July 25th, 2010 by Rick

I’m up early paying bills and trying to get comfortable with the idea of connecting this blog to Twitter – and trying to make sure it’s working right since I’m doing it.  Should I also connect Facebook?  I’m thinking no – not really keen on posting to FB (privacy stuff!).  If you have an opinion, LMK.  Off to church!

July 24th, 2010 by Rick

Getting WP, Twitter & Bit.Ly to talk.  Here’s an image to make it worthwhile…

July 24th, 2010 by Rick

Clearly, I haven’t kept this thing up. I took some nice photos last week that are worthy of sharing. Checked in, realized how out of date everything is and started to dust things off a bit.

WordPress upgrade – check.

Gallery upgrade – check.

Shave head – check.

Graduate from college – check.

Watch son grow up – check.

Upload cool stuff – soon.

July 24th, 2010 by Rick

I normally don’t sit by the window…  but on this day, the weather was great and I had the chance to break out the iPhone.  Enjoy.

March 6th, 2010 by Rick

HDR photography has me excited. I have a decent DSLR camera and can (occasionally) take a good picture. But, some scenes just never seem to look as compelling in the picture as they are in real life. Thinking about it, and reading up about it on the latest photog sites, it became clearer.

Many scenes have such variation between the shadows and the highlights aren’t well replicated in a normal image. It turns out that our eyes can process wider ranges than cameras today can capture – “dynamic range”. So, “high dynamic range” imaging infers that capturing this range is possible with relatively normal cameras. The trick is to capture the full range of the scene by taking a series of pictures, and then combining them into one image. By bracketing exposures and using software to align and combine the photos, this becomes possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 3rd, 2009 by Rick

Every Friday, I try to set aside a little time for a geeky “Friday afternoon project”.  It usually starts with an idea and sometimes it takes many days (or even weeks) to figure out if the idea can work.  Last Friday, I found myself wondering whether I could turn the 3G internet connection on my Windows Mobile 6.1 cell phone (a Palm Treo 800W) into a WiFi hotspot that I could share with a computer (or multiple computers).  I found the answer and had it working within an hour – using WMWiFiRouter.  Amazing.

Read the rest of this entry »

March 3rd, 2009 by Rick

Cali Lewis bills herself as a happy, shiny geek girl and she does a great job of being very entertaining while keeping the world abreast of the latest geekery.  Cali runs several sites, but the “must see” is GeekBrief TV (www.geekbrief.tv).

Each day, Cali posts a new video segment that covers a timely technological topic.  Her show is well produced (with the help of her husband Neil) and her sense of humor makes each segment a have-to-see even if the geek topic for the days doesn’t seem interesting (be sure to stay past the credits for a little added entertainment).

She covers computing, home entertainment, Web 2.0, mobile tech, portable lasers, bacon (you have to see it to understand!) and more.  She talks fast, is engaging and keeps it lively.  In addition to the Flash based video on the site, Cali makes each show available on iTunes.  She is an active blogger, is frequently on Twitter and has several other productions.  If you’re interested in keeping up with the latest in tech, be sure to check out Cali’s shows!

Rick

March 3rd, 2009 by Rick

Wow. It’s been way too long. The time has flown and both my photography and my geekery have moved forward nicely. So, it’s time to catch up here and then catch up on the galleries.

I’ll make separate entries in the blog, but want to give you some great info on several different topics. I’ve found myself exploring high dynamic range photography (HDR), found an awesome geek web site that you have to check out an awesome program that takes the 3G data connection from your Windows Mobile smartphone and turns it into a WiFi hotspot. Amazing stuff…!

October 20th, 2008 by Rick

Time for a teaser… Today I’m on my way to Reno where i hope to fund some time to add to the photo collection. Even better is that on Thursday, I’m headed up to a lodge on the edge of Zion National Park for a few days. I’m hopeful that the fall colors will be in abundance on top of the usual Zion sites. Check back soon for updates!

Rick

October 20th, 2008 by Rick

A few days have passed since discovering the beautiful combination of the Mac OS, Windows, Boot Camp and Parallels. I haven’t been disappointed… and for the most part, everything has worked exceptionally well. A few gotchas, but no deal breakers (at least for what I’m trying to accomplish). Between the home office and work, we’ve got three MacBook Pros set up this way.

As I noted before, the beauty of this arrangement is that both OS’s are able to run at once. You can copy and paste between both sides and there is shared file space (we took that one step further and included a FAT32 partition).

The obvious gotchas include shared resources (RAM and CPU), generic virtualized hardware, licensing issues with certain software and a few incompatibilities. The licensing issues can go beyond the OS activation problems warned about in the Parallels documentation (the requirement for multiple Windows serial numbers depending on the flavor and level chosen). The reason for activation issues stems from activation schemes that look at differences in hardware as a way to detect multiptle installs. Even though you’re only installing on one physical computer, Boot Camp and Parallels make it appear as two different boxes because of the virtualized software.

Adobe threw me an activation curve because of the different hardware look. I have the CS3 Master Collection Suite for Windows. They allow two concurrent activations – one on a desktop and one on a laptop, which I’ve taken advantage of (one on my MBP Boot Camp partition and one on my desktop). When I fired up Windows via Parallel and ran Photoshop, it gave me an activation issue. I haven’t yet researched to see whether Adobe will make exceptions for virtualized installs, but I’m not optimistic.

That’s enough for now… I’m writing on the plane and it’s about time to land.

Rick