Events

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 4½-year-old mutt. I last updated this About... page almost two years ago, so it's time for a quick update. In the interest of enlightened laziness I'm starting with the most powerful keystroke combination in the universe: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V. The Daily Parker is about: Parker, my dog, whom I adopted on 1 September 2006. Politics. I'm a moderate-leftie by international standards, which makes me a radical left-winger in today's United States. Software. I...

Here's a fun task. Let's take the U.S. military budget, and then add up the budgets of the next few countries in the ranked list of spending until we get to the same number. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. spent $663.2 bn on defense in 2008. Let's start with China, who had the second-biggest military outlay, and keep adding until we get to $663.2 bn: 2. China 3. UK 4. France 5. Russia OK, we've now got the entire permanent membership of the U.N. Security...

When I left for New York last Saturday morning, my car still lay under a snowdrift. A few days of unseasonably warm weather later, and voilà:

I'm really, really tired, but I just had to post this: Did I mention how much I love my new camera? In fairness, my old camera could have done that, too. It's a 200mm lens on a 1.6x digital image chip, ISO-100, f/5.6 at 1/500. My old camera wouldn't have had the detail the new one has, but really, the trick to the shot was the tripod I've had since 1983. (Seriously.) The moon is actually pretty bright. Its albedo—the amount of light its surface reflects—is about 9%, or about half of an average surface...

When I left Chicago on Saturday morning, we had half a meter of snow on the ground. I hear most of it is gone: Thursday's 13°C high temperature at O'Hare, a reading 11°C above normal and more typical of late April than February, fell just 2°C shy of a 130-year old record of 16°C. But, at Midway Airport, the home of an uninterrupted 82 year observational record which began in 1928, Thursday's 14°C temperature was a record-breaker. The reading replaced a 1981 record high of 13°C at the South Side site....

Quick update: A Kindle can disappear from just centimeters from your left elbow, and hotel security didn't see nothin'. And whoever took it now has a nonfunctional brick, albeit one with several decent books on it including the complete works of Shakespeare. Maybe he'll read? More later.

No, I'm not swimming in Long Island Sound; I'm up to here [gesture] analyzing a broken software application for a financial firm outside Norwalk. I'm also fighting to get a good night's sleep in a room with clear sightlines to the Connecticut Turnpike and the Metro North Railroad. Within the next day or two I'm going to explain why this particular client makes me (and the rest of my team) incredibly happy to work there. One of my teammates already compared it to Nirvana Corp. Now, however, I need to...

Apparently, Chicago has had above-freezing temperatures for more than 24 hours. Anyone want to lay odds on whether I can drive my car when I get home?

I can't decide, if I were to move back to New York (and if I had unlimited funds), whether I'd live in the Village or on the Upper West. I have a hunch the latter would win: Right now, however, I'm in Stamford, Conn., in a hotel room overlooking I-95, because our client wants us to start work tomorrow at 8am. I used to spend a lot of time in Stamford, so I walked around a bit after checking in. It hasn't changed much. And my favorite Stamford bar is still there—which is where I believe I'll have dinner...

The low-light performance of my new camera astounds me. I took an hour-long hike around Midtown Manhattan right around sunset. Cranking the camera up to ISO-6400 allowed me to do this: That's f/3.5 at 1/30, using available light. Sorry about the nerd moment but: day-um. Another one, in Washington Square: ISO-3200, f/5.6 at 1/30. Again: day-um. To celebrate, I had a greasy slice of New York pizza from a corner pizzeria for dinner.