Another Thursday night jam at Wayne’s studio. The creative juices were flowing along with the fermented ones =8-]
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My new Camera – Canon Powershot SX30 IS Review -
Recently purchased a Canon Powershot SX30 IS, and I am quite impressed with its night shooting abilities. Check out this moon shot. This is a hand held shot at 35X zoom. Nothing has been done to enhance this image except cropping.
Impressive yes? here is the exif data
Exposure Time = 1/125" F Number = F5.8 ISO Speed Ratings = 100 Exif Version = 30, 32, 33, 30 Date Time Original = 2011-09-06 21:26:50 Date Time Digitized = 2011-09-06 21:26:50 Shutter Speed Value = 6.97 TV Aperture Value = 5.06 AV Exposure Bias Value = ±0EV Flash = Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode Focal Length = 150.5mm Maker Note = 982 Byte User Comment = Flashpix Version = Version 1.0 Color Space = sRGB Exif Image Width = 956 Exif Image Height = 1292 File Source = DSC Custom Rendered = Custom process Exposure Mode = Manual exposure White Balance = Auto white balance Digital Zoom Ratio = 1x Scene Capture Type = Normal
I find myself enjoying this camera. It has most of what I expect from a point and shoot, with the added advantage of many features found on SLR’s such as Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual . It is a heavy camera compared to its competitors similar models, but I don’t mind that because it gives it a good solid feel. The lens is awesome! 35mm equivalent 24 to 840. That’s a 35 x zoom. I haven’t given it a full work out yet but so far it is impressing the heck out of me. Definetly use a tripod at the higher magnifications, as even the slightest shake will be magnified, though the image stabilizer is quite effective.
The 24MM equiv wide angle shows no edge distortion, and with an fstop of 2.7, allows lots of low light shooting opportunities.
The shutter speeds range from 15 seconds to 1/3200. with an effective iso rating of 80 to 1600. You are ready for pretty well any lighting situations.
There are also many preset modes to chose from including one that I discovered by accident on the first day of shooting, ” Color Accent” which allows you to pick a color in the scene you are shooting, and keep only that color. Everything that is not that color will be rendered in black and white, leaving just that color. How cool is that?
The only drawback I have found so far is the slow continuous shooting speed of 1.3 frames p/sec. Kind of crappy if you like shooting sports, but I guess you cant have everything. Anyway, I give this camera an 8 out of 10 so far and I will post more images as I take them.
Cheers!
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Littlehead’s End of Summer Party 2011
It’s that time of year again. Summer is on it’s way out and and the fall colours are starting to grace the trees. What better time to get together with a few friends and ROCK OUT!
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Audrey and Dave’s Wedding
Here are Audrey and Daves Wedding photo’s.
If you want to save and print any of these, don’t use the slide show. Just click through the pics and if you see one you want, you can right click and choose “save image as” and save it to your computer. These images are optimized for the web so if you print them I wouldn’t go any larger than 4×6, maybe 5×7. If you need larger, talk to the happy couple. They have all the original files.
Thanks for stopping by, enjoy, and feel free to click an ad on the right so that I can keep buying cheap wine kits! =8-]
Cheers!
Marilyn got some great shots "Behind the scenes"
40 Photos
Stress? What stress!
37 Photos
What a cute couple!
107 Photos
Let the party begin!
60 Photos
The Family shots
32 Photos
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The Biker
a song for Chris
By C.C. McInnesHe’s crashed every car that he’s ever owned
and never walked away bleedin’
Always complained about something mechanical
Had nothing to do with his speedin’The stuff that he did, when he was a kid
would probably scare a man stupid
But he settled down, as many man do
when they get shot in the arse by some cupidWell I hope they have Harleys in Heaven
you know you never can tell
There better be Harleys in heaven my friends
’cause the devil don’t want him in HellHe lived by his rules and suffered no fools
Except for the ones that he liked
He didn’t want much, had all that he needed
A good wife, some good friends and his bikeNow he’s ridin’ that highway into the sky
and he is sorely going to be missed
But if theres no bikes allowed up in Heaven
then he is surely going to be pissed!Well I hope they have Harleys in Heaven
you know you never can tell
There better be Harleys in heaven my friends
’cause the devil don’t want him in Hellyeah There better be Harleys in Heaven
’cause the devil don’t want him in hell!
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The CSI Song
I want to be a corpse on CSI
People think I’m kinda weird, can’t quite imagine why
I could lie around all day, pretending that I died
I could do it while I’m drunk, I could do it while I’m friedThey could make me play the part of a weird dead electrician
They’d put me in an alley in some weird painful position
Get examined by an actor who plays a smart physician
and have all of my bits handled by some gorgeous blond clinicianI’d love to make my money lyin’ round all day
If you’re gonna be that lazy, better make it pay
If you’re good at doin’ nothing, then this is the way
I’d like to play a stiff until I’m old and grayYou too could be a corpse on CSI
©2011 Swinesong Publishing
Just lie down on the floor and give it a try
You’ll find it quite relaxing, staring up at the sky
and you thought only politicians get paid to lie
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The imminent death of linux on the desktop (Oh no. Not again!)
About once a year, some tech blog will drum up views and comments (and advertising bucks) by spewing out the same old adage “Linux is dead on the desktop”. I am hear to refute these statements as an avid Linux desktop user for over 10 years now.
Now an Operating system or OS is the go between or traffic cop that controls system hardware and the programs that want to access them. It allocates resources and memory for the different programs running and tries to do it in ways that provide speed, efficiency and security. Some examples of the different OS’s are Windows, Mac or Apple, Unix, Linux, Freebsd, and a host of other lesser known and experimental ones. Now through my research, I’ve found that most of the OS’s are based on Unix including Freebsd, MacOSx Google’s new Chrome os and of course Linux. (pronounced “Lynn-ux”, like my friend Lynn who collects penguins which is also the linux mascot….coincidink? )
Windows and Mac are the most popular OS’s out there and thats fine with me. I used windows since 3.1 and DOS before that (i am getting sooo old…sob) and after 10000 “blue screens of death” decided to enter the world of Linux and all it’s various flavors.
Now a “flavor” is a particular linux distribution. There are many of them out there like Slackware, Debian, RedHat, Ubuntu, and several others. The difference between the flavors is how it is bundled, or what programs and tools are included with that particular distribution. The underlying base OS is the same. Some, like RedHat, are geared towards businesses and therefore are bundled and tuned towards business applications and include things like file and print server software, office applications etc. There is a distribution specifically designed to turn your computer into a PVR, MythBuntu, or if you want to turn your desktop into a home recording studio you can try UbuntuStudio which packages up all the latest sound,video,and graphics programs.
I have tried a few of them over the years and have decided on Ubuntu linux. Ive used it for a few years now and have to say it is one of the easiest to install and setup right out of the box. It found all my devices and installed the appropriate drivers and I was up and running in less than an hour. One of the nicest things about converting from windows to linux for me is not having to install mother board drivers. Motherboard drivers have to be installed after Windows is installed so that Windows “sees” all the different devices. As anyone who has worked in computer repair knows, when a Windows box needs to be totally reinstalled, a motherboard driver disk is a necessity, and most of the people I had to do this for usually had no clue as to the location of said disk, leading to the frustration of tracking down the drivers on the net. So remember folks…KEEP THOSE DISKS IN A SAFE PLACE!…whew.
Ubuntu uses its own drivers so you don’t have to worry about that. There are some instances that you may have to download a particular driver, but it is rare. The installation is totally automated, just answer a few questions and let ‘er rip, or, for the more adventurous, you can set everything up manually.
The main installation includes the OS and various basic programs to get you up and productive right away, including Firefox to get you on the web, and one of the greatest inventions ever, the “SOFTWARE PACKAGE MANAGER” (insert echo here)
With this puppy you can customize your computer to your liking by downloading the software that YOU want for absolutely FREE…Thats right FREE. Another great feature about the package manager is that it will automatically load any other packages that you need to run the application you are downloading. How cool is that?
Advantage;
Windows? big bucks! Programs that run on windows? More big bucks! latest version of Windows…more big bucks! …cha-ching!
Ubuntu? FREE! Programs that run on Ubuntu? FREE! latest version of Ubuntu? FREE! It’s a no brainer as far as I’m concerned.
The programs that you can download and use on Ubuntu are every bit as stable and usable as the stuff you have to purchase for windows. They may have less eye candy involved but they work. Sometimes even better than the windows equivalent.
From Address Book to Znes (which is a super Nintendo emulator), there are over 30,000….thats right 30,000 freely available programs you can download in the gleeful knowledge that you are not doing anything illegal. If you are coder, you are even allowed to download the source code and modify it to your particular needs and specifications as desired, as long as you let others modify your code as well.
Another advantage is the automatic upgrade system. In Windows, the OS will update itself, but it will not update the programs that you have on your computer, whereas Ubuntu keeps track of all available programs that have been updated, and applies not only the OS updates, but all the other applications on your computer that have been updated as well.
Now why would anyone choose an OS that they have to re-purchase every few years, and buy software on top of that when they can download a free OS and free programs that continually update themselves? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
If you are interested in trying some of these Linux OS’s out for yourself without wiping windows out, check out their websites you can download them to cd or usb stick and run directly from them.
The death of Linux on the desktop? I think it is just the beginning of the age of linux!
(notice I didn’t mention anything about viruses, bot nets, malware etc)
