com
P. photobucket.com
Q. no Q for you!
R. ratemyprofessors.com
S. statcounter.com
T. themes.wordpress.net
U. utata.org
V. vanityfairmusings.blogspot.com
W. worldofwar.net
X. xanga.com
Y. youtube.com
Z. zug.com/pranks/credit

Why Terrorism Can Never Be Stopped in America

Evil Plans, High School — Alisa on September 4, 2006 at 12:13 am

The other day when I took a friend to the airport, I realized that there is a serious flaw in the security system. I made a crude computer drawing so that you can have some sort of an idea when I describe my plan to blow up a plane.


Terminal 2 at Sky Harbor International Airport is not a high traffic area. It flies out mainly Continental and United Airlines, along with a couple others. Because it is not an area of significant interest, there has not been a lot of money spent on security (this will become obvious in a minute).

When a passenger goes to board a flight, they leave the ‘Waiting Area’, walk past the ‘Wall of Serious Flaw’, and weave their way into the ‘Security Threat Detection Area’. Non-passengers are not allowed to approach or go past the ‘Security Threat Detection Area’. They may, however, stand and watch passengers through a glass wall (represented as a solid black line south-east of the ‘Wall of Serious Flaw’).

From what I understand, once passengers are cleared in the ‘Security Threat Detection Area’, they may board their flight without any further in-depth checking. This is where the plan comes into play.

The ‘Wall of Serious Flaw’ is made up of stand-alone panels that look like extra tall cubicle walls. You know the stuff–carpeted, metal rim around the edge, feet support at the base. These types of walls are used a lot in public schools. Because they are stand-alone, they need base support. The corners at the bottom of the base are not squared off; they curve upward to make room for the feet. Although each panel is placed close together and you can not see through them, there is a hole about the diameter of an 8 oz. soda bottle at the base of each wall joint.

As you all know, liquids are banned on flights nowadays because some people tried to make an explosive out of them. Well how easy would it be for an adult passenger to “drop” his bag on one side of the wall, and a child to be playing on the other side? No one would think twice about a child sticking his hand through the hole, and no one would think twice about an adult picking up spilled belongings. Anything could slip through the hole, and it would go unnoticed.

Of course, one soda bottle full of explosives would not be enough to blow up a plane. But multiple soda bottles would. There are only 2 security guards working at a time during the off-season (I’m not sure if there are more metal detectors or not, but for the majority of the year there are only 2) in Terminal 2. Once the break rotation is figured out, you could have an “accident” every break change. I’m guessing they rotate every other worker (not both at once), but this is not a problem. You just can’t have the same guard notice two “accidents” in less than 6 hours. It would be okay every 7 hours though, because the odds are more likely.

So if you start feeding the potential martyrs through at say, 9am, for a 10pm flight, it would give you plenty of time to feed at least 4 other people through for the same flight. For the earlier passengers, I would recommend buying 2 tickets: one for an early flight, and one for the 10pm flight. This would remove suspicion because checking in for a flight 13 hours early is a little suspicious.

So my friends, as you can see, little details like these are why terrorism can never be stopped in America.

Cheers!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative 3.0 Unported License. | alisawilhelm.com/blog