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The past few days have had very little sun in St. John’s.  When, on occasion, the sun would break through, it would show itself just for a few hours - long enough to allow me to finish the task at hand and grab the camera… but not long enough to actually get some shots.

Here are a few inside shots from today… just before we took the tree down.

This picture is certainly not that great, but it did come after subjecting ourselves to significant risk; a slippery ride down a very steep ice covered road, a sudden spin, and several minutes and layers of rubber while trying to get back out.

Add to that the loss of one Estwing 28oz Framing Hammer and, overall, it wasn’t worth it.

I am tired of looking at my campfire, Randy, Mike, Andreau are you out there?  I have not been out shooting for a while but I dug this one up from June.  I have no idea how it will look as I have been playing with some Photoshop actions that Randy emailed me ages ago.  So here it goes!

If one were to come to the conclusion, based on these photos and the ones from yesterday, that I love sunset pictures, they would be wrong.

The fact is, I’m just a real wimp when it comes to high temperatures. I was able to comfortably get shots during sunrise and sunset when the temperatures were bearable, but spent most of the rest of the day lugging equipment for her highness while sprinting from one patch of shade to another.

Ironically, as I write this, in the background an episode of Frontline entitled Hot Politics is airing. The slant of the story seems to be that, while the federal US political system has basically failed to do anything about climate change, the American people (grass roots efforts leading to movement on the part of state governments and industry) are taking action.

I’m not optimistic - I didn’t see any obvious signs of concern during my short visit. Things simply don’t add up… We paid as much as $3.69 for a gallon of gas - prices are at an all time high, but massive SUVs are everywhere. As we traveled around, we happened into two areas where other “all-times” had been set - record high AND low temperatures.

No big deal, right? Well, not really… consider this; We spent the day in the very beautiful and very historic little community of Key West whose highest point is 18 feet above sea level.

The scheme for land development seems to be generally curious as well. It can be summarized in three words - clear, pave, re-plant. We visited protected areas and nature parks that range in covering just a few square kilometers to several thousand. Besides having a shit-load of mosquitoes, these areas also have a stunning natural beauty. Signs on every Sate Park proudly welcome you to “…the real Florida.” Still, despite all this beauty, new development has large expanses of land flattened and “decorated” with pretty palm trees and grass - grass that apparently needs to be heavily watered. And what isn’t covered in grass is covered in brightly coloured concrete and pavement.

Anyway, here’s another encouraging thought. I’ve been checking out the The World Monuments Watch site - every two years they list areas of cultural heritage that are endangered around the world. Canada has only one site on the newest list…. not too bad. Ya, Canada! Europe and the Middle East on the other hand look to be in big trouble - they have more endangered areas than I have fly bites on my legs (…and trust me, that’s a lot of spots).

As I look through the list of endangered sites, one threat seems particularly common - rising sea levels due to climate change.

Oh well… Key West was nice.

This all started when I tried downloading pics of Canadian money for a math lesson with my students.  After a while of not being able to get clear and true pics I decidied to do it myself.  I tried but my lense just couldn’t get detailed enough for my liking.  Then I went back to surfing the web again and saw Kim’s butterflies.  They are awesome so I asked about my money situation.  She said she uses a macro1:2.8 and offered to loan it to me.  So I have been playing with it all weekend.  Yes, I got my money shots LOL!  But also some other interesting perspectives.  The first one is of my dog Ripley.

I thought I could use the rest as a game of guess what with my students?  For more check out my gallery.

This is a warning to anyone considering the purchase of a new lens. Not a warning regarding the purchase of any lens in general, but a very specific lens in particular.

It’s call a Peleng F3.5 8mm Fisheye. Generally speaking, this lens is looked upon favorably, especially when taking into account it’s price. But, as I said, this warning is not about the lens. It’s a waring about what is likely to happen if you purchase one.

If you’re the type of photographer that often shoots with other photographers, purchase of this lens could very likely get you into trouble, or at the very least, into a lot of pictures.

Problematic behavior developed after purchase of the Peleng F3.5 8mm Fisheye exhibits itself as follows:

1. “Peleng Photographer” sees something to photograph. In our example image, it is a tractor.
2. Peleng Photogrpaher approaches tractor, stopping at a common distance in relation to the other photographers that may be shooting the tractor.
3. Peleng Photographer looks at tractor in viewfinder.
4. Peleng Photographer approaches tractor further, while looking through the viewfinder.
5. Peleng Photographer continues to approach tractor.
6. Read item 5, three more times.

If the Peleng Photographer is fortunate enough to have the support of family and friends, there often is hope.
It is a unfortunate affliction of sorts to be the owner of this particular piece of equipment, and those around the Peleng Photographer must offer sympathy. There is no treatment for this affliction, and under no circumstances should anyone attempt to intervene with the Peleng Photographer’s use of this equipment.

The accompanying image is an actual image of an actual photographer using an actual Peleng F3.5 8mm Fisheye.

The face of the photographer is concealed to protect his identity.

Just ignore the cold outside and sit by a sunny window.  Now let the rays of the sun warm you and pretend that we get Spring in a couple of weeks just like the calendar says.  This is what I was doing this afternoon while looking at my Christmas Cactus, which normally blooms once a year but likes his new place by the window and has decided to lift my spirits and bloom again.  So if you get down about the cold and snow look at these pictures and think spring, maybe if we all do it together we might just get it.

How about this. It was on my camera, but I’ll have to wait ’till later to find out fur sure if it’s not my shot.

Who is that lazy-ass anyway? Get outta the car if you see something! Jezzz!

Sure is quite around here. I guess Andreau can be excused since he’s just listed his house. And I’m renovating. I guess we need more geeks?

A bit of background. I’ve used PeeCees for years. I bought my first “real” computer after giving my Commodore 64 away in 1989. I ran DOS, every version of Windows up to XP, and for a short time OS/2 and Linux.

In the beginning, before I got a 386, home computers were for the hobbyist. While the latter two operating systems were generally more solid and robust than Microsoft’s offerings, they came with a catch - they suffered from limited application support.

Back then, in the PC world, you had two choices. You could either spend your time in the very solid OS/2 or Linux environment and pick from the few productivity applications or use Windows and spend your time repairing a faulty OS. Basically, no matter what the choice, you’d spent more time screwing around with hardware and software than you would getting work done.

So, when I recently got involved in a small business, I knew we had to make some smart choices early on. So we switched to non-Vista, or rather, the MAC.

Enough history. So I didn’t know what to expect when switching to the MAC. I’ll certainly write more about the switch here in the future, but for now, here’s a few little things that I’ve noticed - things that have made my life a little easier.

Ten Simple Things that are better with my MAC than they were with my PC

• 10. The MAC will actually sleep when I close the lid, and wake up when I open it. Also, it’ll consume practically no battery power when it’s closed for an extended time. The PC took several minutes to sleep, almost as long to wake up, and eventually drained the battery even when the lid was closed.
• 09. When I exit a program, it’s gone. Either thru “Dock > right click > Quit” or “Apple Logo > Force Quit > name”, when I need something closed right off, it’s history. The PC would have things hanging around for god knows how long.
• 08. When I “Click Pause Click” on a file name in my file manager, just the name (before the “dot”) is highlighted for editing. The PC highlights the whole thing - I want to edit the file name, not the extension.
• 07. The MAC will always - Always - connect to the available wireless networks in the correct order. The PCs, both the Toshiba and the Sony, but more often the Sony, will constantly get confused about this.
• 06. The included MAC web browser, Safari, is very fast and very light on system resources. I can have dozens of tabs or windows open in Safari at a time. IE, in either version and by contrast, is unstable, a security nightmare and a bit of a system hog when the web browsing gets busy.
• 05. The MAC, since day one and without any intervention on my part, has natively viewed / previewed camera RAW files.
• 04. The MAC, since day one and without any intervention on my part, has natively viewed / previewed / saved PDF files. I don’t even need Acrobat to create them - any program that can print can do it.
• 03. The built in MAC search, Spotlight, is fast and actually useful. How about this for a concept - if you’re looking for something, just start typing and let the computer do the leg work. No dancing dogs or stupid questions before you start looking for a file.
• 02. Two finger scroll. The MAC trackpad is still not as intuitive as a mouse, but it is far better than a conventional trackpad.
• 01. No pop-ups. Be it in the OS, on the web, whatever. Finally, the applications are not always getting in my way.
• 00. I don’t have to reboot once a day to get everything working again. I know first hand what they mean by “it just works”.

Oops. That’s Eleven, off-the-top-of-my-head.