Ok, after much prodding by brother, I have crossed over to the dark side and converted my Blog to WordPress from Movable Type.
As fun as making my MTYahooMaps plugin was, I haven’t touched it in over a year and have no intention of updating it to work on MT 4.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
Nothing at the moment.
One of my hobbies is building plastic models, usually Gundam models, but I also build an occasional plane. It’s fun, requires patience and is relaxing. I have a queue of models taking up space so I’m building them a little at a time. As I build them, I’ll take photos and update the blog. Above is a photo I took of three of the models I built. The two on the right were completed last week.Next on my plate is this:
I’ve had this for a while and never got around to building it.
This is Bandai’s Perfect Grade Evangelion model. This is the 1st Perfect Grade in the series from 1998 and the only one in the series that is not based on the Gundam Franchise.
To put it mildly, it requires paint and glue to look good.
Fortunately, Tamiya colors (Water soluble) work fine and is easily available from Image Anime on West 30th Street.
The colors I’ll need:
X-1 Black (Optional Might just polish the Black parts)
X-2 White
X-5 Green
X-6 Orange
X-16 Purple
Building it will be straight forward, I’ll test fit everything, glue seams where needed, mask and paint.
Should be fun.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Makes Me Wonder” Maroon 5 from the “It Won’t Be Soon Before Long” Album.
As people may know, Photography is a hobby I indulge in. I like to think of doing different things such as a long exposure shot.
So, when I read “Awesome Red Alert Tesla Coil Makes Quick Work of Allied Soldiers” on Gizmodo, I had to read about it.
Peter at tesladownunder.com was nice enough to document how he did it. Basically, he replicated the scene from the game in real life with a Real Tesla Coil.
See his work here.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
Wild by Seal from his “SEAL [1991]” album.
Last year, I had a conversation with Nina, a friend of mine who’s a Professional Photographer (See her excellent work here) about the advantages of having a Nikon WT-2A wireless adapter for a D2x. At the time, I thought it was overkill, but Nina pointed out that during a Studio or Field shoot, this would be very useful as the LCD screen on the camera is not a good way to tell if a shot came out right or not.
Along those lines, I saw this on Engadget and found it to be an interesting idea. 2 GB and Wireless in an SD card? Great idea and nicely priced too. At the same time, a little scary! That Wireless card is the size of a postage stamp. I would likely not get one, but I’d recommend it for other people. From the review, it apparently does not create a big power burden on the camera and certainly is good for people who want it without having to plug a card reader in.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
1973 by James Blunt from the “All the Lost Souls” album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
Originally uploaded by S.D.
To Recap:
Needless to say, it was a blast, despite being crushed against a Police barricade.
The photo on the right was from the people gathering at Spring Street and 6th Avenue. I met other people from Flickr early on, but we got separated as we each got good vantage points.
Next time, I have to get there earlier so I can get into the starting area.
Things I learned:
Music I’m listening to right Now:
I Don’t Wanna Be In Love (Dance Floor Anthem) by Good Charlotte from the “Good Morning Revival” album.
I saw this via Reddit.com (Best.Productivity.Killer.EVER) on Saturday and was nearly in tears by the end. My Wife and I have been getting a lot of Telemarketers lately, so when I heard about this, I could not resist listening to it.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
First Time by Lifehouse from the “Who We Are” album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Video
Ok, I’ve pointed out that I’m a programmer because I like to make the computer work for me. Recently, My old lawnmower stalled once too often and I got a new one from Home Depot (They had the best price) to replace it. My requirements are pretty simple:
So we went shopping and I decided to go with a Toro. My reasoning is that they make fine lawn mowers, have a great reputation and you could order any parts for it.
Here is the lazy part: It has front wheel drive. That may not sound lazy until you consider our house is on a 40 by 100 ft parcel and the house and garage take up most of it.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
General Attitude by Collective Soul from the “Youth” Album.
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Posted in Cool Stuff, Different
Anyone who knows me, knows I use Flickr a lot. I'm also lazy, a programmer and constantly looking for ways to execute repetitive tasks easier.
Lately, I've taken to replying to comments on Flickr with an 24×24 image of that persons Flickr Icon. Easy enough view the HTML source, find the link and cut and paste it into the comment.
OR I could have just installed Greasemonkey and install GM Script: Flickr Buddy Icon Reply v2_2 written by Doc18. Finding that INCREDIBLY convenient, I checked out GM Script: Smilies and other tools by Jessica Shannon.
Greasemonkey is an Interesting idea. I think I'll look into it an start writing my own Greasemonkey scripts.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"You're Amazing" by Robert Palmer from "Don't Explain".
Posted in Cool Stuff
It all goes back to when I was a child. When I was in 5th Grade I took black and white photo with an Kodak Instamatic using 126 Cartridge film.
I took photos of our house, family, my cat, anything that caught my attention. It was great fun carefully composing the shot and taking the photo. I took photos, my Father would develop them and print them with his Leitz Focomat enlarger. We had a small darkroom under the porch of our house that was really an old store room, but worked perfectly to develop film.
Let me tell you for a 5th grader, developing film in a tank, hanging the film to dry, developing and printing the image it, is Magical. I’m forever grateful for my Father taking the time to introduce photography to me and my brothers. Time went on and my Father had less time for photography, but I kept at it.
Now years later, It’s my turn to return the favor. My Father asked if he could use my old Nikon D70s while he considers getting a DSLR of his own. To help, I got a Nikon SB-600 flash for him to use with the camera. He’s free to use is as long as he wants, but he insists that he’s buying one of his own.
I can’t wait to see the photos he takes.
Music I’m listening to right Now:
“World” by Five for Fighting from “Two Lights “. Five for Fighting is John Ondrasik.
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Posted in Cool Stuff
By training, I am a programmer. Its something I enjoy and use to my advantage whenever possible. In this case, I had a repetitious task to perform and so I made a PERL program to solve it.
This past Monday, while working from home, my DSL went out for several hours. Since I was stuck on site fielding questions from the Support team, I started tinkering with a program I use to copy Nikon NEF files from a flashcard reader.
Basically, I like to sort my files in directories by camera model and date. That is, if I take a photo with my Nikon D80 on May 20th, 2007, I'd copy them into:
C:StuffStefanNikonD802007-05-20
Sounds simple, but suppose I put two weeks of photos on a 2 GB memory card? Doing it manually is a pain and I'm lazy. So I wrote a PERL program to do it.
Here's How it works:
A colleague asked for a copy, so I niced it up, commented it, added command line parameters and I'm releasing it into the wild.
Prerequisites: PERL, of course and ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Frankly, Phil Harvey did all the heavy lifting here. He wrote a great PERL module and I'm only using a little bit of it. The rest is just simple file manipulation.
From a command line:
c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl -?
USAGE: copyNEFJPEG.pl
[–from X:] (e.g. –from i:) Default = i:
[–to X:somedirectory] (e.g. –to X:somedirectory)
Default = d:StuffStefan
[–writecfg] Write config file to "copyNEFJPEG.cfg".
[–nothing] Do Nothing, just show me.
[–usage|help|?] This message.
Example:
c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl –from g: –to c:stuffStefan –writecfg –nothing
In this case, it will write a file called copyNEFJPEG.cfg to the same location as copyNEFJPEG.pl and set the defaults to the command line (Assuming "c:stuffStefan" exists in advance). The "–nothing" parameter shows what it would do without doing any copying (other then the config file that is) . Next time, you would simply use:
c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl
and it will just copy the files (Did I mention I'm lazy??). Once the config is done, you could just set it up as a shortcut. This program won't overwrite anything or delete the source files. It's fairly harmless, but if you use it, do so at your own risk. I've used this on Nikon NEF files and JPEG files. Likely it would work on CANON RAW files, but I don't have any to test. If anyine wants me to test with CANON RAW files, leave me a comment.
You can download it in a zip here.
Music I'm listening to right Now:
"The Taste" by Five for Fighting from "The Battle for Everything". Five for Fighting is John Ondrasik.
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