I have put up a new section to the site. It is the “code” tab at the top. I plan on putting tutorials or code that I have to share up here. The first thing to grace the new section is a tutorial called Intro to Java Objects and Classes. I wrote this to present at work.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Get your new McNally
I have a copy of Joe McNally’s “The Moment it Clicks” sitting by my bed. I read a couple of pages most days. Now that I have a SB800, it has me even more psyched. The really good news is that there is a new book coming. “The Hot Shoe Diaries” is in pre-order right now at Amazon, but it is supposed to ship before Christmas. This should be on anyone’s list that has a flash. I came across this announcement recently at pixSylated. I had heard of this book coming (on Joe’s blog) but not that it was in pre-order. One other interesting thing that I found on pixSylated is this post on pimping your McNally. He takes Joe’s book and puts a spiral binding on it. What makes this idea really interesting is that I have the coils, the punch and the laminating machine to do this at home, from the cookbooks Annie used to do. I hate to “wreck” my books, but I might need to try this.
Once in a lifetime trip
Wish I was saying that I am going on such a trip… but that may have to wait for a different lifetime. I got fired up about maybe going on the Lumen Dei Ladakh 2009 trip, but there is only one spot left, and I can’t pull the trigger. Annie and I talked briefly about me going on a trip for my 40th birthday, and this would be one heck of a trip. But total cost of trip, airfare, hotel, etc would require a herculean effort to raise the money. WIth Annie looking to switch jobs, my contract coming due, the economy tanking, I can’t see it happening. Besides, going away for 2-3 weeks would be tough. Kate would be just starting Kindergarten, and Lily would be 2 3/4. That would be a tough time to go. Maybe when the kids get older and we don’t have daycare/school costs. That’s only 4 years away. 🙂
South Dakota Panoramic Shot
I finally got a panorama that I liked. I took some images I took when we were out in South Dakota at the Badlands, and stitched them together in Photoshop. I was surprised to see a couple of seams. I needed to nudge it together a bit. Then I had to get out the healing brush and fix up a couple of hot spots that were left over. Anyway, I then adjusted it with a curves layer to bring out some more contrast. I also round tripped it back into camera raw to adjust the white balance on the jpeg, but I am not sure that was the way to do it, because I had to save a jpeg a couple of times. Anyway, here it is:
New Flash and Drives
Not a flash drive. A SB800 flash, and two Western Digital 1TB green drives. These should be arriving today via UPS.
I am excited to get the SB800. I have a SB400 right now, but I am looking forward to trying out the new flash wirelessly. That will be cool. Also, the head turns better, there is a pop up bounce card and it will be much easier to gel than the SB400.
The drives were needed. I discovered the other day that both of the raid 1 drives in my NAS were failing. It would appear that the cron job to run smartmon wasn’t working, and I didn’t get an email that the drives were failing. Yikes. Almost all of the properties were saying “old age”. The drives are only 1.5 years old too. I think part of the problem is that they never spin down. I need to figure out how to get that to happen. I don’t really need instantaneous access from my NAS, and it does sit idle (except for the drives unfortunately) most of the time.
More on the new toys as I get to use them…