You want a piece of me?
Attack of the bear
I’m not sure how I managed it but I escaped unharmed.
Looking up
Same angel as yesturday’s shot. Interesting how this different angle changes how the face appears as opposed to yesturday’s.
VB6 Image Resizing and more with FREEIMAGE
I have an application that I’m working on. As a side note it’s related to a previous post here on MISGuys. I wrote awhile back about RSS readers and the fact that I couldn’t find a single one that did what I wanted or that was priced reasonably. So I decided to make my own. It’s called squatRSS.
Not sure why I chose that name, it just jumped out at me and I stuck with it. I’ve got a pretty good start but it’s not ready to be released yet. I hope to release it at a later date. While I’m not trying to get rich on it I do plan on charging $10 for it because I have spent around 25 to 30 hours so far and I’m sure I’ll spend that much or more before I am ready to release it. We’ll see if anyone is interested in buying it and if not then I have a cool RSS reader and that much more experience in VB. $10 doesn’t seem like too much to charge for a good little application. Anyways, while I’m pretty proficient in VB6 I’m not guru enough to write my own code for taking a bunch of image files and batch resizing them. So I searched the web and after considerable looking found a good solution. The FREEIMAGE project is an open source library project that supports many different image formats and is able to perform many different image manipulation routines like rotating, resizing, flipping, color adjustments and more. I’m just using the image resizing part of it, so I can’t speak to the other functions, but resizing works really well and is quick.
Sad eyes
Kinda sad looking angel.
Flying high
It’s kinda wierd that I tend to take so many pictures of birds. I really don’t like birds that much. They seem like rats with wings to me most of the time. They can be so annoying, pooping on everything and making noise and such. Yet I keep photographing them. I think I’m just fascinated by their ability to fly and they make it look so easy.
The end of Christmas as we know it…or is it?
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
REM penned these insightful words sometime around 1987 and these lyrics will forever be able to be used to describe the world we live in, at least it seems that way.
I keep hearing discussions about everyone being so afraid to give any religious association to the upcoming holiday season known as Christmas. Personally I don’t care if people call it Christmas or Winter Solstice or whatever. Those who embrace Jesus and allow Him to affect their lives shouldn’t be afraid to celebrate Jesus’ birth. How can we expect those who don’t know Jesus or care about Him and what he did for them to want to celebrate the same as us? How can we not expect them to try and seperate Jesus from this time of year, just the same as they seperate Him from Easter? As for my family? We give each other gifts, put up a tree and put decorations on it, we get together and have fun and celebrate life. We also put much emphasis on Jesus’ birth and remind our kids that Christmas is not only about giving gifts and Santa, but it’s also about the Son of God who cared so much for you and I that he left the riches and comfort of Heaven to be born in a manger as a little baby and live a human life and experience the trials and pains of humanity. Though he did it without sin and in so doing was able to die as a sacrifice for our sins. Don’t let the fact that Target or some other big chain company shy’s away from the word Christmas get you in a tizzy. If you look at the history of the Christmas holiday you’ll quickly see that it has always had controversial meanings to many different people. Just remember that it’s our responsibility to celebrate and teach our kids what Christmas is to us, not Target’s or Walmart’s or Dillard’s. Merry Christmas.
- Camera: NIKON D70
- Aperture: ƒ/1.8
- Focal length: 50mm
- ISO: 200
- Shutter speed: 1/60s
Microsoft Shared Computer Toolkit
I don’t normally like to write a post about something I haven’t actually reviewed and tested yet, but it sounded so cool, I just had to write about it. I read today about a new tool from Microsoft to secure computers that are being used in a public environment.
For instance, we have a computer in the front area were I work so that people can sit down and schedule their next visit with us online. I used group policies to lock this machine down because I didn’t want it sitting there open on our network nor the internet wide open to who knows what. So, I locked it down pretty tight. This new tool is supposed to make locking down such shared computers even easier. I plan on giving this tool a run in the next couple of days and will let you know how it turns out, but it sounded so cool I just had to share! :)
- Camera: NIKON D70s
- Taken: 16 September, 2005
- Shutter speed: 1/320s
Water droplets
I find the edges a bit distracting in this, but I really like the detail in the center area. This was taken a month or so ago as the leaves were beginning to fall. They have pretty much all fallen now which reminds me, I need to rake my front yard.
Dell Precision followup
Just as promised a technician was sent out to fix the Dell laptop the following day. The laptop is back up and running although there’s a small issue that they are still working on. The tech had to replace the motherboard, which went fine. The problem is the laptop now thinks it’s a Dell Latitude and not a Dell Precision like it actually is. It doesn’t seem to have affected usability of the laptop, but the tech said the problem would be when I went to run updates from the Dell website. So they are getting the bios issue straightened out and it’ll be back to were it was. Overall I was impressed with Dell’s support and speed. It was a much better experience than I was expecting.
Update: 12/1/05 A tech came out today and got the Dell Precision laptop working correctly. The problem with the laptop thinking it was a Latitude and not a Precision is fixed and the laptop is back to how it was before the motherboard up and died. While I am impressed with the performance and design of the Dell Precision we have decided to go with the IBM laptops for our project instead of the Dell’s. The IBM laptops are actually higher priced and the warranty isn’t onsite like the Dell’s, but our confidence level is much higher than with the Dell’s at this point. Hopefully this turns out to be a good decision.