Central Park

Central Park

So, I got to visit New York city this past week. Wow, it’s a very different place from where I live. I’ll expound more later, but for now, I’ll just say Wow! Out of the noise and apparent chaos we found ourselves in Central Park. It’s a huge and amazingly quiet and peaceful place in the middle of New York, Manhattan to be specific. The anxiety and craziness of the city seemed to fade away behind us, and I was glad! :)

Ripples

Ripples

I really miss getting out and shooting, but I’m working a second job, doing some web programming stuff in the evenings and it’s eating up all my free time. The rest of my free time goes to my family and Church. I’m scheduled to be done in February so I can get back to shooting again around then. In the meantime I try and do some here and there. Thanks for stopping by!

Hangin out

Hangin out

I know it seems I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, but really I haven’t. I’ve been working more hours than I care to think about and have little time for much. But, I did manage to get away with my family last week and we ventured to St. Louis where we visited their Zoo, the Arch and other touristy sorts of things. I also managed to break out my D70 and blew the dust off it to snap some shots, nothing too inspiring, but it was fun non-the-less.

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I shot this while wondering around the countryside near Las Vegas. The sun was setting behind the rocks which made the backsides light up. The countryside was way more interesting than Las Vegas itself! Man I’d like to get out and do some shooting! :)

Configure Firefox to allow linking to a file or folder

FirefoxOne thing about Firefox that’s always bugged me is the inability to access links to files and folders using file://.
After some research it appears that this ability is disabled for security reasons. Fair enough, but I want to use it at work.
I have a page on my Intranet with links to installations and folders but they are all located on network shares, not hosted by

So, to enable this you have to add a file to your Firefox profile called user.js
To do it just make a new empty text file and name it user.js
If you already have a user.js file you can edit it and add the following lines:

user_pref(“capability.policy.policynames”, “offlineok”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.sites”, “http://YourDomain.com”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.sites”, “http://YourOtherDomain.com”);
user_pref(“capability.policy.offlineok.checkloaduri.enabled”, “allAccess”);

Now when you click on a “File://” link from one of the specified domains it will allow it to be accessed.
One think to keep in mind when making links to use this way, Firefox wants the “File://” link to look like this: “File://///” when linking to a file or folder on a network share. When linking to a local file or folder you can just use the “File://”
Note: Sometimes when copying code like the above the quotation marks can get changed by different browsers and text editors, so if it’s not working when you put it into the user.js file check that the quotation marks are normal.

Shiny rust

Shiny rust

Shiny rust doesn’t really make much sense as far as titles go, but I always go with the first title that pops into my head when I look at a shot, no matter how non-nonsensical it may be. I’ve been doing some extra work in the evenings, so I have absolutely no time to shoot or process stuff I have shot. It stinks not having more time, but the extra money is nice.

Vista Tip – Slow Vista file copy processes

worldI’ve been using Windows Vista on my laptop for several months now and each time I go to copy files from another networked machine it tends to take a really long time. Sometimes it’ll say “Calculating remaining time…” and it will never finish, it doesn’t even time out after sitting there trying to calculate how long it’s going to take to copy 100mb across the network. I’ve noticed this happening from time to time on copying files from my laptop to an external hard drive or usb thumb drive as well. I didn’t experience this issue when I had XP loaded on my laptop so I figured it ruled out a hardware issue. I checked the DMA settings for my laptop’s hard drive and it had DMA enabled like I would expect it to.

Finally I had grown to tired of this slowness so I jumped on Google and went through several forums and tried several different fixes, non of which helped. Then I found my way to this Microsoft hotfix that basically said it’s an issue with Vista, there’s a hotfix for it but you have to contact Microsoft support to get it. They also said that you should just wait for the first service pack of Vista, but this issue has been bugging me to much to wait and Microsoft didn’t want to give up the hotfix.  I didn’t really feel like calling Microsoft Support and being on the phone forever etc.
Back to Google I go and I found the hotfix available for download from theHotfixshare.net. Sure enough the hotfix worked and my file transfers, particularly network transfers, are a lot faster. They don’t like you to link directly to the hotfix, so I won’t link directly to it, but if you goto their site and goto downloads, then select “language neutral” then Vista. Search for KB931770 you’ll find it on that page.

Since you never know how long a site might be around I’m putting the hotfix on my site for download as well. I take no responsibility for what this might do to your computer, so don’t whine to me if it messes something up. It worked fine on my Alienware laptop with Vista Home Premium on it. Get it here.

Globe icon downloaded from here.

This big

This big...

For the life of me I can’t remember what this guy was saying. You’d think he was talking about fishing based on his hand gestures, but, we were at the Grand Canyon and nowhere near water. I wasn’t actually paying attention at the moment, I was just amused by his mannerisms and how intently everyone was listening to him.

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I hadn’t ever tried stacking a polorizer and a neutral density filter to get the smooth water, but it worked well here even for being almost noon with little cloud coverage. In the past I had always shot in lower light (like at sunset)with long exposures which works but you run the risk of the other areas in the shot not being as sharp because of slight movements. Another benefit to doing it this way and at this time of the day is you don’t have to fight with bugs as much!

Photographer’s Tips #5 – Smooth water in bright light

water

I’ve always liked shots that have the water looking like silk, especially waterfalls.  Early on I figured out I could get this effect by doing a long exposure, but it had to be done in lower light.  This usually meant hanging around the water area at sunset.  Otherwise there’s just too much light and it all gets blown out.

Then I purchased a Polarizer filter because I read somewhere that it would do something cool, I don’t remember what or why but I did.  The polorizer is a handy filter that really makes the sky pop and cuts down on reflected glare.  Anyways I found that I didn’t have to have as dark a setting to get the cool water effect.

Then I read about the Neutral Density filter which worked even better.  The Neutral Density filter basically allows you to slow the shutter speed down even more.
So, today I was out shooting and was around a waterfall, but it was noon and the sun was at it’s high point making it hard to get that cool silky effect.  So I stacked the Polarizer and the Neutral Density filter on top of each other and was able to shoot at a slow shutter speed without blowing alot of the water out!

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