http://old.tifster.com/blog Photos and thoughts from tif Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:20:02 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 [image:4707:c] Okay, I'm a little late getting this blogged, sorry. For Valentine's Day I surprised Penny with 15 beautiful roses delivered to her work and then we went out and had steak for dinner. 15 is just a good start to a life with all my heart. Forever is where my plans lay if you let me have my way. --Love, Paul http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=269 [image:4704:l]Penny and I have been together for one year. We celebrated our anniversary with a fancy dinner and night out. We’re wonderfully happy and loving our time together. This week, we’re officially moving in together to share her apartment. [newline] http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=268 [image:4702:l] Penny and I drove up to Fort Worth on Saturday and we had a nice visit with Dad at the house. Everything went well and he was in good spirits. I happened to have all my camera gear with me and managed to get this really nice picture of him. --Paul http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=267 [1] I love you Penny --Paul [1] http://old.tifster.com/blog/blog/emailpix/2007-09-01-20-01-8-1.jpeg http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=266 [image:4697:l]Far from my best picture of the moon, but this is what I got from this morning's Lunar eclipse. I wimped out and didn't bring the telescope. I was just using my 300mm lens and a normal tripod. One thing I learned (and should have already known) is that you can't take time exposures of the moon on a stationary tripod. It took me a while to figure out why every single one of them was blurry. When I was processing them, it finally occurred to me that the same streaks I was seeing on stars was going to happen on the moon. I had once before learned that even a few seconds is visible as a short streak, but conveniently forgotten this when taking these shots of the moon. See, normally the moon is bright and you take pictures with about 1/100th of a second shutter speed. That speed is fine on a tripod. During the eclipe though, the moon gets like 1000x darker, requiring a wide-open lens or a several second shutter speed. Thus my problem. http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=262 [image:4696:c] This was taken at a restaurant here in Austin. Click through to read the description if you can't tell what you're looking at. --Paul http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=261 [image:4694:c] I think this picture of Mom and Dad came out great! I have other pictures from the day as well, but they're not nearly as good, so I haven't done anything with them yet. --Paul http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=260 [1] That's right. I'm using Windows. I've gotten a decent laptop to run it on and using Windows XP. And it's actually working pretty well. Oh my... I never thought I'd say that. Between my job now involving a Windows-based application and not-quite-there Linux support on laptops, I'm trying to get used to running Windows full-time. Now, most of my time is spent in a "putty" window working with a Linux command-line, but I'm at least reading my work-mail with Thunderbird on Windows. The little quirky things with Windows will no doubt get on my nerves though, so I've left space on my hard drive for a Linux partition. I'm using my old monitor to give me extra screen space and using NVidia's stuff to support four virtual desktops. I got a bluetooth mouse to use when I'm at work, but the touchpad works okay for me when I'm away. I can't figure out a reasonable way to use the bluetooth keyboard unless I abandon the two-screen setup. At the very least, I miss my "xscreensaver". --Paul [1] http://old.tifster.com/blog/blog/emailpix/2007-07-03-8-41-8-0.jpeg http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=259 [1] We ran across this amazing blue bowl at a store today. Somebody had dumped a bunch of "sprinkles" into it, making this splendid mixture of colors. The smell alone was strong enough to get a sugar-high. --Paul [1] http://old.tifster.com/blog/blog/emailpix/2007-07-01-13-54-1-0.jpeg http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=258 [image:4691:c] I've been wanting to try this shot now for several months. I got Penny to sit still (mostly) for me for about two hours while I shot and shot and shot trying to get the focus right. It takes a lot of light and a lot of patience. This isn't really my best pose, but it's the best we could capture. No significant photoshopping here, just lots of light, two tripods, and a remote shutter release. http://old.tifster.com/blog/?p=257