Back in February, I spent a morning working on “Redline Tango” with Scott Coulson and his band at Poteet High School in Mesquite, Texas. I thought they were the best high school band I’d ever heard. They had that rare combination of insane technique and real musicality. They were also a lot of fun to work with — fun and pleasant, but well behaved. (I mean, nobody threw anything at me.) Scott Coulson was obviously doing everything right. I wondered, being out of the Texas Band circuit as I am, if other people knew what a special group this was.

Well, they do now. Poteet just won 4A Honor Band for all of Texas. Congratulations, Scott and the band!

I took a short break from working a few days ago, and I stuck the ol’ 50mm f/1.4 lens on the camera. I just love this lens. It’s kind of idiot-proof. It’s so fast, as long as you get the right thing in focus, everything else is nice and soft, creating excellent portraits, at least of cats. Check out how Loki’s eyes are sharp, but with such a narrow depth of field, even his ears are soft-focused.

It also takes a nice food picture. (That’s a “crown of rolls” in the background.) Unfoutunately, to get this shot, I had to step back from the dining table. That’s fine when I’m home, as I was for this shot, but it’s not so practical in a restaurant.

For contrast, I stuck the 100-400mm lens on the camera and went out on the deck. By chance, moments after I got out there, a coyote ran past the house. Unfortunately, it was early evening, so it was getting dark, and the 400mm lens is not fast at all. So this shot it blurry, but it’s still pretty cool, just as evidence that a friggin’ coyote ran past the house before dark.

AEJ and I saw the new Die Hard movie last night. It’s awesome. It was a lot better than it needed to be. We went in expecting a bunch of mindless explosions, and although there was no shortage of mindless explosions, the movie was actually quite good. Pretty well written, and excellently executed. And any movie that features Bruce Willis blowing up a flying helicopter by driving a car into it — that’s bad-ass.