Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Ikea! I'll never stop saying Ikea!
I've shown the construction of my new computer desk, shelf and file drawer that we got from Ikea. Now that it is all put together and Jerry has cleaned up the mess I already made on it, you, too, get to see it.
"What's behind all the new furniture?" one might ask.
A new camera.
This camera of mine is an ever expanding hobby. There was my intervalometer that lets me make time-lapse movies with the camera.
Then, I thought, "What's the point of taking photographs if they're never printed?"
We had a photo printer that turned out to be a BIG DUD. It used up ink like it was free. It would churn and grind for minutes any time we wanted to print anything. It seems to have done a deep priming of the print head every time it was used. It quickly ran out of ink and I gave it a new set of cartridges and it emptied those in a short time. According to this very long thread on a forum, it is a common problem for that model of printer and that a fix was never to be expected.
So I started shopping for a photo printer.
One of the things I thought I wanted to do is get my panoramas printed. I had looked at online processors but their services were rather pricy. I wondered if there are consumer printers that can print panoramas. It turns out that Epson makes printers that print on roll paper. So I got myself an Epson Stylus Photo R1900 printer.
It can print on sheets from 4"x6" to 13"x19". They've got specialty paper and canvas for it if you're in a very artistic mood.
And they've got rolls of paper in 8.3" and 13" widths.
You can see my second successful panorama picture on the desk just beyond the chair in the picture above. The image is 8"x44". I took it this summer at Blue Mesa in the Petrified Forest National Park. Here's a tiny version of the image (click on it to make it less tiny, but still tiny).
Picasa web albums seem to have a limit on the size of photos so I can't show you a full resolution file. It wouldn't do much good anyway. You'd either have to shrink it to fit on your monitor or pan and scroll to see small bits of it at a time.
My first successful panorama printout was this image from the Grand Canyon taken the day after we were at the Petrified Forest.
The photo printer doesn't work as a network printer and we wouldn't want to use it for our day-to-day printing anyway so we got an HP printer that was on sale at Costco to replace the BIG DUD from Canon. It does copying and network printing and scanning. It prints photos as well. But I'll use the Epson for that.
And you can't expect me to do photo processing on a little screen on a notebook computer, can you? No, you can't. So I got myself a new iMac. Ooooooh!
The weather machine still wants a Windows system so that is still here. You can see its monitor to the right of the iMac in the first picture.
So now I have a new, large photo printer, a workhorse printer and a beautiful iMac. My old computer desk was a six foot wide table. It wasn't big enough or functional enough to hold all this gadgetry. So we got the desk and storage for all the supplies and accessories. With any luck I'll use the storage instead of just heaping piles of junk on the vast horizontal surface.
I'm still using evaluation versions of image processing software. I'm getting toward the end of my evaluation period so I'll have to stimulate the economy a little more in a couple of weeks.
I'm in geek heaven!
"What's behind all the new furniture?" one might ask.
A new camera.
This camera of mine is an ever expanding hobby. There was my intervalometer that lets me make time-lapse movies with the camera.
Then, I thought, "What's the point of taking photographs if they're never printed?"
We had a photo printer that turned out to be a BIG DUD. It used up ink like it was free. It would churn and grind for minutes any time we wanted to print anything. It seems to have done a deep priming of the print head every time it was used. It quickly ran out of ink and I gave it a new set of cartridges and it emptied those in a short time. According to this very long thread on a forum, it is a common problem for that model of printer and that a fix was never to be expected.
So I started shopping for a photo printer.
One of the things I thought I wanted to do is get my panoramas printed. I had looked at online processors but their services were rather pricy. I wondered if there are consumer printers that can print panoramas. It turns out that Epson makes printers that print on roll paper. So I got myself an Epson Stylus Photo R1900 printer.
It can print on sheets from 4"x6" to 13"x19". They've got specialty paper and canvas for it if you're in a very artistic mood.
And they've got rolls of paper in 8.3" and 13" widths.
You can see my second successful panorama picture on the desk just beyond the chair in the picture above. The image is 8"x44". I took it this summer at Blue Mesa in the Petrified Forest National Park. Here's a tiny version of the image (click on it to make it less tiny, but still tiny).
 |
| Blue Mesa in Petrified Forest |
My first successful panorama printout was this image from the Grand Canyon taken the day after we were at the Petrified Forest.
 |
| Grand Canyon |
And you can't expect me to do photo processing on a little screen on a notebook computer, can you? No, you can't. So I got myself a new iMac. Ooooooh!
The weather machine still wants a Windows system so that is still here. You can see its monitor to the right of the iMac in the first picture.
So now I have a new, large photo printer, a workhorse printer and a beautiful iMac. My old computer desk was a six foot wide table. It wasn't big enough or functional enough to hold all this gadgetry. So we got the desk and storage for all the supplies and accessories. With any luck I'll use the storage instead of just heaping piles of junk on the vast horizontal surface.
I'm still using evaluation versions of image processing software. I'm getting toward the end of my evaluation period so I'll have to stimulate the economy a little more in a couple of weeks.
I'm in geek heaven!
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday
Pad of notepaper. It has a magnet on the back so it can be used as a refrigerator magnet! It's stuck on the door to the garage for this picture...it usually just sits near the phone to let us take notes.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Cohen the Violinist, Very Special Edition
2013 Edition is here.
Labor Day Weekend is here again. Time to celebrate the accomplishments of Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen, Cohen the Violinist!
We get to read about Cohen the Violinist each Labor Day weekend in the "Celebrations" section of the Sunday San Diego Union-Tribune. For the last two years I've been posting her stories.
These posts are about the only ones where people other than friends and family have posted comments. People from around the country have done Google searches of her name and have found my posts.
I've gotten some emails through my profile's Contact link that have given me pointers to information on the web about Ms. Magic Meryle. I was pointed to a YouTube video that I included in last year's post. Unfortunately, that video has been removed by the user who posted it. :-(
I had thought that these emails were coming from another fan of hers but it turned out they were from Ms. Magic Meryle herself.
Earlier this year I got a note from her alerting me to the program "Night on the Town" on Oceanside Community Television KOCT. Unfortunately, the Oceanside government access channels aren't on Escondido's cable TV...it has Escondido's government channel (imagine!). So I wrote back to say I couldn't watch the program since I don't get that channel. She wrote to let me know that they have it on their web site.
"Night on the Town" is a half hour program that shows various activities that you can do evenings in Oceanside. One activity they showed is Oceanside's weekly Sunset Market. The Sunset Market segment of the show was introduced with a snippet of Cohen the Violinist playing her signature "Theme from 'The Addams Family'."
A few months ago I got a message from Magic Meryle telling me that the YouTube video had been taken down and asked if I could get it back. I wrote to say that it wasn't my video so I couldn't help. But, since she introduced the Sunset Market segment of "Night on the Town," I asked if there was a time she'd be performing there again. I said that maybe I could go over some Thursday evening and record some videos to post to YouTube.
She wrote back to tell me that she's allowed to play the first Thursday of each month. So three days later I packed up my camera and tripod on the first Thursday of August and headed over to Oceanside's Sunset Market.
There she was! After she finished a tune I went up and introduced myself as "Chuckbert." She apparently couldn't hear all I said, it looked like she was adjusting a hearing aid, so I explained that I was the person she had been emailing information to. "You're 'Chuckbert'?!?" she asked excitedly. "I can't believe you came all the way from Escondido!"
She's thrilled that I repeat her story on this blog. She's amazed that there are people out there who have the newspaper clipping on their refrigerators.
I set up the camera and tripod and yelled "Action!" The camera can take 18 minutes of video at a time. She gave us a performance that lasted nearly that long. I've broken it up into four sections. Here they come. Beneath them I've listed the tunes I recognize. There are some that I know I know but the titles just don't come to me. Any help in naming those tunes will be very much appreciated.
But first, let's get the ball rolling with this year's celebration of her accomplishments (click on it to see a a more readable version).
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments, Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen! (I am humbled by your mention of this blog. Thanks, Ms. Magic Meryle!)
And now to the concert she promised starting with the theme from "The Addams Family"...
Theme from the Addams Family
Theme from I Love Lucy
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
Hokey Pokey
Don't Cry for Me Argentina
The Glory of Love
Yankee Doodle
?
Theme from The Odd Couple
Theme from The Lone Ranger
Uptown Girl
Michelle
Beethoven Symphony 7, 2nd Movement
Theme from The Dick van Dyke Show
If You're Happy and You Know It
Theme from Bonanza
?
Beethoven's Ode to Joy
A Whole New World
Maria
Time to Say Goodbye
?
Over the Rainbow
Baby Elephant Walk
Can Can
The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Oh! Susanna
If I Were a Rich Man
Greensleeves
I'm an Indian, Too
Day Tripper
?
So What
I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
Hit the Road, Jack
Those Were the Days, theme from All In the Family
Love and Marriage
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
?
There's No Business Like Show Business
?
Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark
Polly Wolly Doodle
?
Auld Lang Syne
For He's a Jolly Good Fellow
Here's a picture of Cohen the Violinist and Chuckbert.
If you're in the area some Thursday evening, you might want to go to Oceanside's Sunset Market and see if Ms. Magic Meryle is playing. She'll give you a nice performance and recommendations of places to eat. Mmmmmmmmmm...donuts!
And take note of the tip can.
Labor Day Weekend is here again. Time to celebrate the accomplishments of Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen, Cohen the Violinist!
We get to read about Cohen the Violinist each Labor Day weekend in the "Celebrations" section of the Sunday San Diego Union-Tribune. For the last two years I've been posting her stories.
These posts are about the only ones where people other than friends and family have posted comments. People from around the country have done Google searches of her name and have found my posts.
I've gotten some emails through my profile's Contact link that have given me pointers to information on the web about Ms. Magic Meryle. I was pointed to a YouTube video that I included in last year's post. Unfortunately, that video has been removed by the user who posted it. :-(
I had thought that these emails were coming from another fan of hers but it turned out they were from Ms. Magic Meryle herself.
Earlier this year I got a note from her alerting me to the program "Night on the Town" on Oceanside Community Television KOCT. Unfortunately, the Oceanside government access channels aren't on Escondido's cable TV...it has Escondido's government channel (imagine!). So I wrote back to say I couldn't watch the program since I don't get that channel. She wrote to let me know that they have it on their web site.
"Night on the Town" is a half hour program that shows various activities that you can do evenings in Oceanside. One activity they showed is Oceanside's weekly Sunset Market. The Sunset Market segment of the show was introduced with a snippet of Cohen the Violinist playing her signature "Theme from 'The Addams Family'."
A few months ago I got a message from Magic Meryle telling me that the YouTube video had been taken down and asked if I could get it back. I wrote to say that it wasn't my video so I couldn't help. But, since she introduced the Sunset Market segment of "Night on the Town," I asked if there was a time she'd be performing there again. I said that maybe I could go over some Thursday evening and record some videos to post to YouTube.
She wrote back to tell me that she's allowed to play the first Thursday of each month. So three days later I packed up my camera and tripod on the first Thursday of August and headed over to Oceanside's Sunset Market.
There she was! After she finished a tune I went up and introduced myself as "Chuckbert." She apparently couldn't hear all I said, it looked like she was adjusting a hearing aid, so I explained that I was the person she had been emailing information to. "You're 'Chuckbert'?!?" she asked excitedly. "I can't believe you came all the way from Escondido!"
She's thrilled that I repeat her story on this blog. She's amazed that there are people out there who have the newspaper clipping on their refrigerators.
I set up the camera and tripod and yelled "Action!" The camera can take 18 minutes of video at a time. She gave us a performance that lasted nearly that long. I've broken it up into four sections. Here they come. Beneath them I've listed the tunes I recognize. There are some that I know I know but the titles just don't come to me. Any help in naming those tunes will be very much appreciated.
But first, let's get the ball rolling with this year's celebration of her accomplishments (click on it to see a a more readable version).
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments, Ms. Magic Meryle Cohen! (I am humbled by your mention of this blog. Thanks, Ms. Magic Meryle!)
And now to the concert she promised starting with the theme from "The Addams Family"...
Theme from the Addams Family
Theme from I Love Lucy
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini
Hokey Pokey
Don't Cry for Me Argentina
The Glory of Love
Yankee Doodle
?
Theme from The Odd Couple
Theme from The Lone Ranger
Uptown Girl
Michelle
Beethoven Symphony 7, 2nd Movement
Theme from The Dick van Dyke Show
If You're Happy and You Know It
Theme from Bonanza
?
Beethoven's Ode to Joy
A Whole New World
Maria
Time to Say Goodbye
?
Baby Elephant Walk
Can Can
The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Oh! Susanna
If I Were a Rich Man
Greensleeves
I'm an Indian, Too
Day Tripper
?
So What
I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Weiner
Hit the Road, Jack
Those Were the Days, theme from All In the Family
Love and Marriage
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
?
There's No Business Like Show Business
?
Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark
Polly Wolly Doodle
?
Auld Lang Syne
For He's a Jolly Good Fellow
Here's a picture of Cohen the Violinist and Chuckbert.
If you're in the area some Thursday evening, you might want to go to Oceanside's Sunset Market and see if Ms. Magic Meryle is playing. She'll give you a nice performance and recommendations of places to eat. Mmmmmmmmmm...donuts!
And take note of the tip can.
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