It also has an SOS mode in case I’m ever stuck on the side of mountain in view of someone that understands Morse code. It also has a couple of flashing beacon modes that seem totally useless.

I’ve purchased several flashlights from 4sevens. Only one of them has become unreliable, and it’s a shame. I’ve owned that one for over a year and from the looks of things on their website it looks like the manufacturer is calling it quits. Perhaps I should try and get some satisfaction. All the others are holding up fine.

I laugh at myself often when I take this little flashlight and my wee multifunction pocket knife out of my pocket at the end of the day. I’ve become such an “old man.”

This rally drove north from the usual starting point in Mission Hills to the 14 Freeway, then it settled in the Agua Dulce and Acton areas. This rally was a lot of fun. Long winding roads through canyons and two passes through the small town of Acton at night.

We managed to fall for each trap in the first two legs and our times reflected it. We missed three different turns costing us a minute, 27 and 47 seconds respectively. We nailed the last two legs though,  with scores of 11 and 16. Those are great times! We’re hoping we were 3rd overall for class C. We’ll know for sure when the score are posted online towards the end of the month.

In the first we leg we fell for the ol “double left turn on the road that connects at both ends to the main road” trick. I fell for this on my first rally. I remember thinking what a clever thing it is. Since if you do it right or do it wrong you end up in the same place, only at different times. It works like this; You’re asked to turn left or right onto a road that eventually rejoins the road you’re on.  When you meet the original road you make another turn in the same direction as the first turn. This returns you to your original road/course. The trick is in which end of the side road you start on.

I wish I had video or photos to share, but it’s dark out there, plus we’re always in a hurry.

I do have a cool map with our course detailed on it. It’s made by recording our trip on a GPS receiver. I have the GPS device set to record a track point every two seconds. With that data I’m able to determine exactly how long any mistakes in our route take. Here’s a link to our course. As we do these rallys, I’m often impressed with the countryside we find ourselves in. I often think I should go back out there sometime during the day. I haven’t gone back out yet, because I’m pretty sure a lot of these places look better at night.

When I was younger I had a fascination with all sort of automotive auxiliary lighting. Mostly “fog lights” and a light known as a “driving light”. Driving lights were basically super bright, high beams.  Illegal as could be, so i never got got the courage to buy a set.  Even though the headlights in my S2000 are excellent, these very lightly traveled back roads are night have caused me to long for a set of modern driving lights.  I can’t imagine how I’d even install any extra lights on my car, so the worry is moot.

The WBC arrived at 11:47 from having parked up the hill east of the University’s entrance. Kevin and his friends had parked on the university’s grounds and came running down the hill shortly after the WBC arrived.

Kevin, dressed again as Jesus, opened his giant folded sign that read “I’m with Stupid.”  He sang his own songs to drown out the protester’s songs. His friends engaged the protesters in a dialogue, without much success at convincing any of them in either direction. There were a few car horn honks, but I think they were mostly from drivers upset at those cars taking off when the light changed. There were also a few “one finger salutes” from some drivers.  I’m guessing drivers were mostly confused at the conflicting messages.

The WBC left after only 30 minutes. According to their website, most of their protests are short appearances like this. Their next protest is scheduled for an hour and 45 minutes later at the Sinai Temple on Wilshire Blvd.  After that Kevin and his friends will pester them somewhere around the Academy awards.

I dug out my 80-200 f2.8 Nikkor for most these shots. It’s much sharper than my 18-200. Heavier to be sure, but worth it for its image quality.

Click the photo for more pictures

There were actually three cars, two were recreations and a third was an actual restoration of an original Red Car.  The project included a 1.5 mile section of the original Red Car right-of-way in San Pedro from the cruise terminal to just south of the Ports O’Call village. This project was funded by the Port of Los Angeles.  I happened to be back there this weekend and was delighted to see the Red Cars running.   They look like an old photo come to life. I’m very impressed with their appearance.  It was raining when I took these photos but that didn’t dampen my enthusiasm to dig up old photos of the day we visited the open house.

The Port of Los Angeles / Long Beach is fascinating place. It is America’s busiest port. A huge area with (pardon the expression) a boatload of history. As a child my parents kept a boat not far from Ports O’Call. I became familiar with the area and some of the shipping techniques used and have seen a lot of changes there in my life. In this photo circa 1935 you can see a few cargo vessels docked beside transit sheds. Before cargo containers, cargo ships were much smaller and were basically loaded and unloaded by hand. Teams of Longshoremen had to move the ship’s cargo from the ship, onto the dock and then into or through the transit shed to trucks or rail cars. There was a lot of picking things up and setting them down again.  When I was about twelve I recall we had neighbors who were longshoremen. They frequently worked unloading banana boats from South America.

Fishing fleets also make their home in the harbor, though much diminished from the days when they kept the canneries busy. I guess it’s something about the juncture of industry and the sea, and the logistics of moving all the goods that keep a country afloat that fascinates me.

]]> http://dougfolkerts.com/historical/retro-red-cars/feed 0 http://dougfolkerts.com/misc/my-son-the-dancing-jesus http://dougfolkerts.com/misc/my-son-the-dancing-jesus#comments Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:32:51 +0000 kdf http://dougfolkerts.com/?p=423 I couldn’t be prouder of my son Kevin.  He got out there in Long Beach protesting against the WBC (Westboro Baptist Church) from Kansas. This group hates gays, Jews and even American soldiers.  Apparently they’ve gained notoriety protesting at the funerals of returned service members.

The tactics of the anti WBC protesters is to block, annoy and diffuse the message of the WBC.  Watch the video and you’ll see  many conflicting messages including my son the dancing Jesus. Talk about confusing, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

Long Beach is great community. The fifth largest city in California and it feels like a small town. A diverse place that values that diversity enough to stand up for it. Go Long Beach!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Watch this video and you’ll see more of the WBC speaking for themselves at another protest outside Wilson High School.  I learned from Kevin that the WBC choose Wilson because that’s where a national gay and lesbian student group formed. Kevin, a recent graduate from Wilson finds that kind of ironic since that group had maybe three members in it his senior year.

Click here to view the embedded video.

BTW. It’s my buddy John’s birthday today. In my life, John has held the position friend longer than anyone else. He’s been my best man, twice! He tolerates our differences and remains a solid steadfast friend in spite of me.  Here’s to you, John!  Happy Birthday.

image of new site design

I found someone sharing his camera calibration settings for the LX3.  They’re not for every situation, but they are a great starting place. The settings are:

RedHue -4

RedSaturation +21

GreenHue -14

GreenSaturation -20

BlueHue +3

BlueSaturation -6

I added -6 to the shadow tint setting.

Now I’m applying this to all my LX3 RAW conversions first before making individual adjustments in Lightroom.

But what about Lightroom? Is it still my first choice for quickly correcting a group of images?  I decided to compare it again to RAW Developer and to the new Lightroom 3 beta.

Armed with the camera’s Jpegs as an example of what the camera felt the pictures should look like, and my memories of the mornings visit to the car show, I set out to establish a RAW conversion work flow that would provide consistent, accurate results, that I could be happy with. I made 2 runs through my pictures with Lightroom 2, Then I did them all again with RAW Developer and then Lightroom 3.0 Beta. I also have the light version of Capture One but I didn’t include it in this test. Long story short I have found happiness in Lightroom 3.0. I was able to achieve pleasing color and sharpness from Lightroom 3. Lightroom 2.* gave me mixed results. I had a  lot difficulty with the shadows. They also lacked sharpness.  Raw Developer had excellent color at times and was sharper than the Lightroom 2.

All of the images in the car show gallery that are affected such as this example, were done in Lightroom 2.0. That’s where my presets are and since affected shots aren’t so much about accuracy, they’re “good enough”.

Processed in Lightroom 2.*

Lightroom 3.0 beta was the only converter that made it easy to get the shadows correct. It’s as if Adobe has been sabotaging my Lightroom 2.0. to drum up new business for LR 3.0. This image sold me on Lightroom 3.0.

Converted in Lightroom 3.0 beta

The car is black. Yeah, there’s a hint of the blue sky in that black, as there should be. What Lightroom 2.0 and even Raw Developer (to a much lesser extent) did, was add either Magenta or green to those shadows. This shot rocks in comparison. I apologize for not saving all the examples for inclusion here. You’re just going to try LR 3.0 for yourself to see if it works for you.

Raw Developer created a finely detailed sharp image with excellent color. However, it doesn’t correct for distortion. I could do that correction in Photoshop, but that’s another step I don’t want to take. There is one image in the car show pictures that’s from RAW Developer. The color of the carpet was the most difficult to get right. I also really like how sharp the steering wheel is.

Developed with RAW Developer

There were three Mercedes 300 Gullwings, a Ferrari F40 and this Porsche Carrera GT. Tesla was there with 4 cars and a few salesmen. Lotus Elise/Exiges were everywhere. A great morning for motoring and sightseeing.

I think it’s great how guys with half million dollar cars will get out of the house early on Sunday to share their rides with the masses.

Click the photo for more pictures

Here’s a link to our route through the canyons. You can see from the data there, where we stopped and see our elevation as we traveled.

Ken's Cortina as a late 70's magazine ad.

Here’s a link to a gallery of the day. There are POV videos of driving up the canyon roads and shots of many of the sites we saw that day. It sure beat watching parades and football. And judging by all the other car affectionados on the road that day, we weren’t the only ones to feel that way.