Twitter Back-Channel for the Presidential Debates on Current

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

If you’ve been to a conference over the last few years, you may have encountered a “back-channel”. A back-channel is simply an alternate communication channel that continues alongside the primary communications channel. For instance, there may be an IRC room where audience members can discuss a panel while the panel is going on.

For the upcoming Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debates, the channel Current is doing just that with Twitter in a project that they're calling Hack the Debate. In short, if you tweet during while you’re watching the debates, just include the tag “#current” and your tweet will be overlaid onto the broadcast (probably similar in look to subtitles or closed-captioning, but just with a lot more people contributing to the feed).

In this promo video, the Current team goes over how this might have worked if Twitter had been around for the Kennedy/Nixon debates:

I don’t know about you, but I think this sounds like it could be good fun. And while I might normally watch the debates on CNN or MSNBC, I think I’ll give Current a try. If you’d like to play along, here’s the schedule for the upcoming debates:

First presidential debate:
Friday, September 26
University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS
Vice presidential debate:
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Second presidential debate:
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, TN
Third presidential debate:
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY

That news item from the Commission on Presidential Debates goes on to say that all debates will be 90 mins in length and will start at 9 p.m. Eastern / 8 p.m. Central / 6 p.m. Pacific. And, yeah, that first one — on Friday September 26 — is this Friday.

Photos from Ian and Briana’s Wedding

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

Ian and Angelika Walking Down the Aisle

My cousin Ian and his fiancée Briana got married last weekend (Labor Day weekend) in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. As it turns out, they live in the Chicago area (I believe), but they chose to have the wedding in the Charlotte area since many relatives (including Ian’s parents and my parents) live there.

Ian and Briana had their wedding at a botanical gardens in the area and it was lovely. There happened to be a 30% chance of rain on the day of the wedding, if memory serves, but it didn’t end up raining until quite later in the evening. The reception was held indoors, so the rain didn't have much of an effect on the festivities; and, even when people went outside for a smoke (or just to go outside), there also happened to be an awning around the circumference of the building.

It also so happened that this was one of the first opportunities I’ve had to make use of my Lightsphere flash diffuser. The basic idea with diffusers, if you’re not familiar with them, is that they serve to diffuse and scatter the light coming out of one’s flash in order to help reduce that portrait-in-the-headlights look that can be common to some cameras.

With the Lightsphere, like all diffusers, the enclosure attaches to the end of one's flash. On top of that, an additional strategy that’s often used — and one that I put to use — was to fire the flash upward to reflect it off the ceiling. In may sound a bit weird to fire, at first, but by firing the flash upward, the light becomes even more diffuse as it bounces off the ceiling (and then the walls and so on, a bit like billiard balls might travel across a pool table).

What ends up happening is that the light which may have formerly been harsh and direct is now much softer and generally absent of that yucky-flash look. This is all a good thing, but I can attest that it can take a little getting used-to. One adjustment (both on the part of the camera and its operator) is that the camera isn't always able to compensate for the longer distances that the light from its flash has to travel (up to the ceiling, off a wall, nothing but net and onto the subject).

Fortunately, this generally only requires a few minor adjustments to bump up the flash power; unfortunately, the operator has to remember to do so. In my case, I fell more into the latter category. Luckily, I was shooting entirely in RAW mode (well RAW+JPEG), so I had some leeway toward adjusting some of my shots that had ended up a tad underexposed as they came out of the camera. In the end, though, I was quite pleased with how things worked out. I had a great time at Ian and Briana’s wedding and the photography fun was just an added bonus.

Preventing Pens from Leaking on Airplanes

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One of my coworkers, T.Scott, had his pen start leaking on him after a recent flight. And, in case it might help anyone else, I thought I’d write a short post about a strategy that has worked pretty well for me. In short, you can generally prevent pens from leaking if you keep them upright (tip pointed-up) during flight.

That way, if the air expands within the chamber (due to a change in air pressure), the air can harmlessly escape through the tip (rather than pushing the ink through it). Typically, I’ll use the pen’s clip to attach it to one of the in-flight safety cards in the seatback in front of me just before takeoff (while keeping the tip pointed up, of course).

PS Some pages that address this topic also recommend removing the cap during flight (while keeping them pen upright) to allow further airflow through the tip of the pen. I’ve had good results without having to remove the cap, myself, but that option is there if you had wanted to take extra precautions.

Seattle Sightseeing Photos

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Dad at the Bow of the Ferry

I’ve been in Seattle on a project for a client here in the area and my dad came to visit over the weekend. We went on many of the classic sightseeing spots and I thought I’d give a couple thoughts in case you might ever find yourself in the Seattle area:

  • Museum of Flight — If you like planes and flight, I can recommend this — they have a Concorde and it’s probably worth going for their SR-71 alone.

  • Seattle Aquarium — One of my coworkers who visited the aquarium didn’t like it very much, but I thought it was a hoot. Their exhibit on tropical fish (the coral reef kind) was particularly good. (And, I gotta give props to the staff — they were very knowledgeable and were happy to answer all of our questions.)

  • Seattle Underground Tour — As you may be aware, much of Seattle was decimated by a fire in 1889. In the aftermath, the city planners decided to regrade the streets one or two stories higher than they were originally; this tour visits some of those formerly-first-floor areas of town. When my dad and went, our tour guide was very lively, but still informative at the same time.

  • Space Needle — In many ways, the Space Needle is Seattle’s icon. The architecture is novel, of course, and the view really is fantastic; it probably helps, also, that even though the Space Needle is no longer Seattle’s tallest structure, most of the buildings anywhere close to the Space Needle aren’t exactly of the skyscraper variety.

Photos from the Seattle Mariners Game

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Wide View of Safeco Field

I’ve been working on a project for a client in Seattle since early June and a bunch of us recently headed out to Safeco Field to catch a Seattle Mariners game. It was good fun — and any ballpark that has Pyramid Hefeweizen on top is a-ok with me.

I had also been pining to purchase Canon's 10-22mm lens and this outing provided just the excuse I had needed. (Besides, it had been months since my last lens purchase, I tells ya.) After getting the lens, I didn’t actually have many opportunities to play around with it; if you look over the photo set, though, you’ll see a few Seattle cityscape-type shots, but even those were taken with my 50mm lens (before the 10-22mm had arrived).

In all though, I’ve had great deal of fun with the lens. In months prior, I can’t even count how many times I had said to myself, “Hey this viewpoint would be great for a wide-angle shot… now if only I had a wide-angle lens :(.” (And, yes the unhappy face was included in my mental notes at the time.) And, since getting ahold of the lens, I’ve been nothing but pleased when those scenarios have come along.