One More Fireworks Photo

I fixed up another photo of the fireworks to be at least slightly acceptable. The fireworks are over exposed and I have a lens flare from the moon. I also had the white balance set for "flash" because I forgot to set it before I started. It's still far simpler than I expected for fireworks shots.

More Photos

Some photos from earlier today that failed to post properly...

We also went back out for an 8pm fireworks show but only a couple of photos turned out.      I had my asa setting off so it's brighter than I would like. The "sun" you see on the right is actually the full moon. Next time I'll take my filter off the lens as well so I don't get a flare. Oh well. Learning a bit at a time.

Rendezvous Fun

We went to Rendezvous today because we entered Tessy the dog in a dog pull contest. E¹ and her friend worked with Tessy for quite a while yesterday to get her used to pulling a sled. Lets just say that it didn't really work. E² entered with Tessy for the pull but Tessy did little more than stand still and look nervous. Sixty seconds passed by and the competition was over for Tessy. Oh well. Maybe next year. Here are a few photos of the day...

I'll post some more later because the other ones I uploaded didn't work for this post.

The Game Of Spam

I manage two spam filters at work (one I created myself - it was dubbed Darracuda - a play on my name and Barracuda). Over the last few years I've been watching the spam stats and noticed the trends of rising and falling spam levels as botnets are found and shutdown and new spam techniques are employed by the bad guys. I found an article (an "infographic", really) which shows and explains those trends I've noted at work.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2749/27491501.jpg

The spam levels are currently rising again to something like 98% of all email being spam. That's a huge number of millions when the world levels are looked at as a whole. Stupid spam.

Rendezvous

It's the start of Drunk Rendezvous Weekend. Tomorrow is known as Heritage Day and I don't have work and all the schools are closed. "Heritage" is just a fancy word for "drink so much you fall down" yet despite that fact there are a lot of fun things to do on Rendezvous Weekend. What I really want to do is go to town and take some photos of the annual ice sculptures in Shipyard Park. The sculptures start has huge blocks of ice (about 15 feet by 15 feet) in what is normally one of the parking lots of the park. As of today the sculpting has started and some of them already look pretty nice.  I tried to take some photos last year but my old camera couldn't handle the intense white and light and didn't turn out at all. I bought a new tripod today ($160 which was half price so it's pretty nice) so maybe I can even get some short video clips of the fun. So now I'm itching to go try it out.

Speaking of Shipyard Park; when Dad was up here in the '50s (?) I guess he snapped a photo of some old paddle wheelers which were hauled up onto the shore and no longer in service. That photo was taken very close to where the ice sculptures are happening. I've got a scan of that photo and I keep promising myself I'll find the same spot and take a modern shot and put them side-by-side.

Old As The Hills

I found an article from Newsweek detailing Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. It's supposedly about 12,000 years old. What makes it so interesting and unique is the fact that it is a site holding a substantial structure which seems to be ceremonial in nature. This would reverse the currently held belief that cities/town started first then temples etc. Nothing older has been found yet. It's funny that I've never heard of this place until now. A Google search will show quite a few pages about this archaeological site.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/233844

Funny Label

I was looking at a jug of olive oil that we bought a while ago and thought there was something not right about it. I suddenly realized what it was. Looking at the urn I noticed  two guys beating a third guy with sticks. Poor guy. He's not even able to stand after the beating. The two guys with sticks are probably stealing his olives or something...

Carcross Desert

We went out to the Carcross Desert today with a bunch of friends from church for a day of sun and fun. We arrived around 2pm and found ourselves to be the first ones there so we started a fire to warm things up. Not long after people started arriving with sleds, skidoos, skies, and a couple of snowboards. The chairs were unfolded, food was brought out and the fun began. There were three skidoos which were mainly used to ferry people up and down the hill because to walk it would be too much and take too long.

 

Our camp was set up at the bottom of the long run but some sleds could pick up enough speed to run the distance all the way back down.  I missed getting a shot of all the spectacular wipeouts though.

 

The temperature was perfect again at about -1 or -2 celsius. The sun was bright on the snow and small crystals of frost built up on some of the finer branches on the wind-bent trees.

 

 

I climbed to the top of the hill to see what kind of view I could get hoping to get a picture down the valley and towards White Pass where the Chilkoot Trail starts high in the mountains. Once I got to the top I realized the sun was just too intense to get any real shots. I stood there looking around at the site and far below me I could hear all our friends hollering and having quite a lot of fun and a curl of smoke to mark the spot of our little picnic site.

I'm pretty tired now and even E¹ admits that she will sleep well tonight.

Sun, Snow, Sky

I walked along the ice-bound river again today while the rest of the family went to town. I headed north towards Lake Laberge under blazing blue skies and a bright sun. I walked about 4 kilometres along the frozen shore and stopped just before the entrance to the Lake. If I had gone another two or so kilometres and passed through the big switchback the river makes I would have come out into Shallow Bay where the paddle wheelers used to be housed for the long winter months. Down the river this far there were few sounds. The world seems big and empty; just me, the sky and the snow. It's warm out but not warm enough for the bird to sing or fly freely from tree to tree. Just the big ravens seem more active on days like this.

Ursa Major

I tried the astrophotography thing tonight again because the stars are blazing outside with only a sliver of a moon. I used the same settings as last time but I remembered to take off my UV filter before I snapped my shots. I pointed it at one of the most recognizable constellations this time (The Big Dipper) partly because it's so obvious and partly because it was far from the glowing crescent moon. I'm pretty pleased at how well it turned out for using such a basic technique.

Climbing

Had to do some more work over at the Art Center for the Frostbite Music Festival happening this weekend. I needed to setup a network connection to stream audio down to Vancouver (streaming not done by me) and the only connection I could provide for this was up in the roof about 80-90 feet above the stage. The only way up is to climb a ladder which has two stages to it before it reaches the top. Once at the top it's a long way back down. All the ropes and pullies fix to the roof and run down between the catwalk connecting to all the stage blinds, curtains and whatever else. It's always fun going up there and this time I finally brought my camera. Not many pictures though but at least I got one or two. The guy in the photo is the Other Daren (aka, Nocturnal Daren, even SingleR - he has a few names)

Gadget

I need one of these things. Well, not need but they sure are cool. It's a little camcorder capable of doing high definition (HD) video. It's small enough to fit in a pocket and gets about 4 hours of playtime from a full charge. A friend at work paid only about $90 for it. Rather amazing what is being developed today when only a short while ago the concept of a video camera was something the size of a building perched on ones shoulder.

A Few Years Back

1974. I was seven years old (that's me on the right). For whatever reason I remember this day; sitting under the huge radio tower on a hot and hazey day. I posted this because I was looking for another picture and happened to find this one (thanks Brother - I got it from your vast Flickr repository). The image I am looking for is of the old house back in Cranbrook taken from the '70s. Dad, Mom, and my Uncle were all sitting in front of the house when it was painted a ugly brown and sided with slats of horizontal wood panels. I was going to upload the photo to Google Earth and attach it to the house as it appears now. Quite a difference.

View Larger Map
It's all there. All the basics; the same skyline, the roads, the houses, the school. First thing I noticed were the big changes like the painted school and house. Then I noticed that the lawn of the old house has been leveled out somewhat and the old rock garden removed. The roads are old looking too; cracked and fuzzy with grass along the edges where once they were clearly delineated. There are also some missing trees. Thanks to Street View I don't really feel like I need to go back there now.

Linux to the rescue

Tethering is when you connect your camera to your laptop/computer. With the correct software you can then control your camera through your computer. Nice. I'm a linux user so I figured there must be a way to do this without paying the money and also have some extra flexibility through scripting. Sure enough there is an easy way. It requires the installation of gphoto2 ("apt-get install gphoto2" with ubuntu and other debian based distros) and then a rather simple script:

Intervalometer script

n=0
while [ $n -le 200 ] ; do
gphoto2 --capture-image-and-download --filename=$n.jpg
n=$(($n+1))
sleep 20


Easy. The script will grab an image from the camera every 20 seconds (the "sleep" command) and loop 200 times, incrementing the filename by one each time it loops. Once complete you should have a folder full of .jpg's numbered up to 200.jpg. You can then import those photos into whatever program you choose and create a timelapse.

Tethering can also be used to simply fire the camera once for a shake-free image. Depending on your camera you can also have even more control over it. I have a nice small (but old) X40 Thinkpad with linux on it so sometime soon I'll try a few photos of the stars while tethered. That should work far better than my first attempt using the car roof and shakey shutter release...

Stars! (well, kind of)

My first experiment with photographing stars. I hesitate to call it astrophotography because that would imply some kind of skill or expertise. This blurry shot used some high tech equipment - my camera and the roof of my car. I focused to infinity with the camera set to automatic mode and let the camera do the rest. At some point I'll try to tether my camera to the laptop while using the tripod for stability. I don't need to buy an intervalometer or a remote trigger because I've got a script I worked out to do that stuff. Nice. A higher power lens would be a nice thing too.

To Do Lists

I think it was about two weeks ago when Tanya and I suddenly thought of getting a whiteboard to organize the chores and "to-do's". It kind of started because, well, the house was a mess and our videos we rented were over-due by "a bit". So we got one and I put the screws into the wall and mounted it up by the door. Tanya then worked out a schedule for the chores throughout the week - sweeping, dishes, laundry - but I don't think the kids are too thrilled with it. Now that it's up, the house is a bit cleaner, and the videos and library books are all returned...

Snowshoeing and Picasa

Bought some snowshoes a while back but weekends being what they are (busy) I've only managed to get out on them once. The day was bright and quite warm even for a place that isn't the Yukon but the wind blew up the River creating a bit of a windchill. I did however, manage to take a few pictures. White snow and bright sunlight are tricky for someone with limited photography skills but I did manage to get at least a couple of nice ones. There is one other photo over in my tiny Picasa site

Street View

Last summer Google deployed their swarms of Google Vans in order to map the streets of Canada. They made it as far north as Inuvik and on their way they went right passed Burma Road. The photos were taken before the fires started and the haze of smoke obscured everything.


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Photo Shoot

Our daughter, E¹, has discovered a new career path it would seem. It was great fun watching the process, not to mention I learned a few things about lighting. I haven't seen the final photos yet but they should be ready in a couple days when my friend finishes up with them.

Trial

I've run a blog for years (wow, years) but it sits on my old server which sits in my boot room. I had lots of followers (hi Mom) but never really wanted to allow the world access. So I'll try this out maybe...