OK Doffuses listen up. No, this article is not for you software engineers with brains, it's for you catch phrase managers that think torturing dev teams with SCRUM is just peachy. And worse, you think it's actually agile. pffft!
Sorry no can do wacko. SCRUM did not come from agile. It was not advocated by Scott Ambler, father of agile. SCRUM came from XP idiots who also advocated "pair programming" which meant, that every developer was to always have another person in their cube looking over their every move. Do you want to work like that? Really?
SCRUM takes a few good useful things, then puts gobs of claptrap and torture around them. For example, starting with "user stories". Well yah, in these here parts we call that a functional spec! SCRUM has sprints. I call them death marches. They are great for companies that wish to utterly burn out and exhaust their dev team and send them running for Facebook or Google. We used to call them releases and agile proposes release often. We don't need SCRUM death marches for that. The only useful aspect of SCRUM is that the tooling like JIRA allows teams of developers to simply pull work off the a shared list. This actually simplifies project management and produces a pitching in. But SCRUM adds these 9am everyone huddle nonsense. I did one project like that for six months. It was a horrific nightmare under extreme stress. Have I led daily meetings and crit path analysis and as a manager made sure there were no roadblocks to dev teams. Yes. For two weeks. In critical release times. Not as a standard. It burns people out. It's exhausting.
Here's what one engineer had to say about his experience :
"What you fear is EXACTLY what happened in our agency several years back.
We sent a lot of developers and IT managers to agile training that so
confused everyone with how to manage SCRUM, Sprints and other practices
associated with agile, that our CIO actually created posters that he
placed all over the shop with the word "agile" in middle with a big red
circle with diagonal line through it and we have been stuck doing
everything using Waterfall methodology ever since. A quote I often use
that usually falls on deaf ears is "The aim of agile is not to DO agile,
it is to BE agile!"
The next gobblygoo manager who thinks that to be agile they MUST do SCRUM OR conversely, that by doing SCRUM they somehow get agile, needs to be promptly rounded up and dealt with soviet style.
I have a new acronym. SCUM. It's where we make doofus MBA managers use JIRA and have 9am meetings every single day and then be forced to write 20 pages of excel spreadsheet financials. Yehp. Try that on for size rather than your doughnut break.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Why Fukushima Happened And the Spider Arm Reactor Solution
Physics is always a strange bird that takes us out of our comfort zone. Things which we or rather our brains declare maxims of existence, like that this concrete table is solid, physics rips apart and declares, no, rather, its all mostly empty space. And a collection of forces, the strong and weak forces, the gravitrons, the bends in space time, the quanta, and buzzing things beneath those where position and space dissapear in some space time energy dance.
Now we had fukushima. And if you look at the reactor design from the mindset of the people in the 1950s, it all makes great sense. It just doesn't make any sense in the realm of physics.
All these engineers had just come from projects building nuclear bombs. How do you do that? well simple you build strong compression chambers of thick steel and concrete and then maximize the pressure and a primary fission reaction ignites a secondary fusion reaction and blacmmo a city no longer exists and the clouds shure glow a pretty green.
Well the problem was these same scientists were tasked to design the peacetime nuclear energy reactors. So what did they do? They basically made bombs again. Big massive steel and concrete pressure vessels. And piped in water and made steam and turned turbines.
But Fukushima proved a basic lesson of physics. That four feet of steel and concrete that seems so strong to us humans, well it's nothing to a four thousand degree pool of molten uranium. It would be like making a pan out of WAX and then dropping a red hot BB pellet on it and being astonished that somehow the BB pellet was able to go through the wax. that's exactly how dumb physicists are today.
But it gets worse. They let the material get in contact with WATER! How stupid can you be. Why is this dumb? Well the problem is, we are used to water gently heating and becoming steam. These physicists completely forgot basic physics of what happens when 4,000 degree fissioning material meets water. What happens is that water instantly SHATTERS into pure O2 and Pure H2. The pure oxygen blasts onto fire and the pure Hydrogen EXPLODES. What they were really doing was surrounding the fuel with explosive hydrogen. But nawww no biggie, they have PHDs and I dont. so they MUST know what they are doing right? Dumb ol Giavell... she's just a nobody because she couldnt sit in boring classes with peon brained 120 iq professors who were dumb as stumps for eight years. But the physicists could. No problem. and that makes them.... morons.
Wait it gets even worse. Think of a nuclear reactor as a big backyard grill. And instead of putting a few charcoal brickets in it, you fill it to overflowing with charcoal brickets. Then you get the whole thing red hot even white hot, then cook one small chicken piece with it. And then you are left with forty pounds of blasting hot charcoal brickets burning away for hours and hours. That's exactly what a modern nuclear reactor is. first they make a big hole. then they stuff it full of control tubules which are stuffed with rods and pellets of purified uranium. And the whole thing is straining to light up white hot and burn for 200,000 years and the whole reactor will run for years and year on the huge pile of fuel they put in it which is great EXCEPT when something goes very very wrong. I call this the too much woodon the woodpile problem. The Superphénix reactor in France, for example, was designed hold an initial core of 5,550 Kg of Plutonium. That's outrageous!
Well dont worry, things wont go wrong because we have control rods. fragile boron indium cadmium rhodium sleeves that slide over the rods. Except... when the rods get hot, they expand, and the sleeves deform, and suddenly YOU GOT HELP ME JESUS a backyard grill with forty foot flames blastin out of it again.
Within seconds the uranium melts, drips onto the floor, blast fragments the water, the hydrogen explodes the pressure vessel, and the molton uranium melts through four feet of steel and concrete which has a melting point of just 3500 degrees in a matter of minutes. And you have Fukushima parts one through four. And the first thing they do? Why they treat it like a REGULAR FIRE like they are FIREMEN and take out long hoses and blast it with what? Why WATER of course! Because in their small tiny pea brains they think this is a form of fire, that concrete is always solid, that steel cant melt, water cant fracture, and loading five hundred tons of uranium into one giant vault is a sensible thing to do.
Ok now, lets look at some options that dumb phd Physicists haven't been able to figure out. First of all there's the amount of fuel issue. There is absolutely no need for so much fuel. The only reason they stock this massive tank of fuel is because they are so clumsy and it is so difficult for them to get the huge fuel rod assemblies OUT! That's where the spider arm reactor comes in. The spider arm reactor uses sixteen thin rods of fuel each attached to a cantilevered arm. When power fails, the arms move away from each other like a flower blooming until each comes to rest in its own area far from the others. Ahh they never thought of the FUEL ITSELF MOVING apart. And what is the fundamental principle of neutron flux? That it is dependent on ... .say it with me... DiSTANCE! YES distance! Once separated, there is only the neutron flux within each slab of material which is by design NOT self sustaining.
Well this design makes it simple to replace one of the pieces of material, load up a fresh one, and then energize the levers and it lifts back up into the neutron flux of the 16 other wedges. The bays for each individual arm are lined with thick layers of the material they make dopey control rods out of - cadmium boron. No flimsy tube to crumple when the going gets hot.
What about slowing it down when it is in decomissioned state, to make it more easy to handle and store. Why blast it with liquid nitrogen! Being extremely cold, the neutrons will stop moving, and poof the item will have its radioacitivity and fission levels reduced to storable levels quickly. NOT WATER! Nitrogen is inert. period. That's why our atmosphere doesnt catch on fire every time we turn on a gas stove, because our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. got it?
OK, now these cantilevered arms are designed simply so that if the power goes out, they move apart and each tiny piece of material moves into its own chamber. Since it's easy peachy to replace each piece of material, they don't have to be big or massive. In fact, place it in a lead shielded case about 3' long and 9" wide, and pick it up in one hand and carry it away. It's safe now to store for ten years during which time its radioactive state with subside to closer to zero aka storage level where more pieces can be gathered together and placed in a bigger storage holder where they will sit safely for another hundred years and then recycled. Try doing that with three hundred pound spent fuel rods.
There is no high pressure tank to burst and blow steam into the atmosphere? No we use a heat exchanger plug to transfer the heat energy to another indirect tank which then turns turbines. Just like an air conditioner coil transfers heat out of the house. High pressure see, like a bomb. Because that's all they knew how to build in the 1940s!
Wait, stick with me it gets even better. because the inter distance of each of the sixteen arms is configurable, its very easy to control the neutron flux or the speed of the fission reaction. Want to warm things up? Push them closest together. Slow it down? Move em apart. Easy peachy simple dimple. This is called controlling the K of the reaction, where 1 or balanced is the goal. Less than one is sub critical meaning the reaction will die out, and > 1 and its supercritical or runaway. Now, with a traditional reactor those control rods sliding over the fuel rods are the ONLY THING preventing it from becoming supercritical. If they are damaged, warped or JAM, as they often do, what then? Well with Fukushima, it's time to shit the goose and get the crap out of there and send in the SARCs to clean up. With a spider arm reactor you'd have to have idiots manning the controls to force the system into supercriticality. And even if that did happen, all you have to do is back off the distance and eventually the reaction slows, all with no control rods. Simply by using distance, and non - humungous fuel sources.
Lets go back to the grill analogy. You build a backyard grill forty feet long. You fill it all with charcoal and lighter fluid. then you light it all on fire. But you close the top and your control rod - the oxygen hole opening - controls the reaction. Except that you built the side of the grill out of aluminum foil and at any second the whole side could fall off and the grill erupts into huge twenty foot flames which will burn for eight hours. Yep thats a modern nuclear reactors design in a nutshell with control rods.
And now we get to the best part. What about thorium? Well thorium salt plug reactors follow a few of these principles, no high pressures, automatic recovery with the salt plug melting, but they aren't rate controllable the whole system of moderators like control rods that warp and fall off, is harder with liquid salt designs. And the hardest part is the extraction process and recovery is still theoretical.
But with a spider arm reactor design, thorium is no problem used solid in purified form. And here is the better issue. To initiate a reaction all you have to do is use a hot plug from a currently active reactor to get the whole thing going. Or even better, each reactor can use a protron synchrotron to initiate the reaction and no uranium is ever used. All very possible and made much easier because you have infinite control of the neutron flux distances.
finally, lets say that somehow magically the spider arms fail to move apart when power is killed and there is a runaway reaction? Well the floor first of all, we'll make out of TANTALUM CARBIDE or the highest melting point stuff on earth. Not out of steel and concrete. They use it on jet engine nozzles which routinely hit temperatures above 4,000 degrees. They should be enough to prevent melt through but if that doesnt stop it the emergency blast from the liquid nitrogen tanks will.
What about CANDU and Pebble Bed reactors, those are safe aren't they? Pebble bed reactors don't suffer from LOCA (loss of coolent accident) unless they run out of their gas coolent like Helium. But the pebbles themselves break or often jam when they are supposed to exit - "The reactor also suffered from the unplanned high destruction rate of pebbles during normal operation, and the resulting higher contamination of the containment structure, and problems with compact pebble allocations, which caused deformations in the control rods and of the side reflector arrangement." CANDU reactors still use fuel rods so they still have issues.
There are some technical issues with the design. Criticality with enriched Uranium for examply, typically requires a massive amount of some 50 tonnes. In a spider arm design, with 25 arms, that means each arm needs to be engineered to hold 2 tonnes. It's not easy but it's certainly doable. Think of the weight of a midsize car on each arm. This, however, might simply be the amount required for dinosaur designs and certainly for designs which did not use linear accelerators for instantiation of the reaction. With this more modern design, a reactor could possibly achieve sustainability with only ten tons of material. Or it might require a periodic burst from a linear accelerator, like your hand hitting a wheel to keep it spinning. This very new technique, could extract the energy from a much tinier "pile" even perhaps as small as one ton. We also know that these huge numbers cannot be correct. We have nuclear submarines do we not? Certainly they don't have 150 tons sitting on one end. Most likely this early research number was never updated as technology advanced and became classified. With this "hand slap by accelerator" technique, we get one more advantage - because we have designed the reaction NOT to be sustainable it must naturally decrease without runaway fission. An optimal design would have the reaction grow and produce heat for say 24 hours, then naturally begin to lessen.
In between the arms wedge shape as a moderator would be 100 tons of purified graphite. Although costlier, for the reasons mentioned with H2O direct explosion at high temperature, graphite is the moderator of choice. A moderator is a material which takes the 50 million kelvin super speedy neutron and having particles of roughly the same weight, results in multiple elastic collisions, extending that heat via thermolyzation into the moderator and allowing the neutron to then impact additional material at the correct energy level to yield more fission. The use of graphite brings into question issues of Wigner energy and one reactor in England burst into flames in the 50s because of the accumulation of this energy. But Wigner energy only accumulates when collisions occur below the Wigner annealing temperature. Since the spider arm reactor is a high intensity reactor, this Wigner buildup will not occur. Now we get the ninth advantage of the Spider Arm Reactor (SAR) design. By the arms moving the nuclear material away from the moderator, again the neutrons will be traveling with too much energy to split other atoms. The use of water as a neutron shield still makes sense, but as a ring around the entire facility, a neutron moat if you will. Finally, the graphite moderator can also be designed on cantilevered arms, for the occasional need to replace or repair. The alternating wedges of moderator and fissile material forming a pie, akin to the piece on the board game trivial pursuit.
Another issue with graphite was the corrosion of ducting used to carry away heat. This was solved in pebble bed designs by the natural space around the spheres. While the solution is unclear, a natural solution of the graphite blocks with a 3d design to allow airflow is envisioned. This will obviate the need for metal ducting.
The spider arm reactor is not a new technology, it is simply the best minds understanding of how to bring technical solutions to a reaction we understand well. In the 1950s there was not a good understanding of these failure issues. Now that we have learned from each of the disasters, it's time to take that knowledge and put it into better reactor designs like the spider arm reactor. By doing so, it will be possible to remove and rid our Nation and Japan both of the dangerous reactors designed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Now we had fukushima. And if you look at the reactor design from the mindset of the people in the 1950s, it all makes great sense. It just doesn't make any sense in the realm of physics.
All these engineers had just come from projects building nuclear bombs. How do you do that? well simple you build strong compression chambers of thick steel and concrete and then maximize the pressure and a primary fission reaction ignites a secondary fusion reaction and blacmmo a city no longer exists and the clouds shure glow a pretty green.
Well the problem was these same scientists were tasked to design the peacetime nuclear energy reactors. So what did they do? They basically made bombs again. Big massive steel and concrete pressure vessels. And piped in water and made steam and turned turbines.
But Fukushima proved a basic lesson of physics. That four feet of steel and concrete that seems so strong to us humans, well it's nothing to a four thousand degree pool of molten uranium. It would be like making a pan out of WAX and then dropping a red hot BB pellet on it and being astonished that somehow the BB pellet was able to go through the wax. that's exactly how dumb physicists are today.
But it gets worse. They let the material get in contact with WATER! How stupid can you be. Why is this dumb? Well the problem is, we are used to water gently heating and becoming steam. These physicists completely forgot basic physics of what happens when 4,000 degree fissioning material meets water. What happens is that water instantly SHATTERS into pure O2 and Pure H2. The pure oxygen blasts onto fire and the pure Hydrogen EXPLODES. What they were really doing was surrounding the fuel with explosive hydrogen. But nawww no biggie, they have PHDs and I dont. so they MUST know what they are doing right? Dumb ol Giavell... she's just a nobody because she couldnt sit in boring classes with peon brained 120 iq professors who were dumb as stumps for eight years. But the physicists could. No problem. and that makes them.... morons.
Wait it gets even worse. Think of a nuclear reactor as a big backyard grill. And instead of putting a few charcoal brickets in it, you fill it to overflowing with charcoal brickets. Then you get the whole thing red hot even white hot, then cook one small chicken piece with it. And then you are left with forty pounds of blasting hot charcoal brickets burning away for hours and hours. That's exactly what a modern nuclear reactor is. first they make a big hole. then they stuff it full of control tubules which are stuffed with rods and pellets of purified uranium. And the whole thing is straining to light up white hot and burn for 200,000 years and the whole reactor will run for years and year on the huge pile of fuel they put in it which is great EXCEPT when something goes very very wrong. I call this the too much woodon the woodpile problem. The Superphénix reactor in France, for example, was designed hold an initial core of 5,550 Kg of Plutonium. That's outrageous!
Well dont worry, things wont go wrong because we have control rods. fragile boron indium cadmium rhodium sleeves that slide over the rods. Except... when the rods get hot, they expand, and the sleeves deform, and suddenly YOU GOT HELP ME JESUS a backyard grill with forty foot flames blastin out of it again.
Within seconds the uranium melts, drips onto the floor, blast fragments the water, the hydrogen explodes the pressure vessel, and the molton uranium melts through four feet of steel and concrete which has a melting point of just 3500 degrees in a matter of minutes. And you have Fukushima parts one through four. And the first thing they do? Why they treat it like a REGULAR FIRE like they are FIREMEN and take out long hoses and blast it with what? Why WATER of course! Because in their small tiny pea brains they think this is a form of fire, that concrete is always solid, that steel cant melt, water cant fracture, and loading five hundred tons of uranium into one giant vault is a sensible thing to do.
Ok now, lets look at some options that dumb phd Physicists haven't been able to figure out. First of all there's the amount of fuel issue. There is absolutely no need for so much fuel. The only reason they stock this massive tank of fuel is because they are so clumsy and it is so difficult for them to get the huge fuel rod assemblies OUT! That's where the spider arm reactor comes in. The spider arm reactor uses sixteen thin rods of fuel each attached to a cantilevered arm. When power fails, the arms move away from each other like a flower blooming until each comes to rest in its own area far from the others. Ahh they never thought of the FUEL ITSELF MOVING apart. And what is the fundamental principle of neutron flux? That it is dependent on ... .say it with me... DiSTANCE! YES distance! Once separated, there is only the neutron flux within each slab of material which is by design NOT self sustaining.
Well this design makes it simple to replace one of the pieces of material, load up a fresh one, and then energize the levers and it lifts back up into the neutron flux of the 16 other wedges. The bays for each individual arm are lined with thick layers of the material they make dopey control rods out of - cadmium boron. No flimsy tube to crumple when the going gets hot.
What about slowing it down when it is in decomissioned state, to make it more easy to handle and store. Why blast it with liquid nitrogen! Being extremely cold, the neutrons will stop moving, and poof the item will have its radioacitivity and fission levels reduced to storable levels quickly. NOT WATER! Nitrogen is inert. period. That's why our atmosphere doesnt catch on fire every time we turn on a gas stove, because our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen. got it?
OK, now these cantilevered arms are designed simply so that if the power goes out, they move apart and each tiny piece of material moves into its own chamber. Since it's easy peachy to replace each piece of material, they don't have to be big or massive. In fact, place it in a lead shielded case about 3' long and 9" wide, and pick it up in one hand and carry it away. It's safe now to store for ten years during which time its radioactive state with subside to closer to zero aka storage level where more pieces can be gathered together and placed in a bigger storage holder where they will sit safely for another hundred years and then recycled. Try doing that with three hundred pound spent fuel rods.
There is no high pressure tank to burst and blow steam into the atmosphere? No we use a heat exchanger plug to transfer the heat energy to another indirect tank which then turns turbines. Just like an air conditioner coil transfers heat out of the house. High pressure see, like a bomb. Because that's all they knew how to build in the 1940s!
Wait, stick with me it gets even better. because the inter distance of each of the sixteen arms is configurable, its very easy to control the neutron flux or the speed of the fission reaction. Want to warm things up? Push them closest together. Slow it down? Move em apart. Easy peachy simple dimple. This is called controlling the K of the reaction, where 1 or balanced is the goal. Less than one is sub critical meaning the reaction will die out, and > 1 and its supercritical or runaway. Now, with a traditional reactor those control rods sliding over the fuel rods are the ONLY THING preventing it from becoming supercritical. If they are damaged, warped or JAM, as they often do, what then? Well with Fukushima, it's time to shit the goose and get the crap out of there and send in the SARCs to clean up. With a spider arm reactor you'd have to have idiots manning the controls to force the system into supercriticality. And even if that did happen, all you have to do is back off the distance and eventually the reaction slows, all with no control rods. Simply by using distance, and non - humungous fuel sources.
Lets go back to the grill analogy. You build a backyard grill forty feet long. You fill it all with charcoal and lighter fluid. then you light it all on fire. But you close the top and your control rod - the oxygen hole opening - controls the reaction. Except that you built the side of the grill out of aluminum foil and at any second the whole side could fall off and the grill erupts into huge twenty foot flames which will burn for eight hours. Yep thats a modern nuclear reactors design in a nutshell with control rods.
And now we get to the best part. What about thorium? Well thorium salt plug reactors follow a few of these principles, no high pressures, automatic recovery with the salt plug melting, but they aren't rate controllable the whole system of moderators like control rods that warp and fall off, is harder with liquid salt designs. And the hardest part is the extraction process and recovery is still theoretical.
But with a spider arm reactor design, thorium is no problem used solid in purified form. And here is the better issue. To initiate a reaction all you have to do is use a hot plug from a currently active reactor to get the whole thing going. Or even better, each reactor can use a protron synchrotron to initiate the reaction and no uranium is ever used. All very possible and made much easier because you have infinite control of the neutron flux distances.
finally, lets say that somehow magically the spider arms fail to move apart when power is killed and there is a runaway reaction? Well the floor first of all, we'll make out of TANTALUM CARBIDE or the highest melting point stuff on earth. Not out of steel and concrete. They use it on jet engine nozzles which routinely hit temperatures above 4,000 degrees. They should be enough to prevent melt through but if that doesnt stop it the emergency blast from the liquid nitrogen tanks will.
What about CANDU and Pebble Bed reactors, those are safe aren't they? Pebble bed reactors don't suffer from LOCA (loss of coolent accident) unless they run out of their gas coolent like Helium. But the pebbles themselves break or often jam when they are supposed to exit - "The reactor also suffered from the unplanned high destruction rate of pebbles during normal operation, and the resulting higher contamination of the containment structure, and problems with compact pebble allocations, which caused deformations in the control rods and of the side reflector arrangement." CANDU reactors still use fuel rods so they still have issues.
There are some technical issues with the design. Criticality with enriched Uranium for examply, typically requires a massive amount of some 50 tonnes. In a spider arm design, with 25 arms, that means each arm needs to be engineered to hold 2 tonnes. It's not easy but it's certainly doable. Think of the weight of a midsize car on each arm. This, however, might simply be the amount required for dinosaur designs and certainly for designs which did not use linear accelerators for instantiation of the reaction. With this more modern design, a reactor could possibly achieve sustainability with only ten tons of material. Or it might require a periodic burst from a linear accelerator, like your hand hitting a wheel to keep it spinning. This very new technique, could extract the energy from a much tinier "pile" even perhaps as small as one ton. We also know that these huge numbers cannot be correct. We have nuclear submarines do we not? Certainly they don't have 150 tons sitting on one end. Most likely this early research number was never updated as technology advanced and became classified. With this "hand slap by accelerator" technique, we get one more advantage - because we have designed the reaction NOT to be sustainable it must naturally decrease without runaway fission. An optimal design would have the reaction grow and produce heat for say 24 hours, then naturally begin to lessen.
In between the arms wedge shape as a moderator would be 100 tons of purified graphite. Although costlier, for the reasons mentioned with H2O direct explosion at high temperature, graphite is the moderator of choice. A moderator is a material which takes the 50 million kelvin super speedy neutron and having particles of roughly the same weight, results in multiple elastic collisions, extending that heat via thermolyzation into the moderator and allowing the neutron to then impact additional material at the correct energy level to yield more fission. The use of graphite brings into question issues of Wigner energy and one reactor in England burst into flames in the 50s because of the accumulation of this energy. But Wigner energy only accumulates when collisions occur below the Wigner annealing temperature. Since the spider arm reactor is a high intensity reactor, this Wigner buildup will not occur. Now we get the ninth advantage of the Spider Arm Reactor (SAR) design. By the arms moving the nuclear material away from the moderator, again the neutrons will be traveling with too much energy to split other atoms. The use of water as a neutron shield still makes sense, but as a ring around the entire facility, a neutron moat if you will. Finally, the graphite moderator can also be designed on cantilevered arms, for the occasional need to replace or repair. The alternating wedges of moderator and fissile material forming a pie, akin to the piece on the board game trivial pursuit.
Another issue with graphite was the corrosion of ducting used to carry away heat. This was solved in pebble bed designs by the natural space around the spheres. While the solution is unclear, a natural solution of the graphite blocks with a 3d design to allow airflow is envisioned. This will obviate the need for metal ducting.
The spider arm reactor is not a new technology, it is simply the best minds understanding of how to bring technical solutions to a reaction we understand well. In the 1950s there was not a good understanding of these failure issues. Now that we have learned from each of the disasters, it's time to take that knowledge and put it into better reactor designs like the spider arm reactor. By doing so, it will be possible to remove and rid our Nation and Japan both of the dangerous reactors designed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Monday, June 9, 2014
A friend asked, if I had 1000 - 1500 bucks, what camera should I buy. Here is my answer...
notes on cameras
1) Digital or film
for art, film. If you are trying to be a pro photographer or demand the most incredible results, shoot film. If you are just snapping, shoot digital. With some exceptions. ilford HP5, xp2, and Tri-x are standards for black and white. Even with 35mm the results rival digital cameras < 40 MP. With color, 35mm will not rival digitals best cameras, but will have better colors often. Color films to consider - Fuji Astia for portraits, Fuji Reala, Fuji Velvia asa 50 for nature.
Today, sometimes its best to bring both. Each has merits. Each produce something different.
2) Size of Film?
For serious work consider medium format. Especially shooting slide film or chromes. Because this can then be projected or seen on the light table. Typical sizes are 6x7, 6x9 and 6x12. For nature I recommend 6x9. There is also the Hasselbad XPAn which shoots 1/2 height 6x7. Medium format is called 120 or 220 film (220 is a strip of film twice as long as 120)
What about Large Format? Large format like 4x5, 5x7, 8x12 are a single piece of film that you put in the camera. It's for trying to get that really increadible single shot. These are big cameras on tripods. Film is so good, often 6x9 is fine for magazine size enlargements and even WALL sized enlargements. 6x7 a bit less. 35mm can be too small a format for say 40x60inch enlargements but will make a nice 11x17inch
3) A good lens matters. A lot.
Tiss better to have one good lens than hundreds of crappy ones. Photographers KNOW what is good glass.
4) Zooms tend to distort, take in less light, and are not used by the pros except for weddings. They can be very big and heavy especially for 2.8 aperture zooms. 2.8 is the f stop or light rating. Most zooms are 3.5 - 4.5. Many modern zoom lenses are pretty darn good especially if they cost > $1000. Mostly the difference is WEIGHT. I prefer a light camera so I bring just two or three PRIME lenses (those that don't zoom.
3) What are great 35MM film cameras?
There are two kinds. DSLR and rangefinder.
DSLR: NIkon f4
The f4 will shoot more kinds of lenses and do more with them (like matrix metering, a advanced computerized metering based on scene analysis) and is solid like a tank. It also is all manual controls with no LCD. It costs about $400 for a good one. It comes with 3 different sized battery packs, go for the mb-20 version whcih is the smallest as its a big heavy camera already. Yes the f6 does more, but all the electronics and lcds get in the way.
Nikon F3HP
A gorgeous viewfinder from the 80s and is one of the most loved highest rated dslrs of all time. Simply and easy to use compared to digital. And can be found for around 200 bucks. A good lens will add another 200-400 dollars.
Contax RX
Rock solid. Similar to a F4 but zeiss lenses (even better!) which cost about 500-1000 bucks each, substantially lower than the zeiss for nikon or zeiss for leica versions. Camera has motor, automation, and a great visual focusing aid for manual focusing in the viewfinder. It's a nicer camera than the Nikons build wise, but you lose out on the huge nikon Lens selection.
35mm Rangefinder:
I hate to admit the truth. But rangefinders always produce sharper pictures than DSLRs. Why? Because they can design lenses that sit closer to the film which results in less moving apart of the light rays. Yes, you can nail focus on a dslr. Somehow, rangefinders just seem sharper. Maybe sharpness is the wrong word. Maybe it's IQ or inherent quality. Whatever it is, rangefinders tend to produce better pictures in lighter smaller packages.
Leica MP, M7, M6
it costs thousands and thousands. Out of my price range for such stuff.
The Nikon 35ti is a autofocus rangefinder that does great pictures for about 400. Most people hate it because its autofocus not manual and is electronic. Not for me.
Contax T2: A beautiful rangefinder around 1000 dollars. also autofocus yuck. Prettier than the Nikon35
Ricoh GR1: another beautiful rangefinder released in 1996.autofucus yuk
Ricoh 500g: A teeny tiny rangefinder with a fixed 40mm lens that takes sharp sharp pictures! insist on like new quality. Real focus. Real aperture ring. this is a camera I could love and would be great to carry around in the purse
Yashica Lynx 14: an older camera with a huge 1.4 lens. brilliant simple 35mm rangefinder camera. insist on like new quality
Medium Format: Why shoot medium format instead of 35mm? for the quality. The negatives rival the best digital cameras when done right. A top 6x9 chrome negative will blow away any camera on this list except for the Merrill SD1 which is close. As a photographer, to be able to take a slide and put it on a light table illuminated, or projected on a wall, is a much more satisfying experience than seeing a picture on a computer monitor.
I used to own a dslr medium format a pentax and it was just too heavy. rangefinders are the way to go for medium format
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Mamiya 6 or 7: the six is amazing because it gets so small when retracted. about 1000 dollars to 1500 for a kit with all 3 lenses
Hasselblad XPAN: shoots wide panoramas. about 1000 dollars. can also take normal 35mm shots. a beautifully made camera that was thousands new. very small and light.
Fuji 6x9 shoots the very huge frame, great for wide landscapes. not lens changeable. giant camera. one of the best to make wall sized blow ups. Next time I go to venice, this is what i want.
Koni Omega: a older medium format rangefinder. A great way to get into 6x7 for about 400 bucks. love that crazy WWII viewfinder!
Bronica 645rf: Uses the 6x4.5 format, which is smaller than the typical 6x7. The advantage is you get many more shots on a roll. This is a truly amazing camera and costs around 1300 bucks. design wise, its ahead of the mamiya stuff in quality. This is the compromise camera, much bigger negative than 35mm, but still a light easy camera to carry around. system has 3 lenses. This is similar to the xpan but not as wide and a bit bigger negative (xpan is 6x3). pictures have great depth.
Digital:
There are some very nice digital full frame cameras around 2-3,000 dollars. Like a Nikon 800e or 610. But after shooting nikon for a very long time, I have gone to odd digital cameras that look more like film.
Nikon d700. A solid beautiful nikon digital that takes great pictures. Not as film realistic as a s5 pro but better resolution and beautiful viewfinder. full frame digital (same size as 35mm) not dx. About 1400 used without lens. oddly, the price never seems to drop people love this camera.
Sigma Merrill SD1: One of the best. A very different foveon sensor takes 15MP shots based on resolution but 40MP shots based on total information. Produces a solid film like experience. A Dslr. about 1500 bucks plus lenses.
Sigma Merrill SP3: (sd3?) The mini version of the SD1 for about 600 bucks. No viewfinder. you shoot using the lcd on the back. I dont like them but for image quality its amazing. this also just came out.
Fuji S5 Pro: The camera I currently have. Only 8MP. One of the most film like of all cameras ever made, now an antique. Built into the great Nikon d200 solid metal body. Wedding and portrait photographers still use it.
Fuji TX-1: A beautiful electronic viewfinder, probably the first one I could ever stand to use vs. optical. It has the mini DX sensor at 16MP but does great colors and detailed resolution. Its the best new camera out this year and is around 1500. This is a full sized camera with interchangeable lenses.
Fuji x100s: a fixed 35mm lens camera. Takes great pictures and is very small.
Nikon D3200: grab a used one from shopgoodwill.com and be sure it has the 18-55mm lens. You will be good to go for around 300 bucks. Its 24MP and a lower end consumer camera. It cant shoot older manual lenses, you use only the new ones with this which autofocus. Another model not as high in resolution you can try is a Nikon d40 but its only 6mp and a bit old, still will take great pics with the 18-55mm lens and only cost about 200 bucks
So what do I recommend for around $1000 bucks? I would try very hard to get a Merrill SD1. or the XPAN for film. If you wanted to jump in around 400 for a body and a few hundred on lenses, I'd get a fuji S5 pro for digital or the Koni Omega for medium format.
My personal loves right now are the Bronica 645rf and the merrill sd1 and the xpan. I can't wait to get one of them and if I had to choose it would probably be to get the xpan, then the bronica, then the sd1.
If you get a digital as your primary, I'd try to pick up a F3HP as a film camera backup for a few hundred.
How can you see what each one does? Go to http://www.flickriver.com and enter the camera into it.
Here is what the bronica will do:
http://flickriver.com/search/bronica+645rf/
Here is what the SD1 does:
http://flickriver.com/search/merrill+sd1/
Here is the fuji s5
http://flickriver.com/search/fuji+s5/
and here is the xpan
http://flickriver.com/search/hasselblad+xpan/
1) Digital or film
for art, film. If you are trying to be a pro photographer or demand the most incredible results, shoot film. If you are just snapping, shoot digital. With some exceptions. ilford HP5, xp2, and Tri-x are standards for black and white. Even with 35mm the results rival digital cameras < 40 MP. With color, 35mm will not rival digitals best cameras, but will have better colors often. Color films to consider - Fuji Astia for portraits, Fuji Reala, Fuji Velvia asa 50 for nature.
Today, sometimes its best to bring both. Each has merits. Each produce something different.
2) Size of Film?
For serious work consider medium format. Especially shooting slide film or chromes. Because this can then be projected or seen on the light table. Typical sizes are 6x7, 6x9 and 6x12. For nature I recommend 6x9. There is also the Hasselbad XPAn which shoots 1/2 height 6x7. Medium format is called 120 or 220 film (220 is a strip of film twice as long as 120)
What about Large Format? Large format like 4x5, 5x7, 8x12 are a single piece of film that you put in the camera. It's for trying to get that really increadible single shot. These are big cameras on tripods. Film is so good, often 6x9 is fine for magazine size enlargements and even WALL sized enlargements. 6x7 a bit less. 35mm can be too small a format for say 40x60inch enlargements but will make a nice 11x17inch
3) A good lens matters. A lot.
Tiss better to have one good lens than hundreds of crappy ones. Photographers KNOW what is good glass.
4) Zooms tend to distort, take in less light, and are not used by the pros except for weddings. They can be very big and heavy especially for 2.8 aperture zooms. 2.8 is the f stop or light rating. Most zooms are 3.5 - 4.5. Many modern zoom lenses are pretty darn good especially if they cost > $1000. Mostly the difference is WEIGHT. I prefer a light camera so I bring just two or three PRIME lenses (those that don't zoom.
3) What are great 35MM film cameras?
There are two kinds. DSLR and rangefinder.
DSLR: NIkon f4
The f4 will shoot more kinds of lenses and do more with them (like matrix metering, a advanced computerized metering based on scene analysis) and is solid like a tank. It also is all manual controls with no LCD. It costs about $400 for a good one. It comes with 3 different sized battery packs, go for the mb-20 version whcih is the smallest as its a big heavy camera already. Yes the f6 does more, but all the electronics and lcds get in the way.
Nikon F3HP
A gorgeous viewfinder from the 80s and is one of the most loved highest rated dslrs of all time. Simply and easy to use compared to digital. And can be found for around 200 bucks. A good lens will add another 200-400 dollars.
Contax RX
Rock solid. Similar to a F4 but zeiss lenses (even better!) which cost about 500-1000 bucks each, substantially lower than the zeiss for nikon or zeiss for leica versions. Camera has motor, automation, and a great visual focusing aid for manual focusing in the viewfinder. It's a nicer camera than the Nikons build wise, but you lose out on the huge nikon Lens selection.
35mm Rangefinder:
I hate to admit the truth. But rangefinders always produce sharper pictures than DSLRs. Why? Because they can design lenses that sit closer to the film which results in less moving apart of the light rays. Yes, you can nail focus on a dslr. Somehow, rangefinders just seem sharper. Maybe sharpness is the wrong word. Maybe it's IQ or inherent quality. Whatever it is, rangefinders tend to produce better pictures in lighter smaller packages.
Leica MP, M7, M6
it costs thousands and thousands. Out of my price range for such stuff.
The Nikon 35ti is a autofocus rangefinder that does great pictures for about 400. Most people hate it because its autofocus not manual and is electronic. Not for me.
Contax T2: A beautiful rangefinder around 1000 dollars. also autofocus yuck. Prettier than the Nikon35
Ricoh GR1: another beautiful rangefinder released in 1996.autofucus yuk
Ricoh 500g: A teeny tiny rangefinder with a fixed 40mm lens that takes sharp sharp pictures! insist on like new quality. Real focus. Real aperture ring. this is a camera I could love and would be great to carry around in the purse
Yashica Lynx 14: an older camera with a huge 1.4 lens. brilliant simple 35mm rangefinder camera. insist on like new quality
Medium Format: Why shoot medium format instead of 35mm? for the quality. The negatives rival the best digital cameras when done right. A top 6x9 chrome negative will blow away any camera on this list except for the Merrill SD1 which is close. As a photographer, to be able to take a slide and put it on a light table illuminated, or projected on a wall, is a much more satisfying experience than seeing a picture on a computer monitor.
I used to own a dslr medium format a pentax and it was just too heavy. rangefinders are the way to go for medium format
Mamiya 6 or 7: the six is amazing because it gets so small when retracted. about 1000 dollars to 1500 for a kit with all 3 lenses
Hasselblad XPAN: shoots wide panoramas. about 1000 dollars. can also take normal 35mm shots. a beautifully made camera that was thousands new. very small and light.
Fuji 6x9 shoots the very huge frame, great for wide landscapes. not lens changeable. giant camera. one of the best to make wall sized blow ups. Next time I go to venice, this is what i want.
Koni Omega: a older medium format rangefinder. A great way to get into 6x7 for about 400 bucks. love that crazy WWII viewfinder!
Bronica 645rf: Uses the 6x4.5 format, which is smaller than the typical 6x7. The advantage is you get many more shots on a roll. This is a truly amazing camera and costs around 1300 bucks. design wise, its ahead of the mamiya stuff in quality. This is the compromise camera, much bigger negative than 35mm, but still a light easy camera to carry around. system has 3 lenses. This is similar to the xpan but not as wide and a bit bigger negative (xpan is 6x3). pictures have great depth.
Digital:
There are some very nice digital full frame cameras around 2-3,000 dollars. Like a Nikon 800e or 610. But after shooting nikon for a very long time, I have gone to odd digital cameras that look more like film.
Nikon d700. A solid beautiful nikon digital that takes great pictures. Not as film realistic as a s5 pro but better resolution and beautiful viewfinder. full frame digital (same size as 35mm) not dx. About 1400 used without lens. oddly, the price never seems to drop people love this camera.
Sigma Merrill SD1: One of the best. A very different foveon sensor takes 15MP shots based on resolution but 40MP shots based on total information. Produces a solid film like experience. A Dslr. about 1500 bucks plus lenses.
Sigma Merrill SP3: (sd3?) The mini version of the SD1 for about 600 bucks. No viewfinder. you shoot using the lcd on the back. I dont like them but for image quality its amazing. this also just came out.
Fuji S5 Pro: The camera I currently have. Only 8MP. One of the most film like of all cameras ever made, now an antique. Built into the great Nikon d200 solid metal body. Wedding and portrait photographers still use it.
Fuji TX-1: A beautiful electronic viewfinder, probably the first one I could ever stand to use vs. optical. It has the mini DX sensor at 16MP but does great colors and detailed resolution. Its the best new camera out this year and is around 1500. This is a full sized camera with interchangeable lenses.
Fuji x100s: a fixed 35mm lens camera. Takes great pictures and is very small.
Nikon D3200: grab a used one from shopgoodwill.com and be sure it has the 18-55mm lens. You will be good to go for around 300 bucks. Its 24MP and a lower end consumer camera. It cant shoot older manual lenses, you use only the new ones with this which autofocus. Another model not as high in resolution you can try is a Nikon d40 but its only 6mp and a bit old, still will take great pics with the 18-55mm lens and only cost about 200 bucks
So what do I recommend for around $1000 bucks? I would try very hard to get a Merrill SD1. or the XPAN for film. If you wanted to jump in around 400 for a body and a few hundred on lenses, I'd get a fuji S5 pro for digital or the Koni Omega for medium format.
My personal loves right now are the Bronica 645rf and the merrill sd1 and the xpan. I can't wait to get one of them and if I had to choose it would probably be to get the xpan, then the bronica, then the sd1.
If you get a digital as your primary, I'd try to pick up a F3HP as a film camera backup for a few hundred.
How can you see what each one does? Go to http://www.flickriver.com and enter the camera into it.
Here is what the bronica will do:
http://flickriver.com/search/bronica+645rf/
Here is what the SD1 does:
http://flickriver.com/search/merrill+sd1/
Here is the fuji s5
http://flickriver.com/search/fuji+s5/
and here is the xpan
http://flickriver.com/search/hasselblad+xpan/
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Going Deeper Than Deep - The New Physics of Space-Time : Thermophasic Physics
We all know the frightening forces unleashed when matter is converted to energy in a fission or fusion reaction. Matter it seems, is simply a very dense packed form of energy.
But there is another mechanism which a destructive bomb can be built and it doesn't release any energy at all. If sufficient energy can be concentrated, the very gravitronic thread of reality can be severed creating a warp in space-time.
Picture the world and everything you see as floating points of light sitting on a delicate silk cloth. Even more, picture them actually woven into the thread of the cloth. Now picture the cloth with a broken thread, unraveling, and each point of light dropping through the thread and extinguishing.Like glass christmas bulbs falling off a tree and shattering. Welcome to the wonderful world of thermophasic physics.
The bomb would literally be a world devourer and it would be insane to ever use it. All that would be left would be a region of highly unstable gravimetric forces similar to a black hole.
If however, the device could be created on a smaller scale, an army could make an opponents legion of troops simply dissapear.
This technology has some advantages over fusion and fission in that it does not leave a radioactive residue, only gravimetric. and like getting sucked into a vacuum cleaner, people readily learn to steer clear of such areas.
The next question is can such a device actually be created. Have we reached a level of understanding of gravimetric forces and of the fabric of the universe to accomplish such things. The answer like anything is, we do not yet have the knowledge but we have the knowledge of the path to pursue it.
The complexity arises that you cannot use any particle to create such a tear. All particles are subordinate to it. And massive amounts of energy cannot be practically focused or contained. For example we have seen the results of Tsar Bomba and there was a gravimetric reaction but a small one. The result will come from a new sphere of high energy wave physics. A tear will only result by rapidly phasing an area of space time beyond its limits.
Light we like to say travels in photons, but emits a wave pattern. The wave pattern is not a property of light or photons, but instead is a property of space-time fabric itself. It is the resultant effect of photons drifting through space-time and their resultant clustering and limitations. Picture a surfer riding the ocean waves. The surfer goes up and down. But we do not say that the motion is the direct property of the surfer. So also it is with light. So we have some information to begin the investigation. One approach would be to see if we could alter the wave effect of light by inducing phase on space time in the same area. Since light has no mass, technically it should impossible to alter it. Only altering space time fabric, like the effect of the bending of light around stars gravimetric force, can alter lights path. But we do not have to simulate a stars mass in order to begin the experiment.
So we are left with a question - what can touch the untouchable. We have a collection of forces in our physics workbench. Is it simply a matter of trying them out? Well no, actually we have no practical ways to simulate most of the forces we encounter at the sub atomic level. We have to look for a phase effect which is occuring as an unexplained side effect in our particle physics. Some extra behaviour which shouldn't be there. That will be the clue we have stumbled ever so slightly on a force that can ripple space time fabric.
Another issue is that the force is likely to be non spatially located. If you assume our lower substrate to be holographic, instead we might get a shimmer like the rays of light out of a diamond, appearing in many places at the same time. Or even, in one place at many times.
There should be non destructive goals in pursuing such research. One of them might be the ability to cancel out gravity by inducing a ripple vibration in the substrate. Gravity, it seems, in deeply induced by the bends in space time, by vibrating the space time continuum gravity may struggle to effect. This would lead to ten year olds being able to carry skyscrapers in the palm of their hands, or flight without effort. And most importantly, travel beyond the stars. All of these are products of understanding deeper what is beneath us, what lattice is below our atomic vibrations.
How do you touch that which cannot be touched. How do you see that which cannot be seen? How do you know about something which is what arises our universe. It will be interesting to see if we make any progress on this in my lifetime.
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Episode VII of Star Wars - secret leak preview
Luke Skywalker takes over in Episode VII of Star Wars Saga, Sneak Leaks of Disney's Greatest Movie Ever
It took me many years, almost a lifetime to understand that Darth Vader was the good guy, and really Luke was evil. No, not the reformed mask off dying vader, the powerful suited up black menace Vader.
You see, the federation, aka the Trade Federation, initially allied with the emperor in a fake attack on Naboo. Much like the USA blew up the 911 towers to start a war in Iraq. The Trade Federation did this because? Well to avoid taxes, to loot all the plasma (aka oil in our world) from Naboo, and to ally with Palpatine who would become supreme chancellor.
The Republic, had become like the US Congress, laying taxes upon taxes and regulation upon regulation until the citizens said no more.
Palpatine takes over as Emperorer and divides things up into districts (in our world, Fema regions). Taxes are slashed. Things become efficient. Trade opens up again and Anakin slays the trading big wigs who also were part of the problem with their endless bickering. Now the whole empire was one free trade zone. And with all that they are able to do amazing things.
First off, they are able to assemble star destroyers that are bigger and more incredible than any previous ones. And finally they have such an efficient society that they are able to build massive star destroyers the size of moons.
The rebels are the holdouts from the old ways. They liked the congress and democracy rather than dictatorship of the Emperor. But what if they are the Nancy Pelosi's of the Republic, evil nannies bickering and control monsters wanting nothing more than to take away freedom from the people.
Perhaps America will descend into Empire once there is a strong enough leader to throw out the congress. No not Obama, he is the King of the liberal nellies, it has to come from an opposing force that is sick of their beaurocracy and kleptocratic elitism.
So one has to ask, did Luke fight on the right side? With all these questions, here is my script for Episode VII
------- Star Wars Episode VII : The End of the Sith
The new death star explodes. The rebel forces seize the now confused Galactic Fleet. Luke finally assumes his title as Galactic Commander.
Twenty years has passed. Libertarianism has returned to the Galaxy, not democracy, not the Nancy Peolosi Reid horror, but freedoms for the people. The republic is restored with a constitution. Opening scene is Luke now aged, descending into the vaults on the capital city. He descends deep past many guards. He places he hand on the door and it scans then opens. Inside... his fathers cape and mask.
attendent: are you sure you wish to do this lord skywalker?
luke: yes. today we finish it.
Luke dons his fathers cape, gloves, and carries the helmet in his arm at his side. He is wearing a modified armored breastplate which does not have the life support systems of the original, which also stays in the vault.
Guard: No, that is forbidden, no one can remov.... (gasps as his air is choked off and collapses into the ground)
Luke: This is my inheritance from my father. No one dare deny me again.
Luke walks the length of the star destroyer. Hundreds of white clone troops and fifty red guard stand in respect. None dare move. As he passes all troops bow.
Luke: Is the connection with the Senate ready.
minion: of course master Skywalker
Luke: Begin
A multi part screen appears and many members of the senate appear.
Luke: I lord Skywalker stand before you to assume the position of Supreme Commander of the Fleet. Do you grant it.
Senator Koplin: It is granted Lord Skywalker. We wish you success in your first battle and your quest. To the senate, please raise your arm in Salute if you agree with the motion - We hereby appoint Luke Skywalker Supreme Commander of all our forces and defenses.
senators: HERE HERE! (arms go up)
slowly Luke puts on Vaders Helmet.
Luke: It is time to destroy those who murdered my mother and stole my father. Begin. Open the ViewPort!
Huge panels pull back revealing a view of the planet Korriban
Attendant on Bridge: Sir, theres a message coming in from the surface
Luke: I'm ready.
HoloMessage: I am Dark Lord Vengence, leader of the Sith. Leave our space or suffer your fate.
Luke: For crimes against my people and my family, the corruption of my father, and the death of my mother, I sentence all of you to ... nothingness. Release the Star Forge.
A huge groaning is heard. Three massive fins rise up from the star destroyer. A huge beam pulses forth. Gravitonic forces slurp up the whole planet and a steady stream of star destroyers is created next to Skywalkers ship. Forty are produced.
Luke: Send the forces to man the new ships. Be sure to have the priests cast out the dark spirits first.
attendent: It will be done lord Skywalker.
Luke: Plot a course for the remaining sith planets. We will absorb them all without warning or discourse. What is the projected time to complete our task?
attendent: 147 worlds, the course is plotted. It will take us two months.
Luke: We will have too many ships. Reprogram a new star destroyer ten times bigger, and equip each of them with a star forge. Convert each planet to 3 major destroyers and 20 regular emperor class destroyers. That will restore our fleet against any force.
Luke removes the helmet and places it in a special secure bay on the deck of the ship.
Luke to himself: My father I have avenged you.
Luke in his quarters. Tired. An alarm goes off
Luke: YES?
Phone: Sir, it's the sixth planet off the Esstran sector, the Daluba system. We were in position to fire the star forge and... and...
Luke: And?
Phone: Well it sorta shimmered, and winked out. Gone.
Luke: It's supposed to be gone
Phone: No, thats the thing sir, we never fired. And, well, there was this face that appeared. A woman wrapped in long cloths. Maitreya.
Luke: Maitreya is a myth. Play it back I want to see. (watches. planet winks out. no face is seen)
Phone: But it was there, it was huge, this huge face all covered but the eyes, the eyes... they had such kindness
Luke runs back to the bridge.
Luke: NOOOOOOoooooo (looks like the mad anakin with wild eyes)
The whole bridge staff is now sitting and meditating. All smiling and happy.
Luke: You will stop this. Your minds have been twisted. YOU WILL STOP!
Luke uses the force and crushes the windpipe of a bridge crew member. he keeps smiling happily even as he dies.
luke: UNACCEPTABLE! Guards remove all of them to the brig. Get new crew up here! And find me MAITREYA!
---------
luke on capital city in the senate
Vice Chancellor: It is done! The sith is no more! The sith is no more!
crowd cheers
Luke bows and smiles, happily
Luke: The time of war is OVER the time of prosperity is upon us. We have stationed our star forges near black dwarf stars and they are now producing all the equipment to make every planet energy and food self sufficient, building great buildings, all free to everyone. The sith and their treachery are.... (pause)... no wait.... they are ....
Luke closes eyes. He raises his darth vader gloved hand up... then slowly clenches his fingers. Four members of the senate begin to curl up and gasp for breath.
Luke: That was my fathers way. But this is how I deal with the sith
Luke brings his hand into a fist and smashes it into the podium. the four senators shatter into a thousand shards and are gone.
Luke: I care not for war and I care not to lead you. I go to seek my family and to rebuild now. Until the Jedi forces can be rebuilt, I urge all of you to be safe.
Luke walks out slowly, huge applause "our hero!" "hail skywalker!"
A padma looking female: I hear he destroyed two hundred worlds
Mom: No dear, he is a hero, the sith are gone and wont dare come back
aplf: yes but at what cost. at what price. And what a burden he must carry. he was so innocent before now... now.. I don't know what he is.
------ a dusty planet
four bandit soldiers are circling a high ridge in rough terrain. they have their blasters in hand
bandit leader: Circle thirty six, we have them surrounded. Are you in position
radio: Yes circle seven, just past hobbs run.
bandit leader to team: we will get them now. ATTACK!
the teams run around the rock cropping. Thirty soldiers from the south and twenty from the other side. It is a blind canyon with a open area only forty feet across. In the center, wrapped in long white cloths ... are four children.
Bandit leader: FIRE!!!! Kill the Maitreyan Jadsi !
the troops fire. The children close their eyes and begin to hum. The bullets pass through them. One soldier picks up a huge club like piece of wood and is about to swing. But before he moves a child has moved hyper fast and is now steadying his arm. Others are weaving cloth pieces around the soldiers wrapping them up. A few seconds later they are gone.
Top Leader: Sorry they do something new every time. It's like they are learning more and more ways to counter us. They never were able to absorb blasters before.
Bandit leader: It's Maitreya. she is teaching all the children. Soon there will be too many of them. The only way is to go in in huge numbers. They wont be able to stop an army. Radio ahead. We can have five brigades here in two days.
---- a well lit cave full of children in long strip cloths
Jesom: There were so many this time
Katly (a chic): we always best them. soon they will learn.
a white light appears from one side... maitreya is entering...
Maitreya: No children.... (she humbly shuffles in, bent over a little, she is older but not very old) how many times do I have to tell you we do not learn the force so we can fight. We learn the force so we can be true. Now join me in meditation
they join hands and sit and circle a small statue. You cant make it out from behind. But as the camera pans around... it is an unmistakable face, it is Yoda. As the children hum a low rumble, the face flashes green just for a second. and a smiling yoda is seen, not the serious yoda statue.
--- Lukes Destroyer
Emisary: It's a request for battle battalions, they think they have found this Maitreya.
Luke: I don't care about her, I need to find my lost sister. She was taken away by the sith but I didn't sense her on any of the sith planets. They say they had planned on torturing her but she projected such beauty that they could not and instead she taught them jedi secrets in exchange for them teaching her the powers of healing the dead. For six months I went to every planet and searched her out, but she wasn't on any of them I'm sure of it. Now her trail has run cold and there is this new monster creature to deal with it. Send someone else I'm tired of war games.
Luke closes his eyes. ... "Leeiiaaa...." "Luke? LUKE!" a reply her voice is heard far away "Leia where are you..." "Luke... LUKE!" "I lost you in the war but I won't lose you again I am powerful now my powers are supreme. I am the supreme jedi. But you are too far. I must get closer to find you"
Luke gets up. Walks down an pathway on the ship and enters a door. It's a dojo. Many teen kids are there with lightsabers practicing. Luke takes a light saber off each side of his belt and with one in each hand dons gentle blows against each kid in amazingly fast succession. The children bow to their master. There is a row of ceramic spheres. Luke looks at one, clenches his fist, and it shatters inwards. The first kid tries, nothing. a second, again nothing. the oldest one tries and his cracks into six pieces. It's progress. Luke closes his eyes and uses the force and all spheres are back together. he walks out of the room without speaking.
Luke on bridge
Luke: Take us to this dust planet. I will kill Maitreya myself. Get five hundred imperial guard ready. Vibroswords, no blasters.
Emisary Jupe: Five Hundred? We will have to rendezvous with many ships to get all of them. (looks at luke) errr right away sir.
--- On the dusty planet
the huge swath of red as the imperial guard, trained personally by Luke, stands behind him in perfect columns. In front of them is a massive army of ten thousand hell creatures. And in front of that, is a huge creature, a Hutt.
Gorth Hutt: This is my planet under my control you have no right bringing troops here. Leave before we destroy all of you.
Luke: Really Gorth? Are you quite sure you wish to end up like Jabba?
Gorth Hutt: Jabba was weak. I am a match for your jedi trickery. Your mind tricks wont work on me.
Luke: Who said anything about mind tricks.
Luke puts on the darth vader glove. Even Gorth recognizes it and pulls back in fear. Luke extends his hand at Gorth fingers out... then slowly pulls his fingers in. As he does Gorth pulls in from his middle starting to get sucked into a singleton of nothing.
Gorth: ENOUGH STOP! OF COURSE YOU MAY PASS! OF COURSE YOU ARE WELCOME ON MY PLANET. WELCOME WELCOME. TAKE EVERYTHING YOU WISH!!!! But you are a fool to go after Maitreya, you think your jedi powers are enough? She teaches Jedi.
Luke: I am now stronger than my father ever was.There is no jedi or sith who can stand against me.
Gorth:Do not be so sure human. That will be your downfall.
Luke plods forward and the massive dark army parts like the red sea. A rather nasty Krayt dragon 200 feet long lunges forward at Luke. Everyone gasps and backs away. Luke simply climbs on top and rides it, an army following.
Emisary: What are Kryats doing here? there's no record of them here?
Luke: they are attracted to the force. Something powerful is here there can be no doubt.
Slowly the red army marched up into the mountains passing narrow cliffs.
soldiers: ROCKS!!!
Luke raised his hand and threw the rocks far away. A test attack no doubt.
kids: Nothing stops them!
other kid: try the crystal
a crystal is pulled out and the child concentrates. Waves of energy ring out. It pierces the mind and the red troops recoil in pain
Luke claps his hands together and in the distance the crystall explodes, and the child collapses. The other children drag the child back to Maitreya. Maitreya gathers up the children and they withdraw to the large open field. Soon Lukes army reaches the cave. He gazes briefly at the statue of Yoda not recognizing it. They follow them out onto the open field until finally it is army against army. maitreya standing in front of a hundred small children. Luke with his hundreds of red guard. The red guard stomp their vibro swords onto the ground and their tips begin to vibrate. The children far off, draw light sabres.
Luke: Huh? Light sabres? That's reserved for Jedi and the sith are no more. WHO ARE YOU! WHY did you steal my planet. Why did you deprive me of the death of the final hell bound sith
Maitreya: Because on that planet was one sith only, and he, he is the teacher of the ressurection, he was my teacher. He is a good man and should not die. He saved my life.
Luke: All sith must die (his eyes glowing red). Luke raises his hand and black lightening bolts spring out at Maitreya. Maitreya rejects them but they strike one of the children who falls over dead. The red soldiers scream and charge forward in attack. The children grab their light sabers and run at them. The two forces about to close the distance on the great field.
But then. there. there in the distance, a small green glow. a small man. no. Yoda. Seeing it, the children at once bow. Luke is confused.
Luke: wait... STOP!(he screams to his soldiers).
there can be no mistake now. It is Yoda. Looking out over at the two armies. Luke runs up to it.
"So Much like your father you are now. Did you forget all I have taught you?"
Yoda turns to Maitreya
"And you, so ashamed of yourself you are, that you wont even tell him who you are?"
Maitreya is placing her palms on the dead child. She pulses and a warm glow descends, and slowly the child gets up. She stands up and walks to Yoda and Luke. Slowly she unraps her long white head wraps, the ones the children emulate. And there, badly scarred and disfigured over much of it... is the glowing face of Leia.
Yoda smiles and fades away
Luke pulls Leia into his arms. "My sister, I have searched and searched after the sith took you I I"
Lei looked onto Luke: "I needed to make sure that my teacher from the sith survived to complete my training in the ressurection skill. It is what our father sought out. Now no jedi will ever be tempted by it again, it is among our skills now"
Luke: Your teach is a sith and must die.
Leia: I will take you to him
Luke and Leia went over to a clearing. A small meak man sat, sipping juice.
Sith: Ahh, my student. I knew this day would come. And who has come to destroy me?
Luke: I am luke skywaker, the sith betrayed my father, and as the most powerful of the jedi, so you must die.
Luke strains and lifts a nearby mountain top up and over on top of the sith lord. Suddenly the moountain top the huge mountain shifts away as if a piece of candy
Leia: Who says you are the most powerful jedi!
leias eyes beam bright white. Her scars are burned off her. The children bow and chant Maitreya.
sith lord: she is neither jedi nor sith, nor both. she is something new. The days of jedi and sith and fighting are over. It is my time to leave you. Remember there is good and bad in all teachings (dissapears slowly)
Leia returns to normal. Luke turns at her.
Luke: Gee sis, and all this time I thought you were just a spoiled princess! But I was the last of the Jedi who could possibly be your jedi teacher?
Leai: Who do you think? (looks over to statue of Yoda. Yoda flashes green and smiles)
Friday, February 21, 2014
The Fuji S5 and d7000 colors suck
Well this month started out with the fuji S5. It was time to sell my beast pentax 6x7 camera that seems to weigh 30 pounds and Ken Rockwell recommended Adorama for their used equipment. I spoke to their used manager and we had a great talk. It was no risk. we offer 70% of our sale price. No muss no worries. Great! I'll send you two boxes.
At the end lest minute I decided NOT to send my rare manual ais lenses and just kick off the Nikon d7000 and the Pentax and some newer lenses.
Well. the first red herring is that I never got back a clear price list of their offer. The Pentax body goes for about 300 and the lens goes for about 300. Thats 600 bucks just for that. finally I had a phone call with a fellow named Jack. Jack was a fast talker, a wheeler dealer. First he says he evaluated all the stuff I sent and it has a worth of 800 dollars. I had sent them over two thousand dollars worth of stuff so immediately I began to hiccup. The d7000 alone was selling used for 650. So this was quite outrageous low balling. I said no no thats crazy, how much just for the Pentax and it's rare leaf shutter lens (the best lens for that camera and very rare). 210 bucks. In need of some cash, I begrugdgingly accepted it. It should have been 400 bucks. Not good. when I told him the dollar amount for the rest wasnt even close to reality he asked if they had anything I might trade for.
Therein I commited my error. I stupidly went in for a deal to trade my d7000 a 1`6mp camera that retails for 1200 for a 3 year OLDER fuji S5 which sells used for 500. What the heck!
Well you have to understand after two years of studio portraits I just could NOT get the color right, and yes I did white balancing in studio I even had a special cap for it. I still could not make sense of their colors even in Nikons CapturePlus software. the fuji had been designed with dual sensors to be like film. with huge dynamic range and no clipping. But more important than all that was it's color rendition.. it made people look like people. Now Nikons d700 was not bad, not as good as the fuji but not vbad, but its selling used for 1500 so I thought that was a goal too high to reach. Well a straight swap of a 1200 camera for a 500 dollar camera doesn't interest adorama they want THREE lenses also. What! THats NUTSO! In the end and only because it was on the phone they got TWO three hundred dollar lenses, a 1200 d7000 new in box, all for a s5 which was promised in good mildly used condition. I hung up. What have I done.
the first horror was I never got all my stuff back. I had towrite and write and write and finally I got two of the lenses. They were still holding a 300 dollar 85mm 1.4 rokinon lens and my d7000's battery grip. I wrote and protested to high heaven saying.. well give me the d700 then if you are gonna hijack my stuff. Eventually I got the 85mm back. But not the grip. I was screwed over. But at least the s5 was pristing and ....
BUT IT WASNT IT WAS JUNK! CRAZY! It looked OK on the outside ONLY because they had repalced the rubber. I knew this cause the color stripe, black on a real s5, was back to nikon RED, aka a nikon replacement kit. And the shutter actuations was 86,000, meaning... all used up. Worse, the viewfinder had beenreplaced with some terrible military one with lines all over it! What the hell!!! at least 60 bucks to replace it. ugh. groan. sigh. life sucks then you die.
Well live and learn. Ken Rockwell please update your web site to no longer recommend selling used equipment to Adorama. I'm stickin with KEH from now on.
At the end lest minute I decided NOT to send my rare manual ais lenses and just kick off the Nikon d7000 and the Pentax and some newer lenses.
Well. the first red herring is that I never got back a clear price list of their offer. The Pentax body goes for about 300 and the lens goes for about 300. Thats 600 bucks just for that. finally I had a phone call with a fellow named Jack. Jack was a fast talker, a wheeler dealer. First he says he evaluated all the stuff I sent and it has a worth of 800 dollars. I had sent them over two thousand dollars worth of stuff so immediately I began to hiccup. The d7000 alone was selling used for 650. So this was quite outrageous low balling. I said no no thats crazy, how much just for the Pentax and it's rare leaf shutter lens (the best lens for that camera and very rare). 210 bucks. In need of some cash, I begrugdgingly accepted it. It should have been 400 bucks. Not good. when I told him the dollar amount for the rest wasnt even close to reality he asked if they had anything I might trade for.
Therein I commited my error. I stupidly went in for a deal to trade my d7000 a 1`6mp camera that retails for 1200 for a 3 year OLDER fuji S5 which sells used for 500. What the heck!
Well you have to understand after two years of studio portraits I just could NOT get the color right, and yes I did white balancing in studio I even had a special cap for it. I still could not make sense of their colors even in Nikons CapturePlus software. the fuji had been designed with dual sensors to be like film. with huge dynamic range and no clipping. But more important than all that was it's color rendition.. it made people look like people. Now Nikons d700 was not bad, not as good as the fuji but not vbad, but its selling used for 1500 so I thought that was a goal too high to reach. Well a straight swap of a 1200 camera for a 500 dollar camera doesn't interest adorama they want THREE lenses also. What! THats NUTSO! In the end and only because it was on the phone they got TWO three hundred dollar lenses, a 1200 d7000 new in box, all for a s5 which was promised in good mildly used condition. I hung up. What have I done.
the first horror was I never got all my stuff back. I had towrite and write and write and finally I got two of the lenses. They were still holding a 300 dollar 85mm 1.4 rokinon lens and my d7000's battery grip. I wrote and protested to high heaven saying.. well give me the d700 then if you are gonna hijack my stuff. Eventually I got the 85mm back. But not the grip. I was screwed over. But at least the s5 was pristing and ....
BUT IT WASNT IT WAS JUNK! CRAZY! It looked OK on the outside ONLY because they had repalced the rubber. I knew this cause the color stripe, black on a real s5, was back to nikon RED, aka a nikon replacement kit. And the shutter actuations was 86,000, meaning... all used up. Worse, the viewfinder had beenreplaced with some terrible military one with lines all over it! What the hell!!! at least 60 bucks to replace it. ugh. groan. sigh. life sucks then you die.
Well live and learn. Ken Rockwell please update your web site to no longer recommend selling used equipment to Adorama. I'm stickin with KEH from now on.
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