Light
I am not an artsy photographer, but I noticed this play of light on the wall of my apartment the other day, and had to try and capture the emotions it evoked. The first photo is as shot:
In some ways I like it as it sets the environment, but I saw a more abstract image there:
Still it was not isolating the abstract image I had seen in my mind:
Here I converted to B&W with a green filter effect, and adjusted the curves to give a more film like image:
I like how the light from the blinds curve and flow into one another and repeat. I would like to hear comments on the images. As I do not think I am particularly good at this kind of image, I will not get upset if you are hard on it. Links to your own similar images are welcome (I will have to watch the spam filters as they are hell on links in comments).
Inexpensive Foamcore Holder
I thought I would share my foamcore holder. Sometimes you just do not have enough hands to do everything, and while a 20×30 sheet of foamcore makes a great reflector for head and shoulders portraits usually we want someone holding it. The pros use a reflector arm on their stands, but that costs quite a bit. So, I came up with this from parts I had laying around.
Reflector mount for lightstand
As you can see it is an umbrella mount ($10 on ebay), a 5/8 inch dowel ($2 at Lowes), a couple of small clamps (a set of 10 in various sizes $10 at Lowes). And, of course, a sheet of foamcore (that one was a buck at the Dollar Tree). A 1/2 inch dowel will probably work, but I already had the 5/8 which is tight fit.
Photos to go with previous post
I thought I might just post a few photos to illustrate what I was writing about in the previous post. None of the flash test photos have been adjusted for exposure so you can see what the differences may be.
No flash shot
That shot is my bedroom mirror without flash. Notice how flash tames the glare from the ceiling lights in the following photos.
FL-40 Only
That one is the FL-40 flash bounced straight up without the on camera flash.
Camera Slave Triggrer Only
That one is of the slave trigger only. Note it is very low intensity, and there is no auto exposure control. It is meant to trigger the slave and provide a catchlight in the eyes only.
283 slave on bracket
That one is of the Vivitar 283 setup with a slave trigger and bounced at 60 degrees toward the ceiling.
I wish I had done one of the Olympus FL-40 bouced at 60 degrees instead of 90 degree, but I think you can see what is going on. Refer back to the previous post for more details.
Window Shade Seamless Background
This is one of the window shade background photos. It is the same direct flash as the one in the previous article. I did nothing but adjust the exposure level in Photoshop. I think you would agree, I could use this photo to sell the hobby vise on eBay with no problem. Needless to say if I had adjusted the exposure for this type of image from the camera it would be even better quality.
Problem with Comments
I want to apologise to those who have posted comments that seem to have disappeared into limbo.
Somehow the settings got changed and I have not been receiving the emails notifying me that there were comments to approve. Hopefully I have gotten that fixed.
It is not my policy to censor comments. However, I do have heavy duty spam filters in place. Unfortunately that is a necessity in today’s internet environment. I also delete duplicate postings. The spam filters occasionally get a valid comment (especially if there are links in it), I try to catch those but but if I don’t get to it in a week the anti-spam stuff deletes it. Other than that I approve all comments posted.
So, once again, if you have posted a comment on my blogs in the past couple of months and it did not show up, I am sorry. I will try to keep up with things better from now on.
Schools Out and Other Stuff
Well, I am happy to report I passed my first class in decades despite getting sick at the end of it. Even with the D on that final paper I did OK overall. It is interesting going back to school at 65. I certainly did not know what to expect, and that showed. Lots of young faces and a few older ones, but I did not see anyone else my age taking classes which is sad, because the state of North Carolina allows us senior citizens to take one or two classes a semester free on a space available basis. It beats the heck out of sitting around watching television.
I was thinking of taking a photography course over the summer to get access to the darkroom, but the they have two summer session each only 5 weeks long. I kind of feel that would be a bit too intense for me given the current state of my health. There are several areas I would like to explore if they have the classes, so of them would be real easy on an audit basis. Things like music appreciation, acient civilizations, etc.
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I just got a couple of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives for my computer in the mail today. They are smallish 73gb 15000 rpm server class drives that I will use for my operation system. They should improve the base preformance of the system quite noticably. I am waiting on the needed cable and hot swap module to install them. Computers at Casa Graywolf do not get replaced they just evolve.
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If you care to look over on my “A Guy and His Sewing Machine” blog, you will see that I have gotten the Singer 750 that was in the sewing machine table when I bought it up and running.
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Weather here today is wet and cold again. So much for global warming and all that. Unfortunately I slip back healthwise everytime that happens, and it has been happening a lot around here lately. If it continues like this for a couple of years we may even recover from the drought.
Feeling Better
I am finally feeling better. Yesterday I cleaned the apartment, and tinkered with one of the sewing machines. I had to order a couple of parts for that sewing machine so it will be a week or so until I get back to working on it.
Today I fixed this underdesk keyboard tray that I picked up used awhile back: it has taken a few tries as there were no instructons. It is one of those articulated kind where you can adjust the height and angle to suit your typing style. I am going to have to move the stop back about three inches as the tray is coming out too far, my keyboard is not that deep.
kbtray.jpg
I picked up a TV stand at one of the thrift stores in town that I am going to use as a coffee table. It has an A-frame and casters. I hate having a table in the middle of the room, but this I can roll against the wall or use for an end table until I have guests,
table-a.jpg
then I can roll it in front of the sofa and use it as a coffee table.
table-b.jpg
I used some of that oil type furniture cleaner on it and it looks pretty nice now. It also needed a couple of missing fasteners replaced.
Now I have to clean up the mess from the keyboard tray project. Maybe I should move the stop while I have the tools out. Then I should go for a walk in the park, I have not been getting much exercise either.
Wow, I lost most of a month!
A couple of colds, and all of a sudden I have lost a month. With the colds my energy went, and my ability to concentrate too. Physically I am feeling much better now, but the concentrations is still out of town. Anyone following my “A Guy and His Sewing Machine” blog will have noticed that I now have 3 sewing machines. I pick up the 3rd for the table. Turns out the machine is in pretty good shape too. I have done nothing with the chaincase yet, but do intend to get to that soon. I have to mount a keyboard tray on this desk as soon as I get to thinking a bit better. The apartment is a pig sty right now, and that is very high on my to do list. The class I am taking at the U is in its final days. I turned in a half assed final paper last week and the final exam is Tuesday. I do pick great times to get sick.
Can’t even get up to my minimum 250 word could for this article. Sigh!
Free Web Advice
The strange thing about the internet is how easy it is to get advice. On a speaker forum the other day I asked about some speakers. I got several replies that they were no good. But upon reading them carefully I realized that every single reply was based upon the repliers feelings about the brand, not one of them had actually used or even heard the speakers in question. However they were quite adamant that they were no good based apparently on the low price.
When I went looking for reviews of the speakers they were mostly very favorable. The few that were not could be discounted on the face of what their complaint was; like, “they get dirty”. They are carpet covered public address speakers of course they get dirty if you do not keep them clean.
Any way the point of my essay here is that you get a lot of experts, with no experience whatsoever, giving you advice on the web. However, I guess I should apply their valuing system to what they say; it cost nothing so it is worthless.
Back Up and Running
Well, this wipe and restore has me putting in a bit of effort to make the next time easier.
First, I moved My Documents to the Archive Drive D: on the server, and E: on this workstation. Then I set them up with SyncBack to synchronize their files so I have exactly the same data on both computers and if I change it on one it will on the other within 24 hours (I have SyncBack scheduled to run once a day). Then I moved the Outlook folder to My Documents, so that will stay synchronized too. All this means that if I have one of the systems go down again, I can do my stuff on the other until I get the crashed machine working and then they will resync with each other.
Moving My Documents is easy. You just click on START, the green box in the corner of your screen, then right click on My Documents in that menu. At the bottom of the menu that brings up is a Properties line. Click on Properties and you get a pop-up that tells you where My Documents currently is and has three radio buttons. The center one is Move. Click on that and you get a pop-up asking for a destination folder. Once you select that, you click Apply and then you get a pop-up asking if you want to move the contents to the new location. Select yes and all your folders are copied to the new location. While it does not say so, I suggest you then reboot so the change will be permanent.
Moving the Outlook folder is not so easy. First, the info you get from Help is wrong so don’t bother looking. Just move the Outlook.pst file from the default location (Documents&Settings\your user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\) to the new location. When you start Outlook it will say the data file is not there and ask where to look. Tell it. Shut down Outlook. Reopen Outlook and make sure it took (my experience is that sometimes it does not), if it did then shut down Outlook again and reboot the system (That is the way of Microsoft, reboot, reboot, reboot…).
SyncBack SE is freeware so just Google it, and download from their website. The only thing I can tell you about it is to run it in Simulation Mode over and over until everything works the way you want it to. If you just let it run and it is not set right then you are going to lose data. You have been warned.
At this point, I have the workstation back up and running with all the critical software installed. I have both the XP-32 installation on C: and the XP-64 installation on D: working with the same My Documents folder on E: so they are accessing the same data, and any work I do in either installation is available in the other. Then as detailed above I have this machine sync’d with the old Athlon box that I am using primarily as a backup server. Everything on the Archive Drive other than the Documents Folder is simply backed up to the Athlon box daily. The Documents folder is synchronized daily.
I have not yet decided what to do about keeping the Thinkpad sync’d with other boxes. It is a cinch that I cannot keep 32gb of documents on its 28gb drive (GRIN!). I guess I can set it up to sync just specific files or folders.
I would like to put the Program Files folders on the E: drive as well so I would not have to reinstall the software. While I primarily only use about a dozen programs there are maybe 50 that I use occasionally and it is a lot of work reloading them all. However some poorly designed programs still install their DLL’s in the Windows folder, so I am not sure this would work well. I guess the thing to do is get everything exactly the way I want and do and image of the installation, and redo that anytime I make a I have been playing around with N-lite and it seems to work OK with XP-32. I have made several trials and still have not gotten exactly what I want in the way of an install disk. However, it looks like an auto install of XP-32, with software, and drives is possible. However, I have been unable to get it to would with XP-64. Run on XP-64 it says it has to be run with a 64bit OS to slipstream SP2 but it will not run at all under XP-64. SIGH! The good old Catch 22.
New Computer Update
Well, I just won the last parts needed on eBay a few minutes ago.
It will be a dual AMD Opteron workstation with all commercial grade parts. It will consist of the following:
–Enlight EN-8950 10bay Server Case.
–Delta 400watt+400watt redundant powersupplies.
–Supermicro H8DCE dual Opteron Workstation motherboard.
–2 AMD Opteron 242 CPU’s with Arctic Cooling Alpine 7 heatsinks.
–4 sticks of 512mb PC3200 ecc reg ram (2gb total).
–ATI FireGL V3100 Workstation Graphics Card.
–2 existing CRT monitors.
–2 existing hard drives.
All the parts, save the motherboard, were so cheap that I will be able to afford to toss them when and if I upgrade. In the mean time, if all the parts work, I will have a working computer that should 20+ times as fast as my existing one. So, now, all I have to do is wait until the stuff gets here, and then put it all together. Call it a week. I can hardly wait.
I made the decision to go ahead and build it as cheaply as possible, in order to get it up and running. Later, maybe next year, I can upgrade it piece by piece, although the only critical upgrade would be to dual core CPU’s.
Iwill need to get bigger hard drives as soon as possible however.