Wiretap – The Wind at the End of the World (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-31 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Yesterday I got a phone call telling me that I passed my background check and that I could pick up my 30 day MBTA photo permit at the transportation building in Boston.

After I picked up my permit, which just turned out to be a little piece of paper, I headed back to South Station. Took a few more photos of the new new Charlie Ticket equipment and was again told photography was not allowed. (They have staff around the equipment to help people figure it out.) I showed the woman my photo permit. She had never heard of or seen such a thing.

Overall, a highly secure system that a terrorist could never circumvent. cough.

I got a call this morning from Mr. Perez this morning (617-222-4494). He works in the MBTA legal department. He was very friendly and wanted to let me know that he is on the case to find out what the photography policy actually says.

He said that he wasn’t sure that the photo permit requirement was a law, but rather a company policy. He said the MBTA was within their rights to have policies that were for safety, which makes sense.

He gave two examples where policy is used to keep the property safe for employees and travelers. The people who sell produce, newpapers, etc. must be permitted otherwise, “it would turn into a flea market”. He also mentioned that there was a previous case where people sued for the right to hand out religious pamphlets. It was determined that they could distribute the pamphlets, however, they couldn’t hand them out in places that could endanger people such as around stairs.

From my previous research on subway performers, I am also aware that permits are required to perform in the subway. They also must only perform in designated areas.

These policies all seem reasonable. They allow the activity to take place while keeping people safe. For people using the facilities regularly to make money, getting a permit isn’t a big deal. The photography policy however seems to require even tourists taking pictures of their family to get a permit which seems a little silly. How taking a photograph on the property endangers others is debatable as well. Some circumstances such as the use of a flash could startle people, but beyond that, the argument seems shaky.

After the criticism of how easily the iPod nano scratched, Apple started including a simple sleeve case. An interesting new feature, or is it a bug, of this case is that the touch sensitive dial on the nano still works through the case. So you can still easily change the volume without taking the iPod out of the case.

If you cut a small hole in the bottom of the case to sneak the headphone cable through, you can then control the ipod through the case and see the screen.

I just got off the phone with MBTA Customer Relations (617-222-5215) and the guy I talked to, Mr. Bassila, confirmed that photography on MBTA property without a permit is indeed prohibited. He believed that this rule was put into place after 9/11. However, he couldn’t tell me any more details about what the rule specifically said. He also couldn’t explain why MBTA property is private, but I can’t blame him since it looks complicated.

He is going to email me a permit request form. I believe I can fill it out and send it back to him via email or fax. He then sends it to the police to perform a background check. It takes about a week, after which time you have to pick the permit up in person (10 Park Plaza, Boston, MA).

He also sent me the non-emergency number for the MBTA Police (617-222-1000) for more information on the specifics of the rule. They couldn’t provide any details, so they forwarded me to the legal department which was just a voice mail.

This whole thing is still just rediculous. It is a big inconvenience to everyone, while being ignored by terrorists. In addition, no one I’ve talked to knows how the rule was installed and what it actually says. Will it ever be retracted?

Update: I just received the email from Mr. Bassila with the Photo Permit Request form. More info after the jump. Direct link to the form here (warning Word Doc). The form says it could take two to four weeks to process. What is sort of strange is that you don’t provide unique proof of identification until you’ve been approved and are picking up the permit. It seems like it would be easy for the background check to look at the wrong person without any information like a Social Security number, or license number.
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Corin and I took the Commuter Train/Red Line to meet my mother for dinner last night in Cambridge. I was excited to discover that the token and turnstile system in South Station had been upgraded with the new “Charlie” system where you buy a Charlie card which contains credits and you feed it into shmancy new “gates” (that will probably be broken in a month). So before going through, I snapped a couple photos.
After taking my third picture (right) I was told by an MBTA employee to stop taking pictures. I asked why and she told me it was “illegal”. I asked her politely why it was illegal and turned around to find another MBTA employee in my face saying, “You ever heard of 9/11?!”.

Apparently everyone is a suspected terrorist now. Doesn’t it make you feel safer?

After again asking for clarification, they started to get riled up and wanted to call the police. Not knowing whether they were right or not, we simply continued on our way.

After searching the web, I came across a few discussions on Flickr of similar experiences (1, 2). However, I still haven’t found anything on the MBTA web site. I also don’t understand the concept of a “company” that is “owned” by the government. I believe that is basically the position of the MBTA. It was burped out by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts but how independent it is? Does it still get funding from tax payers? Is it no longer public property? Can they just make up any rules they wish?

According to the above discussions, you can get a permit to take photos, however it takes two weeks, requires two forms of identification, and requitres two trips to the office, one to submit the request and one to pick it up. Assuming they decide you are not a terrorist, your permit is only valid for 30 days.

Wiretap – Forsaken (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-24 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Follow up to my post about Flickr and adding the original file name in directly in the Exif data… After some brief skimming of Exif documentation, I didn’t see anything that suggested I could add arbitrary tags.  I tried doing it with the exiftool utility and it doesn’t allow it.  So instead I added a “comment” tag with the contents: IMG_1234.jpg and that worked.  I then uploaded the image to Flickr and viewed the Exif data both through the Flickr website and through the Flickr API.  Oddly, the Exif comment data doesn’t appear on either the Flickr website, or through the Flickr API.  It does however preserve the Exif data, so if you download the original image it will still be there.

The solution of embedding the original filename in the Exif data won’t work anyway since I can’t easily add the Exif tag to the photos I’ve already uploaded to Flickr.  So it looks like a regular Flickr tag will be the best solution for now.  While it is a little verbose, I think I’ll tag them with the above formatting for easier parsing and clarity.

By the way, the Flickr Creative Commons page was finally fixed a couple days ago.

I’m happy to announce that the day after I visited Kyja in Vermont, she and Chris had a 8 pound 4 ounce baby girl named Mai.

Found this gross looking thing while out in the back yard with Ketzel. What the heck is it? It must be a squirrel tail? Right? Does a squirrel tail actually have bones in it? Click the photo for a closer look.

I’ve decided to slowly migrate the redjar gallery from Menalto Gallery to Flickr. Gallery just isn’t doing it for me. Feature bloat in the wrong areas and regular security vulnerabilities top my list. Flickr has it’s own downsides, loss of control and flexibility, but with a little work I think I can work around them. The benefits of Flickr are that I don’t need to worry about maintenance. They get to worry about things like security vulnerabilties and backups. And of course there is the community. For instance, if you are looking for a creative commons licensed photo of Amsterdam, or puppies, or whatever, Flickr is a great place to start.

It is going to be a mult-phase process. So far, in the past couple days I’ve migrated over 6500 photos in over 300 albums from gallery to Flickr using the gallery2flickr script. It fails to export the album title and description, so I had to take care of that with my own combination of scripts, Flickr API, and some kludgy TextWrangler find and replace.

One thing I haven’t taken care of yet is addressing the fact that when you upload an image to flickr, the original file name gets blown away. I can understand them changing the name so that all photos follow a convention, while avoiding name collisions, but there really should be a metadata field accessible via the public API that stores the original filename. My planned solution is to add a tag for each photo in the form of, “original_filename_IMG_123.jpg”, where IMG_123.jpg is the original filename. Another alternative that I haven’t looked at is the possiblity of stuffing the original filename in the EXIF data and seeing if it is maintained. I’ve never played enough the EXIF to know how straight forward that is.

The next phase, and the key to my even considering using Flickr is to use the Flickr API to put the photos on redjar.org, hopefully without the viewer even really knowing that they are hosted by Flickr (beyond the API requirement that there be a link back to the photo on Flickr).

I’ve looked at a couple projects that do just this including f*gallery (no CMS dependencies but also not very advanced and not being actively developed), FAlbum (Wordpress plugin) and this Flickr module for “CMS Made Simple” which is the closest to what I’m after, but of course is tied to “CMS Made Simple”. However, none of them go quite far enough. I don’t even want the image src to use flickr.com, I still want it to be a redjar.org URL. Why? Because I am absolutely sure, that in a few years, the next Flickr will come along that will make Flickr’s offering look rediculous, and I’ll want to switch, hopefully without breaking URL’s.

By the way… strangely, after my Flickr account reached 100% of the 2 GB per month upload limit, my uploads just kept chugging along. Weird, but I’m not complaining.

I spent 2.5 hours at H&R Block today and will return on Friday for a second session to complete our 2005 taxes. I was a little dubious of using H&R Block. The fact that the two closest “offices” to are us are in either the Sears or the Walmart made me even more nervous. I chose the one in the Sears and lucked out by getting a retired chemistry teacher who’s been working at H&R block during tax season for the last few years. She actually thanked me for the challenge. Due to the fact that we lived in Vermont for half of 2005… Mass. for the other half, I worked in VT and MA, Corin lived in VT while working in MA for half, then lived in MA while working in MA for the other half… among many other crazy details, made our taxes, “the most complicated she’s ever seen”. As lunch time came and went, and my eyes started to bleed she kept moving forward. She was very knowledgable, but even better, when she didn’t know something, she told me and said she would research it and figure it out. I don’t even know how much it is going to cost, but this woman is worth every penny.

Wiretap – Career Opportunities (11 MB MP3) From 2006-03-17 with host Jonathan Goldstein.

Jeff Annetts, who you saw in the ski movie I posted a few days ago, is now a pretty boy. These photos were in a recent “Men’s Journal”. He’s living with his brother Matt in Jackson, Wyoming and he tells me during the height of the ski season he didn’t bother getting up early unless there was more than 8 inches of new snow.

I picked Corin and Lindsay up at the airport this afternoon. There flight was actually early, which I’ve never heard of. Corin had grand plans of going out for a steak dinner. After about an hour of being home, telling stories, and flying through 700+ photographs, they both decided to, “take a nap”…which was seven hours ago.

Seth and I took a field trip to Amherst today. We met up with Josiah and Dan at Hampshire for lunch. I tried to take Ketzel for a quick walk in the Hampshire woods and ended up completely lost. It included climbing underneath multiple barbwire fences and jumping muddy streams to get back to the campus. Checking GMaps Pedometer revealed that the little walk was 4.5 miles.
It was also entertaining to see what’s changed at the college and what remains the same. Lots of little left over relics from my days there.

Unfortunately due to my longer than expected walk in the woods, by the time I got back to the campus most people had gone home for the day.

More pictures in the gallery.

Ketzel and I are back in Massachusetts after a whirl wind tour. I spent the last leg visiting with Matt, Pam, and Alice (above), who very kindly put me up for the night. Also got to see Mike and Jess (our old next door neighbors) who were celebrating their daughter Hannah’s first birthday.

I also got an excellent taste of Mud Season. The pictures I took do it no justice. I’ve never seen Moss Hollow that bad. Luckily I borrowed Matt and Pam’s truck, because the Mini would have gotten stuck in seconds.

Last leg photos in the gallery:

• Huntington to Guilford – 03/10/2006
• Walk, Hannah’s Birthday Party, heading home – 03/11/2006

Today I managed to not only track down the elusive Kyja, but I also found my more elusive father. Kyja, Chris, and Avery are now in a great place in Johnson. Her boy Avery is one and a half. She is also expecting a new baby any day now.

I managed to get pulled over by a Vermont State Trooper on the back roads of Vermont on my way to Johnson. I was doing 45 in a well marked 35 MPH zone. He was passing me… saw the flashy red car with Mass. plates, and did a quick 3-point turn about, and pulled me over. He let me go with a warning, presumably after learning that I had previously had a Vermont license.

Him: “Did you used to live in Vermont.”

Me, in a thick Vermont accent: “Oh yes. Born and raised here.” …Trying to convince him that I wasn’t one of those Massholes he’s heard bad things about.

Ride along in the gallery.

Spent the majority of the day visiting with Michael, Nicole and their daughters Dakota and Grace. Their home continues to evolve each time I visit. As usual, I took many photos.

I also tried to track down my old, but elusive friend Kyja. After trying to call, I decided to just drive out to Hardwick to her last known residence only to find it empty and under renovation.

See more photos in the gallery and a 30 second movie clip of Dakota and Grace on YouTube.

Huntington VT town meeting this morning, followed by a shortened hike up Camels Hump, followed by a viewing of “Why We Fight” in Burlington. Too tired to say any more than that. And to think, I came here to relax.