The Wiggles ride in on their Big Red Car

Do not watch their television show.
 
It’s that simple.  From the conversations I’ve had with people who don’t like the Wiggles, the one thing I notice about them is that they had to sit through endless loops of the TV series, which is a cheap green screen affair that’s soul-crushing to adults.  Kids eat it up, but adults want to grind their teeth.
 
Here’s the trick: Ignore the TV show and buy the two concert movies.  Just enjoy them for the music and the theatrics of the live stage.
 
Yeah, that’s right: The Wiggles are a Live Band, not an Album Band.
 
Coming soon: Lots of photography lessons learned from photographing a Wiggles concert.

Wiggles Big Big Show Concert DVD

It’s seriously not even close, is it? Crystal just wiped the floor with Lee, didn’t she? All of Lee’s shortcomings were on display tonight, while all of Crystal’s strengths came through. She played it ten times better than he did, and I almost had to feel sorry for him.

“Everybody Hurts” and “Beautiful Day,” really? Could they have been anything other than karaoke? I felt badly for him on “Beautiful Day.” Without that guitar, he might as well thrust his hands into his jeans pockets and stand there motionless.

Though I did have kind thoughts for him when I saw him just staring out into the crowd and taking it all in. You could see it was slightly humbling for him. He seems like a nice enough guy. He’s got a voice that would fit well in commercial bland copycat radio. He probably has a career.

But he’s nowhere near as good as Crystal, who somehow managed not to cry at the end of that lost song, barely. And, sure, her ode to Simon may have been awkward and she didn’t know where she was walking to in the introductions, but — she sang her face off tonight.

Tangent: The great thing about high definition TV? You can clearly read along with the contestants as the lyrics float up the teleprompter. I actually don’t have a problem with them being there, and I didn’t ever catch either Lee or Crystal relying on them. (Crystal sings with her eyes closed half the time, while Lee is glancing awkwardly to either side to avoid the camera, I guess. Still, the occasional grin was endearing.)

So, there you have it. An often boring season ends with the two strongest contestants, and one was able to pull it off.

While anything is possible, I think Crystal wins this one tomorrow. I love the Idol Finale show. It’s a true spectacle. Can’t wait to see what they come up with for Simon. And will Paula return to say her goodbyes while Andrew sings “Straight Up?” Will there be duets between the contestants and beloved contemporary artists? How much of a workout will the gospel choir get this year? What matching outfits will the Top 12 wear at the top of the show? etc. etc.

Ferris Wheel at Night

This picture was taken at 8:30 p.m., about a half hour after official sunset time. The sky looks pitch black, but it’s really still a dark blue. Ramp up your ISO high enough, and you’ll pick up that color in the sky.

You can even see some clouds in the sky in this image, as blurry or noisy as they might appear.

It would be a minor thing here, but I really wish I could have had the camera lower. Shooting at eye level with your subject can often make a BIG difference in the final image. Here, it wasn’t possible. I had a second or two to fire off a pic. Crouching would have meant losing the pic, so it’s a compromise. (ALL of photography is a compromise, you quickly learn.)

The big trick about shooting animals at zoos through fences is to put your glass close to the fence and shoot at a wide open aperture. The fence disappears.

Sadly, this trick doesn’t work while on a moving train where the fence is a few feet away. Still, look! BISON! MOOSE! Cool!

Bad Bird Backgrounds

Be aware of your backgrounds. They can ruin a pic. That garbage can behind the bird on the left is a killer.

I knew that going in, actually. I saw it there. But I thought I’d give the bird shot a chance. I could always crop heavily in, right? But the bird isn’t looking all that great when seen close up, either, so the whole thing is a wash. Still, it’s a good lesson to learn.

See more pics from my trip to the zoo all week at AugieShoots.com.

How to ruin a good pic: Overexposed Highlights

Lesson #1 of photography: Always check your settings before taking a picture. I forgot I had played with manual exposure at the last set of animals at the zoo before taking this pic. All my ostrich pics turned out way overexposed because I thought I was still in Aperture Priority mode. Whoops.

This is the only pic that was salvageable. The rest were far too blown out to recover any details in Lightroom with. Still, that hot spot in front of the bird’s beak destroys the pic.

I’ve been a Mac guy for about five years now. Still use my original Mac desktop as a matter of fact, a creaky PowerPC based leviathan with a second hard drive installed to handle all the photos, music, etc.

I’ve rarely needed to use the Genius Bar. I used it once when a power pack died on my monitor, and one other time when my first iPod had battery issues after a month or two of use. (I sense a pattern, all of a sudden.)

So when my two year old laptop developed issues — the backlight turned off after opening the screen past 90 degrees — I went to Apple.com and made an appointment for a Sunday morning visit to the Genius Bar.

It went very smoothly. An employee with an iPad found my appointment and got me the next available genius. The Genius, himself, (Hi, Doug!) saw what was wrong and had two possible diagnoses in an instant, explaining them clearly and succinctly. (It was just the backlighting, and one of two issues were to blame.) He gave me both price quotes.

Then he saw some chips on the plastic around the edges where my wrists rest, and told me it would be a free repair on my model and lined that up, too.

I gave them the laptop, sheepishly admitted my insecure password for it, and was on my way.

They called a couple of hours later and I returned to get everything back in one piece and fully functional again. $100 is a lot cheaper than a new laptop, though let’s face it: I’m a tech geek. A new laptop would have been cooler. ;-) (Completely unnecessary, though.)

On the way out the door in the morning, I got to touch an iPad for the first time.

Steve Jobs is right — it IS magical. Everything glides across the screen. It’s like everything is on ice, it moves so quickly. Pinching to zoom in and out happens quicker than anything I’ve ever seen a computer do. Swiping from page to page is slick.

And then I had to go, because my daughter was getting antsy inside her stroller. I showed her a video off SesameStreet.org and she was entranced, but I didn’t want to push it.

Sadly, the Mrs. was home sick and couldn’t witness the glory.

When I went back in the afternoon to pick the laptop up, the two tables with six iPads each were crowded with people checking it out. I saw lots of kids — tweens and teenagers — showing their parents the iPad, and lots of people smiling. It’s true — when you get yours hands on the device, you can’t help but fall in love.

No wonder Apple just hired a Nintendo fanboy to manage their iPad Games section. This thing might upset the entire portable games market, even at its larger size in comparison to the DS, PSP, et. al. (Wait, are there others past those two?)

So what’s the point of all this? The iPad looks really cool. It gives a great demo to those playing with it. And the Genius Bar worked for me yet again. Heck, thanks to on-line scheduling, it worked better than ever.

I’m a happy Apple guy.

There’s been some talk across the blogosphere lately of reviews of product packaging over the products, themselves. People post negative reviews of a book on Amazon, for example, because there’s not a digital version of it available, as well.

Check this review out, of the forthcoming Blu Ray release of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy:

Some confusion among other reviewers that somehow we’re obligated to post a five star recommendation for the movie.

I don’t know which is worse, though: those other reviewers, or this guy’s logic.

The fact is, the disc hasn’t been released yet. I don’t know why Amazon even allows reviews to be posted of material that can’t be seen yet.

[...] This product is being created FOR NO OTHER REASON than to dupe people into buying this movie twice…again. Those of us who were huge fans bought the original DVDs of the theatrical releases. THEN the studio FINALLY released the extended editions, even though they could have released both at the same time.

Whoa whoa whoa. This guy is either stupid or ignorant. I’m not sure which.

First, no, the special edition DVDs could NOT have been released three or four months after the theatrical run. There were often hundreds of special effects shots added to the movie, not to mention additional scoring. Then, there were the two bonus discs worth of materials added to those special edition presentations. That stuff doesn’t happen overnight.

Second, every fan KNEW that there was a special edition coming out for Christmas at the time the regular edition came out months sooner. And if they didn’t know that about the first movie, certainly they were clued in for movies 2 and 3.

Third, I bet there are some people for whom the “shorter” 3 hour movies are more than enough.

Now that Blu Ray has won the High Def battle, the studios are salivating at screwing us all again the same way!

They won’t be screwing me. I’m not buying this Blu Ray set. I have the DVDs and they’ll do. Someday, they’ll release the four hour versions of the movies that I’ll never have the time to watch, and I’ll screw myself by buying them again. I’m sure they’ll look and sound AWESOME in my home theater.

Please do not let them get away with pretending that Blu Ray can’t hold both versions on one disc–it certainly can! A simple menu option would let you watch the Extended Edition when you have time, or Theatrical Edition when you don’t.

Yes, “seamless branching” is a technique that was very popular in the DVD world and worked every time they tried it. Wait, no, nobody ever went for it. It’s about as useful as BD-Live, honestly.

Look, I don’t know why they can’t release the special editions of the movies on Blu Ray right now. It is silly. But I’m mature enough to wait for the special editions, should I choose to ever watch these movies again. In the meantime, there are dozens of other movies that I can buy and watch. I don’t need to start a campaign on Amazon to “sink” a Blu Ray before it’s released.

He’s ALREADY DONE THE WORK–just copy what he did for the regular DVDs onto a new Blu Ray master!

It’s not always that simple. It’s not always a matter of pushing the up-res button on a computer and spitting out a perfect Blu Ray disc.

I don’t know why I’m trying to reason with this reviewer. He doesn’t care, and likely won’t ever read this. Even if he did, it’s tough to talk a man out of a jihad he’s started.

I’d like to rent one of those LOTR Blu Ray discs someday, though, just to see how they look and sound at the higher resolution and bit rate. Barring some insanely good sale on them, I’ll be passing.

The ramifications on this are insane.

Photoshop Content Aware Fill

Three are three tell-tale signs that an Idol contestant picked the wrong song.  They’ll say one or more of the following things to Ryan Seacrest:
 
• I knew that song already.
• I love that song.
• I had fun.
 
When a contestant uses all three, they’re done.

Bonus points if the judges start their critiques with “You look great.” 

Play along at home next week.
 
 

The Blockbuster down the street from me is closing.  The sign outside the store says, “This Location Only!”
 
Funny; that’s the same thing the other three Blockbusters I’ve seen close in the area in the last six months or so have said.
 
At what point do they just admit that their business model is toast?  The video rental store made sense when it was VHS only and rental stores had exclusives for a long time.  (Well, you as the consumer could buy the movie right away if you REALLY wanted to pay $80 or more for it.)  But once that barrier disappeared — I think it did with DVDs, but don’t quote me on that — the rental store lost its major weapon.  And with cheap DVDs available quickly and DVRs able to record high def movies off cable to view anytime and now those $1 rental Red Boxes and all the on-line options — well, Blockbuster doesn’t need to exist. It’s convenient sometimes, but not often.  Why bother?
 
It’s somewhat sad to see another Real World community site disappear. Welcome to the future, though.
 
 

It’s Rolling Stones Week! I guess that’s good for some.

Chris Daughtry II isn’t bad, but horribly shy/awkward

Bucky II should get out from behind the guitar.

David Archuleta II/Kevin Covais II was too weak, not “vulnerable.”

Adam Lambert II’s screaming is fast becoming cliché, though it did make we want to go play “Paint It Black” on Guitar Hero again. It’s one of my favorite GH songs.

Ruben II sounds better than Ruben I and is ten times more mobile than the original was in Season Two.

Amy Adams II is going to wind up just like Amy Adams I – voted out quickly. (I think Allison Iraheta is still the only successful redheaded contestant in the series, and they do try to prop one up there every year.)

I did actually like the odd reggae remix that Jon Peter Lewis II did with his song. But, then, I’m not a Rolling Stones fan to begin with, per se, so I’m open to radical reinterpretations.

It’s too bad John Stevens II got eliminated last week…

If your next guest is either Syl Arena or David Du Chemin, you’re not trying hard enough.

Nothing against either gentleman, who both have books to plug, but I could give their interviews for them by now, if you’d like. (I can explain second curtain sync by heart now, thanks to Arena.) They pop up in my podcatcher constantly.

That said, I really really want Arena’s Speedliting book to come out, stat.

Just discovered this weekend that Amazon has a complete history of everything you’ve ever purchased available for your perusal. Go to Your Account –> Your Orders and then choose the year from the dropdown box just above and to the left of your most recent orders.

Turns out my first Amazon purchase was September 7, 1998.  I bought two things:

• The Fifth Element on DVD

I had gotten my DVD player a couple months earlier, so this would have been one of my earliest movie purchases.  Back then, DVDs weren’t a dime a dozen.  This one cost $20.99. Today, it’s available for $12.49. For goodness sake, the Blu Ray for this movie is less than $15.

• DVD Demystified: The Guidebook for DVD-Video and DVD-ROM

What can I say, I’m part tech geek. This $42.95 book promised to discuss the format and the processing in detail. I was very curious about it at the time.  I remember carrying this book out of the office one day, when one of the Veeps at the company I worked for (he’s very smart) looked at the book and said, “I didn’t think they were all that mystifying.”

Total price: $68.84

That’s right: There was no free shipping on orders more than $25 back then, let alone Amazon Prime.