Mischievous Ramblings II

Delicious!

TL;dr -- I got a new pellet smoker.  It's really heavy, and it cooks chicken good.

So we got a windfall.  Sara got a pilot's watch.  I got a pellet smoker.  It's not my first, but I trust it will be my last.  The first was an inexpensive Traeger from Costco.  Not the cheapest, but I think the cheapest that had a digital controller.  I won't go into a lot of details, but let's just say that when it was good, it was very very good.  But when it was bad?  It was awful.  It went away on Craigslist to a retired Boeing engineer who immediately built a new controller for it.  I hope he's happy.

I did much of my research on AmazingRibs.com.  I own Meathead's book and have been reading his site for a couple of years.  I worked my way down a long list of desires and requirements, excluded devices that cost more than an exorbitant amount of money (OK, I probably should have set my sights on a bit less exorbitant), and decided on a MAK Grills 2-Star General.

I ordered from Big Poppa Smokers online, because there doesn't seem to be a MAK dealer in the immediate area.  I am perfectly happy with them, except for one thing: their communication on shipping estimates and dates is pathetic.  Virtually every communication I got from them (including several I had to initiate) was incorrect.  The were quick, pleasant, fixed a problem I caused, and got me the stuff in a reasonable time (I'm making an assumption on a follow up order, but I think it's a good one), but their notification system flat does not work.

Thus, I was not expecting Wild Bill, the UPS Freight guy, Friday afternoon when he knocked on the door.  I moved things around to give him a good clear path to the courtyard, and he left me this.  Two hundred and eighty pounds (he said, according to the invoice) of precursor to smoky meaty goodness.

 

Against my better judgement (which was completely overwhelmed by my "it's Christmas morning" anticipation), and the unprovided advice of my entire family (none of whom were present), I reduced the mass as much as possible by removing packaging and subpackages, and wrangled the remainder onto a dolly, which I wrestled around the house and down to the backyard, informally known as the hockey rink.  I assembled what was practical for one person, and waited (calm as a hooded falcon)...

The next morning, Kiernan was kind enough to assist me in lifting the ~200 pound top onto the base and to hold the warming drawer in place while I fastened it on.

I loaded up the 20 pounds of pellets provided, and set it to season.

And then, this morning, I loaded the virgin grill up with

a dozen rubbed chicken thighs (following Myron Mixon's advice that dry-rub BBQ chicken is an excellent first dish to try on a new grill.

Fired up the Wi-Fi (yes, my grill has Wi-Fi!) controller.

And waited.  Not too long.  I watched the "Cooking Graph" on the website:

"Probe 1" and "Probe 2" are temperature probes placed in two thighs on opposite ends of the grill.  When they hit 180, I turned the grill down to "Smoke" to add flavor for a few minutes, but when I checked them, they looked properly done.

And they are delicious!  Cooked through (tested with an instant read digital thermometer as well as the traditional "are the juices clear?"), pleasantly smoky, nicely moist (I might experiment with producing a slightly drier version that would be easier to eat without making a mess), and lacking only in skin crispiness, which might also be produced with a longer cook or a briefly hotter cook -- either of which should be easy to set up.

Seeing about cold smoking some cheese, now.

Complete Genetic Makeover

I joke that I am a Canon shooter because of genetics: my father shot Canon gear, so I shoot Canon gear.  My first SLR was my father's Canon F-1.  The first one I picked out was a Canon A-1 in college.  My first digital SLR was a Canon Digital Rebel.  A couple of years ago I upgraded that body with a Canon 60D.

Last Tuesday I dug up all the Canon gear I had around the house, packed it into as much original packaging as I could find, loaded it all into an Ikea bag, and drove to Glazer's Camera in South Lake Union.  When they asked me what they could do for me, I said "I have a bag full of used Canon gear.  I'd like to walk out of here with some Nikon gear."

Why did I do that?

I've looked at every digital photo I've got in the last two months and stripped my collection down from over 43K to under 2K worth keeping.  Some of those pictures were taken on digital cameras with 640x400 resolution, some on phones, many on the Digital Rebel (6.3 MP), and the vast majority on the 60D (18 MP). Aside from a lot of swearing at myself about getting shots wrong, there's only one thing I said more than once about a photo.  It wasn't "I need more pixels".  It wasn't "I need a better flash".  It wasn't "I need a longer lens" or "I need a faster lens".

It was "I want more Dynamic Range".

I've been planning to upgrade from the 60D to a 5D Mk IV (if it ever comes out) because a full frame camera system is better for landscape photography (which I'm doing more of) and bigger pixel sites are better for taking star photos (which I really enjoy).  As the delay went on, I questioned whether I should consider a 5D Mk III or a 5DS instead.  Or a 6D.  In either case, I was talking about a minimum of $1400 and probably more  like $3K or $4K.  Plus new lenses.  Major investment.

Once I knew I was looking for Dynamic Range, I started Googling.  There's this site called DXOMark that has allegedly objective measurements of camera bodies and lenses.  It's sortable by measurement.  Go check it out and sort the list of camera bodies by Landscape (which is largely a proxy for Dynamic Range).  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

Six of the top seven (and seven of the top nine) are Nikon bodies.  The odd ones out are from Sony, which is the company that Nikon buys sensors from.  Nikon, Sony, and Pentax dominate the top ranks with cameras going back five years or so.  This is not a flash in the pan.  You have to go to the 68th slot to find a Canon, and it's not a DSLR.  The Canon 5DS is 94th. The Nikon D810 has nearly 2 1/2 EVs more dynamic range than the 5DS and more than 3 more than my 60D.

If I wanted more dynamic range, I was buying a Nikon.  Which meant getting rid of about $6K worth of Canon gear.  Which I might get $2500 for if I was lucky.

While we were in NY to see George Takei's Allegiance musical, I visited B&H Photo (which was amazing, BTW -- like Fry's Electronics for photo and optical geeks with the entire staff wearing yarmulke and speaking English) and Adorama and spent perhaps 60 minutes playing with the D810.  I read the manual.  I researched lenses.  I concluded that I was going to be out of pocket over $6K to rebuild my kit, including getting between $2K and $2.5K for my old kit.

But it would be better kit, objectively, as measured by DXOMark.

Here's the planned kit:

• Nikon D810 Body
• Nikon 20mm f/1.8
• Nikon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 VR
• Nikon 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5
• Nikon 70-200mm f/4 VR
• Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro Di VC
• Sigma 150-600 F/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sport or Contemporary

I ordered the body, 18-35, and 24-85 from B&H with overnight delivery for Wednesday 10/28.  My Tekniq modular camera bag (from a Kickstarter I backed in May) happened to arrive.  I visited Glazer's on 10/27 and got trade-in money for my Canon gear, which bought the 20mm and the 70-200.  The kit packs into the Tekniq like a charm.  This is the first time I've ever planned kit instead of buying what I seemed to need as I went along.  There were what seemed like a million little details: UV filters, extra lens caps, lens caps retainers (I'm horrible about losing caps and hoods), batteries, chargers, new CF cards (the 60D used SD) and a high speed SD card, card readers, new cables for the remotes, polarizers, step-up rings, monitor protection, and so on.

Here's the first image I was willing to put up on Facebook: 

Here's the one that blew me away:

Which is a detail from:

Which is itself about a 50% crop from the original.  What blows me away is the sharp detail on the crow where it is in focus (which isn't all of it, not at f/4, but that's not the point).  You can see dust on the feathers.  There are places where you can see each individual barb!  It's not that this is a great image, but the level of detail is, to me, nearly unbelievable.

Which brings me back to those DXOMark numbers.  I turned in lenses for my Canon 60D with sharpness values of 7, 8, 8, 9, and 12.  I bought lenses which, combined with the D810, have sharpness values of 17, 23, 25, 26, and 29.  The crow images are from the 70-200 with a 29 sharpness.  I would not have expected to get kit capable of 3x the detail, but I think I may have 2x or more (the average of each new lens' sharpness improvement over the equivalent lens in the old kit is about 2.6x, with the worst being 2.2x and the best being 3.2x).

I'm gobsmacked.  And I have no excuses that my equipment can't get a shot.  If I don't get a shot, it's my fault -- intent, design, execution, understanding of conditions, understanding of the equipment.  The gear can get the shot, if I can figure out what the shot should be.

Isn't genetic surgery amazing?

Mass v2 @ GNB

http://www.groupnewsblog.net/2015/05/mass-v2.html

War Surplus

  

War Surplus Baby
Jim Carroll & William Danoff, 1976
(as performed by Starland Vocal Band)

She's a war surplus baby from Salvation's Army
She plays tambourine and wants to be a star

She stepped out of the Sixties
From a dream world to fix these
Broken promises I play on my guitar

And we made it through somehow
For the bad and good
She always knew we would

See, she believes in miracles and romance,
In learning how to slow dance
In sacrifice, in freedom, and in pain

Yes, she believes in magic
And she tells me the tragic
Side of something beautiful that never ends in vain

Barefoot and sadness
Bell bottom eyes
We did what needed to be done
So marched all the marches
Ended all the wars
All the time believing that we won

Don't the times keep on changing
The stakes get much higher
It's out of the frying pan into the fire

(made it through somehow)
And we made it through somehow
For the bad and good
She always knew we would

And she still believes
In love in the morning
And love when you need it
If your soul gets hungry you've got to feed it

She's a war surplus treasure
Her peace is her pleasure
In spite of all this madness
Life Goes On

"God made Men, Samuel Colt made them Equal"

Since I cannot physically practice Kenpo anymore, I've had to reconsider personal defense.  White American males of my age and class are not prime candidates for violent crime, and Kenpo has for years been more of a fascinating physical and mental discipline than a plan for Der Tag, but I do occasionally worry about my ability to deal with a situation since I can't practice and I can't count on my body to perform under stress.

When we moved back to the US, we had some specific concerns about Sara's safety.  She appeared on at least one list of people destroying America on some rather unsavory rightwing sites.  Having had some previous experience with a stalker, we took the matter rather seriously for a while, but eventually concluded that her lowered profile was probably sufficient protection.

During our research, however, we determined that Washington state has some of the weakest, if not the weakest, requirements to obtain a concealed carry permit in the country.  I'm not going to talk about the sense of that, at least not now, but we did look at obtaining carry permits.  With a carry permit (called a CPL -- Concealed Pistol License) you can carry concealed (Washington is generally an open carry state) in most locations and you don't have to deal with waiting periods while buying firearms in Washington state because they've already done a background check on you.  You still need to do background checks as required by law (e.g. any firearm you buy from a licensed dealer), but there are no statutory waiting periods.

Each having a background with guns (both of us had at least partially rural upbringings, and my father thought he wanted to be Ernest Hemingway when he grew up), we had seriously discussed whether it was necessary to teach our children to shoot and about gun safety.  We decided that they were more likely to be urbanites that we were, and put all our firearms in storage during their years in our house (and of course they stayed in storage in the US while we were in Canada).  We never expected Kiernan to be the paintball reincarnation of Wyatt Earp :-).

With our empty nest came a desire to re-examine and re-experience shooting.  We have bought several new firearms and visited a variety of local ranges as well as taking handgun training classes.

No, I'm not going to announce whether or not we have CPLs, nor am I going to announce whether or not we carry legally or otherwise.

But I will say that I have a new appreciation for pistolcraft as a martial art, having visited Gunsite Academy in Paulden, AZ for a one week Pistol 250 class in January.  I would say it took 3-5 years of regular training (2+ hours a night 3-4 nights a week) to feel comfortable in my ability to handle a situation with Kenpo.  One week of excellent training on top of years of casual shooting might have done it using a pistol.  I put videos of the two simulators on youtube here and here.

So there will be quite a bit more conversation about guns than there has been.  Since I doubt there are a whole lot of readers out there, I don't know if it matters.  If I offend you and you leave, sorry about that.

Back troubles, self-defense, & helping Mr. Frank Trejo

I studied American Kenpo actively for 10-ish years, covering nearly half my adult life when you consider the off-and-on nature of it.  I studied at Master John Sepulveda's Santa Clara Kenpo Karate in the Bay Area, Shayne Simpson's in Bellingham, and Chris Hermann's Alpha Martial Arts in Seattle, and other instructors included Mr. Buda, Mr. Tabb, Mr Graves, and Professor Skip Hancock from Spokane.  In late 2011 I received my black belt from Mr. Hermann.

I also seriously injured my back during the test.  I had first thrown my back out in about 1978 while moving into my dorm room at Pomona College by reaching out and lifting an empty cardboard box.  Periodically since I've had to spend some time doing PT, seeing a chiropractor, or taking serious painkillers because my back had gone out again -- usually because I did something stupid, like carried too much firewood, or pushed myself too hard.  In the black belt test I overexerted doing a pulling drill.  It was my breakthrough moment for the test, but it cost me.  I tried to return to the mat several times, but after re-injuring my back about six months later I gave up.

I have not been back to Alpha Martial Arts or stepped on a dojo mat since.  I've done months of Physical Therapy, worked (and still work) with a Personal Trainer, and am up to working out three times a week at a local gym.  But I know myself, and even at my now-best, I do not want to re-injure myself.  I know enough to know that I will not go 50% or 75% or whatever it is that I can do without injury.  I have to stay off the mat.

And it's too painful to go watch what I can't do anymore, so I have not been back into a dojo since about six months after my test.  Until Saturday (yesterday), when Alpha Martial Arts held a benefit seminar for Mr. Frank Trejo, who's got some medical issues.  I knew I could not get on the mat, and I knew that I should not stay and watch while I'm fighting a cold (no reason to infect others), so I just stopped by to drop off a donation.  I watched perhaps 5-10 minutes of Mr. Durgan teaching, and ached to be back on the mat.  It hurt not to get on the mat.

Because I can't do Kenpo anymore, I've had to reconsider my personal defense, and I have done some weapons and lethal force training, which I'll talk about later.

Back from the Frozen North

 

Sorry for the absence.  Some was preparation, some was the trip, some was a bit of recovery.  We drove from Seattle to Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory to Skagway, Alaska and back, covering 3827.9 miles.

We saw moose, bison, bears, elk, mountain goats, and a lynx, some in the wild and some in a wildlife sanctuary and rescue facility.

Preliminary pictures here.

Curmudgenly Thoughts

I don't know if I want to live in a world where the University of Oregon Ducks are a sports powerhouse.

I grew up in Eugene and outside Myrtle Point, Oregon.  My father taught at the U of O.  The official sports slogan I remember was "Go Big Green!", but the usual local usage was more commonly "Go Little Yellow!" as the basketball teams generally didn't reach .500 playing at Mac Court ("Pack the Pit!") and the football teams didn't play a bowl game between 1963 and 1989.  The one thing I remember the U of O being somewhat successful at was track and field.  We watched "Pre" run fourth at the 1972 Olympics.

There was a certain rightness to the world when the U of O and OSU fought for the bottom every year.

Curse you, Phil Knight!

Testing...1,2,3...

Yes, it's been a long time.
No, I don't know if I'll be blogging regularly, but I'm going to give it a try.
Catching up...
Moved to Seattle, working at Amazon, just went live with a new project built by a new team.
Kids are both in Vancouver, Sara's remodeling the house (we're up to the master suite and hope to be done this year).
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Personal Landmark

My training lineage:
T-shirt of Mr. Simpson's lineage: Ed Parker's American Kenpo (top of triangle);
Skip Hancock's Kenpo 2000 (left); Mr. Simpson's Pacific Northwest Karate Center.
T-Shirt of Alpha Martial Arts' logo. Black belt including my name and Alpha
Martial Arts' logo.  Photograph by Evan Robinson.  Click to embiggen.

Sara wrote to an email list we're on:

Evan's been doing Kenpo karate for as long as I've known him. Longer, actually: when I met him, he was a 25-year-old four-night-a-week dojo rat with six-pac abs and an appetite for esoteric books on management of violent conflict. Kenpo is a big guy's art, a very technical kind of karate that's favored by bouncers, bodyguards, and other people for whom self-defense is a serious business. In fact, Kenpo was founded by Elvis's Hawaiian bodyguard, Ed Parker; and Elvis himself had a Kenpo black belt. Evan took some workshops with Ed Parker back in the day, and has always sought out teachers who were directly Parker-trained.

But Evan quit Kenpo at 28,  just a few months shy of getting his black belt...though he's never stopped training on his own through all the years that followed.

Fast forward to four years ago. We're in Vancouver, and Evan's been piddling around with a local dojo that (ahem) lacks the rigor of the far more serious one he'd trained with in Santa Clara. But he finds a really great one over the border in Bellingham, which is closely affiliated with Parker's most respected remaining student. We're making weekly trips there anyway, so he joins up, digs out his brown belt, and gets back into training.

When he moved to Seattle last year, he asked the Bham dojo for a referral to another school in the city. We bought our house, in part, because it's a 10-minute drive from this one.

Long story short: Tonight, Evan finally received his long-delayed black belt, after a seven-hour marathon test that started at 9 am this morning and ran until 4 pm. I was there for the last couple hours of it, and was amazed at both the rigor, and the fact that my 50-year-old guy was holding up under it. He was probably the oldest person testing -- and also the biggest, and also one of the two or three most skilled. (They call him "Po" -- the Kung Fu panda.)

One of the universal rituals of martial arts is that when you're given your black belt, your instructor gives you a ceremonial kick in the gut. Usually, one or two other instructors stand behind you to catch you if you should get knocked over. 

Evan was the last candidate kicked. When his turn came, nine instructors got off the bench to come and stand behind him to support him. Pretty sweet. When I came down to the mat to hug him afterward, his heavy canvas gi was completely drenched with sweat -- not a dry spot on him anywhere. He's resting now, after a hot shower, a steak dinner, and a stiff dose of ibuprofen....

Half a lifetime. And about time, too.

I blush :-).

I have trained at: John Sepulveda's Santa Clara Kenpo Karate in Santa Clara, CA (an IKKA school) in the late '80s and early '90s; Shayne Simpson's Pacific Northwest Karate Center in Bellingham, WA (Kenpo 2000 under Professor Hancock); with Professor Skip Hancock in Spokane, WA (Kenpo 2000); and now with Mr. Chris Herrman of Alpha Martial Arts in Seattle, WA (under Mr. Brian MacDonald of Boston, MA).  Each of them (and my individual instructors, including Jesse Guel, Marcus Buonfiglio, Jeff Buda, Howard Tabb, Master John Sepulveda, Tom Graves, Greg Moench, Penny Simpson, and Shayne Simpson) have contributed greatly to my understanding of the art and ability to perform.

Without going into details (and thus providing spoilers for other students of Mr. Herrman's), I will say that the two part blackbelt test (90+ minutes Wednesday night of conditioning and sparring and about six hours of running/biking; pad & bag work; sets; self-defense techniques; and forms on Saturday) was certainly the most difficult physical challenge I have ever faced in a non-survival situation, and possibly the most difficult physical challenge ever.

Yes, it was worse than the Grouse Grind :-).

But deeply satisfying to have completed.

My thanks for the congratulations I have received.