Bad kitty!

One question that we get now and then is, "how are the animals with the baby?"  Well, they are pretty much totally indifferent to her.  However, our cat Bango should be thankful that she is here, because Bango has benefited greatly from her existence.  Why?  Because baby stuff seems to be perfectly made for cats to hang out in.  Despite some effort to prevent her from getting into Ashley's stuff, Bango has been found sleeping, or attempting to sleep, on or in Ashley's:

• play mat
• car seat
• pack'n'play
• crib
• changing pad
• bouncy seat,
• bassinette, and
• stroller.

Puppets are hilarious

Hot pixels

Back in June I noticed that we had a bunch of large-aperture/high ISO exposures with a bright pink dot in the middle of the frame.  It was consistently reproducible at ISO 800 or higher at f/1.8, but there was no problem evident at lower ISO or small apertures.  A quick google search revealed that this was what's known as a "hot" pixel, and is an inevitable and common problem with digital cameras sensors.  I then did a long exposure   of the back of our lens cap (with long-exposure noise reduction turned off), and found that we had a whole bunch of bad pixels, though it was just the one magenta one that was particularly noticeable.  Once a hot pixel develops, there does not seem to be any way to fix the sensor itself.  However, sensors have millions of photosites, and so hot pixels can be individually mapped out, with the value for that pixel then interpolated from nearby photosites.

Our camera was still under warranty, so I sent it back to Nikon to have the hot pixels mapped out.  UPS Ground to the service center cost about $20, but the camera returned about 10 days later in absolutely perfect condition.  Nikon cleaned it so well that I would have sworn it was a brand new camera if it hadn't had the same serial number.  And of course, all of the bad pixels were mapped out.

Since we got the camera back, we've been taking plenty of wide-open high-ISO shots with no hot pixels to be found... until last night.  Another bright magenta pixel, right in the middle of the image!  Our camera is just out of warranty now, and I didn't want to be without it for another week-and-a-half anyway, so I searched for another solution.  I quickly stumbled across some great free software.  Pixel Fixer will automatically detect hot pixels, remember the locations of them, and then conveniently map those out of your raw files, in batches of a directory at a time, with filters for shutter speed and ISO (among other things).

See that little dot on Ashley's shoulder?  That's our new hot pixel.

Six Months!

Ashley, I can't believe you turned six months old yesterday!

At six months you:

•  Like to lift your chest and tummy off the ground, fully straightening your arms.
• Want to grab anything around you that you can see-- and you usually find a way to get at it!
• Enjoy watching the dog and the cat, and will occasionally grab their paws and tails.
• Smile at everyone, and laugh very easily.
• Have started eating solid food.  You really enjoy your rice cereal.
• Are starting to go to bed earlier at night, and take shorter naps during the day.
• Love playing in your UltraSaucer.
• Are still a very quiet, patient, and sweet little baby!

Here are some photos from your six-month birthday:

You spent the morning playing on your play mat for a while, as usual.

"Don't touch the camera lens!"

A well-known technique for getting a baby to smile is to bark like a dog.  A lesser-known fact is that this technique also works on moms!

You've been lifting yourself up like this a lot lately.

Ashley at seven-and-a-half weeks

Just a bunch of pictures that Nancy took of Ashley on June 5th.

How to NOT attend an SS Lazio 1900 game

Lazio is sort of the New York Mets of Rome: they are a big club, but they don't really compare to the city's other Serie A team.  Stadio Olimpico seats eighty thousand, but Lazio only averaged attendance of about thirty thousand per home fixture last year.  So if they are playing one of the smaller Serie-A teams, getting tickets shouldn't be a problem, right?

We were in Rome last weekend and decided on Saturday to attend the next day's match, Lazio against Brescia.  An interesting match because both teams happened to be playing well and vying for the top of the table at this early juncture in the season, but Brescia is one of the smaller clubs, so the match would not be well attended.  After checking SS Lazio's (Italian-only) website, I determined that the tickets were not sold online, and I needed to find a Listicket ticket retailer in order to buy tickets.  The girl at our hotel's front desk called the nearest retailer to confirm for us that they were selling tickets, and we ventured down, with no address or store name, but an "x" drawn on a tourist map to guide us.

We eventually found the store.  The helpful proprietor let us know that there would indeed be plenty of tickets available for the game, but that his Listicket connection was currently down so we wouldn't be able to purchase tickets right then.  No problem though: tickets would be available the next day at the Lazio Style store near the stadium, we just had to show up prior to game time and buy them.

Well, at this point we thought, "this is silly-- if we are going to be near the stadium anyway, why not just go right to the stadium's box office?"  So we devised a foolproof plan-- we would show up at the stadium one hour before game time, buy tickets at the box office, and attend the game.

Getting to the stadium was a breeze.  We simply took Metro line A to Ottaviano, then took Bus 32 right to the stadium, getting off at the same stop as everyone dressed in light blue.  The bus was easy to recognize: it said "Stadio" right on it.

So there we were, outside of the stadium with over an hour until game time.  We just had to find the box office.

Turns out that at least for football games, Stadio Olimpico is set up with a security fence around the perimeter, which can be entered only with a ticket to the event.  There is no access to a stadium box office like you might expect.  So while Nancy fed Ashley, I jogged over to the Lazio Style store.

Lazio Style is the official team merchandise outlet, and is a tiny little store on Via Calderini.  (To get directly to Lazio Style, take Metro line A to Flaminio, then take tram #2.)  When I arrived about 40 minutes prior to game time, there was a large group of densely-packed people crowded around the entrance/exit to the store, and another group waiting in the shade across the street.  I realized after a few minutes that they were all holding numbers.  I found the numbers-- hidden within the crowd on the right side of the entrance (just a little dispenser like you'd see at a deli), and took one.  I had number 141.  The display in the store window showed #951!

After waiting about 10 minutes I realized that they only served about one-and-a-half customers per minute.   There was no way I was getting tickets to this game!  I walked back to the stadium, found Nancy and Ashley, and headed back towards Lazio Style to check on the line.  As we walked away, we heard them announcing the players from inside the stadium.  When we arrived at Lazio Style, the game was just starting, the number being served had barely incremented, and the crowd around the store was nearly as large as before.  Some started to listen to the game on the radio.  We waited around for a bit before deciding to head over down to Ostia Antica to check out some ruins while the day was still young.  As our #2 tram passed Via Calderini, two-thirds of the way through the first half of the match, there was still a decent-sized crowd outside of Lazio Style.

Lazio won the game 1-0.  20,000 lucky fans attended, 60,000 seats remained empty, and a sad-looking group listened to the game outside of Lazio Style.  As the disappointed-for-us girl working at the front desk of our hotel later explained, "There is always a line in Rome."  For future visitors to Rome who are thinking of attending a Lazio match and happen to stumble across this post:

I found that at least as applicable to the game I was looking to get tickets for, there is a lot of misinformation on the web.  In particular:

• There were no (obvious) scalpers outside the stadium from whom tickets could be purchased.  My last resort at North American sporting events has always been scalpers, and it's never been a problem. Here it was just not possible.
• It was not possible to buy tickets at the stadium.
• Tickets were NOT available at Lottomatica retailers, only Listicket, and even then, the retailer I went to didn't have a working connection (one is located about a 10-15 min walk south of the train station, on Piazza di Porta Maggiore, north side of the street, just east of Via Giovanni Giolitti).
• It would not be advisable to show up at Lazio Style on game day and expect to be able to buy tickets. I'd go the first day you arrive in Rome.  For the game we attempted to attend, tickets were available one week before the game started.