Archive for January, 2008

  • Cleared for Landing - January 29th, 2008
  •  We trundled back down to the southern end of Assateague today to take more pictures at the wildlife refuge. Yesterday, I had been frustrated by all of my images appearing fuzzy on the LCD display on the 40D. I had been shooting RAW only, which has a JPEG thumbnail embedded for preview purposes. However, it [...]

  • A Better Day at Assateague - January 28th, 2008
  • Today we ventured out to the Virginia part of Assateague. We haven’t been down that way in some time, and it was a lot of fun. I ended up being a lot less frustrated — though I was pretty frustrated when I was shooting. For some reason, the previews on the 40D LCD are [...]

  • Assateague in the Cold - January 27th, 2008
  • We ventured out in the cold today to Assateague to take some pictures. It turned out to be a pretty crappy day for pictures, but, a good day for bird watching. We were able to see a Northern Harrier, a whole wad of Cedar Waxwings, a juvenile Bald Eagle and various and sundry gulls [...]

  • Afternoon at Assateague - January 27th, 2008
  • Went to Assateague today. Although none of the ponies were on greeting duty today, one was being quite sociable. This one ambled over to our car as soon as we parked in one of the lots, and had to see if there was anything in the car suitable for lunch. No doubt [...]

  • Some Thoughts on Street Numbers - January 27th, 2008
  • I heard on this morning’s news that, at least in Baltimore County, homes and businesses are going to be required to display the street number on the back of the building. The idea is to make it easier for emergency crews to find an address from the alleyway. I think this is a fantastic idea.
    But, [...]

  • The World’s Most Portable Monopod - January 25th, 2008
  • This video shows a really simple — and cheap — method of reducing camera shake:
    $1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod - The most amazing home videos are here
    This idea is, by no means, a new thing. This video just shows how to put it together very succinctly. Theoretically, [...]

  • Blogging from Word? - January 24th, 2008
  • I’m playing with the trial version of Office2007. Yeah, I know. I’m Mr. OpenOffice.org, aren’t I.

    Well, I heard tell that Micro$oft might have finally gotten Office right. If nothing else, they’ve certainly improved things. One nifty feature is that you can write blog entries from within M$Word. You can see a screen grab made while [...]

  • Busy day in the backyard - January 19th, 2008
  • It was a busy day in the backyard today.  We were graced by visits from a Tufted Titmouse, Downy Woodpecker, Mourning Doves, Cardinals, Carolina Wren, Blue Jays, Dark-Eyed Junco, House Sparrows (anyone know how to keep them away?), House Finches,  Mockingbird, and our Cooper’s Hawk.
    The hawk flew in right on top [...]

  • Towards The End Of An Era - January 15th, 2008
  • By now, I sure that many of you have heard or read that Howard County will be discontinuing their GTV cable television operation, effective June 30 of this year.
    The staff at the station found out last Thursday in a meeting that was called by the county Director of Communications. We sorta knew something was [...]

  • Things that make you go hmm… - January 13th, 2008
  • A development over on the eastern shore has this sign at its entrance:
    Adventure Farms
    A Planned Community
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for this post.

  • What Got Me Hooked… - January 12th, 2008
  • Some of you may remember my mentioning that Steve’s bike was the first I’d actually ridden on. Well, Steve put the following picture up on his flickr stream.

    That’s Steve, back in ‘85, on his little 250cc Suzuki.
    I rode on some other bikes after that — Jeff Wood’s 500cc Honda, and another fellow’s Harley [...]

  • What’s New On Our Other Sites? - January 9th, 2008
  • You may have noticed that I took out the sidebar item for the RSS feeds from our other web sites. Mostly, I did it because they were not properly updating on a regular basis. For instance, the section for Orchard Studios should, for the past three days, been indicating that the feed was missing.
    The big [...]

  • This amused me today… - January 7th, 2008
  • This and this amused me today…
    Post Revisions:There are no revisions for this post.

  • Ways to Get Screwed - January 3rd, 2008
  • Way #1 — Live in Maryland
    Maryland has, for years, been known as “The Fee State.” Well, now it’s January 3, 2008, and Maryland’s new sales tax is in effect — 6% now, instead of 5%, as well as a doubled cigarette tax! At least the ciggie tax doesn’t affect me. And, fortunately, we bought the [...]

  • Get Yer DTV Upgrade, Cheap… - January 2nd, 2008
  • For those who don’t already know it, our regular, analog, “NTSC” TV channels will all go off the air on February 17, 2009. All you’ll get on that old Quasar is snow … unless you get a DTV converter box. And, the government is here to help! They’ve started accepting applications for $40 vouchers [...]

  • Follow The Leader … - January 2nd, 2008
  • New Years Day, we braved the cold and wind and joined almost a couple hundred other people for an annual beach walk on Assateague Island. Honestly, I expected that only a handful of people would actually show up for this, but, the turnout was great.
    The three mike walk afforded some great photo opportunities. The [...]

  • Resolution - January 1st, 2008
  •  I usually don’t make new year’s resolutions — because I don’t keep them. But I’m going to go out on a limb and make a simple one this year: More pictures.
    The picture above was made at the Assateague Island National Park, just south of Ocean City, Maryland, with a Canon 40D and a Tokina 12-24mm [...]

  • New Years in Berlin - December 23rd, 2007
  • [ December 30, 2007; December 31, 2007; January 1, 2008; ] Plans being what plans are, our Christmas weekend plans changed radically. Instead of spending it with my parents, we ended up having to cover all four Christmas services at church.

    So, now we’ll be in Berlin for New Years. Yay!

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