New Computer

New Computer

I haven't actually bought a new, non-laptop computer in many years.  

I usually make my computers out of a combination of parts I have, parts from current computers, and new parts.

But this time I wanted to just go out and buy one; a damn good one, and not screw around with it very much.


Of course, as things go - especially in the computer and Windows world - there's still a lot of screwing around to do.  At least for a perfectionist and power user like I.

The computer I found is an HP.  A good company, and pretty much always has been.  They sell a good range of computers falling under any price and level of features that you want to pay for.

I didn't want any crappy Gateway's or Dell's, no factory-built jobbers (I'd just build it myself), no refurbs, no cheapos (like eMachines - though they're a perfectly fine computer).



I perused online, then headed out to the great megacity of Watertown.  After trying to work through the semi-knowledge some of the guys at various computer stores have about the specific computers they sell (though the guy in Best Buy that I talked to knew a lot about computers and hardware/software - he wasn't familiar with any of the computers enough to tell me their specs without looking on the side of the box; which is of negligible help and that I could do myself).  I found a couple good ones at Best Buy, comparable in price and features to what I found online. I wrote the models down and headed home to look up the exact specs, and compare prices.


Only a few days later I'd settled on this one articular computer over all the others.  Best Buy had the best price for it too, surprisingly.


I also had to update my multiple USB 1.1 distribution boxes to 2.0.  And I threw in a new power strip while I was at it.


The little cutie who helped me out the second time around didn't maybe know that much about the computers but she was very very helpful and happy to do so.

That is; once I stopped staring at all of her fascinating piercings - and sure; I may have wondered a few times where else she may have had piercings...  But for the most part I kept my mind on the computers.

And yea - maybe at the end of it all she may have had a hard time actually getting the money out of my hands (a la the typical sitcom joke).  After all, I'm a cheap bastard and I was paying cash - nothing like seeing that much money leave my fingertips after holding and cuddling it lovingly in my sweaty, shaking hands.  Heh heh.

Better to give it to Best Buy and get something out of it rather then having Uncle Bush and his cronies get their greedy oil-stained mitts on it.



Anyway, it is 2.4 Ghz, 4 gig of RAM, dual-core, real Intel, Nvidia card with separate memory (if you want to do graphics applications, video editing, or heavy duty games make sure your video card isn't sharing mem with the computer - blah), Dolby Surround Sound card, lots of Firewire and USB and audio (front and back) and digital video ports, SATA drives (the specs mention it's IDE - strange), DVD writer with Lightscribe, lots of ports, expansion front and back, super quiet (compared to the relatively high decibels of my 'industrial fanned' bastard computer - a good computer and fairly fast and resource-filled but a bit slow when doing some of the work I've been doing), etc etc etc.  I won't bore you with any more specs.  


Suffice to say it's a pretty nice medium-range computer.


The hardest parts are 1) installing/copying stuff over from my old computer and backups and 2) figuring out which operating system I want to use.


The latter was the hardest.


On the one hand XP is well-established and frankly, I'm extremely familiar with it. It runs everything I want it to run.  But XP can't usually take advantage of even 4 gigs of RAM (this particular system combined with XP only uses 3.12 Gig of the available 4), and the availability of drivers can be extremely problematic; to say the least.  Sometimes a particular XP driver can't even be found for a newer system, or if it can it's severely out of date.  Or doesn't support all of the features.  

A good tip for finding drivers is to look at the manufacturer's website for other countries where XP hasn't been pushed out.



On the other hand Vista has come a long way with SP1 and the tweaks people have come up with.  It's modern, and does have some nice features.  And it o course takes advantage of newer software and hardware.  Plus the drivers are already there and installed.  Downsides - it's can still be annoying, lagged, and questionable.  It's big, bloated (like all Windows software).  And a few programs here and there won't run, older stuff.



I would either have to A) re-install a new OS and find sometimes-nearly-impossible-to-find drivers to work with it, THEN re-install all my stuff or B) optimize and hack Vista to make it work the way I want to.


I went back and forth for a few days.  As I knew would happen ; finding drivers for this brand new system running XP was hard-to-impossible for some of the devices.  I never did find one for the network card or SM Bus Controller.


At some point you have to re-evaluate things and how much time is going to be invovled and, indeed, whether you can do something and still have a few strands of hair left afterward (and I can't spare any).


I use Vista occasionally, for myself as well as customers; enough to know it annoys me.  But never have I used it exclusively and for long periods of time.


Despite previous efforts to force myself to use it and tweak it and learn everything about it I never could stomach it long enough.


This time (through what I believe is an extreme force of will ;) I sat down and started seriously using it (without the thought at the back of my mind that I really was going to go back to XP at some point).


As I said - SP1 has made it much better.  Combining a few simple things like turning off UAC, Indexing, and various other miscellanea makes living with it much easier.  Not to mention faster.  Turning off the Aero theme is even better, even though this computer ran very fast with everything mentioned above turned on.  I in fact turned off themes completely, not just switched to the classic theme.


I uninstalled and/or disabled a number of other things including a bunch of media desktop stuff, media sharing, little tray icons for this and that that manufacturers install, dumped Norton (actually this was the very first thing I did), put on my own anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software.  And did a little registry hacking.



I continued (and continue) to dive into optimizing the system, getting rid of things that aren't needed (like the many services).


Now the Vista system is (mind-blowingly surprising to me) very fast and compares very favorably to the speeds of Windows XP.  Things blaze, the graphics are fast and smooth (Flight Simulator 2004 is beautiful, gorgeous and realistic - in fact I find myself getting motion sick while flying occasionally).


It came with an HP keyboard and mouse (optical, but slightly cheap-feeling - the Logitech I've had for years is discolored from many years of finger-rubbing and button-clicking but it's solid and I can easily solder on new button switches when I [inevitably] wear one out once a year).  


I'm not a big fan of multimedia keyboards (nor wireless keyboards and mice - though they are great for presentations).  I tend to not use them, and people in general tend to not use the extra buttons after the initial fun of having them wears off.  But I find myself actually using some of the functions on this one. 

So far this has been a good computer and I've put it through it's paces.  We'll see how it goes.

 

Finger Lakes Vacation Trip

We've been throwing around a few ideas vacation-wise for quite awhile.  I haven't, personally, went on a 'vacation' since our honeymoon a few years ago, and neither has Jenny (though she's taken some pretty nice biz trips).  

We've taken weekends, sure.  And a day or two here and there, or maybe a few days to relax at home.  But nothing longer. 

 

So we decided to do a camping trip to the Finger Lakes region.  The "Land of Gorges" I think is the what they call that area, or some such.  The Finger Lakes were created by glaciers that gouged out the large lakes during the Ice Age and.  The area where we are going, around Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake, certainly have a number of parks and areas with popular waterfalls and gorges.  One is higher then Niagara Falls, even.  And we haven't been camping in many years.  It's also "Wine Country" but that particular attraction isn't something we're interested in.

The last time we went camping was a large get-together for a car rally (for the versatile and much-maligned Pontiac Aztek - we use the thing for everything and you can't find many SUV's that have seats that actually come out anymore.  See pic above from the rally.), and we used the Aztek's tent and air mattress.  Very comfortable, and we had a great time.  The last 'real' vacation we took was out honeymoon to Ocean City (see pic below).

This time around we'll have the dogs with us (German Shepard and Boxer) so we're using our 12x8 tent, large enough for a queen-sized air mattress with lots of room left over for our stuff and the dogs too.

And we decided that, even though the Aztek has lots of room in it, we'd get one of those rooftop carriers so we can store some supplies in there and have more room in the back for the dogs.

I found a hardshell one on a local Watertown Freecycle mailing list.  It was fine, though needed some new padding and hinge pins.  We decided maybe we'd just go ahead and get a soft one; easier to put on and take off, less trouble, etc. 

Except the later Azteks didn't come with the roofrails - which is kinda needed for the car-top carriers.  The things you slide them into are on the vehicle, sure; but not the rails themselves. 

The local dealership, Davidson's, would charge an arm and a leg for them.  Over $270 for a pair of them!  Any that come into the junkyards get snapped up at all the junkyards as soon as they come in. 

Coincidentally, on our Aztek Yahoogroup (some of the same people we all went to a rally with a few years back) a person was GIVING away an Aztek because of a blown engine.  A couple decided to drive down to Binghamton and tow it back to their place near Syracuse and part it out, for free.

So we asked for the roofrails, met them halfway, and gave them $25 for their troubles and gas.  Good deal.

Now we have the roofrails, and the softshell carrier and we're ready to go.  We set up the tent and got a new queen-size air mattress (the old one had some holes in it - too many to patch), and started gathering our stuff together for the trip.  We're really looking forward to it.

Oh, and you may notice that this entry is posted after we got back.  I know, maybe this is a bit paranoid but I'd prefer not to let anyone know we'll be gone beforehand.  Ya never know...

After getting the updated and routable maps for my GPS (and a bit of messing around to get everything to work), I'm looking forward to trying out the various routing and waypoint functions.  And having access to how far away the nearest McDonald's is, how long it will take to get there, and what time, etc. is going to make everything much smoother and easier.

  Tuesday. 

We started out fairly early, but there’s always the occasional snufa and forgotten item.  This time around I had been working on and tweaking the list of items we would need, for a few weeks time ahead of time.  I also have a list of common camping and trip items that I cross-referenced what we needed against.  And I don’t think we passed over or missed anything.

On the way down the Aztek’s stereo started going fruity, changing stations by itself.  What a headache, as we’re music people.  And I didn't want it to ruin Jenny's vacation.  I figured when we got back I'd unhook the battery for a bit, sometimes that can reset the computer in the stereo.

It wasn’t until we were most of the way down there that Jen started wondering if something was pressing against the duplicate radio controls in the rear.  That was it, I knew right away.  Earlier I had reclined the seat and climbed into the back for a water bottle.  But getting back into my seat, crawling over the dogs and the stuff - isn't exactly easy.  So we decided to wait until our next stop to check it.

The GPS had helped immensely already, there’s just no question of getting lost or finding the nearest Wegman’s or Pizza Hut with the GPS and it's search functions.  After a short time of comparing routes the GPS calculates and those from a paper map I gave up re-checking it.  Give in, trust technology blindly... ;)

We found a nice little city park in Geneva, with doggie poop bags, boat docks and accessible shores (for us to take the dogs down to), a visitor's center, and picnic tables. 

While we had our pizza I moved some things away from the duplicate radio controls in the rear.  Sure enough that was the problem.  The radio worked fine.

Back on the way to the Sampson Campground we went through the wine country; large grape fields and wineries interspersed with large crops of very healthy corn.  The growing season here seems to be later, due to the warm climate between the two lakes (Seneca and Cayuga).

Almost there – we went by a long fenced-in area, with high fence topped with barbed wire and warning signs.  This was the retired Seneca Army Depot that was right on the other side of the Sampson military base.

The fence ran for miles and at one point we saw a pure white deer.  At first we both thought it was a goat.  And then I remembered something I had read quite awhile back.

There was a retired military base in NY where a number of white deer had gotten inside the fence when the base was being built and had bred. 

I need to find more info on this, I’m assuming it’s the same one that I had read about before but, as I write this; I have no access to the Internet and can't remember if it was indeed the Seneca Army depot grounds where the white deer are.  (Later addendum - yes, it was the Seneca Army Depot that the white deer bred on - a link.  These are NOT albinos.  The 24-mile fenced-in area keep the deer in and most people don't even know they exist.  We were lucky to see them.  Apparently the base commander liked the white deer and ordered that they not be hunted so they continued to breed, while the normal brown deer were hunted and culled.  Possibly the only place in the world with that many white deer when most people don't even know there is such a thing; but now they want to develop the area which seems to be a big controversy there.  Others want to make it a wilderness area).

No WIFI at this campground – way too large to cover I guess.  In fact, there aren't many real villages nearby and not much chance of grabbing a signal anywhere.

So we got to the Sampson Campground, a former military base-turned-park.  A very nice place, lots of land, a military museum, and a very friendly (and a bit silly from too many long hours) desk clerk.  We were able to check in and set up our site earlier then the normal 3:00 PM check-in time.  Again, the GPS even led us directly to our own camp site itself (I had waypointed it before hand, using the camp’s site maps so I knew exactly where on the campground we would be).

Our site has lots of space, and in fact it was a special extra $4 for it (because of the water access).  We have access to the water, electricity, and a good big space with some elbow room away from neighbors.  We took the dogs into the water (not sure if we were supposed to be swimming as there is a beach on the grounds but we went in too). 

And now we sit and relax.  Nice day so far.

Later, we walked quite some distance down one of the abandoned roads which were originally part of the military base and which are now walking trails.  This one continued all the way to Willard, the next town (and where a large drug treatment facility is – which is an alternative to prison for qualified candidates.  Like a boot camp sort of situation I guess). 

We didn’t walk all the way to Willard as we didn't really know how far it would be (I left the GPS in the car). 

We also checked out the military museum on the Sampson campground/park.  It was closed but had a lot of interesting naval and air force equipment outside.

I also got in touch with my father back home, who is taking care of the cats, ferret, and keeping an eye on the house.  He mentioned that my uncle, Vern, had been stationed here at the Sampson Naval base when he was in World War II.

While brushing my teeth at the bathrooms/showers a guy and his son were cleaning a large lake trout.  Gigantic thing.

Last night

It was a little cool in the tent last night, I ended up letting all the rainflaps down to seal the mesh.  Why didn’t the tent instructions say you could do that?  It made a hell of a lot of difference, no draft and a bit warmer.

But the worse thing for me was some sort of tree frog or something.  What kind of evolution would make an animal want to croak, squeak, or make noise all night with little pause?  What possible reason?

I finally got smart and dug out my ear plugs.

Wednesday

I got into the showers before anyone else, since our shower area only has two men’s shower stalls.  Each section or “loop” of camping has one bathroom/shower area and there's also a main section.

We headed out early. 

We had noticed on the entire trip that there were a lot of bicyclists, they seemed to be either traveling in groups or together.  On some tour perhaps?

As we were leaving the park a couple RV trailers were also heading out and a small group of bicyclists were following right on their rear's.

As we turned onto the main road a couple of the bikes continued to stay directly behind one RV trailer.  As our speeds increased one dropped back but the other continued for perhaps a mile.  I was stunned, he was reaching speeds of nearly 50 MPH and at times wasn't even pedaling. 

Just like NASCAR cars and other racing; the bicyclist must have been using the relatively low pressure air behind the rear of the boxy RV trailer.  Amazing how fast he was traveling.  As the hill increased in pitch he went from occasionally not even pedalling to fast and even cranking, then gradually fell back and finally stopped on the side of the road, waving at the people in the truck pulling the RV trailer as it pulled away.  He was breathing fairly heavily as he waited for his companions to catch up, but not overly so.  Pretty impressive.

We headed out toward the Taughannock Falls area.  At this point we were fully trusting the GPS to give us correct and quick instructions, and we barely looked at our paper maps for the rest of the trip. 

The park and gorge and falls were absolutely amazing.  The waterfall has an upper and a lower viewing area, and is 215 feet from top to bottom.  There's also an upper falls and a lower falls. 

Some of the gorge walls are 400 feet tall or more.  We took the lower trail, which goes along the bottom of the gorge.  We could even walk out on the flat stones where, during flood season, flood waters flow.  In fact, there’s been incidents where the trail bridges and pavilion have been washed out, once right after some campers left.  But that's during spring time of course.

After doing lots of exploring and pics (and having tourists stop to pet and talk to the dogs) we then headed to Ithaca, thinking we could see some of the gorges and waterfalls right in the city of Ithaca.  We hadn’t realized how hilly it is and hard to find these falls in an unfamiliar and maze-like city and campus.

After we tried to find some of the trails to the falls according to the directions I had printed out, and not being successful (without getting out and walking around to find them), we decided to head out to the next park.  The campus and area is a maze and many of the falls are on small seemingly unmarked walking trails and shortcuts.  Again, the GPS came in very handy getting us out of the city and also finding us a McDonald’s.

At Buttermilk Falls State Park we decided against walking on the tall, steep, and hard to walk trail around the area.  With a rambunctious dog it wasn’t a good idea.  We decided to go to the other part of the park, the upper part, and walk those trails. 

But on the way another gorge area I had waypointed on the GPS showed up and we tried that.  It was very treacherous, and some of the trails precariously wound along very tall drops.  This was called Sweedler Preserve and was on DEC land.  Until a short time back the falls were almost unknown by even the natives to that area, and there wasn't even info on how far down the gorge went.  It was very scary though, especially since you're walking along a dirt trail along the very edge, and I kept thinking back to those overhangs on the Taughannock Falls Park.  On those trails they kept them far, far away from the overhanging edges.

We went on quite a section of it but turned back after a bit and went to the upper Buttermilk Falls part, went around for a drive along this park (one part has the road going through the running stream that goes into the gorge), and then we headed back. 

The trip back to the campground was uneventful.  The dogs slept most of the way.

Back at the campground the tent that the young couple who had been camping to the left of us had put up was now on the site to the right of us, and a van was at their previous prime spot.  They must not have reserved it for that day. 

The new people were a guy, his wife, and a kid.  They looked awfully friendly, too friendly in fact.  And kept looking over hopefully at us. 

I made sure I looked as uninviting as possible and they left us alone.  Some people go camping to get away (like us), and some go to meet new people and schmooze.

Many of the spots near us were vacated at this point.  That night we started a larger fire and when we came back from the bathrooms while getting ready for bed; a big RV trailer being pulled by a dually was trying to get into a space parallel across from us.  And having quite a time, eliciting lots of complaints from others.

Th wife was backing it up while the asshole husband swore at her and paced back and forth with his flashlight, trying to get her to back it in the way he wanted.  This went on for quite some time.

The campground itself has a number of security vehicles which drive around every few hours, and we saw some local cops take trips through the park at various times.

But this time, unfortunately, there was no one around.  Finally they seemed to get the trailer in the way they wanted and things settled down.

Thursday morning

I slept much better, with my earplugs in.  The tree-dwelling animals screeched both nights but this night I was smart enough to put the plugs in earlier, so I didn't hear much of anything.

As I headed to the shower, hoping I would get lucky once again and get it at least mostly to myself; the RV trailer and truck were sitting across from us, no sign of life.  Fine with me.

I made a quick fire, cooked our eggs and toast and we started packing up.  I'm pretty good at making camp fires, BTW, all it takes it a bit of logic and basic knowledge of thermodynamics to make yourself the perfect fire.

Anyway, the young couple to the left of us didn't emerge until we were just about ready to leave.  Earlier in the morning the family to the right of us had returned from where ever they had went well before I had gotten up at a leisurely 7:30.  Damn early risers - don't trust anyone who goes on vacation and gets up earlier then everyone else and is damn happy and bubbly about it.

We packed our car-top carrier and the dogs and took a quick look around for anything we'd missed, then headed down the park driveways.

On the way, I had my GPS do a search for Geocaches (I had used Garmin's Geocache section to mass-download Geocaches for the area directly to my GPS - a corporate site that actually has something that works well and efficiently - yep!) and sure enough there were four nearby. 

After a short walk down one of the old original base's roads we came to the location of the Geocache; this one called "Poppa Bear" - don't ask me why. 

After searching for a bit I was about to give up. 

Because the military and government limit the accuracy of commercial GPS's I figured I could be 15 feet off, or more on this overcast day.  Sure enough, I found the Geocache - another ammo box - in a broken concrete pipe, half covered with twigs and bark and about 15 feet from the waypoint location.

We looked briefly through all the log entries (a family had found it the previous day, in fact) and then we signed it and headed over to the military museum (didn't feel like looking for any more Geocaches at that point).

The museum is manned by veterans and is situated in the old brig building, with a few real planes and boats outside.  One side of the museum is for the Naval Base, one side for the Air Force. 

The naval side was much larger as it had been a naval base much longer, and had almost every conceivable items from everyday life on the base as well as from those who were stationed there and moved on.  There was even a real periscope, on loan from the military, that you could look through and see 360 degrees around the park from the roof of the museum.  It was quite interesting and they even had notebooks filled with names and pics of those who had been stationed there.  There didn't seem to be an index so I didn't look up my uncle.  The museum is very well done, on both sides.

Next we headed up to the Montezuma Wildlife Preserve.  This is a large wetlands preserve, with walking trails as well as a driving trail (also, the Seneca-Cayuga Canal System goes right past it).  We saw a few birds and wildlife here and there, stopping at the observation tower and walking one of the trails in addition to the driving trail.  It also had a nice visitor center with stuffed animals of all sorts that might be in the preserve, and lots of info and helpful people.

We spent quite some time there but finally felt it was time to head back.  Unfortunately the Thruway doesn't have as many entries and exits as Route 81 so we had to go all the way to Weedsport to get back on (not all that far).  

Again, the GPS made the whole thing a breeze - instead of looking through maps and missing shortcuts they were all right there.  Of course, the GPS is only as good as the maps that are loaded on it and the person using it.  

On the way from the Preserve to Weedsport we passed by and over the Erie Canal System, and one of the still-functioning locks.  A boat was making it's way toward it.  I would have liked to stop to watch but I was ready to head home without delay at this point. 

Here's more pics from our trip.

Vacations are nice, but it's just as nice to get home too.  And there's always a lot to catch up on.

My Dad's 90th Birthday, Faststone Maxview, More Stabs at HDR Creation, Fred Langa's Journey

My Dad's 90th Birthday

I was a late child - an 'accident' as my wife likes to tease me about.

While growing up, most of my friends and peers had parents the age that my sister and brother were, with grandparents the age my parents were.

It usually didn't make much of a difference either way to me, for the most part. But let's just say I didn't do things like bring home the eccentric, sometimes strange, sometimes wild girlfriends I preferred at the time.

In later years I found myself doing some extra caring for them as they got older, more and more. They were always self-sufficient but as we all know sometimes we need an extra hand when we get older.

Before my mother passed away I made every day trips to check on them, sometimes more then once a day, and help them out with whatever they needed. I sometimes took them places and made sure things went smoothly, lending a hand as much as needed. In these later years I probably saw them more then I had seen them later when I lived at home and before I moved out.

After my mother passed away I took extra care to continue being there and making sure I was available to help my dad when needed, doing the at-least-once daily visit with him and helping him with what was needed - though he's still very much self-sufficient.

Last week he celebrated his 90th birthday and last weekend we had a little BBQ/birthday party for him, organized by my wife and I and my sister. I think he enjoyed it, and below is a quick pic I took of him with his birthday cake.

As everyone who knows him says - he's in great shape for his age. And especially after working all his life in a fairly dangerous profession - farming.

Faststone Maxview

I'm always on the look-out for the fastest image display program. Something for those times when you just want to take a peek at a bunch of photos or pics, maybe do some simple rotations or contrast changes, or look at the f.stop info for that pic, or something along those lines - faster and better then the built-in XP one (which I haven't used in years) but for those times when you don't need to load a pic into something as heavy-duty as a full-blown image editor, or even a simple one.

For awhile I had switched to the commercial program ACDC, then Irfanview (crappy but fast), then XNview, and a few other minor ones.

Finally I ran across something something called VJPEG - a frameless picture/photo display program. It had some nice features; like frameless photo display and like being able to resize the displayed photo by grabbing it and bumping the edges of the screen.

But it was a bit simplistic and basic, plus if any other windows covered the displayed VJPEG windows it wouldn't show up on the task bar.

Previously I had tried out Faststone Image Viewer - very similar to XNview and earlier versions of ACDC.

It was a toss-up between Faststone and XNview but I finally settled on XNview due to a slight speed advantage.

So after messing with VJPEG I had a taste for something like it, something to replace the very nice but still feature-heavy XNview.

I came back to the Faststone site and found something I hadn't previously tried, even though it was right before my eyes when I tried the Faststone Image Viewer - something called Faststone Maxview.

A quick download and I had it plugged into my system. Very shortly I had changed my associations for graphics to this one.

It was fast, quick to display, and frameless until you bump the top. You could resize it and pick various options for displaying part of all of a pic.

Maxview also showed up in the taskbar, allowed multiple instances and was moveable, and when you bumped the top you got a menu with some more options; like a lossless rotate, brightness control, sharpness, and a bunch of other basic options. Right-clicking brings up more, including the ability to send/edit the photo in any number of external programs. Bumping the bottom of the displayed pic gives you zooming, smoothing, SAVE AS (for converting to other formats), slideshow, next or previous pic, etc as well as an overview window (for when you have it zoomed).

Fullscreen mode works beautifully, with an additionally option of giving your camera/photo properties when you bump the right side of the screen.

The program also lets you open your graphic or pic in the more fully-featured Faststone Image Viewer using the Edit With External Programs Options (which you can also additionally set up to allow a photo to be sent to Adobe Photoshop or any other programs, and any number of them).

Many, many other nice options I haven't mentioned here. A definite must-see if you need something like this.

More Stabs at HDR Creation

If you've read my previous blog entries and/or are into photography you probably have heard of HDR - High Dynamic Range photos. It's a way to fit more picture information into one photo, a way for a photo to display more then a camera will normally capture; by using multiple shots with various contrasts.

Here's my latest creation (see above pic), the best of a few. Not bad, getting there. Click to see a larger version.

I've also been experimenting with the long exposure settings on my Canon Powershot A570 IS. Great camera, see previous blog entries. I'm continually impressed with the many features this camera has, rivaling much more expensive ones yet with automatic modes easy enough for the casual photographer to use.

The below photo was done the same way as the above. It's okay, not great when talking about HDR's. But what's interesting to me and my continually efforts in improving my photography skills is that this was done in near-darkness. The bright spot is the moon, not the sun. Notice the illuminated clouds near the moon. Love the long exposures. Good stuff.

Fred Langa's Journey

If you're a 'computer person' then you probably know Fred's name. He published the Langalist for years until he retired (it's still running, under new management) and has his post-list blog. He sure knew/knows his stuff.

Mr. Langa had decided to take a long motorcycle trip with his wife after he retired, and photo blog (via a motorcycle enthusiast's site) the whole thing as he made the trip.

But circumstances changed and he had to make the journey by himself. His roadtrip went from a simple vacation to an experience of acceptance of his situation.

And, of course, a great number of incredible pictures and personal experiences. Take some time and check it out.

I wish Mr. Langa very well.

New Quote System For My Blog

Nothing major - just tweaked my quote system for the blog. It now isn't graphically-based but inserts the text directly, making it look a bit nicer. I inserted the code reference directly into the HTML code of the template itself, of course; for better integration.