Uncategorized

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Obama Discusses the Plan To Capture/Kill Bin Laden

Fascinating interview by 60 Minutes. Among the interesting tidbits:

As outstanding a job as our intelligence teams did…at the end of the day this was still a 55/45 situation. We could not say definitively that Bin Laden was there. Had he not been there, then there would have been significant consequences. Obviously, we’re going into the sovereign territory of another country and landing helicopters and conducting a military operation. And so if it turns out that it’s a wealthy, you know, prince from Dubai who’s in this compound, and, you know, we’ve spent Special Forces in — we’ve got problems. So there were risks involved geopolitically in making the decision.

Don’t Get Left Behind

Frédéric Filloux breaks down some lessons from the coverage of Osama Bin Laden’s death:

[B]eat reporters now need a new skill: they must master the microblogging service in the most professional of ways. Tweeter has now reached a new status: main alert feed – as long as (and that is a big “if”) a proper credibility index is used to qualify the source. Such capability is supposed to be the key differentiation between a pro and an amateur.

Hannah Vassallo Scammed Me Out of $570

This is a photo of Hannah Vassallo. 
You may or may not know who Hannah Vassallo is, but by the end of this post, you will know all the details you need to know about Hannah Vassallo.
Here is what I know about Hannah Vassallo:
– At one point, Hannah Vassallo lived in the Boston area, which is when I encountered her.
– Hannah Vassallo came from Australia, and speaks with a noticeable Australian accent.
– She is not the actress/dancer of the same name.
Why am I so interested in the life of Hannah Vassallo? Because on Saturday, April 9, 2011, Hannah Vassallo scammed me out of $570. The details are below.
***
On the morning of April 9, 2011, I responded to an ad on Craigslist advertising a Canon 50D. The Canon 50D is an older model, positioned by Canon as part of its “prosumer” line between its amateur and professional lines of cameras. I had been looking for a camera of this type to be able to take with me to photo gigs and the 50D fit my requirements nicely. The link to the original ad is probably no longer functional, but I’ve screencapped it for posterity. The ad reads that she “purchased this camera in August last year” and that it’s “still in perfect working order.” The quoted price was $1600 for the camera and lens, but Hannah said she was “open to negotiate.”
I didn’t need a lens, so I asked Hannah if she’d be willing to sell me the camera body only for $600 (they are going for between $500 and $700 on eBay, so I thought $600 was a fair price). Hannah agreed. In a separate e-mail, she mentioned that she was missing the body cap on the camera, so she was willing to shave off $30 off the price. Even better. 
I brought $570 in cash with me and met her in Davis Square. We exchanged pleasantries and ended up talking about photography for a few minutes. I was really impressed with the photos on her website and told her so.
I tested the camera out and took some practice photos. I did NOT have a compact flash card with me, so I took several photos with the camera in “No Card” mode, which allows you to take photos and see them on the screen without actually saving them. Everything seemed in working order. Hannah behaved completely normally during the entire process. It was just a regular conversation between two people transacting business on Craigslist. During our conversation, I learned all the information I referenced above about Hannah. We parted on good terms, her with the cash, me with the Canon 50D and a camera bag that Hannah generously decided to throw in with the purchase. 
When I got home, I noticed one problem immediately: the battery charger used a different type of plug. I assumed this was since Hannah had purchased the camera in Australia, a detail she mentioned when we spoke. This meant I’d need to purchase a new battery charger, or an adapter. A minor annoyance, but not a deal breaker.
The more significant problem was when I tried to save photos to one of my compact flash cards. I kept getting a card-reading error. I formatted my cards and tried again. Nothing worked. After a little bit of Google detective work, I discovered that this is something that happens when the compact flash card reader is broken. I was unable to save any photos to compact flash. 
So, in essence, I had just purchased a $570 broken camera.
I called Hannah immediately. No answer. I left a message. I e-mailed her and explained there might be an issue with the camera, and could you please call me when you have a chance? No response.
The next day (Sunday), I did the exact same thing. I told her I was willing to be reasonable. I could pay her for her time, if we could just trade back the money for the camera. I was even willing to still keep the camera, so long as she fronted the repair costs. But Hannah never responded.
So now I’m sitting here in my room with a broken camera, $570 poorer, and trying to explain exactly why it is that Hannah Vassallo vexes me. Ideally, I should have tested the card reader, but honestly the thought never occurred to me. The camera appeared to be working fine and was almost perfect, cosmetically. I’ve purchased things of this magnitude off Craigslist before and never thought someone would be so brazen in selling me a lemon, especially someone who used her real name and phone number and (I’m guessing) e-mail address, and who invited me to check out more of her photos on her Facebook page (I offered to send her my photos too. I like supporting local photographers).
The money I can make back, eventually. My steadily eroding trust in humanity will be harder to regain. If you know Hannah Vassallo, please tell her that, won’t you?
Update: Hannah ended up responding to my e-mail. Her e-mail was suspicious, unconvincing, and unsatisfying. Here it is in part:

***

Hi David,

I apologise so much for not replying to this sooner. My fiance and I are currently in the process of moving interstate so we have not been connected to the internet. I imagine you have been trying to contact me via my cell phone which has been misplaced during the move. […]

I’ve never had this problem before. My suggestion is to try another memory card as some of the cheaper brands can be almost useless. I apologise profusely for any inconvenience this has caused you, but I really encourage you to try another memory card as I have encountered that type of problem with
cheaper cameras and friends cameras.

***

Two things to note: 1) I called Hannah’s cell phone several times, beginning one hour after we initially met. If her claims are to be believed, she must have lost the phone almost immediately after we spoke. 2) Obviously I tried all manner of high-end compact flash cards on this thing. It wasn’t my flash cards that were the problem. It was the camera.

I e-mailed Hannah two more times: once to re-explain the situation and another time after $200 worth of repairs had been completed by Canon’s New Jersey service center to provide her proof that the camera had in fact been broken in the way I described. Both times, I asked for some sort of compensation for my troubles (I would have accepted virtually any amount). She never responded. I would not have either, if I were her.

The bottom line is that buying this camera has been one of my biggest mistakes of the past few months. My lesson learned? As a friend of mine put it, cameras are such delicate devices. As a result of this experience, I’ll probably never buy used again.

Please Die

Scott Weinberg asks 3D to die:

3D sucks, and even when it doesn’t suck (Avatar and Beowulf come to mind) (fine, and My Bloody Valentine), it’s a glitzy little light show that exists just to make your tickets 30% more expensive. And the 3D blu-ray? That’s about 50% pricier than the “plain” option. If only a similarly revolutionary new advancement in the craft of screenwriting took place, then maybe we’d be somewhere. As long as our huge leaps in filmmaking lie solely within the realm of technology, we’re missing something. A studio will spend millions to make a film “look 3D,” but they won’t spend a fraction of that to make sure their shooting script is kicking ass on all cylinders.

I agree with most of what Scott says, although I would say that films like Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon by themselves are almost enough to justify the unfortunate rise of 3D in recent times. I actually specifically chose my Thor screening to avoid seeing it in 3D. Seeing Thor at its optimal luminance without the need for cumbersome glasses felt good, but it was also sad that I had to go out of my way to ensure that experience.

Post-Credits Sequences

I recently watched Fast Five and Thor, then discovered after the fact that I missed post-credits sequences for both films. This frustration reminded me of Eric D. Snider’s rant about this very topic three years ago (almost to the day):

It has been well established that when a list of names starts scrolling up against a black screen, the movie is OVER. You’re done. Whatever story you had to tell, you told it. That’s the way movies work. You want to put something cute after the credits, fine. Knock yourself out. A lot of times that stuff is fun. But it doesn’t count as an actual part of the story. If it’s something we need to know, tell us. Don’t hide it after the list of gaffers and production assistants and humane society certifications.