Beltzner asked me once why I liked birds so much. I told him I didn’t, not particularly. I like nature. But if you go out for a walk in nature, you’re apt to come across a rodent or two, maybe an interesting mammal like a fox or deer, and you’re going to see at least 20 to 30 different kinds of birds. Bird knowledge is high return on investment, and gives lots of opportunity for practice. Knowing… I don’t know… voles, seems less immediately rewarding.

As for keeping track of them, I only started that last fall after a trip to Florida that was particularly packed with “life birds” (birds I’d never seen in the wild.) It may delight you to know that keeping track, “listing” as it’s called, is not without controversy. There are rules, if you enjoy such things, and there are a variety of local, regional, continental and world lists to work from. There are also, because of course there would be, reactionary elements within the bird watching world who are anti-list. There are lines drawn along the axis of listing that separate “birders” from “bird watchers” in ways that any Trekkie (or Trekker) will find immediately familiar.

I mostly don’t go in for all that. I record every bird I see in the wild; that’s it. For now I keep the list to North America, though I might start a world list at some point. I don’t record a bird until I’m confident of the ID, and I add a little ‘P’ in the margin for those where I managed to snag a good photo. Among (ahem) serious North American birders, my 105 is child’s play. 250 is the price of admission, 400 is typical of serious hobbyists, and 700 is a target once thought impossible but now reached regularly by people with the ability to fly to the Aleutian Islands to sneak in some Eurasian migrants while still technically in North America. I’m not likely to go in for all that, either.

Still, it’s rewarding for me to keep track. It motivates me to seek out habitats I haven’t visited before, and it lets me flag certain birds with extra import. It helps me notice detail on the birds that, I think, makes me a better photographer. Mostly, it gets me out of the house and into nature with a camera – that’s reason enough.

For posterity, then, my list to date (in Peterson’s order). Big thanks to Barry, my mentor in all things bird, for getting me this far.

1. Canada Goose
2. Mute Swan
3. Tundra Swan
4. American Wigeon
5. Mallard
6. Redhead
7. Ring-necked Duck
8. Lesser Scaup
9. Long-tailed Duck
10. Bufflehead
11. Common Merganser
12. Wild Turkey
13. Common Loon
14. Western Grebe
15. Northern Gannet
16. Brown Pelican
17. Double-crested Cormorant
18. Anhinga
19. Magnificent Frigatebird
20. Great Blue Heron
21. Great Egret
22. Snowy Egret
23. Tricolored Heron
24. Cattle Egret
25. Green Heron
26. White Ibis
27. Wood Stork
28. Black Vulture
29. Turkey Vulture
30. Greater Flamingo
31. Osprey
32. Bald Eagle
33. Northern Harrier
34. Cooper’s Hawk
35. Red-tailed Hawk
36. Rough-legged Hawk
37. American Kestrel
38. American Coot
39. Sandhill Crane
40. Killdeer
41. Black Oystercatcher
42. Spotted Sandpiper
43. Ruddy Turnstone
44. Sanderling
45. Laughing Gull
46. Ring-billed Gull
47. Herring Gull
48. Western Gull
49. Black-legged Kittiwake
50. Caspian Tern
51. Royal Tern
52. Sandwich Tern
53. Common Murre
54. Thick-billed Murre
55. Atlantic Puffin
56. Rock Pigeon
57. Mourning Dove
58. Snowy Owl
59. Acorn Woodpecker
60. Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
61. Downy Woodpecker
62. Hairy Woodpecker
63. Northern Flicker
64. Pileated Woodpecker
65. Eastern Phoebe
66. Eastern Kingbird
67. Gray Jay
68. Blue Jay
69. American Crow
70. Fish Crow
71. Common Raven
72. Tree Swallow
73. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
74. Bank Swallow
75. Barn Swallow
76. Black-capped Chickadee
77. Tufted Titmouse
78. Red-breasted Nuthatch
79. White-breasted Nuthatch
80. Hermit Thrush
81. American Robin
82. Gray Catbird
83. Northern Mockingbird
84. European Starling
85. Cedar Waxwing
86. Yellow Warbler
87. American Tree Sparrow
88. Black-Throated Sparrow
89. Savannah Sparrow
90. Song Sparrow
91. White-crowned Sparrow
92. Dark-eyed Junco
93. Northern Cardinal
94. Indigo Bunting
95. Red-winged Blackbird
96. Common Grackle
97. Boat-tailed Grackle
98. Great-tailed Grackle
99. Brown-headed Cowbird
100. Baltimore Oriole
101. Pine Grosbeak
102. House Finch
103. White-winged Crossbill
104. American Goldfinch
105. House Sparrow

Stick that in your perspective and smoke it. It’s worth clicking through to the HD version.

I had a lot of help from several people, most notably Shaver, in putting this presentation together; my goal is to keep adapting it and ideally get other people giving it as well. Security is something that the Mozilla project has a lot of experience with, and a lot to be proud of. It is important to our mission that we share that expertise. Even when what we’re saying isn’t new (“have unit tests”), the fact that we have achieved the success we have lets us be a proof point for people trying to make change in their own projects (“Mozilla didn’t think code review was too time-intensive.”)

I may not be an official member of the evangelism team, but I will do whatever I can to encourage more people in our community to take their knowledge outbound. We are doing crazy awesome stuff here (how many IT people, on the planet, have dealt with what Justin‘s team has?) and we should consider it an obligation to spread that knowledge around. Heck, that’s actually sort of what my talk is about.

I tend to shave pretty regularly, and I think people tend to prefer it that way, for the most part.  I do too, really.  But sometimes you need a chance to stretch your follicles and see what you’d look like if only.  And so, NSID was born:

No Shaving In December

I have been delinquent in not introducing the concept sooner, but in truth, the first NSID was not a full month long anyhow, and we keepers of the faith welcome late arrivals in any case.  Don’t view it as a contest, or a strict discipline, view it as an opportunity.

If you have to shave early because of some social function – so be it – consider resuming your hobo look afterwards if there’s still time.  If you have to shave it because it itches like an unholy FIRE, that’s okay.  NSID is not about judgement.  It’s about self-actualization which, unless I am sorely mistaken, and I’m not, is right at the tippy-top of the god damned pyramid.  It’s the gift you give yourself.

Know too that you are not alone.  I am here.  Robcee is here.  Beltzner and bhearsum and claire are here too.  Shaver defied the destiny of his very name to join our motley crew, and mconnor is a member by default.

We have a flickr pool.  You know what to do.

this one,

and this one,

Animal Kingdom: flickr pool

[Photo credit: dotpolka]

Since the end goal is pictures, printed or on-screen, a certain contrarian attitude has emerged among the would-be elites of the digital photography circuit. It goes, to a first approximation, like this:

The human eye can only recognize 200dpi or so, so even for an 8×10 print, which is as big as I would want to get, [the argument is always phrased in a run-on sentence with comma-splices] you’re only looking at 1600x2000pixels, which is 3.2 megapixel, therefore the idiots buying 5, 7, or 10 megapixel cameras are just tools of the corporate whore neo-fascist consumerism brainwash, and their purchasing of these cameras affirms their sheephood. Burn.

The problems with this argument are myriad, but since it tends to come up a lot I figured it was worth laying out at the very least some general outlines. First off, let’s agree with some of the spirit of what’s being said, to wit: a lot of twits with more money than brains think they can buy themselves status by deciding they are somehow purer of heart than the other dilettantes, and buying professional grade SLR backs and lenses and tripods and cases and light meters and battery packs… and then leaving them carefully packed away at home because they’ve lost interest. This is a very valid observation, and all right minded people should join hands, light candles and, much as they did in the seventies, beat the living shit out of these people and take their cameras. But this observation does not, in itself, invalidate the market for cameras above 3.2 megapixels.

We all agree that actual pros are perfectly justified in owning the top of the line, because we imagine their print needs are far beyond our own, and we’re not entirely wrong, though a lot of pros don’t need 12MP on every assignment, or maybe ever. Herein lies the first problem with the myth of the 3.2 MP barrier which, as I have already anticipated in the title, I will henceforth abbreviate to “the megapixel myth” or just “duh.” The fact is that pros are also more demanding on their camera’s engineering, optics, and feature set, and are willing to pay for it, so those are the cameras that get the best work. Buying a higher MP number doesn’t automatically get you a better piece of kit, but it often does, and it’s relatively rare if it gets you a worse one (at least from the same manufacturer, and with the note that there are exceptions to this.) The sensor might not be worth it to you, but the quality definitely might be.

The quality argument goes further too. A higher pixelcount often means imperfections in the lens(es) become more evident, both in the quality of the glass, and in the construction of the barrels. Maybe you think your 1.5MP phone cam takes fine pictures insofar as you can still recognize people and all, but it’s amazing how much easier it becomes to do little things like focus, when your optics are helping instead of hurting you. Quality, in photography, often means becoming invisible — not assisting or altering so much as failing to detract. Obviously camera makers are incented to put that extra work into cameras with higher MP counts where a) people might actually notice and b) there is any pricing margin whatsoever to squeeze it in.

But the big one, the huge elephant in the room when it comes to people making this argument, has nothing to do with professionals, in fact it almost makes it sound like pros are the only ones who should be allowed to own low MP digitals. Here’s the thing: most humans who pick up a camera and point it at things can’t frame a shot to save their lives. Don’t blame them, they’re just trying to snap pics of things that are interesting, but every one of them gets home and looks at their photos and is disappointed at how small the leaning tower of Pisa is, or how the great shot of their niece at the beach is ruined by that guy peeing in the background. The reason more pixels is good is so that you can decide which 3.2 million of them to use for your print. This isn’t hard any more. With the advent of things like picasa everyone can do easy cropping jobs to get in closer, remove distractions, and make the picture match the experience it’s supposed to be capturing. Remember how that is what photography is about?

A couple examples might help, but understand that the purpose here is to demonstrate the benefit gained by focusing on a portion of the original, not to exhibit my photography prowess, to which we’ve already established I make no claim. If you draw from this series a general principle that shots get better when you get closer to your subjects, then you are right.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

And in a particularly extreme case of cropping in to get at a detail
BEFORE

AFTER

Hello Mr. Guy in Seat 1A!

The takeaway here is not that you are stupid to buy a camera you can afford, and must instead buy some monstrosity. High resolution has its own problems, not the least of which is the very practical matter of being able to fit fewer images on a card. And if you buy a camera more expensive than you can tolerate placing in harm’s way, you will leave it at home and take exactly NO high resolution pictures of anything. All of that would be much worse than just shooting with a low res camera. All I’m asking is that you not deliberately go cheap in service to this notion that a 5MP or 7MP camera is somehow frivolous conspicuous consumption. I came by mine honestly enough, someone broke into my house and stole my old one – the Canon S70 is a delightful little 7MP gem, but I didn’t pick it, my insurance company did. Even if you did buy it with your own money though, I promise I wouldn’t disapprove.

[Credit for the linked photos at the beginning of this rant is gladly and gratefully given to fantasygoat, though he is likely not the photographer for any of them.]

Photos That Please Me – a photoset on Flickr

I believe I was the photographer on every one in which I am not a subject, so hefty derivative cheques come hither. It should be noted that this reexamination of old pictures was greatly facilitated by Picasa2, which you should all go download.