New Stuff Added

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I have updated the site a bit. The About page got updated, and I added a new page called Books. I wanted to have a page where I would keep track of the books I have read, and a place where I could link to any of the posts I have made about these books. I also will put together a list of the books that have been recommended to me that I plan to read.

You may also notice that there is a blue space in the top header. I have some images that I need to update. Might be a good time to swap in some new ones. The reason for the gap is that I have made the blog content area wider. As I had blogged about earlier, the medium images from flickr didn’t quite fit. Now they do.

The new F150 Tonka

I have also found a really cool plugin called the Flickr Photo Album for WordPress. It is very cool. It does three things. First, there is a widget on the right sidebar that shows the last 8 flickr images I have posted. Second, it allows me to select a flickr image to insert (I did this with the Tonka Truck) without needing to goto flickr and get the url for the image. Slick. The third thing brings us to the menu changes. I have changed what I have up there, and there is a new tab called flickr. Clicking on that brings you to a page, still in the blog template that shows pictures from flickr. You have access to all the albums there. You can even initiate the flickr slideshow, which is a nice touch.

I don’t think I broke anything, but you never know…

Another Book!

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David DuChemin now has a book on pre-order at Amazon. It is going to be called “Within the Frame, A Journey in Photographic Vision”. I am starting to get a list of books I want to read going, and this will definitely go on that list. In his post about the book, he mentions that he still doesn’t have the pictures. This is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. One, I would be scared to have a book promised with no pictures. But that is one of the things that sets the amateurs apart from the pros, they can produce great pictures on demand. The second is that he appears to have the writing for the book mostly solidified. This isn’t a “picture book”, or a “how to get this shot” book. This should be a window into Davids vision.

I have been following his blog for a while now, and have tried to understand what it means to have a vision for what you want to convey in a picture, and how he does this. I still feel like I come up short in understanding this, especially when I try to reflect on what I want to say with my pictures. I hope this book will help sort more of that out. My only wish is that it was available now, instead of the spring.

2 Terrabytes of Backup Goodness. Maybe.

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It doesn’t do much good to have any amount of backup if you can’t use it. Right now, the NAS, where I intended to put them appears dead. Not sure what happened. I powered down, put the new drives in, powered up with the newest Ubuntu server disk, and it dies on the install. Now it won’t start up at all. I get the Ubuntu graphic, then a blinking cursor. I am going to have to pull everything out, and put back pieces until it starts up. Just what I wanted to do.

WordPress Code Plugin

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If you look at the tutorial I put up, you can see that the code snippets are syntax highlighted. Most of the java classes are initially hidden, but when you press the arrow to the right, the code slides down. Very cool. I found this WordPress plugin called WP-CodeBox. It works pretty slick.

One thing that I wasn’t completely happy with, was that there was no “name” to the code. The header for the top just looked like this:

code here

What I wanted was something like this:

code here

It took a bit of sorting through the code, but I found the section that parsed the parameters, and added a “name” parameter. Now I could add whatever text to the header I wanted, and have the name of the code stand out.

Get your new McNally

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Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe 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

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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

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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:

South Dakota Panorama

New Flash and Drives

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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…

Happy Thanksgiving

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As a Canadian living in Minneapolis, I get to have two Thanksgivings. Two celebrations, and twice the food. I seem to let both of them sneak up on me now. I never seem to know when either of them are. I miss Canadian Thanksgiving because no one in the US other than Canadians think that there could possibly be a day in October when you could celebrate thanksgiving. I miss the US version because as a contractor, I don’t have all the holidays marked out on my calendar (though I should as the office is closed), and it seems way too close to Christmas. I am not the only one who thinks so. Still, I am gratefull for the screaming, whining, crying, stomping and fussing my two little girls do, because it is all part of the package that comes with the hugs, the kisses, the snuggling, the walks holding my hand, the night time stories, and the hilarious things they say. I am thankfull for the two little girls I love very much.