Words to Lyrics Ben Ho's observations from the cloud

22 April 2010

Birthday Stats and Messages

Filed under: Reflection — Tags: , — Ben @ 8:43 pm

Like I did last year, I’ve compiled a set of statistics about my birthday. So here goes:

Statistics

Birthday messages
Facebook messages – 65
Face to face greets – 4
Text messages – 4
Tweets – 1

Frequency of Facebook messages vs. Time (i.e. when was the message posted)

(Time in 24 hour format i.e. 0 is 12am, 22 is 10pm)

Comparison of AEST and UTC:

AEST 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
UTC 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Number of people who attempted to use my ‘initials’ signature – 11
Number of people who used it incorrectly – 3
Facebook email lag* – 11

Amount spent on scratchies – $10
Amount lost – $10

Cash received as gifts – $364.2

*Every time I get a wall post, an email is sent to me. This is the number of emails it did not send me.

Observations

Some observations about the graph I’d like to point out. (Yes! I get to nerd out now.)

I would have expected a normal distribution (bell-shaped curve) which meant that the majority of responses were in the middle of the day. But as the graph shows, it is quite evenly distributed.

The unusual concentration at 12am-2am is the result of people who (I think):

  • wanted to be the first to wish me Happy Birthday (at 12am)
  • were studying late (all-nighter)
  • (in one case) was overseas (from the raw data, one message was from a person in the UK, hence the local time would have been 5pm)(London is UTC+1)

My other prediction is that the ‘spike’ at 6pm is due to people coming home after a day at uni.

Now, about the initials. For those who don’t know, I write the same thing for each person’s birthday. I sign with my initials, BH. This statistic shows that the trend of signing with initials was popular with some of you. Also, three of you managed to use my initials instead of your own! Well done.

Next, Facebook email lag. This is an interesting one. It shows that Facebook’s email servers can’t keep up with the posts of my wall, hence, I wasn’t sent emails about wall posts for 11 people.

Messages

OK. That’s enough of the stats, now the personal messages. You know who you are.

To those who are overseas, I miss you too.

To those who signed with initials, Thank you. BH

I do miss French, as well as the free hugs.

Merci beaucoup.

Cale, FAIL! (Now that rhymes!)

To everyone else, Thank you, keep in touch, and see you soon.

6 April 2010

Photography Roadmap 2010: Part 2

Filed under: Forward Thinking — Tags: , , — Ben @ 10:38 pm

After writing out my Roadmap last week, I thought I’d explain further my wish to do more sports photography.

Sports photography isn’t something that I have a great amount of interest in, but I think it can teach amateur photographers like me a thing or two about shooting in ‘tight conditions’. As I said before, the recent Winter Olympics sparked my interest in this. Which just happens to go well with my wish to do some ski photography this year.

I’ve done very little sports photography before (exactly: 2 sessions in Europe and touch footy last year) with a mixed bag of results. Some shots were good, others not so.

Good Bad
Good Bad

Shooting a sports event requires a lot of precision and accuracy. The main challenges to overcome are fast moving subjects and the fact that you are usually far away from them (on the sideline). These challenges are partially solved with some good equipment (specifically long-range, fast lenses e.g. 200mm f/2.8)

Being quick and accurate leads to the styles of photography I’d like to specialise in, namely, live events and music.

Now, to the Winter Olympics influence. As I discovered in Europe, shooting in the snow produces a sharp subject almost every time, because cameras can not find a focus on white backgrounds. (Un)fortunately this is a little cheat one can use to create the illusion of stunning photographs. This in turn leads to a morale boost! It also has led to a desire to shoot in the snow more.

There’s probably a million other insignificant reasons why I’d want to do photography in the snow, but I’ll spare those for the time around the warm fire in the lodge.

So this is why I want to head down to the slopes this winter. To sum up, it is part of the learning experience in becoming a great photographer.

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