The DayBook – Page 438 – life in the old lane

June 29, 2009June 29, 2009

for something different

May Bernie Madoff live a long life. And may he have a neo-Nazi in the cell to his left and Muslim terrorist in the cell to the right. Would not want him in a cell with a neo-Nazi or terrorist – they might kill him. That boy needs to live to see his 100 birthday.

Actually, a more fitting punishment would be to have him and his wife live out their lives on social security in New York City. Without the benefit of a rent controlled apartment. But that would be “cruel and unusual”.

My pursuit of a less paper lifestyle at home is coming along nicely. And, I did an assessment of the stuff that I have in my kitchen – culled out what that hasn’t been used since we moved to the apartment. (Well, I did save the brass candlesticks and the box of candles in the event of power outage. Carlton isn’t much for candlelight dinners.)

Words from Edmund Burke to ponder.

“Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.”

June 27, 2009June 27, 2009

you know you are old when…

You know you are old when you are going to visit someone in an “old folks” home and they are not your parents age, but your age. Actually it is a pretty upmarket old folks home. Each resident has their own wine locker. So, I am taking a bottle of “Liberty School” as a house warming gift. Carlton wanted to re-gift something – no – you don’t give folk who are downsizing stuff. Especially stuff that you don’t want.

Speaking of stuff. The Panasonic 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6 Vario-Elmarit Aspherical MEGA O.I.S. Lens for Four Thirds System Lens that is on my lust list seems to only be available in Japan. Anybody out there actually ordered something that cost more than $200 but less than $2000 from overseas. I am wondering about how the thing gets thru customs and how you pay. Might should just go to Singapore (which is on my must visit list) and buy one in person. That would make the lens cost as much as a Leica M8! Might should just get a Leica M8 and a couple of lens – blast a big hole in the cash account.

Speaking of cash – notice how little money you are “earning” on your CD’s/money market accounts. Might as well spend it on toys. Life is uncertain.

June 26, 2009June 26, 2009

summer daze

At Columbia Cemetery – a couple of weeks ago with the old FX01.

Forgive me, but, I did not do photography today. I grocery shopped – 3 stores and 1 farm market. And, lounged around the pool.

Decided that I liked my theme better than the black one. So, it is back to my personal theme.

June 25, 2009October 11, 2009

lighting matters

click for the larger version

Last night I went to the US Army Old Guard’s Twilight Tattoo. A first class advertising campaign.

I didn’t get any good photos. But, seems to me that the two images above illustrate the importance of lighting. The left image looks rather sinister. Is that armed man going to open fire on the people stuffed in the stands. The right image only looks sinister to old anti-war activists like me. Most would see a friendly soldier.

In the background is one of the main buildings of the “Army War College”. Do they have a football team? What about cheerleaders?

Army War College – in the olden days the War College maintained a cadre of personnel called “The Enemy Army”. As I recall the enemy spoke Esperanto, had uniforms, the whole deal. I wanted to join the Enemy Army.

Gotta feel sorry for Farrah Fawcett – not only did she die – but after about six hours her death was upstaged by Michael Jackson.

June 24, 2009June 25, 2009

no blogging today

no blog entry today. busy having a life.

Well, maybe just a minute to acknowledge Gov. Sanford. Can you imagine “Oh honey, I was just out hiking the Appalachian Trail”. I feel sorry for all the married men who really are on Appalachian Trail…. Gotta love politicians. Those boys just can’t keep it zipped up.

June 23, 2009June 23, 2009

a lack of interest

I am suffering from a lack of interest in my photography project today. So, today’s image was a reject from yesterday. All of today’s images were rejected.

Have I mentioned lately that WordPress is really easy to use and I don’t miss my old “roll your own” style blog one bit? Still haven’t “upgraded” to the latest version.

June 22, 2009June 22, 2009

Another Magnolia

The old residential area near our urban nest is infested with magnolia trees. And, in June and early July they are in maximum bloom. Unfortunately, most of the blooming is done well up the trees. So, you need to know where the baby magnolia trees are to get an interesting picture.

I am suffering from “toy-lust”. Not need – but greed.

Leica D-Lux4
Olympus E-P1
Panasonic 14-150mm f/3.5-5.6 Vario-Elmarit Aspherical MEGA O.I.S. Lens for Four Thirds System Lens
Macbook Air

All these things being old folks expensive tech toys.

June 21, 2009June 22, 2009

Sunday

Not much of a day for picture taking. Wasn’t even all that interested in playing with Lightroom. Did find the rather British looking manhole cover next to the shopping mall.

What I did do, was continue on my path to a “less paper” lifestyle. Most of the old stuff just got tossed. But, some got scanned and stored as PDFs. I recommend adding gscan2pdf to your Linux scanning tool kit. The only issue being I can only get OCR to work in German. I have very little German stuff to scan. But, I am not planning on OCRing anything anyhow. I am PDF-ing.

I did not toss my original birth certificate with little footprints. Don’t know why I am keeping it. I know that I was born.

I did toss – and did not scan – my original Internet account. From 1995. There were 8 single spaced typed pages telling you how to get online. I also tossed all of my old receipts for hardware and software. Didn’t even think about adding up how much money I have spent. Note that in early 1995 I was running a dual boot system, DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1.

June 20, 2009June 20, 2009

Honoring Dad

Dad died in the August 2000. He always had a camera handy, most of time he would spend an entire year shooting a roll of 36. Mostly he took pictures of his friends, family and the occasional flower or home grown tomato.

When he died, I finished up the roll taking snapshots of the flowers that arrived to note his passing. (Actually, a good bottle of booze would have been a better way to note his passing.)

When I had the pictures processed at the local K-Mart, I was stunned to find this image. It was taken from the carport of our family home in the slums of northwest El Paso. It would have been sunrise. And, since the leaves are off the trees, most likely in the late winter.

Playing with a new blog theme. And, working on deleting – or rather shredding and tossing – as many of paper files as possible. And where ever possible, anything that I want to save – PDF-ing and then shred/toss.

June 19, 2009June 21, 2009

Bee and Cone Flower

It didn’t rain today. Maybe I can stop working on the ark. The big event of the day was lounging around the pool.

And, taking pictures of bees over at the Nature Conservancy. Panasonic L1 with cheap-ass Oly macro lens.

The bee is number 6 of 30 in the 30Squares series.

June 18, 2009June 18, 2009

From FilmTime

Another rainy day. Decided to see what Lightroom would do for old snapshots. These are from North Dakota – summer of 1997, I think. Click on them for the big version.

Really impressed with Lightroom. It is silky smooth. Might even be worth 200 bucks.

In addition to WordPress and NextGen Gallery, now my iPod wants to be updated. Apple wants $10 for the upgrade. But, it doesn’t seem to be worth it to me. So, the iPod upgrade is being ignored.

June 17, 2009June 17, 2009

The Desk

Rain today – just played around with a picture I took of the top of my desk. My real desk top, not the computer one.

In my volunteer job, I am a paper wrangler. We are buried under mountains of paper. So, as of this afternoon I vowed to “Go Less-Paper” at home. I am already pretty paperless – but, little scraps of paper do pile up. Well, that is why I have a scanner. And a shredder. And a trash can.