Digital Photography

New Category (and obsession)

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

So, now that I have a new Digital SLR, I’m having too much fun with it.

We’ll see how long that lasts, but…

I have already take a set of images to see what all the different parameter settings do. They are over –> here. But the light was fading as I did them, so I may redo them this weekend.

And I’m finding all kinds of goodies on the web about Digital Photography.

For example, here is the site of Norman Koren, a professional photographer. He has lots and lots of good stuff about digital on his site.

Here is a nice sunflower picture I took today.

Hobbies

K1100RS Photos Added

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

My 1992 BMW K1100RS is for sale. I have a page up about it here.

I actually got an email about it today expressing some interest. So I decided that I should take some more photos and put them up – for two reasons:

1. So that people interested in buying it can see what shape it’s in.

2. So I have some photos to look at after it’s gone.

I still think this is a beautiful motorcycle and I’ll be sad to see it go, but it’s just not comfortable for me to ride any more. It makes my shoulders hurt to ride for long distances and it’s worse with a passenger.

So I have to sell it before I can buy something else.

I’m going to look a couple of motorcycles when I’m ready to buy. This is my current list:

Honda ST1100
BMW R11xxRT

Computers

New Cisco 678 installed!

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

My new Cisco 678 came on Thursday. I was out Thursday night, and Friday we had some friends over, so I didn’t get a chance to do anything with it until today. So today I plugged it in and tried to configure it.

It had a password set on it. Great.

So I tried all the easy ones, password, cisco, etc. No go.

So I called my friend Charles, whom I knew would know. Of course he did.

You have to have serial access (which I do, of course) and then you hit Ctrl-C while it’s booting up. Then you can erase the config using the command “es 6” followed by “rb” to reboot and all is well.

This is all documented on the Cisco site here: Password Recovery Procedure for the Cisco 6xx CPE.

Thanks Charles!

WWW

Web Log Fun

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

I love looking at the referrers and the search strings that people use to find my web pages.

This is extra fun. In 2001 a group of us at work built radio controlled hovercrafts. It was a blast and I made some pages about it that are here.

It amazes me how many people find those pages when they are looking for rc hovercraft info, and I have even had people email me questions.

But the fun stuff is this:

Here is a Russian forum about RC stuff that links to me.

Here is another Russian site with a link to me (scroll down.)

Here is a site in the Netherlands that links to me.

I’m (almost) famous!

Hobbies

Digital Images – How to catalogue?

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Okay, I have a new digital camera. I expect that it will become my primary device for taking photographs and that I will be taking many, many more.

So I have this problem. The images are all going to be named XYZ00001.JPG, etc. How the hell do you catalogue these things so you can find them when you want them?

I am not the only person thinking about this issue. A google search led me to this interesting article about it.

Unfortunately, while they lay out all the issues, and give some hints, they don’t provide you with the actual software they created.

So… I’m going to keep searching, but I may just end up rolling my own using PHP, Perl and MySQL. I have a good basic feel for what I want it to do, and I should be able to write up the specs pretty soon.

But man, it’s going to be a big project. I’ll definitely open source it and make it available, and I’ll learn a hell of a lot doing it, but it’s going to be a long time in the building.

Guess this is the kick in the pants that I’ve been needing to really learn a few things, like CVS, make files, MySQL, better PHP, Perl DBI and lots of other fun stuffs.

Oh boy oh boy. Like I don’t have enough to do already.

Family

Kitty Story

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

So I get home last night and want to see the kitties. Midnight is easy to find, he’s zonked out on a chair in the computer room.

I wander around the house looking for Terra. Can’t find her.

So I ask Roz if she’s seen Terra recently. Nope.

I wander around some more, still can’t find her. So I figure she must be sleeping somewhere and I go off and do something else for a while.

When Liz comes home I ask her if she’s seen Terra. Not since before they all went to the library she tells me.

So I look a little harder and so does Liz. We wander the house, shaking a bag of treats and calling. We look in the basement, we look in the attic. Still no Terra.

Now we are starting to get worried. What if she got outside? That would be bad. We wander around outside, but no luck.

So I go into Stephanie’s room again to search more throughly. I sit on the bed and look around the room and then I hear a tiny, faint “meow”.

Hmm… Where could she be?

Then I hear it again. It seems to be coming from Steph’s wardrobe.

I open one side, no kitten. I open the other side – there on the bottom shelf is Terra!

I would have to guess that she climbed in while Steph was getting some clothes out and her “meow” is so quiet and pitiful that we just couldn’t hear it. (Unlike Midnight, whom you can hear all over the house.)

She doesn’t seem any worse for wear. She probably slept the whole time she was in there.

Silly cat.

Hobbies

Waiting for my Camera

Posted on by Timothy Foreman

Just checked the UPS tracking for my camera…

Delivery has been re-scheduled for Monday the 11th.

Bah. Stupid UPS.

I WANT IT NOW!

(I’m not very patient.)

On the other hand, yesterday I bought (on ebay) a USB Compact Flash reader (for $15) and a 1 Gig Compact Flash card (for $55) to go with the camera when it does get here. Assuming they get here in a reasonable amount of time.

On the gripping hand, my Cisco 678 DSL router should arrive today or tomorrow, so I can replace this Actiontec that keeps disconnecting my SSH sessions.