Tucker; in mid-jump, Flickr, Wayback Machine, Commodores and Modern ASCII Art

Another picture and playing around with the camera some more, Flickr

Another nice action shot taken with the Canon A570 IS. Continually impressed with the 570's features, quality, and quality of the pics.

Lots of interesting little things with the camer along with the bigger features - I discovered yesterday that when you're looking at previews if you tilt the camera is automatically rotates the images on the screen to keep it horizontal, kinda like the Iphone.

This pic is hosted on Flickr, and was posted to this blog using the integrated blogger poster. Works nicely. I've been a member of Flickr for quite sometime but never got around to using it much - there's so many photo hosting sites and places to set up photo albums...

Anyway, I recently got back into using it. Very nice; nice choice of uploaders, the ability to organize your photos via a JAVA drag and drop applet, and the EXIF info from your pics are read by the site and posted (if you want it to be). And you can make photos private if you wish, important sometimes. Also, lots of photos from the Jefferson County area by others.

Will our websites be archived for eternity?

I've often wondered and pondered if the stuff we write in blogs, the websites we make, and other things on the Internet are REALLY going to be archived forever, or such? Not just for a few years, or five or ten years, but a long time.

Sure, there's a lot of things that you maybe don't want being available "forever" or even for a long period of time (and sometimes for no period of time).


But what about that genealogy website you joined and painstakingly added your entire family to - will it be available to distant relatives a hundred years down the line? Will your artwork you posted on your website? Or your photos? Or a posting on a forum website for dog ownership that is what you consider to be the best philosophical statement you've ever made, something so deep you'll never be able to do better?

I think in the far future (if the human race is still around and still civilized) much information will still be available from our time period, though probably very patchy. Sites like the Wayback Machine are massive archives of websites, websites of many descriptions and various types. And not just the newest stuff but ranging over long time periods (at least "long" in the computer world). Google and other sites too (and if you listen to some people even your Google searches and the e-mail you deleted from Gmail are saved somewhere).

I think some data will be lost, some will never be archived in the first place, others will be archived but those archives will not themselves be stored permanently.

Commodores, ASCII Art

Maybe an occasional reader to this blog will remember the "good ol' days" of the Commodore and the burgeoning of the home computer, back in the 80's. I started out with the Commodore Vic-20, 5 whole KB of RAM! Wow. I had a tape drive, an 8k memory expansion (I even learned to do "high res" graphics), and some other accessories. I graduated to the Commodore 64, wore one out and bought another, then the Commodore 128 and wore at least one of those out too. I even started setting up businesses with Commodores and writing my own programs for myself and businesses. In fact, some people were still using databases and software I set up well into the mid-90's (hard to believe).

Hey, they were the thing at that time, along with TI-99's, Atari's, etc. But Commodore was the most popular, I believe.

At one time, even though bit-mapped graphics were readily available on these machines, ASCII art got kinda popular. Making pictures from the text on your keyboard. BBS's used it for their opening screens, etc (you don't remember BBS's? No, they were the things we used before the Internet started being used by individuals. I even wrote my own software and ran one for a bit - didn't everyone at that time?)

Here's a website that kinda brings that all back (though people never stopped using ASCII art on their computers) - Photo2text. Upload a pic and their computer automatically creates an ASCII text picture.

Here's an example - My photo. Kinda nice, you can also do it all in 1's and 0's, shaded text, etc.

The difference between the Days of Commodore and now is that the computer does it itself, back in the day you had to painstakingly create your ASCII art by hand.

Foot bridge over the Black River, messing with the camera, using Gmail & Inbox.com as spam filter

Footbridge over the Black River.

I wanted to check out the foot bridge over the Black River that was put into place to watch the kayaking competitions and such, but it was all closed off. It looks like it goes over one of the channels to the power dam, and overlooks the Black River on the other side. Kinda looks a bit discolored - possibly this bridge is "second-hand"?

BTW, at the end of the small park off Eastern Boulevard has a small display sign and large piece of equipment from the power dam (my father is leaning over it in the pic), the sign has the history of the building of the power plant with pics. Interesting.

Playing around with the camera a bit more.

Continuing to be impressed with this Canon A570 IS camera. I keep finding new options, settings, and many more manual settings to play around with. Including some pretty incredible stuff.

I've been playing with the continuous mode, which lets the camera recycle even faster. Below is a few shots in a series (thumbnailed of course); unlike my Olympus' "burst mode" this camera can take the continuous shots in full rez:

Also, the video setting is available in 640X480 and modes lesser then that and 30fps or 15fps. Very very nice. Small demo.

Using Gmail and other free mail services' spam filtering for your Pop/Imap e-Mail program.

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame; for you computer nuts you'll know who he is.

There was an interesting article in one of his recent newsletters about using free e-mail services as spam filters.

Take for example Gmail (which is what his article was referring to). Gmail has some pretty good spam filtering, and it also can access external accounts e-mail through pop. And, of course, you can access Gmail via pop.

So why not use Gmail as a spam filtering service by having it get your mail from your pop accounts, spam-wash it, and then access Gmail from your e-mail program instead of your regular pop e-mail?

I've been doing the same for months now, but using Inbox.com and it works great (if I'd only thought of letting others know about it, duh).

There's a few advantages to using Inbox.com instead of Gmail (like privacy issues, Gmail's lack of more advanced spam options, and Inbox.com allows you to access the spam folder if you like, versus Gmail which doesn't) and a few disadvantages, but for the most part the two services are somewhat similar and work well for this purpose.

I just set this system up for my wife using Gmail. Her e-mail address had been in use for many years and has gathered a tremendous amount of spam. Gmail is chugging along quite nicely and filtering 99.9% of it by itself, with few false positives (which will decrease as time goes by).

Olmstead Trail re-visit

Olmstead Trail Re-Visit

I decided to try out the Olmstead Trail once again (see my NNY Trails page about it here, with some more pics). I hadn't been on it for quite awhile, and I had heard that it was expanded. The trail, the last time I rode on it, was a pretty good trail - hills, some rocky parts, etc., and I'd explored all the trails branching out from it, including the ones that go around the perimeter of the zoo. I'd found the ruins of the original Public Square fountain that they were talking about restoring or something, and had even scared some Asian people who were out for a walk (the older lady actually picked the kid up and held onto him as I rode by). Actually, I'd been riding toward them so I didn't scare them so much as they were apparently scared of me in general, even though I gave them a wide berth as I passed. Oh well.

So my wife and sister and nieces were participating in a benefit to help an Alzheimer's walk by renting space at the benefit for selling their crafts. As we'd done the year before we loaded the craft stuff as well as my bike into Jenny's Pontiac Aztek Rally Edition (truly a versatile vehicle, as the ads used to mention before they discontinued this vehicle).

After I helped them set up the crafts and stuff, I headed out on some of the black-topped trails to warm-up, then down onto the Olmstead Trail.

It was about the same and, once again, I scared the crap out of someone. A lady was walking along, I could just barely see her through a curve and figured if I yelled she might not hear me so I waited until I got a bit closer. Unfortunately I got a little TOO close before I yelled a hearty "Hello!". She heard the bike; which to her possibly sounded like a stealthy approach by an attacker, at the same time I yelled. She jumped straight off the ground, did a little turn in mid-air, half-raising her hands in a purely instinctual-looking quasi-karate/quasi-defensive move. Oops, I should have yelled earlier. I apologized and she said she never saw anyone out there and hadn't expected me. I went on my way, feeling a bit bad but still stifling a bit of a laugh - I couldn't help it.

Finally I reached the place where the trail had previously stopped. It now continued on a single track sort of thing, lots of rocks and logs to jump and go over. Even a few places where someone made some nice mountain biking-style things to ride across. I continued on and it got challenging with hills, more stone and logs, and trees so close together that the handlebars of the bike barely fit between them.

In other words - a mountain biker's favorite riding. I'd say it was one of the best mountain biking trails in the area that I had ridden on.

I continued for what seemed like miles. I knew I didn't want to spend all evening and wanted to get back to the benefit in a reasonable time, but each trail leading back in the direction I wanted to go lead out onto the golf course.

Finally, I had spent a lot of time and had traveled down the hill a way, being able to see the ski area on Dry Hill, and getting further and further away. Some of the branching trails were badly maintained.

My bottles of water had even run out, I always bring enough water! Heading back would take even longer, going up the sometimes steep rough hills. And the trees were close together, cutting any bit of wind and making the trail hot as hell. I was soaked in sweat and getting kind worn out as I had biked full-speed through the whole thing to this point.

Jeez - I'm not actually 25 anymore - I realized. High time to head back.

So I took the next branching trail that lead toward where I wanted to go (popping out of the woods and onto the edge of the golf course I could see the water tower, quite a ways in the distance).

Unfortunately there were some older gents standing by and leaning against their gold carts, swinging their clubs around distractedly, and discussing something that sounded suspiciously like Big Business talk. Wow, even this cliche didn't impress me at the time.

They stared as I tried to give them lots of space, knowing I probably wasn't exactly supposed to be there. But, well, they weren't exactly going to catch me on their golf carts and I wasn't doing anything destructive.

I watched for flying balls, golf carts, trotting caddies, and the like. I made my way as quickly and unobtrusively as possible toward the treeline.

At the treeline I found a trail through it, thinking I'd come out at the obstacle course area. Nope, another field of golf courses. I headed off again, occasional people glancing my way. But they didn't seem to be awfully upset and I was keeping well away from anyone.

At the next tree line I passed by large coolers of water, possibly set out for the golfers? I wanted some real bad, being soaked in sweat as I was and no reserve water left. But I kept going, finally getting to the next treeline and finding yet another path through it. This time I was at the obstacle course and made my way back to the 'Tek.

Anyway, great trail but if you continue on it make sure you're in for the long-haul. Sometime I'll go back and ride the whole thing and find out where the end comes out. Across from the other overlook perhaps? Something for another time.

Link for making your own 'cookware' wifi antenna

Cookware Wifi Antenna (WokFi)

These guys are getting about 5 miles out of this.

Kittens opening their eyes

Just opening their eyes.

More photos here.


















The dogs swimming.

New Camera - Canon Powershot A570 IS

Yea, it's been quite a number of year since I've gotten a new digital camera. Mine's old, positively antique, by today's standards.

But it's been a work horse and has stood up to lots and lots and LOTS of use. I usually take a number of pics every day, every single day. The Olympus D-460 Zoom, great camera but the serial connection is slow, clunky, and times-out if I use the computer for anything else when I'd downloading pics. The spring on the flash pop-up broke so I have to either hold it down if I'm tipping the camera ahead for a shot, or hold it up with one hand to use the flash. The plastic's peeling, the resolution is way behind in what is available today, and the protective piece that turns the camera on/protects/closes the lens is worn to the point where the camera barely comes on, and only after many tries and holding my hand against it.

I think I can fix this, by taking this piece off and fixing the worn track where the switch-head rides. Now that I have another camera I am going to do this - after all; it's still a fine camera that my wife paid a lot for and that we can use as a backup and additional camera.

So, I took an afternoon (that I didn't really have available to waste) and set out to buy a new camera.

After checking some manufacturer's websites and then review websites as well, I had a general idea of what I was looking for.

I checked all the local stores, some twice. Staples (no one offered to wait on me, even though I stood there looking around for someone, I'm not going to go bother to seek someone me out unless I see something I am REALLY interested in), Best Buy (a number of people offered to help, unfortunately the one camera I was looking at was so new the guy had to ask someone else every question I asked him, and they didn't really know the answers either), Kmart (only a few models, the lady asked me if I needed help but I didn't have any questions on them), Sears ( Sears bites in general but what the hell. Even fewer models, no specs shown under them, some with no prices! What the hell? Someone did offer help though.), Target (many models missing, salesperson wandered by, looked at me), Walmart in Watertown (many models, a few not working, didn't expect any help from salespeople, they were taking one piece of equipment away for fingerprints, huh?), and Super-Walmart near Fort Drum (also didn't expect help, many models).

After stopping at various free WIFI spots along my route, checking reviews and features against what I saw in the stores, (as well as prices) I headed back home, did some more research, made another trip to Walmart in Watertown (calculating fuel usage in my head as well as I could) with the idea of buying a Fujifilm S5700.

There were some downsides to this particular camera. One of which was the large size of it and another was the lack of an integrated automatic lens cover (which isn't practical on something with such a large optical zoom).

Both of these were minuses to me, pretty big ones. I'm always tugging my camera out or somewhere. The extra size and weight as well as having to take the lens cover off (or leaving it off and possibly scratching the lens) was a downside, for sure. I'd need a large case to carry it, it would be clumsier and awkard to take along, and hell - it was bigger then my digital camcorder!

But the camera was beautiful. It looked like a professional piece of equipment, felt like it too. And it looked like the kind of thing you could walk into any place and anyone would allow you to take photos of whatever you liked. The sort of thing that customers who needed photos taken would take you serious with.

And it had that 10X optical zoom, real nice.

But ultimately another camera won out.

The Canon Powershot A570 IS. This had everything the Fujifilm had (except the 10x optical zoom) and much more. I fell in love with it right away (though I knew I'd always have pangs of regret for my previous amore).

It was very similar to my Canon ZR500 digital Camcorder in the basic use of it - a fully automatic mode where the camera takes care of settings according to visual conditions, yet with the ability to tweak those to presets, and then the fully manual settings for all aspects of the camera.

I went ahead and bought it, plus 2 gig of memory (they give you a measly 16 meg chip for starting out).

The camera comes with a wrist strap, lots of manuals and software, a USB cable, plus a video cable (for plugging into a TV for showing the pics - a must for me), and even alkaline batteries. This only takes two AA's, where my old one took four - lots more backup in the battery department now. One of the disadvantages of some of the cameras I looked at were proprietary batteries.

It also has full 30 fps or 15 fps video with sound, audio memos on the photos, etc.

But the biggest features of interest to me were the image stabilization and the quality of the photos, the high ISO settings and the ability to change any setting manually if needed, while not having to mess with it if I did not want to.

I've played with a lot of people's cameras but this by far has the best pictures for it's price (hell, even for much more pricier cameras I've tried). The high ISO settings are great, as you can see from this picture of Tucker. Wow.

The 4 times optical zoom works well, and pauses right before it switches to the digital zoom (a nice feature, though some might want it more fluid - I think there is a setting for adjusting this to 'no delay').

It is 7.1 megapixel, nice for larger prints. It also has an automatic red-eye reduction (see how well it works in this pic), large LCD plus an optical viewfinder. I think I can take about 900 pictures with this per mem card.

It also has an amazing face recognition mode. It regognizes where the eyes and face of a person is, or even animals and other things, and shows a box on the screen, focusing in on it. Wow, the technology behind this is mind-blowing. It can, of course, like everything else on the camera, be turned off.

I need to take some time to learn all the features, but so far it seems quite nice and a good choice for $229.

Unzoomed, zoomed:





















Some specs (from the Canon website):

Maximum Aperture	f/2.6 (W) - f/5.5 (T)
Shutter Speed	15-1/2000 sec. (settable in Tv and M)

ISO Sensitivity
Auto, High ISO Auto, ISO 80/100/200/400/800/1600 (Standard Output Sensitivity. Recommended Exposure Index)

Light Metering Method	Evaluative*, Center-weighted average, Spot** * Control to incorporate facial brightness in Face Detection AF ** Metering frame is fixed to the center
Exposure Control Method	Program AE, Manual
Exposure Compensation	+/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments

White Balance
White Balance Control	Auto, Preset (Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Underwater), Custom

Flash
Built-in Flash	Auto, Auto w/ Red-eye Reduction, Flash On, Flash On w/ Red-eye Reduction, Flash Off
Flash Range	Normal: 1.5-11 ft./45cm-3.5m (W), 1.5-7.2 ft./45cm-2.2m (T) Macro: 1.0-1.5 ft./30-45cm (W/T) (when sensitivity is set to ISO Auto)
Recycling Time	10 sec. or less (battery voltage=3.0V)
Flash Exposure Compensation	+/-2 stops in 1/3-stop increments

Shooting Specifications
Shooting Modes	Auto; Creative: P, Av, Tv, M; Image: Portrait, Landscape, Special Scene (Night Scene, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Aquarium, Underwater), Indoor, Kids & Pets, Night Snapshot, Stitch Assist, Movie
Self-Timer	Activates shutter after an approx. 2-sec./10-sec. delay, Custom
Wireless Control	N/A
Continuous Shooting	Approx. 1.7 fps

Image Storage
Storage Media	SD Memory Card, SDHC Memory Card, MultiMediaCard
File Format	Design rule for camera file system, DPOF Version 1.1
JPEG Compression Mode	Still Image: Exif 2.2 (JPEG) Movie: AVI (Image: Motion JPEG; Audio: WAVE (Monaural))
Number of Recording Pixels	Still Image: 640 x 480 (Small), 1,600 x 1,200 (Medium 3), 2,048 x 1,536 (Medium 2), 2,592 x 1,944 (Medium 1), 3,072 x 2,304 (Large), 3,072 x 1,728 (Widescreen) Movie: 640 x 480 / 320 x 240 (30 fps/15 fps) available up to 4GB or 60 minutes, 320 x 240 (1 min. at 60 fps), 160 x 120 (3 min. at 15 fps)

Playback Specifications
Playback Modes File	Still Image: Single, Magnification (approx. 2x-10x), Jump, Auto Rotate, Rotate, Resume, Histogram, Index (9 thumbnails), Sound Memos, Auto Play, Red-eye Correction Movie: Normal Playback, Special Playback

Erasing Specifications
Erase Modes	Still Image: single image, all images Movie: part of movie, all of movie

Interfaces
Computer Interface	USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (mini-B jack)
Video Out	NTSC/PAL
Audio Out	Monaural
Other	Memory card slot; direct connection to Canon CP and SELPHY Compact Photo Printers, PIXMA Photo Printers and PictBridge-compatible printers via camera's USB 2.0 Hi-Speed cable

Power Supply
Power Source	1. AA-size Alkaline Battery (x2) 2. Rechargeable AA-size NiMH Battery (x2) 3. AC Adapter Kit ACK800
Shooting Capacity	Still Image: approx. 120 shots (AA-size Alkaline Battery), approx. 400 shots (AA-size NiMH Battery)*
Playback Time	Approx. 540 min. (AA-size Alkaline Battery), approx. 660 min. (AA-size NiMH Battery)* * LCD screen on. The above figures comply with CIPA testing standards and apply when fully-charged batteries are used.

Physical Specifications
Operating Temperature	32-104°F/0-40°C
Operating Humidity	10-90%
Dimensions (W x H x D)	3.52 x 2.53 x 1.69 in. / 89.5 x 64.3 x 42.8mm
Weight	Approx. 6.17 oz. / 175g (camera body only)

Random photo of Tucker

Tucker and B'ellana. He's getting big.






Especially compared to this shot when we first got him.

To blog or not to blog

Sometimes you just got nottin' to say...

Goodyear Blimp visit to Watertown International Airport 9/1/07

For the first time in over 20 years the Goodyear Blimp was back in Watertown. I made a couple trips over to the Watertown airport before it finally made it. There were a fair number of people there, watching and waiting for it to land.

The blimp had to circle for a bit until the ground crew got their mooring tower set up.














Here you can see one of the support vehicles, which had the mooring tower disassembled as well as tools and even a small workshop in the vehicle.

In these photos you can see the blimp coming in for a landing and then the ground crew grabbing the sides of the gondola and the lines. Note the guy at the top of the mooring tower.

You can see larger photos here

New kittens

A while back we had been watching a movie one night, when we finished watching it and turned off the TV we heard a cat meowing.

Thinking one of our cats had gotten outside I opened the door and went out. At the end of the deck was a cat, but not one of ours. She looked to be part calico, part tiger - very unusual markings.

She meowed, and kept a distance from me but kept rubbing against the edge of the deck and looking pretty friendly. After some coaxing I finally was able to get her to come over to me.

She was such a nice, friendly and clean cat we couldn't just leave her out there. We brought her food and water, and moist food. All of which she ate while dividing her time between the food and rubbing against us.

Well, we let her come inside, and she seemed to fit in quite well. She was a very affectionate cat, and even slept with us and sat on my lap the first morning she was there.

But her belly seemed kinda round, I discounted it at first - that she might be pregnant. But her belly kept growing and growing until we couldn't say "she's getting fat!" any more.

So we resigned ourselves to the fact that we'd have a bunch of kittens to find homes for.

She kept getting larger, and larger, and larger. We put together a nice bed in a box for her but she kept exploring every nook and cranny of the house. One place she checked out a couple times was the corner of our home-office, in a space behind a filing cabinet and paper shredder and behind Jenny's computer. I told Jenny that the mother cat (who we named Janeway - all our pets are named after Star Trek characters) would likely just have them where she felt like having them, no matter how nice we made a place for her to do so.

Janeway kept getting bigger and we kept anticipating the birth, and then we started getting a bit worried. She looked like she was going to have about ten kittens, and I couldn't remember how big our cats in the barn used to get. Was her size normal? Was there something wrong? Or were they just going to come out half-grown? ;)

She stayed; for the most part, in our master bedroom's bathroom stretched out on the cool tiles. One night I woke up and checked on her, but she wasn't there. I looked around the house, not finding her anywhere.

Finally I looked in the space behind Jenny's computer. Sure enough, that's where she had had two of her kittens. There was blood and other things there, unmentionable things.

So at 3 in the morning we carefully transferred her and her kittens to the box we had set up, took it into the bathroom near our bedroom, and I proceeded to clean some things out and set up the steam cleaner.

After spending quite a bit of time hand-scrubbing the blood and such, and then using the hand attachment on the steam cleaner (the whole thing wouldn't fit in there) I had the blood cleaned up.

We went back to bed, worrying a bit as she seemed to have stopped her contractions and she obviously had a few (or more) to pop out yet.

I think we both checked on her a few times but she still hadn't had any more.

But the next morning she'd had two more and that seemed to be it. Two little orange and whites and two little half-calico's/half-whites. The latter being females, and the former being males.

Over the next few days she managed to carry the lot of them off into various places around the house a couple times. I also intercepted her in the process of carrying the babies quite a number of times. But finally she seems to have given up and is leaving them where they are.

Random Bits & Bytes

Yea, yea, real original name. But try finding a title for a blog on Blogger - they're all taken!

Anyway, I needed a place to integrate my other blogs that I only occasionally add to as well as a place to post random or occasional pics and info, etc. So here we are!