“Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, as these are haiku poems, I do need to follow the rules.

That said, there were a few things for which we weren’t really prepared — things that we only saw after working with the camera for a few days, weeks, months…  These are things that you won’t get from your in-store demo, things (both good and bad) that you’ll only see with time and experience.

And I’m going to share a few of these things with you.

In some ways, moving from a point-and-shoot to a DSLR is a big step:  now you have fine-grained control over your aperture and shutter speeds, now you can swap lenses, now you can automatically bracket your shots — the list goes on.  In other ways, the move might not be such a big deal:  using program and/or subject modes turns the DSLR into a kind of “super point-and-shoot” and, once you figure out that you need to look through the viewfinder, you can hand it over to anyone in one of those modes and get some stellar shots.  But in the latter scenarios, we’re lucky because we can give up our pretensions in a pinch and just accept some nice pictures.  But we came into DSLR territory for a reason:  to get anal-retentive about that depth-of-field (DOF) with a ƒ/2.2 exposure.

For the most part, our expectations are met in all of the above respects.  But there were a few things that have raised some eyebrows, a few things that have been unexpected considerations.

Auto-focus vs. manual focus.  The way that a camera focuses is something that we’re bound to take for granted, especially when coming from point-and-shoot-land with little-to-no experience with focusing and DOF management.  Having put all of that forethought into aperture and shutter speed control, you would think that I would also have thought about what it takes to focus the lens on any given subject.  Maybe I had nasty flashbacks to that 9th grade photo class — back when I couldn’t get anything into focus because I didn’t even know that I needed to wear glasses.  Before this turns into a rambling reiteration of old laments, I’ll simply admit that it was not something that occurred to me until after I started shooting with the XTi.

First, a point about manual focus:  I get this weird nagging feeling whenever flipping the switch on the lens from “AF” to “MF” that I’m moving over into wild, unknown territory.  Putting it mildly, manual focus is fucking hard.  I blame my corrective lenses for this, for taking what should be a challenging task and turning it into a daunting one.  There are two big factors here (in my case); the first is that it feels somehow wrong to look through the lens of my eyeglasses into the viewfinder — I feel too far away and like there is some kind of corruption of the image going on considering how much glass it’s passing through to hit my retina.  Plus, it’s uncomfortable to work with the camera that way.  Second, though the XTi has a nice little knob to adjust the image in the viewfinder to compensate for my eye’s own problems, I find it difficult to trust the image passing through to my eye — is it really in focus? or is it still just as out-of-focus as it was before the focusing and the further viewfinder adjusting, etc.  These two factors combined are very frustrating because it seems critically important to be able to focus manually and I’ve come to doubt the whole process.  So, arguments and/or discussions about poor and/or missing focusing rings aside, manual focus has emerged as this important piece of the puzzle that is…  Well, that is not given adequate attention.

The reason that manual focusing doesn’t get all of that much attention is because auto-focus (AF) is the default setting and there is the sort of “feeling” (what with the way the camera controls are laid out, etc.) that you’re supposed to use the AF features.  This is fine with me (vide supra) but once I’d been using the camera for a couple months and more/less relying on the AF features, its deficiencies start to become clear.

The AF features of the camera/lens rely heavily on edge detection — and when you break it down to the math that means they are looking high-contrast elements in the frame and will focus on those.  Under most circumstances, this is probably fine but try focusing on the nose of a squirming baby under low-light conditions and suddenly your lens is grabbing onto fists, hair, the dresser behind the baby…  If you’re anything like me, AF now uses the creatively shallow DOF of ƒ/1.8 against you.  What’s an amateur photographer to do?

Well, the savvy amateur is going to attempt a little control by forcing the camera’s “stare” with the AF point controls.  Looking through the viewfinder, they look a little something like this:

XTi auto-focus points

Referring back to our wiggling baby and the efforts to focus on the nose, that’s where this might come in handy.  Frame your shot, determine that the baby’s nose is under that northwest AF point, set it, and take your shot.  You’re still going to need to hit that shutter with crossed-fingers and hope for the best but your odds are at least a little bit better.  The trouble is that the camera is still going for high-contrast and depending on your AF settings, it might still fail to lock onto your subject.  Re-enter the discussion of manual focus, right?  Especially when the in-camera preview looks just fine and then you dump the photos into Aperture, call up the loupe tool, and see that half of your “great” pictures have indistinct edges when viewed at 100% magnification.  Maybe it’s the ƒ/1.8 at 1/10th of a second?

Stabilization.  This is definitely a topic that didn’t mean terribly much prior to digging our heels into this camera.  During our deliberation and research prior to purchase, stabilization didn’t seem like it was going to be much of a factor.  We had identified a few models that had stabilization built into the camera (i.e., as opposed to the lens) but ultimately ruled those out.  We do a lot of our shooting indoors and for that we opted to add a Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.8 II, thinking that the big aperture would help to get enough light onto the sensor.  This turned out to be one of those somewhat naïve beliefs; though the big aperture can ensure enough light without resorting to the flash, I’d neglected to factor in the shallow DOF and the fact that the shutter speed difference might be 1/15th of a second instead of 1/5th or slower.

What we’re learning is that a lens with stabilization might help to compensate for some of these blurred edges.  This is where I admit that I am (six months into this adventure) already thinking about the next lens for the collection.  The XTi’s kit lens is an 18-55mm and I’ve already mentioned the 50mm prime — well:  neither of these is equipped with Canon’s image stabilization (IS) feature.  So now we (viz., “I”) are asking questions:  do “just” go the 18-55mm IS route? or go for the 18-200mm IS?  Adding the IS features seems like an essential next step — but how is one to do that and open up a great range of focal lengths and not break the bank?

Lenses.  Speaking of working with different lenses:  as CK commented:

…the Canon EF 50mm prime is attached to the camera 99% of the time…

And that’s the case here, as well.  The EF 50mm is a great piece of glass — especially for the price, and especially for an amateur.  The range of apertures is useful and aside from the occasional AF challenges under low-light conditions, the pictures are sharp.  But the 50mm certainly doesn’t do the job all the time.  Shooting Independence Day fireworks this past summer, the 18mm focal length on the kit lens was definitely handy — and/but I also found the 55mm zoom to be not quite enough.

While the desire to take advantage of these additional focal lengths is most certainly there, I think back to CK’s comment.  It can be a bit of a pain in the ass to swap the lenses sometimes.  For example, I don’t haul the camera bag around with me to every event nor on every walk around town; the ease of swapping the lenses is tempered by tedium of bringing them with you.  The easy answer seems to circle back on picking the right IS lens with a sufficient breadth of focal lengths in its zoom range.

ISO & noise.  As I mentioned earlier, I’m loathe to shoot at anything above ISO 100.  This is crazy and I admit it.  First, with all the low-light and/or indoors shooting that we do, ISOs of 200, 400, and up are going to be more or less essential — with or without the ƒ/1.8.  The levels of noise are certainly acceptable right off the camera up to about 400 and everything else can get cleaned up in Aperture without too much fuss.  Considering that most of these pictures go to Flickr for sharing and are never printed, any protest I might have against ISO (n > 100) seems to go right out the window.  The fact that aperture alone can’t compensate for low-light conditions has led me to a better understanding of how ISO fits into the equation.  Hopefully I’ll get over this ridiculous fear I have of it; but in retrospect, it seems I should have paid more attention to the ISO aspect of each camera/sensor during my research.  (Ah! Lessons learned…)

Working the flash.  Where larger apertures, slower shutter speeds, and higher ISOs all still fail to produce the desired image, there’s also the flash.  I’ve been “anti-flash” for a couple years now, finding that it tends to over-expose images and produce a kind of harshness on subjects that we don’t want turning up in the final product.  Of course, the only way to get that (yes: that) picture sometimes is to suck it up, swallow your pride and turn the flash on.  That said, there seems to be some good news with the XTi.

First, something is qualitatively different about its flash than the one in the SD630.  It just doesn’t throw that same harsh, washed-out, over-exposure on everyone (at least:  not every time).  Using its flash is a lot less icky than the flash on the point-and-shoot.

Second, the XTi has exposure controls specific to the flash.  But (vide supra) luckily, we haven’t had to use those yet.

Third, when shooting RAW, it’s much (much) easier to correct any over-exposure after the fact.  Especially when used in combination with Aperture’s exposure controls.  It’s not always easy but more than a few times, those controls have saved a shot.  Then again, sometimes it’s fun just to vignette the hell out of the picture instead.

Lastly, I’m curious about the hot shoe flash options.  I haven’t used any quite yet but I imagine that they could add still more options for shooting in the indoor and low light conditions.  Just a thought; a note for later.

Miscellaneous and conclusions.  The moving up to the XTi (and DSLRs in a more general sense) has been a rewarding move for the budding amateur photographers in this house.  Having the subject modes available to us bailed us out on quite a few occasions early on, allowing us to focus more on framing the shots, etc.  It’s nice that those modes are built in — they’re like a safety net for your first month or so, to keep you from lamenting your choice or to let you hand the camera over to someone else a little more comfortably.  But once you’ve got a few basics figured out, you’ll find yourself popping over into priority modes (e.g., aperture priority or shutter priority) or fully manual mode.  Not that I’ve used fully manual mode much but it’s nice to know it’s an option.  Something that I keep managing to mix up are the “Picture Styles” and the “Subject Modes” — the latter always writes images down to JPG and seem to automatically change metering modes, picture styles, etc. while the former seems to be concerned only with how the camera treats the colors.  That said, I’ve had the “Picture Style” set more/less exclusively on “Portrait” since we got the camera; whether this is to the detriment of the landscape (or otherwise) photography is something I’ve yet to determine.  Recommendations?  Thoughts?

Also, using Aperture has been a real coup for these photos, as well.  It has turned some good photos into great photos.  It’s a reminder to get better with the camera itself but still…  Who doesn’t love it when the shot is suddenly perfect?  Post-processing in Aperture has become a bit part of the process for us and the DSLR doesn’t seem complete without it.  Then again, probably >99% of the pictures coming off of the camera are RAW, so…  Yeah.  Maybe a critical component in the workflow.

Tips for other amateurs looking into DSLRs for the first time?  Though I thought I had covered the major considerations the first time around (here and here), here are the things that I would advise someone else in the same position:

1. Look at different cameras but don’t be a brand whore.  Think about the features you want, make a list of cameras, and then search for pictures taken with those cameras on Flickr.  After you’ve narrowed it down, see if you can’t get some hands-on time with a couple of them — even just 5 minutes at the store.  (E.g., if you can’t figure out how to change the ISO in fewer than 5 minutes, the camera might not be a “friendly” one for you.)  I think I had unnecessarily ”married” myself to the Canon brand in my mind long before I got this far in the process — oh, I’m happy with my purchase but I carried my biases a little too strongly to give a fair shake to any other brand.
2. Look at the ISO noise.  Seriously.  Think about the kind of shooting you’re going to do “a lot of”.  If the words “indoors” or “low light” enter into the equation, look at high ISO (talking 800+) shots taken with the cameras that you’re considering.  How grainy?  How noisy?  Don’t ask other people what they think.  Again:  go look on Flickr or some place like that; find someone that has posted “full size” versions and get down real close on the high ISO photo.  Do you think it’s an acceptable level of noise?
3. What do people say about the auto-focus?  This is one that you can’t really find out in five minutes of in-store playtime or by looking at sample pictures.  See if you can’t get someone to tell you about the AF on the camera that you like.  Is it fast?  Does it work well under low-light?  Does it usually catch the right part of the picture?  Does the camera give you a granular enough level of AF point control?
4. Don’t take image stabilization for granted.  Don’t make my mistake.  A big aperture will not save you.  If you can fit it into your budget, get image stabilization worked in there somehow.  You’ll thank yourself later.

Lastly, if you’re new to DSLRs (like I was/am), do yourself a favor and add these two books to your cart as well:  David Busch’s Digital SLR Cameras & Photography for Dummies (Goodreads review here, Amazon.com here) and Mikkel Aaland’s Shooting Digital (Goodreads review here, Amazon.com here).  Aaland’s book covers digital photography a bit more generally and is very useful regardless of what kind of camera is in your hand; Busch addresses DSLR photography more specifically but doesn’t discuss techniques in the same level of detail as Aaland — the two should be bundled together.

At any rate:  six months in and this has been a noble, worthy, and fruitful experiment.

While in the town, I stop to get my hair cut.  Outside of the barber shop, I see two women that look familiar (J.W.? from Flickr?) though I am positive that I have never met them.  As I get closer, it appears that they are either doppelgängers of each other or else identical twins — they have the same face, hair, and body; only their clothes are different.  The woman closer to the door smiles and asks me to come on inside, that she isn’t waiting on any clients.  We go inside the barber shop and there is only one other stylist (an Italian woman that barely speaks any English).

Once seated in the chair, I decide to play dumb — that it would be creepy and weird if I gave any indication of recognition.  On the other hand, she launches right into, giving no pretenses that she “thinks” or “believes” that she knows me from online — she just comes right out and says it and asks me to pick up a story wherever I’d left off.  I start to talk about the writing projects I have in the works, she explains that the woman outside isn’t her twin but a sort of clone.  She determines that I don’t actually need a haircut and offers me a close shave instead.

But with OS X 10.5’s release, Automator got a few useful additions to make it a bit more useful.  In particular, support for variables added some flexibility that was previously impossible within the framework it provided.  So I decided to throw a little task at Automator:

Take my selected photos and export them to a folder on the Desktop called “4Uploadr” (and create that folder first if it isn’t already there).

Straightforward enough, eh?  So I dropped in two actions:

1. Aperture: Get Selected Images
2. Aperture: Export Versions
   • Destination: (Variable = ~/Desktop/4Uploadr)
   • Export Preset: JPEG - Original Size
   • Export Name Format: Current Version Name
   • Export subfolder: No folder…

Which I naïvely believed would do the trick.  Wouldn’t Automator know that if 4Uploadr didn’t exist that it was supposed to create it?  Nope.  It just quietly fails, recording in the Automator log that such a folder does not exist.  Alright, what about setting “Export subfolder” to “Custom”?  No, that only appears to output the selected images into a folder with the name “<untitled>”.  Perhaps there is a preference buried somewhere in there for setting “Custom” to “something useful” instead of “<untitled>” — but if it’s in there, I couldn’t find it.

Unsatisfactory!

So instead:  AppleScript to the rescue!

One of the variables that Automator now accepts/supports is an “AppleScript” variable wherein you set a script for Automator to execute.  In my case, I wrote a script to test for the existence of “4Uploadr” and the create it as necessary before exporting all those images from Aperture into it.

The AppleScript:

That’s:

tell application "Finder"
  if "Malkovich:Users:rob:Desktop:4Uploadr" exists then
    return true
  else
    make folder at desktop with properties {name:"4Uploadr"}
  end if
end tell

The Automator action:

Sure enough, it worked. It creates the folder if it’s not there, passes through quietly if it is there and then exports all the selected images from Aperture just like we would want. A little heavier lifting than originally expected but nothing too terrible.

…moderately satisfied. The seem like a “good enough” value (speaking to the quality-to-price ratio, here). 

PROS:

1. The most comfortable in-ear headphones I’ve ever tried (and have owned more than a few over the years).
2. Nice seal in the ear blocks out a surprising amount of ambient noise (even at low volumes). 

CONS:

1. Vibrations (e.g., the cable against your zipper) tend to amplify and compete with the music in your ear.
2. I’m not sold on the sound, which seems tinny and weak to me; I heard a lot of folks rave about these ear buds but the bass seems average at best. 

MISC.:

1. I prefer an L-shaped connector and was disappointed that this one was straight.
2. The cable has a good texture and seems not to tangle.
3. Very comfortable if you expect to wear them for extended period but you can probably do a lot better in the sound department for not much more money.

(Original review posted on Amazon.com.)

UPDATE:  The sound quality might be a little better than I originally gave it credit for — but it seems like you need to jam the earbud pretty deep and snug into your ear to get any satisfaction below ≈200 Hz.

I get an alert on my phone.  My bank has been sending balance update by text message.  Convenient, but sometimes it’s troublesome to discover randomly, in the middle of the day that the $10 insurance co-pay you charged to your card turned into a $10,000 hospital bill instead.  In a panic, we give up our search for the perfect used hardcover of Snow Crash and leave the store.

Hungry and hundreds of miles from home, we wander into a deli across the street.  It looks like I recognize the proprietor (S.W.?).  I ask for a ham sandwich; he gives me pastrami on rye.  I hand it back.  ”Ham it is.”  And I get back pastrami on pumpernickel.  He smiles and insists that the pastrami is the way to go.

Built at The Muppet Whatnot Workshop (via DF).

I get her to agree to do the tattoo on my chest like I’d originally asked — not giving a damn if she alleges that it will hurt more.  She has a template for similar tattoo but it’s not quite the similar enough for me.  We try to work out a compromise where she executes the tattoo as it appears in her template (viz., a standard straight dagger piercing a black circle) but sneaks in the barbed tip and the correct curve of the hilt.  She fusses over it all though, hemming and hawing about what might happen to her if she got caught and how she wasn’t really confident enough in her free-hand tattooing anyway.

I put my shirt on and walk out even as she tries to convince me otherwise.

Fight the Future feels like a long episode with a little more weight in the climactic moments.  On many levels, this works.  Scenes and dialogue are constructed in a way that you could “get” the film without having seen the preceding 117 hours of X-Files footage, though certain things will make more sense and will have more of an impact if you led up to them gradually and in the right order.  This helps to keep the narrative focused.  At the same time though, it almost seems as though the writers succumbed to the temptation to re-write or re-invent aspects of the narrative.  These minor discontinuities include such things as:  (1) the Black Oil goes from being an organism of its own to being a virus; (2) the FBI that broke up Mulder and Scully when they broke up the X-Files puts them to work on anti-terrorism together; and (3) Mulder’s new-found skepticism seems to have left him all together again.

The film’s story works as part of the overall arc though it has a few bits that are over the top and others that don’t feel quite right.  The ending is pretty typical for The X-Files though:  Mulder and Scully have literally traveled to the ends of the Earth as part of their Search, only to have circumstances dictate the last-minute Total Escape of any evidence or proof that they might have sought.

We’ll let that sink in before resuming with Season Six.

Season Five seems to rely on some role reversals:  Scully as the (reluctant) believe, Mulder as the doubter, conspiracies that are present but mundane and solvable.  In a lot of ways, it’s the spiritual successor to Season Two because it shows our protagonists at important crossroads.  Considering Season Five’s position in the Series timeline, perhaps there are sound reasons to construct this arc in the narrative.

1. Redux.  As the episode’s title suggests, it picks up where Season Four left off.  In many ways, it is a reiteration of events from the Season Four finale:  some gaps are filled in, some alternate perspectives on the events are explored — but overall it is a strong start to the season.  We are right in the thick of it and the conspiracy angle is strong, especially with respect to how they have wrapped the “extraterrestrial” bits into a larger and perhaps scarier proposition — that the government uses such preposterousness as a smokescreen for more mundane but more wicked experimentation.
2. Redux II.  Part two of two, and a game-changing episode.  Mulder is so close to the conspiracy he has chased that he must be able to taste it; the “false positive” that closes the previous episode turns out to be a copy of the chip in Scully’s neck and the cure to her cancer.  Cancer Man approaches Mulder, trying to cut a deal with him, offering Scully’s cancer cure, offering him a meeting with his sister Samantha but in the end, of course, Mulder refuses.  He and Skinner chaise their own leads, leading them to the name of a biotech company named “Roush” only to have it all snatched away when the story arc has the Syndicate (apparently) assassinate the Cancer Man.
3. Unusual Suspects.  Possibly the best episode of the Series thus far.  It’s all flashback, showing how Mulder came to meet The Lone Gunmen.  Nothing truly paranormal going on, just with characters and government conspiracies about bioweapons.
4. Detour.  The sense of humor seems to be back in this episode but the Ents-esque monster(s)?  A little weak.
5. The Modern-Day Prometheus.  Again:  the sense of humor seems to be back but not in its fullest form.  There is a carnival or circus freak atmosphere to this episode that plays on all of the right symbols but that also lapses into a Frankensteinian story that is a big short-sighted and predictable.
6. Christmas Carol.  Except for the briefest of cameo appearances, there is no Mulder.  This episode focuses entirely on Scully and works over a weird confluence of classic X-Files tropes:  government conspiracies, Scully’s (alien?) abduction, voices from beyond-the-grave…  It all centers around a child that all genetic markers indicate is Scully’s offspring.  We are to believe that this episode resumes the core Mythology arc but something feels off about it.
7. Emily.  Part two of two.  Though “Christmas Carol” felt a bit flimsy, there seems to be enough in here to make up for it.  Not that Scully cannot stand on her own as a character but she works better as a foil to Mulder, so it’s a relief to see him drawn into this plot thread.  The “alien conspiracy” aspect of the Syndicate/Mythology episodes is more present here and for a little while it even seems like we’re going to resume that story full-bore, like it will remind us why we’ve been watching for the past four seasons.  But by the end, the resolution is a bit vague, the symbolism a bit heavy-handed, and we start to wonder why they didn’t circle back on the “Roush” name that cropped up five episodes ago.
8. Kitsunegari.  The return of the “Pusher” character from Season Three.  There are enough feints and twists to make it interesting though (that bit with his sister, for example?).  A good episode with some strong writing.
9. Schizogeny.  There is a possession/multiple-personality thing going on here that doesn’t seem to offer much to the story.  Besides, didn’t we already do an Ents-esque monster-of-the-week this season?
10. Chinga.  The fact that this one is set in Maine ought to be the dead giveaway that Stephen King was co-author on this episode.  That said, it definitely feels like a recycled version of Child’s Play.  It isn’t terribly original feeling; it isn’t bad, it’s just average.  Also:  is David Duchovny on sabbatical this season?
11. Kill Switch.  My first reaction to this episode was:  Hey, I liked this better when it was called “The Matrix”.  But this episode pre-dates the theatrical release of that film by about a year.  It’s no surprise however, that it’s co-written by William Gibson and Tom Maddox.  Reflecting more deeply on the episode, I find that it has picked up more of Maddox’s influence than Gibson’s.
12. Bad Blood.  This episode battles “Unusual Suspects” for best episode of the Season (Series?); it is well-written and returns the humor and some of the whimsy of Season Three.  What makes this episode remarkable is how the first and second acts are where Dochovny and Anderson act their characters OUT-of-character depending on whose version of the story (i.e., Mulder’s vs. Scully’s) is being told.  It is a fun take on vampire folklore made perfect by casting Luke Wilson as a small-town Texas sheriff who just happens to be the head vampire.
13. Patient X.  It took 11 episodes to get back to “the point” of the Series.  This brings back the Black Oil and it brings back Marita Covarrubius and Krycek.  It is interesting to see the reversals playing out between Mulder and Scully (i.e., believing vs. doubting) and for the first time in Season Five, it’s starting to feel like home again.
14. The Red and the Black.  Resist or Serve.  Part 2 of 2:  we round out the story arc from “Patient X”.  Mulder’s newfound skepticism continues while Scully agrees to go under hypnosis to validate beliefs she might not have admitted to having in the previous season.  The character reversals aside, it seems like there are many continuity errors here:  wasn’t Cancer Man dead? (wasn’t his body found?) and didn’t Krycek only have one arm?  The title of the episode seems to be a tip of the hat Stendhal’s novel and throws a little color around Jeffrey Spender’s character, though this seems only to make his entrance seem that much more perpendicular to the Series.
15. Travelers.  It’s like retro X-Files!  Flashback to 1990 to find Mulder (smoking?) interviewing an old FBI agent and then we flashback to 1952 and McCarthyism and xenotransplantation, etc.  We discover (with no surprise) that Mulder’s dad has been playing this conspiracy game for a long time and has had his conscience plagued almost as long.
16. Mind’s Eye.  The episode feels a bit off-the-subject but is very well-written, well-shot, and well-acted.  Though it won’t take “best of the season” away from “Bad Blood” or “Unusual Suspects”, this episode strings the viewer along through a minefield of gray-areas and moral ambiguities as it assesses the nature of good and evil.
17. All Souls.  Watching this episode brings it home that the X-Files’ attempts at tying religion to the supernatural/paranormal just don’t work.  It’s as if the religious superstitions are thin stand-ins for the monsters and aliens we have come to expect.  They don’t fit into the Series’ milieu very well; every time we get an episode “like this” I get the same feeling and wind up wondering how the show might have been different if religion played more of a role.  But aside from adding a little depth to Scully’s character, it doesn’t do much.
18. The Pine Bluff Variant.  A cool but non-paranormal episode revolving around (again) government conspiracies and secret bio-weapons programs and “the New Spartans” (an anti-government militia).  Overall, it is a good, complete-feeling episode that works within the milieu in ways that (e.g.) “All Souls” did not.  I get the feeling that this here is the writers’ attempts to set up the Series for some kind of “next step” — it’s a kind of preliminary exercise in “where to from here?”
19. Folie a Deux.  Interesting and not without its charms but we are really beating Mulder’s new-found doubt to death this season.  As events transpire throughout the Season Five, Mulder’s new cynicism makes sense and the lapse that occurs here makes sense.  Still, it seems (as this season comes up several episodes shorter than its predecessors) that the writers had a hard time working through this plot arc.
20. The End.  I am uncertain as to how I feel with respect to this ending here…  There are enough hooks to leave it open for additional Seasons but they also do a good job of tearing apart the X-Files (what with the fire and all that).  It’s as if the writers were trying to one-up each other in a series of annihilating feints until they only option left was to bring back Cancer Man with a bit of deus ex machina.  To go so far as to link Cancer Man to this new Agent Spender character is… I don’t know, it seems like it might be too much and where is the closure on this particular story arc?  I realize that we need to lead in to Season Six by way of the film, right…?

The things that I have been thinking about all day:

• McCain’s concession speech was gracious.  It’s too bad that it was ruined by the reactions in the crowd.
• We have overcome a huge hurdle.  America’s first black President.  I’m looking forward to the day where no one even bats an eyelash at this sort of thing.  But for now, I’m captivated by the energy this seems brings out in people.
• Obama’s victory speech was moving.  But more so…

…I’m glad that he acknowledges that the hardest parts are yet to come.  Barack Obama is not going to save us.  But he brings the right attitude and he brings hope to people, he inspires them.  And we’re going to need that kind of inspiration to dig our way out.

So let’s get to it.

(Original photo on Flickr.)

streaming election coverage, touching up pics in Aperture, wishing we had some f#$%&*g whiskey ¶

(Original photo on Flickr.)