Scattered Thoughts . . .

We had a mild dusting today of yellow... pollen!   Actually, we've never seen pollen this thick and heavy here before...

I was down and, for the most part, relegated to the couch for about a month recently due to some significant foot problems. I visited the doctor... we did some x-rays... and came to some conclusions about tendonitis, arthritis and subsequent swelling. The swelling was significant enough that I could not walk on it nor could I fit into any of my shoes. After about a month of hobbling around with a cane and a lot of pain, my foot slowly felt more like "normal" again.  Then, after about a week of "relatively normal" activity on my foot, I suddenly began having problems again! The recurring tendonitis (Achilles tendon) was making it difficult and painful to walk again and I was feeling some swelling in my heel (as opposed to my entire foot last time around). Although there is no doubt that after decades of extreme sports and a physically demanding career that my feet are a weak point and prone to injury, I've been feeling as though something other than activit

I admit that I am 'hard' on my computers. That is a plain and simple fact.  The work I do on my desktop computer constantly keeps my processors crunching numbers, spinning my hard drives and heating up. Additionally, as my cameras (both stills and video) improve each year, I find that my computer has great difficulty keeping up while getting bogged down very quickly. Because of all this graphics processing, my computers rarely last more than three years before biting the dust. Now that 4K video is becoming more mainstream and 6K cameras are available (and 8K is right around the corner), the average computers from three years ago are not at all equipped to handle streaming video of this resolution. Even trying to edit multiple 'Full HD' video clips is enough to bog down an average three year old computer. As technology moves forward, all your tools must move forward and the computer is an important tool. My current desktop computer is now more than three years old

I wrote a quick blog entry the other day about Liza's graduation ceremony so I could share a few photos rather quickly. This morning, I'll share a few more photos, a small photo album and a very short video.  As I wrote previously, we are all very proud of what Liza has managed to accomplish. Attaining her BA in Psychology was no small feat. Attaining this degree with a high GPA is even more impressive. We are proud of her and she should be proud of herself. If one would like to skip this blog entry and run directly to the photo album, here is the link: Liza's Graduation - 13 May 2017 Edit:   After a week or so, I swapped out the color portraits for black and white versions.  I never liked those color versions because there were far too many wildly varying bright colors fighting against wildly differing patterns. (This is a problem I always encounter when shooting photos of the grandchildren too.)  I converted these portraits to black and white so I could at least eli

Today, we (Sheila, Nan, Pop, her fiancee John, and I) had the honor to be guests of Liza at Johnson State College. Liza graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology this morning! We all had a really great time. Liza was visibly excited and quite proud of herself... as she should be! I have to say that Sheila and I are also quite proud of what Liza has been able to accomplish. Today was sort of a special day for Johnson... this was the last graduating class from "Johnson State College" before they begin the next school year consolidated with another local state college under a different name. It was definitely a special graduation ceremony for us but, in some ways, it was a special graduation for all those associated with Johnson State College as well. Congratulations to Liza! I have a few video clips (I had no plan to shoot video but once the bagpipes started during the processional, I had to capture a few video clips) and many more photos to share but, for

I previously wrote about designing and building my own grand piano using a Yamaha keyboard as the base for the keyboard and sound. In that blog entry, I wrote about designing my own piano around a Yamaha digital piano but I didn't provide any samples to back up my claims. Below, are two short videos which I find to be excellent examples of today's Yamaha digital pianos.  The first is a video of classical pianist, Dominic Piers Smith, performing and providing some of his thoughts about Yamaha's current digital pianos. The second video features a beautiful and moving performance by pop singer Susan Albers. Both videos are impressive and certainly showcase today's Yamaha digital piano.

As if my current 'to-do' list isn't long enough, as I've been recovering from a foot injury over the past month, I've been sketching some designs and plans for a new digital grand piano to add to my 'to-do' list! I've been thinking about designing my own piano for many years. Long ago, I accepted the fact that I would never be able to afford to buy a new commercially manufactured grand piano so I've been creatively designing my own piano. The truth is, this plan has been simmering in the back of my mind for quite some time but, lately, I've been more persistent and detail-oriented in figuring out dimensions, sketching ideas, and working out design issues. Some of the many sketches of a bored maniac... For the most part, I've been laid up with my foot elevated for at least a month now. While I installed that new flooring and new ADA toilet in our master bathroom a bit more than a month ago, I somehow injured my achilles tendon and my

It was a fairly nice afternoon the other day so Sheila and I went for a walk with the grandkids. This was a pretty good opportunity to test my new little action camera so I brought that along for the ride. A screenshot from the video... preserved highlights...  detail in the clouds...   nice clarity...  nice color... nice video!   I figured this would really be putting this little camera to the test... I'm walking with a pronounced limp lately so I knew to expect a bouncy, jerky video... I didn't have any way to strap this camera to anything so I just held it in my hand down at my side... and it was quite breezy out so I knew wind noise would be an issue. Regardless... the resulting video clips look pretty good! I definitely want to make a little homemade wind-cut filter out of open-cell foam to cut down on the wind noise. The primary purpose of this action camera is to use it for recording video of kayaking at the lake and there is almost always some variable winds ou

The Sony FDR X3000 action camera.      The other day, I wrote about how video resolution keeps increasing exponentially rather quickly. Unfortunately, my old Fuji waterproof camera that we've been using at the lake for video is a bit dated and is showing its age. This put me on a search for an affordable waterproof video camera (rather than a waterproof stills camera) which will hold me over for the next five or more years. I quickly found that, once again, Sony has proven that they are listening to what the consumers and professionals want and need. It seems the best action video camera on the market today is a Sony camera... the Sony FDR X3000, to be exact. It has 4K resolution... comes with a waterproof housing... has a separate controller with LCD screen that I can wear like I would a watch (or I can mount it on an accessory)... it has an app which allows me to sync and control with my cellphone... and has perhaps the best video image stabilization on the market today.

A couple of times each year, I have a proof book of some of my photos printed. I just had another one of these proof books printed last week and received it the other day. I'm always amazed at the quality of my photography when I view the photos in print. Well... I need to put one condition on that... When I have my photographs printed professionally, I'm always amazed at the quality.   I've definitely had terrible print jobs in the past from many of the "discount" printers...  ie, WalMart, Snapfish, and perhaps the worst of the worst today, Shutterfly. You definitely get what you pay for in prints. There is a reason why these low cost prints cost so little...  crappy ink, cheap paper, low quality printers, and probably poorly paid employees who don't really know anything about color, calibration, printing standards and print qualities. To make this even worse, many of these 'low cost' printers contract out other low cost printers around the cou