Saying goodbye to your best friend.

Posted on by

So, this is a post from Aug 19, 2005. I had to repost it, because I didn’t import the old blog. It is not related to photography or computers, but on the anniversary of Busters passing, I decided to go find it from the database. I wrote this when he left for Cleveland.

How long have you known your best friend. I suppose some poeple don’t even have a best friend, but I do. I have know him for 12 years. That is a long time. I hardly know anyone other than family that I have seen on a regular basis for that long, other than my best friend. I know that he has been better to me than I have been to him. I have tried though. He has never demanded anything. I have often turned my back on him, but I always came back. He was always accepting. That is why it is so hard this time.
Continue reading →

Where’s the Aperture Love

Posted on by

Several of the blogs and books I see on photography talk about Photoshop (full, not Elements, but that’s another post) and Lightroom. Not Aperture. I realize that Aperture only runs on a Mac, and Lightroom runs on both Windows and Macs, but information on the web is scarce. I tried to come up with a list. This is all I have.

Thats it. Really? All of those sites have links to each other, and no where else I can find. What gives? Where is the info on settings for best sharpening results, or how to get different looks out of your pictures. I have read articles on using Lightroom for this recently, but I have trouble transferring the knowledge over. Anyone know other resources?

Support your local camera.

Posted on by

I have a tripod. I bought a Slik Sprint Pro a while back. It was a tough decision. I didn’t have the money for carbon, so I was pretty much left with, kinda light, but not the most stable, or kinda heavy, and quite stable. I went for the kinda light option. I figured that if I got something too heavy, I wouldn’t take it anywhere. What good would that be?
Continue reading →

Want to take more pictures for cheap?

Posted on by

I was just about to order a couple of SanDisk Extreme II 2gig cards for about $20 a piece. Then I saw that SanDisk has a rebate going until the end of June. Different vendors have different rebates, but through Adorama, you can get a 4gig Extreme III for $19.95 after a $30 rebate. Their rebate gets you a Visa gift card you can use anywhere. If you want, Adorama will add 10% if you want an Adorama gift certificate. Shipping is free too. Buy two, and you get a $70 rebate total. Yikes. Sign me up.

Check your backups

Posted on by

In my backup strategy, I mentioned, like Scott, I had a small 2.5 inch drive that I could use to keep a backup of my data when on the road. I don’t use it much. I don’t travel often, and I am not allowed to use it at work.

So, with a trip coming up in July, I thought I would test it out. From a short trip to Rochester MN last weekend, I had some images on my laptop. (I hadn’t deleted the cards before getting the images to the main computer though) I copied the masters to the portable, then imported them into Aperture from the external drive. Oops. Several garbled images. Reformated the drive and I tried again. Same thing, different images. Dead drive, or housing. Guess I am going shopping.

I need more space.

Posted on by

So after I talked about my backup strategy, I went and started my command to sync my pictures. I went to checkup on it, and it was stuck. I checked, and I was out of space. Oh oh. I stopped the sync. Now what? Well, the drives are sporting LVM2, and I had extra space available, so I just added some.

First add some more space to the volume:
# lvextend -L +1G /dev/vgnas/pictures

Then tell ext3 about the extra space.
# resize2fs /dev/vgnas/pictures

Thats it. I did it live, without unmounting. I then went back to my rsync command, and it continued right where it left off. Sometimes I really like linux.

Backup Strategy

Posted on by

Scott Kelby just posted his backup strategy, and I thought I would follow up with mine.

The thing that is really interresting about Scott and my solutions, is that there are a lot of similarities. But mine cost a lot less.

His first step is to save on location to an Epson P-500 (link). That would be cool. I have looked at those wistfully before. I don’t have anything comparable. I don’t travel as much as he does, so I just have to put in my empty card and go from there.
Continue reading →

I had spam.

Posted on by

So far, there has been nothing but spam in the comments field. Not that I am expecting hundreds of people to all of a sudden start reading my blog, but I am surprised how fast the spammers picked it up. Especially since I had comments turned off on my last site for over a year. I see one to three a day right now. Actually, I thought WordPress had some type of captcha thing going. Have to check if that is turned on or not.

The Trees are Blooming

Posted on by

There are some trees along the Minnehaha Parkway bike path that bloom and then lose their flowers for just a couple of days each year. I was hoping to get them this year. Friday I rode my bike to work, and took my camera with me. It just so happened that that was the day! I wasn’t super happy with any of them in the end, but here is one:
DSC_0990