Wow. I haven’t posted in such a long time. Been busy and not feeling like blogging at all. Bad me. So here’s a quick update.

I just dropped Meeka off at the vets. She cracked one of her back teeth and needs to have it pulled. It’s really bothering me because my other cat (of 13 years) got sick right after he had dental surgery and he died. So there are bad memories for me. Odds are she’ll be okay, but I can’t shake that awful feeling from that last time. Blah…

My son is now going to College. Not only does he work hard and has a steady girlfriend (9 months now) he’s juggling school work as well.  I don’t know where the time went. I miss that “little boy”, but yet I look at him now and I’m SO proud of him.

I started a digital portrait painting of Ramsay from Hell’s Kitchen. I have no idea when it’ll be finished, but I can’t wait to show it off.

I’ve been watching the soap All My Children for a very long time now and recently started watching One Life To Live, which is right after it. Yes..that’s what I need. Another hour sucked out of my life. Wasted on soaps. haha (Annie has turned into a little bitch!)

Finally got new furniture for that room that has nothing in it (*pokes Jamie*). I should be posting pics of that sometime soon.

I simply cannot stand this humid weather. Walking outside is like walking into a sauna. I _hate_it. I’ve been on a few late night walks on my street, but I miss going out into the woods with my dog for our ‘hikes’.

I had a funeral to go to that I really don’t want to get into here, among other things. I like blogging but I also  feel like not everyone  needs to know every_little_thing about my life. Especially the [very] personal stuff. But that’s just me. To each his own…

And I have to slap a link on here. The Daily Dead Puppy. [and I thought I was bad at thinking up titles/names. Cute photos but come on. That's just wrong. What's next? The Daily Dead Babies?]

Categories: Odds and Ends
Tags: All My Children, Digital Painting, I hate tags, meeka, One Life To Live, Ramsay, The Daily Dead Puppy, weather
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Categories: Digital Work • Pets / Animals • Photographs • Plants / Nature
Tags: camera, digital camera, digital photography, dragonfly, e-510, figaro, flower, frogs, new toy, sky, statues, Wordless Wednesday
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Olympus Evolt E-510

Well, I finally got my new toy and I’ve been wanting it for a long time now. I’ve wanted a DSLR camera ever since they first came out. It was a painful wait too, took about a week to get the camera just to find out I had to wait another week because the guy forgot to pack the batteries. I finally got it all however, and also got a weekend to play with it. I must say, I absolutely love it. I’m a secret camera-freak I guess, so finally buying this is just awesome.

I figured I’d write a little unprofessional review of it, as well as test out wordpress’s new features (yay image captions).

It is any enthusiast photographer’s wet dream. Automatic bracketing (in different ways too), 3 FPS shooting, 10 megapixels, RAW capability, in-body image stabilization (nifty feature), full-automatic mode as well as Aperture/Shutter priority modes, full-manual and even programmed ’scene’ modes. Can take Compact Flash and xD memory cards, so space isn’t an issue. There’s a whole bunch of custom lenses, optics, flashes and other accessories for it. It can become a money sink pretty damn fast.

Zuiko Digital 14-42mm lens

The one I got was a Body + Lens combo, so it came with a Zuiko Digital ‘four thirds’ lens (14-42mm). The auction also included an extra battery in the deal too, so overall it was a steal compared to what you’d pay for one normally. I got all that for the price of the body only basically, you gotta love ebay sometimes.

So far the pictures it has taken, even in full-auto ‘SHQ’ mode, are amazing. Using aperture priority mode with RAW, oh man just forget it. Amazing quality, even if you aren’t a professional. You don’t need to be a photographic genius to take good photos with this.

The lens it came with is great too, using around f8 gets the sharpest photos out of it. It can zoom up to approximately 3x and go to a very wide angle as well. The ‘four thirds’ lenses are a bit different in that they aren’t based on 35mm standard, so 14mm on this lens is about the equal of 28mm on a normal 35mm standard lens. In my uneducated testing, the 25mm mark is about equal to 35mm and 35mm is about equal to 50mm (don’t take my word as perfect though, I’m probably off a bit).

One thing that is still holding me in awe, is the overall speed of the camera. It takes barely a second to turn on, automatic focusing in ideal conditions (good light) is nearly instant, writing speed (to slow xD cards) is even bearable. The focus is much more tedious inside when it is dark and using the flash. The flash will pop up and sprinkle light onto the area to try to focus, and sometimes it just takes awhile. Manual focus indoors might be a better option.

The only thing is it is obviously large and isn’t going to fit this in your pocket, unless you’re still sporting some of the baggiest pants on earth. So it is going to make a great companion to my existing SP-310 which I’ll have no trouble taking anywhere due to size. My 310 will also continue to be my macro shooter, I’m amazed at that cameras ability to do macro shots. I’m sure with a macro lens, this E-510 could take amazing macros as well.

I would recommend this lens to anyone looking for a near professional-grade DSLR but don’t want to fork out $2500+ for one. You can get this for about $550 with body + lens + battery. If you ask me it is an excellent deal. It has amazing reviews around the block and comes highly recommended everywhere I look.

I’ll have a bunch of photos posted tomorrow that I took with it to show off what it can do.

I also in no way see this camera as an extension of my body, no matter how bad it looks.

Lens Extended

Categories: Digital Work • Humor • Information • Photographs
Tags: camera, digital camera, digital photography, e-510, giddy like a school girl, new toy, sp-310
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Well I’ve just been totally bummed down this morning, my favorite standup comedian has died Sunday. Apparently George died from heart failure.

“On June 22, 2008, Carlin was admitted to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California complaining of chest pain. He died later that day at 5:55 p.m. PDT of heart failure at the age of 71.”

I’m sad that I never got the chance to see him perform live. I could never get enough of his in your face honesty about the topics he talked about.

The ‘old fuck’ (as he so graciously referred to himself in the end) will be missed by many.

Categories: Quick Post
Tags: death, george carlin
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Been an interesting week or so with storms. Got floods in Iowa, earthquakes in Japan and China and thunderstorms like mad around my area.

Right now as I type getting yet another one, this will be the fourth or fifth storm so far this week alone. Supposed to get like two more tomorrow and wednesday. Two of the past ones caused a few hours altogether of power outages as well. The rain on saturday was insane, driveway became a river basically and you couldn’t see out a hundred feet before the mist and rain blocked your vision.. at only 5 pm in the afternoon.

Well here’s to hoping my power doesn’t go out for once. I really hate having to shut everything down, then back up. Life is crap without electricity anymore, not much you can do in the modern world.

Guess I’ll sit back and enjoy this storm.

Categories: Plants / Nature
Tags: lightning, power outage, storms
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