This is a running collection of the April Fool’s Jokes on the internet today.

This morning started when my girlfriend imed me to check out my dragon on Pet Dragons - a Facebook application. She told me that I had 14 incoming attacks. I logged in, and this is what I see:

After this, I clicked on a link in my gmail about the iPhone Dev Team being bought out - the article was on Engadget

I surfed my way over to Youtube, where every video on the front page is a RickRoll

Steve sent me an IM with a link to the ZapCam - YouTube Taser on ThinkGeek. It’s a Taser that records YouTube video each time you taser someone. Complete with video!

Following that, she sent me to Gmail where there’s a New! Gmail Custom Time, allowing users to send emails from dates in the past. Google is no stranger to the April Fools joke, having an entire wikipedia article on their hoaxes.

Well, Alex and I have been working hard on his blog. He’s been working hard on the writing, and I’ve been working hard on the marketing and SEO side. For awhile, all of his reviews were kind of dry, but his latest review of the new Simple Plan album marks, I think, a turning point. While it was released on the first day that we had zero hits, I really enjoyed the review. It caught me at the beginning, and had me reading until the end. Granted, it’s not perfect, but it’s a good start.

I worked on dressing up the design a bit, added some black around the sides, and got rid of the graphic up at the title. I think it’s a good look for a rock review blog that doesn’t feel the need to come across as dark and edgy.

Check it out.

Two weeks ago I purchased a 1999 Honda Prelude. It has 145,000 miles on it but is still running pretty well. I had been looking for a car for several months while I was in Taiwan, and also during my break afterwards. I browsed craigslist, autotrader, and cars.com.

I created a list of cars that I was interested in. I called up a lot of people. I had several VW Jettas on my to-look at list, a Jeep Wrangler, and a Toyota Corolla. I took a look at one of the Jettas, applied for a bank loan, and went home for the weekend.

My bank loan didn’t come through.
The Jetta was in pretty lousy shape body-wise. The mechanics all seemed to be working properly, but it was a true eyesore.

Just as I was starting to get desperate, I rode past a dealership near my neighborhood. I had looked through this lot a month before or so, but didn’t see anything I was interested in. This dealership accepts all of the older high-mileage cars that are traded in from the big Subaru dealer across the street. I spotted the Prelude, and took a look.

The exterior was in flawless condition. I’ve seen cars five years newer with much worse paint jobs. There’s only a couple of tiny dings in the hood. Nothing else.

The interior is spotless. The driver’s seat fabric is slightly lighter in color than the passengers, and I guess that it’s because it’s been used more, but it really isn’t noticeable. Really, the biggest complaint I had about the car was the buttons on the radio were worn.

I signed a loan and started the three hour drive back to State College. The Check Engine Light went on. I took it to the dealership and they charged me $70 to tell me it was the catalytic converter, and that I should take it back if the light comes back on again. I was upset that it would cost so much for them to do nothing, but I drove it home.

And the light came back on. So now I have to take it back to the dealership… again. At least I have a warranty.

Anyway, I have a photo album at my site www.earcaraxe.com.

One of the big attractions in Taipei for both tourists and locals alike is the Night Markets. There are several Night Markets around the city, so chances are, wherever you are in Taipei, you’re not too much more than 20 minutes away from one.

They’re pretty much unlike anything that I’ve ever encountered in America. A night market is a series of small alleys, all connected together, packed full of people and shops. There are a ton of small shops that are in the buildings on the sides of the street. There will also be a row of vendor stalls going down the middle. It’s not one straight street, it’s a twisting maze of alleys, all crowded with people.

They’re open every night of the week, from dusk until 1-2a.m. usually. I believe that they’re open later on weekends than during the week, but it’s always open really late. You can get pretty good deals on anything you buy there - I bought a nice suit for $150 and had it tailored right there - but you have to be a cautious buyer. There’s a ton of fake goods that enter through the Night Markets.

The crowd is usually teenagers up through twenty-somethings, although you’ll see a smattering of foreigners of all ages, checking out the bargains and the stores. There’s definitely a catering to the age group of the locals though. You’ll hear a lot of American rap music, or some Japanese J-Pop, as you move between stores. There are a lot of “arcades,” which have the machines where you try to make as many baskets as you can with a basketball, or rows upon rows of crane games. These places will usually also have photo booths where you can take pictures of you, yourself, and your friends, in a variety of fake backgrounds.

I have pictures from the Shiling Night Market up in my photo gallery, and you can see them by clicking on the picture below.

So, I posted recently about a telephoto lens that I had received from my friend Jordan. In this post, I mentioned that I had not been having any trouble with the lens after cleaning the contacts. Unfortunately when I went to D.C. the next day to shoot, I pulled out that lens and it failed on me again. Nothing I did made it work. I called up Jordan, and he said that he has an older camera that this lens works fine with, so he’ll be taking it back…

All is not lost in the land of lenses, however. For Christmas my family gave me a Canon f/1.8 lens for the Rebel. It takes some really beautiful photographs. It’s a really clear prime lens, and when I shoot at 1.8, it looks like a movie. The subject is in focus, and the background is very blurry. It makes for a really cool effect.

Here’s a picture of a stop sign I took with this new lens:

I’ve decided that I want to increase my blog’s visibility. I know that there are a number of strategies for this, but the one that I am about to currently employ is registering my blog with Technorati. I’m going to continue posting frequently, and I want to make sure that I also make blog posts that contain substance and significance. I hope that with Technorati I can reach a larger audience with my blog. Anyway, to check out my technorati profile, you can go here Technorati Profile and you can also check out my company’s blog at EmpWeb.

I was talking with Steph about the Greyhound business. She did some research and helped me find a bunch of links to other bloggers, legal documents, and the Greyhound Media Protocol. Apparently I’m not the only one being harassed. A quick tour of the blogosphere shows that a large number of photographers are also being tormented by security personnel all over the country. Here is a link to the Greyhound media protocol document www.greyhound.com/company/media/mediaprotocol.doc
which specifies what you can and can’t take pictures of, according to their rules. The document does not restrict any photography of publicly accessible areas, which is what I was taking pictures of.

Thomas Hawk was harassed for taking pictures from the street of One Bush Place. A security guard attempted to physically block him from taking pictures, and threatened that he had called the police.

Gerald, over at Baltimore Inner Space was also harassed at a Greyhound station by MTA transit officials, who told him to delete his pictures, show them ID, and tell them his life story.

Anyone else who has had trouble with this kind of a thing, KNOW YOUR RIGHTS, and fight them to keep control of what you photograph. I deleted my pictures because I didn’t have a clear understanding of my rights, don’t let this happen to you too.

So I had to delete all of the pictures off of my camera today because
“This is D.C. We have the president. We need to protect the president.”

I spent the weekend in Great Falls at Steph’s house. This morning Steph and her father took me to the Greyhound station. We got off to a little bit of a late start, and were slowed in traffic by two pretty nasty accidents. We made it to the terminal at 8:45a.m. My plan was to catch the 9a.m. Greyhound bus to Philadelphia, arrive at 12:00 and catch the 12:30 Bieber bus home.

The 9:00 bus left at 8:50 without all of its passengers. The driver wouldn’t wait for me, as I was getting my bags. I had my ticket in hand, and was going to take about 30 seconds to retrieve my bags from the car, situated about fifty feet away, when the driver took off. This made me miss my connection to the Bieber bus for which I had already bought the ticket.

Another passenger had been on the bus from its beginning in Richmond and had stepped off the bus with the driver’s permission to buy a snack. Entering the snack line left him stranded until the next bus would depart at 10:45.

Steph, her father, and I went to Starbucks for some breakfast, and returned to wait in line. I had a brief discussion with a Peruvian photographer, which prompted me to take out my camera to show him. His bus left at 10:00, and I was left to stand in line. Thoroughly pissed off at Greyhound, I started taking some pictures of the bus station for my upcoming blog post about how terrible Greyhound is.

Three pictures later, a burly black man wearing a Greyhound uniform began a less-than-pleasant conversation with me:

“Come over here.”
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Where are you from?”
“Allentown”
“Where?”
“It’s in Pennsylvania.”
“I don’t know who you think you are, but there is a lot of photography going on right now.”
“Sorry, sir?”
“You can’t do that. Not since 9/11. I know you’ve heard of 9/11, haven’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well then you should know that you’re not allowed to take pictures.”
“Of a Greyhound station?”
“Of any mass-transit system. You do that in an airport and they’ll take your camera. This is D.C. It would be wise of you to delete those photos you took.”
“Would you like to see them?”
“No. If I were you, I’d delete them right now.”
“Why?”
“This is D.C. We have the president here. We have to protect the president.”

Oh my god. I can’t believe that I was given such a lame reason. How often does the president visit the Greyhound station anyway? Is that picture of the soda machine really a matter of national security? I can’t believe that he would use 9/11 as a reason to abuse his power and bully customers around. Greyhound really has terrible service.

After this, my bus arrived an hour late, drove off with the luggage bay doors open, pulled over on the side of a highway to close them, and when we finally arrived in Philadelphia, the luggage crew threw my bag into a large puddle.

Final Decision: Not going to ride Greyhound anymore unless I can help it.

So, having recently bought my Digital Rebel XTi with Steph, I set out to talk with my friends that I know who are camera nuts. My friend Jordan had a Quantaray telephoto lens (70-210mm) that he could not get working. He believed that it was a problem with lens compatibility with his old camera. He said that if I could get it working with mine that I could have it. I put it on my camera and didn’t have any problems with it the first day. Today I got to Washington D.C. and started taking pictures. When I put on the telephoto lens, sure enough up popped Error 99. I fussed with it for awhile, trying to get it to line up in different ways, and eventually it would work only in the 190-210mm range. Steph and I stopped by a camera store and asked about the problem. The manager at the store said that the electric contacts on the lens are probably dirty, and to clean it with denatured alcohol. When I got to a computer, I looked it up and found this solution on Richard’s blog. I cleaned the lens contacts with an eraser, and it seems to be functioning properly now. Back to D.C. tomorrow for some more field testing though!Pics soon!Quantaray-CN AF1.4-5.6 70~210mmFull BatteryEmpty CF card 

So, during my last couple of weeks in Taiwan Steph came out to visit. She brought her new Canon Digital Rebel XTi along. It’s a really beautiful camera. I’ve been shooting on film with her Nikon FN-10 and my mom’s Pentax. We went together to the photography district of Taipei, which is near the main station, and I bought the japanese version of the XTi. My camera is called the Canon Kiss Digital X.

Boy does this thing take beautiful pictures. The colors, the resolution. It can get incredibly sharp, and because of the ability to change ISO speed, I can take pictures in really bright light and really dim light without the use of a flash. Steph and I spent the last two weeks running around Taiwan taking pictures. Now that we’ve got a significant number of beautiful pictures, we’re looking into Microstock photography. Currently we’re submitting pictures to ShutterStock. I’m also working on rebuilding my image gallery, so stay tuned for updates!