Welcome in February…

My gosh the year is moving along. I just realized I head to Portland in 28 days and I really haven’t had a chance to figure out what to do with my time there when I’m not involved in the conference. Ah me! I should really take a few minutes and check out that Portland link myself. 🙂
I’m still not smoking! It’s been about 252 hours since I started not smoking and I haven’t attacked anyone yet. I have to acknowledge that admitting I needed help, couldn’t do this one my own, and using the patch seems to have done the trick.
I get the odd urge to light up at the times I smoked the most, or perhaps enjoyed it the most, but for the most part the psychological part seems to have abated. I even discovered I can sit for hours at work now (not necessarily a good thing) without noticing I haven’t taken a break. My boss is happy, but I can’t say I’m overly pleased. 🙁
Now I have to decide when to start going off the patch. I’m using the 24-hour variety, which means I have it on all the time. I’m thinking I may try taking it off at night and seeing if that makes me overly miserable in the morning. Mind you, I’m okay with being a little miserable (for a while,a short while), but not as a steady diet. That’s just silly.
I’ve been surprised by the reactions I’ve been getting from people I know. So far I’ve not gotten one comment suggesting it isn’t a good (okay, at least neutral) thing. Even those folks I know who still smoke, still advocate smoking even, don’t have a bad word. I’m grateful for that because I really wasn’t prepared to defend my choice to quit. It wasn’t quite the same when I quit drinking a few years back. I did have a few folks try to buy me drinks, cajoling me to continue, and saying things about my ability to handle alcohol. [I freely admit I can’t handle alcohol, even though I could probably drink most under the table were it to come to that. It’s not a brag. It’s the sad truth. I don’t know when to stop.]
Anyway, enough with the self examination for the moment. I need to get back to work here.
Aloha!

No Time for Photography…

My goodness, I haven’t had a spare minute for a couple of weeks now and it’s beginning to hurt. I had a bunch of lighting equipment come in, and I haven’t had a chance to even try it yet. Heresy!
The problem isn’t really a problem though. I’ve just been so busy with other activities, some rather public, some rather more private. For instance, over the weekend of the 20th/21st I had a two day event that actually lasted almost the entire daylight period of both days. I had little energy left for photography. This last weekend the UH Rainbow Baseball team opened their season with two wins over Santa Clara.
I’ve been a college baseball fan for years. Perhaps more correctly, I’ve been a Rainbow fan for years. I don’t actually follow other teams, well at least not those outside of the WAC. I note that we, being the Rainbows, are 2-1 on the season, as is Nevada, all non-conference games.
The most interesting series coming up for us is that against the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. I actually attended that school (while still in high school as a matter of fact). I wasn’t a fan back then and to be honest, didn’t even know they had a team! Any of my Shorewood classmates up for coming out for the series? 🙂
Now you’d think that being a photographer (or something like one), I’d be out there shooting the games, but frankly, I just can’t get behind sports photography. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when it’s well done and think a lot of some sports photographers, it’s just not me. I’d rather sit back and enjoy the game.
Given all this, it’s been a slow month for photography. I hope that changes soon!
Aloha!

Still smoke free…

Sunday I had my last cigarette before I went to bed.
Monday I wanted to kill people.
Tuesday I only want to beat them up.
Wednesday I just wanted to slap them.
Thursday I thought I could get by just yelling at them.
Friday mumbling under my breath would have sufficed.
Today…today was good.
For those considering quitting, I am using the patch as I wanted to deal with the habit before the addiction itself. I figure I can survive a day or two of withdrawal once I’m not in the habit of lighting up every time I turn around. It’s going well and no matter what I said above, I don’t owe anyone an amends for my behavior this last week (at least not one I haven’t already made).
I figure I’ll just keep doing the next indicated thing because so far I haven’t found a good reason to light up again.
Aloha!

Misc…

There have been quite a few things going on around here. First, and easiest to deal with, was the upgrade to WP 2.1 (Ella). It was a seamless upgrade as far as I can tell and I’ve experienced exactly no problems. 🙂
The next order of business is the fact that I’m on my third day without a cigarette. I started Sunday evening, so this evening will be 72 hours. I haven’t killed anyone yet, not even a good maiming. If this keeps up, perhaps I’ll stop using a patch rather sooner than later.
Finally, instead of working on WordPress for the last day or two, I’ve been installing a private Drupal installation for a committee to which I belong. Given that my first site building experience (ignoring the hand coded HTML of years ago) has been in WP, my initial reaction to Drupal was “WordPress on Steroids.” In fact, however, they are two very different beasts.
For this committee I needed to expand a bit on what I can do (not necessarily what can be done). For this work we’ll need regular blog-like features, forums, file upload and dowload, calendars, and stuff I’ve probably not thought of yet.
Drupal was no harder than WordPress to set up (the installation was through fantastico as was WP). It was longer because there is just that much more stuff to do, but it’s very simple. I admit, however, to buying a book on the topic. For WP, I just went at it.
The book was Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. I found it to be very easy to use but have never felt talked down to by the authors. On the whole, if you are a real amateur as I am, it’s a decent book. I’d have preferred something a bit more recent, but have not experienced any problems at all in using the instructions.
I’d love to show the site off, but as I said, it’s a private site and not everyone would be comfortable with visitors, at least at this point.
As for Drupal itself, I highly recommend it if you need something more than a blog!
Aloha!

Quitting Smoking…

It’s probably a bad idea to bring this up, but today is the first day I’ve willingly gone without a cigarette in years. I’m not quite sure what came over me, but I’ve decided, at least for the time being, to give quitting a try.
To that end I talked with my doctor and was prescribed full strength 24-hour nicotine replacement patches. I’ve one on now. It seems to work in that I’m not climbing the walls, though I’m by no means exactly calm either. I keep getting urges to go and have a smoke, while knowing that it’s mostly habit and not addiction.
By that I mean, there’s nicotine in my system from the patch, so it’s not withdrawal. Rather it seems to be my brain telling me, “You should go have one now.” Ah me.
So why did I decide to quit? It’s not really health as I’ve not had any health problems bad enough at this point, though that could always change. It’s not really the company I keep. Many of my friends smoke. There’s no pressure at work to quit. So why? As I said above, I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s just because I’m on the greedy and selfish side. 🙂
At the current rate a year’s worth of cigarettes is worth either a week in Bali, hotel and airfare included, or a brand new very good Nikon lens. Either would be a nice treat. But you know, it’s not that simple because I can afford either of those (not at the moment but certainly before the year is finished).
If I figure it out, I’ll be sure to write something about it.

Good Old SHS…

I just came across a link to my high school class (76), Shorewood H.S. in Shorewood (natch), Wisconsin. I love the blog, shs76slackers, and thanks for putting it up. If left a calling card as it were, so if anyone bites…
Mahalo for dropping by!
There isn’t much here, but feel free to look around. 🙂 Leave a comment if you like, you’ll have to leave an email address though it won’t show on the page. If you’ve got Skype and I’m online (see sidebar), feel free! I had it turned on to forward to my cell phone and actually got a call from one of you. It was quite a shock. A pleasant one! Still I’m not sure I want the world to be able to call me. If I ever figure out all the Skype options I have, I’ll see about hooking my phone back in the loop. In the meantime, if I’m online, I’ll answer.
I’ve got to run to a meeting (I volunteer some time to charity and have to go to our first meeting of the year), so I don’t have time to say much more.
If you’ve no clue who I am, I played Van Helsing in “Dracula” in our senior year. “A vampire, my friend, is a creature of the undead…”
Aloha!

What's the Skype…

I’ve shied away from chat tools like AIM or ICQ over the years. I’ve never cared for the fact that one must type out a conversation as one is having it. I much prefer email which allows me a bit more thought in composing. I do get involved in email flurries with several of my friends and the emails fly back and forth. Still there’s a bit more time to pause and think when composing longer statements and pauses don’t seem endless as I recall they did on ICQ. This isn’t ICQ’s fault, it’s just the way I work.
Then yesterday I came across Skype. I’d heard about it before but had dismissed it at the time. I’m not much of phone person, yet this intrigued me. I’m one of those folks who does not have a land line, preferring to use my cell for everything (and am impatiently waiting for the iPhone). Still, I much prefer talking to the sort of communication I remember with text based chat tools.
It was certainly simple enough to download and install Skype on my iMac. I tried the volume test and everything seemed to work, so I decided I’d give it a try. Being a bit obsessive, as I am, I even signed up for the their North American special so that I could call actual phones from my computer. I have not yet seen the merit of allowing incoming calls from regular phones. Outgoing calls do cost a bit, but $14.95 for a year didn’t seem excessive.
I also picked up a USB headset while I was out last night as using the built-in microphone on my iMac was acceptable, but prone to pick up other noises, like my TV. Then came the big test…
I called my friend Dan (see link in sidebar) at home on his phone and it worked. Indeed the sound quality was better than I’m used to on my cell and I think that is pretty good in general. I was fairly impressed. Indeed I was impressed enough to put the link you can see in the sidebar up in hopes of getting to use it more. For now, if you are a Skype user feel free to ring me up if I’m available. I can’t promise scintillating conversation, but then I don’t promise that in person either.
Dan was impressed enough he claims to have downloaded the application and is rooting around for his USB headset so we can chat more often. I was at his place the other day showing off my newly acquired Photoshop skill (few and far between I might add) and when I got home there was already an email message asking about something. I’m thinking that this might a be very good opportunity for Skype use.
A couple of questions remain. Will I use it? Will I get sick of using it? Only time will tell…

Gallery Integration…

Tonight I spent time getting WGP2 plugin to work with my new Gallery gallery. I only have one image there so far and I haven’t configured it to allow new users (at least I don’t think I have), so it’s pretty useless at the moment, but it’s the direction in which I’d like to head.
Morning at the HarborTo see if it works, I’m including the one image I’ve managed to get up. It’s an image taken around dawn at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. This dinghy gave me a lot of trouble the first time I worked with its image. I thought I was getting a very blue color cast, but it turned out the boat was, in fact, a very pale blue. 🙂
Aloha!

Birthday Stuff…

My order turned up yesterday and everything was accounted for…

  • 2 – Westcott 45″ Soft Silver Umbrellas
  • 2 – Impact 32″ White Umbrellas with Black Covers
  • 2 – Impact Light Stands (230cm max height)
  • 2 – Impact Umbrella Adapters
  • 1 – Nikon SB-800
  • 1 – Nikon MC-DC1 Remote Cord

Chair with lighting equipmentHere’s a picture of the lighting stuff on a beach chair. The beach chair is important because it’s just about dead and I need a new one. The bag the chair comes in, however, is just fine. That’s important because it hold all the stands and umbrellas perfectly and even has a nice carrying strap. That’s a lot cheaper than the nice lighting gear bags I see advertised. These chairs go for about $12 and while they don’t last forever, the bags are very useful. In a pinch I suspect I can fill it with sand to steady one of the stands. [I had a note about this on the Strobist.com flickr site saying “NO! NO SAND.” I agree. There’s plenty of room left over for big ziplocs.]
Chair with equipment in chair bagHere’s all the cheap stuff in the bag the chair usually goes in. The SB-800 goes with it’s double in my camera bag. I’m cheap, but not crazy. Since I need a new chair anyway, it’s no big loss. As you can imagine, I’m pretty pleased about all of this. Yes, it was a day late, but I’ve survived the ordeal. Now I can’t wait to try it all out and start to learn something about off camera lighting.
All in all it’s not heavy, can be transported on my moped, and hopefully will turn out to be useful. As a note to any Strobists out there, I didn’t get this at the “recommended” dealer, Midwest Photo Exchange. I got it elsewhere because though another affiliation I was able to take advantage of free shipping on everything. That was about $50 to Honolulu, so I was able to add two umbrellas and still save a few bucks.

Happy Birthday to Me…

Yes, today’s the day. I turned 49 today and quite frankly, I don’t feel a bit different than I did yesterday.
I was hoping that my order from B&H would show up before today so I’d have a present to open as it were. It didn’t. This order is for a new Nikon SB-800 as well as some light stands and umbrellas. As noted in my first post, I’m going to be taking a senior portrait and based on what I’ve learned at Strobist.com I want to be sure to have the equipment to do it right. Since it’s “family” I want to make sure I can do my best. After all, it’s not every day someone actually asks me to do something with my camera.

126

This image was my first real attempt at off camera lighting and was done after reading Strobist.com. I used my Nikon D80 with the SB-800 off the camera. The flash has it’s diffuser cap on and was also bounced off the ceiling. Rather than trying to set the flash manually, this shot used Nikon’s Creative Lighting System. After a couple of shots using that, I also tried it manually and the results were the same after some experimentation. Here’s an excellent piece on CLS from Oleg Novikov’s site. I’m going to have to learn to light manually, especially to use the eBay slaves, but CLS works and works well as far as I can tell.
Speaking of photography, I’m afraid I’ve been quite delinquent recently. I never seem to have the time I need to get out there and get it done. I know it sounds like an excuse, and it is, but I belong to an organization that makes frequent demands on my time outside of work and from Thanksgiving through January there’s quite a bit to do. I’m hopeful it’ll slow down a bit in a fortnight or so.
On the blog side, I’ve put in flickrRSS linked to Strobist.com group on flickr. I initially used my own images there, but I realized they wouldn’t rotate very much, at least not until I’ve got a bit more time to do some work. I’ve also put in a self-serving link to my wishlist at B&H. In a perfect world I guess I would have put that up before my birthday.