Similar to the constable in charge of the Watch of Messina, I try to be sincere and try take writing seriously but fear I will use the wrong words to convey my thoughts and that my desire to speak eloquently will become an occasion for parody.
I have been reading about LCHF, which stands for Low Carb – High Fat and pretty much turns the food pyramid upside down. It is probably not right to call it a diet since the word ‘diet’ has come to mean something temporary you do till you loose a certain amount of weight rather than how you eat on a day to day basis.
I really like the way this video answers the questions people naturally have since LCHF goes against conventional wisdom. Interesting thing is, the arguments all make sense.
Favorite Quote: “People around you will tell you that you are crazy but still they cannot tell you you are wrong either”
When touring the ruins at Chichen Itza, vendors are everywhere.
Seems that the original property owners are able to sell the rights to vendors to set up stalls inside the park.
You are regularly approached and asked to buy something for $1 or as they refer to it “Almost Free.”
As we were leaving the park, along with the banter “Cheaper on the Way Out,” I saw this table of colorful skulls for sale.
Besides being worried about suitcases being overweight, we had spent almost 2 hours saying ‘no, thank-you” constantly and so we ended up not buy anything at the park.
Now I wish I had hefted one of these to see how much they weighed cause they would have made great office gifts to our staff.
I have never quite understood the whole “Dia de los Muertos” or “Day of the Dead” thing.
I am not sure how the Catholic Church, a Christian faith, can back such a non-biblical idea and at the expense of its people.
Many families spend a month’s (or more) wages to appease their ancestors and here I thought the dead ancestors were in purgatory begging for us to pray for them! I guess the Gospel was not the Church’s primary objective when they came to Mexico.
On our vacation to the Mayan Riviera outside Cancun, we decided to visit the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza again.
The tour was paid for by Fisher Communications, the company that was sponsoring this week-long getaway, so why not!
Once you get past the vendor stalls along the entrance to Chichen Itza, the Temple of Kukulkan aka El Castillo dominates the scene.
Built by the Mayans before the 12th century, El Castillo served as a temple to the god Kukulkan, the Feathered Serpent deity.
The temple stands about 98 ft high and each side is about 181 ft at the base. The stairways on the four faces of the pyramid rise at 45° angle.
There are 91 steps on each side, and in 2004, the first time we visited Chichen Itza, you were still able to climb to the top.
Climbing up was not a problem. But those short steps at a 45° angle were enough to scare anyone on the way down.
Besides keeping the temple from being destroyed by the thousands of tourists who visit each year, another advantage is that it makes getting a great picture much easier.
Here is a link for more of my Chichen Itza, Tulum, and Aventura Spa Palace Resort photos.
It will take me a while to get them all processed so keep checking back.
Was needing a hotel room near the Spokane airport here in a couple of weeks, so once again I turned to the trusty BiddingForTravel.com website. I read through other people’s ‘success stories’ on the BiddingForTravel Washington Hotel forum and saw that $50 had won a room on Priceline.com before but not often. So I figured I would start my bidding low and use BiddingForTravel’s rebid strategy to rebid twice more today and again tomorrow if needed.
What is BiddingForTravel’s ‘free rebid’ strategy? Priceline will not allow you to just increase your bid without waiting the obligatory 24 hours to try again. But, if you ‘significantly’ change your bid then you can rebid again right away. One of the acceptable changes is to add another ‘area’ to your bid. The trick is to add an area that you cannot win. In this case, Spokane Airport has hotels available from 1 to 3 stars. Liberty Lake and North Spokane only have hotels available up to 2.5 stars. So, if I am bidding $50 for a 3-star hotel in the Spokane Airport area and lose, I can add the Liberty Lake area and up my bid to say, $55. If I loose that bid, then I can add North Spokane and try $60. Failing that, I start over tomorrow at $60. If you have the time and inclination, you could use $1 or $2 increments instead, which I have done when spending a week at a hotel.
Based on previous successful bids by others on the forum and the BiddingForTravel list of Spokane Airport hotels used by Priceline, the 3-star hotel that seemed to come up most often was the Ramada Spokane Airport and Waterpark. The hotel’s website showed that I could book a room direct with them for $124/night.
Priceline’s normal rate to book the hotel without bidding was also $124/night. So, I started my bid at $50 for a 3-star Spokane Airport hotel, figuring it would be rejected but I could try 2 more times today and start over tomorrow if all failed. My $50 bid was accepted! Now I am feeling foolish. Did I start too high? How much lower could I have bid?
Luckily, I still had to book the return hotel room, so this time I started at $40. It was declined. Added Liberty Lake and bumped up my bid to $45. Priceline countered, telling me they could get me a room for $58. I declined. I then added North Spokane and bumped up my bid to $50. Accepted. Now don’t feel so silly about my first $50 bid being accepted.
There are a number of other strategies to use for getting free rebids on Priceline. I think my record is having 6 different ‘areas’ I was using. I was willing to stay in 3 of the areas and used the other 3 as free rebids. Even with just the 3 areas you are willing to stay in you have a number of ways to get free rebids by combining them into multiple permutations but that should be another post at another time.
Just purchased a 2012 Prius V (why have I not written about that yet?) and one of the more active topics on the PriusChat forums is how to disable the annoying backup beep that sounds continuously while you are in reverse.
Now, you might think that a backup beep is a great feature.
Only problem is this beep is very loud and is only inside the car!
It cannot be heard by those behind you as you would expect.
In the previous Prius incarnations you could hold your tongue a certain way and press a series of dash buttons along with your key fob to disable this ‘safety’ feature.
Now, Toyota says to take it to your local dealer for them to make the change.
Only problem is many dealers don’t even know it can be done (or at least the people you and I would talk to don’t) and many new owners report that the dealer wants to charge anywhere from $50 to $100 to do a 2 minute job.
Some dealers do the right thing and turn it off free of charge but some only do it after the owner called Toyota corporate and complained.
Me, I know my dealership would do it if I asked but why have them do something that I can waste hours figuring out for myself.
First, I needed a way to talk to the car’s computer.
I had already bought ELM 327 Bluetooth OBD2 scan tool from Amazon that plugs into the ODB-II slot under the dash so I could monitor some of this little hybrid’s inner workings (here is another post I should have written).
The device uses bluetooth to communicate to the outside world and wouldn’t you know it, a number of Android apps have been written to accommodate.
(Note: Seems that the OBD2 port has a constant power supply, so even if you turn the car off the device stays on as does the Bluetooth, so probably best not to leave it plugged into the car overnight any more than you would leave your dome light on.)
Seemed like this little scan tool should be able to send data as well as receive, so now I just had to figure out how.
I tried using the android ‘Torque’ app that I was using to monitor the vehicle but had no luck then I remember I had seen a program called ‘ELM 327 Terminal‘ which claimed to allow you to communicate with the ELM 327 adapter, sending commands to your hearts content.
My first attempts to just send the strings I had seen in the forums did not work.
Then I ran across a post explaining how to send these commands to a USB connected ELM327 device using a laptop and a terminal program and figured the same commands should work with the ELM 327 Terminal Android app as well.
Out to the car.
Plugged in the ELM327 device.
Activated Bluetooth on my phone and told the terminal program to ‘connect’.
I had the terminal program send a AT I command just to make sure I was communicating with the device.
Now I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
I turned ‘Timer’ (right side of screen above ‘clear’) off otherwise the command you send gets sent over and over again.
(Not sure it matters but in case it does, I had the car ‘on’ with the ‘Ready’ light showing and all the doors were closed.)
First we need to tell ELM327 where to direct our commands, in this case we want to talk to ECU (engine control unit?) 7C0, the combination meter.
Type: AT SH 7c0 (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: OK
Type: 21ac (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 61 AC 00 (00 means continuous reverse beep)
Type: 3bac40 (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 7F 3B 78 (no idea :)
Returns: 7B AC (meaning done)
Type: 21ac (hit ‘Send’)
Returns: 61 AC 40 (40 means only a single beep now)
Now for the real test, I popped the Prius into ‘Reverse’ and joy! joy! only 1 beep.
Guess now I will have to figure out what other options I want to configure.
Got a kick out of some of the answers Patrick Rothfuss, author of the ‘King Killer Trilogy’, gave in an interview on SFFWorld. I have read the first two books and am looking forward to the third.
When asked if the “fantasy genre will ever come to be recognized as veritable literature?”
Rothfuss’ response that many of the ‘classics’ are fantasy was something I had never considered:
The lion’s share of old-school literature IS fantasy, they just pretend it isn’t. The Odyssey is full of gods and spells. Oedipus Rex has a sphinx and a prophecy. There are witches in Macbeth, faeries in Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a ghost in Hamlet. Dante’s Inferno? Beowulf? All looks like fantasy to me….
As I try to read my way through the Pulitzer and Newbery award winners, I couldn’t agree more with his final conclusion:
As far as having my book recognized as literature? [Pat shrugs] Why would I want that? I mean, have you read Great Expectations? Gech. Why would I want to invited into their little club? Give me Tim Powers and Phillip K Dick. Give me Le Guin, Gaiman, and Pratchett. Give me McKillip and Whedon. These are the storytellers. These are our modern mythmakers. Our oracles. Our dreamers. I want to be on that team.
When Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cancer in 1951, cells from her tumor became the first human cell line that scientists were able to keep alive in vitro, not dying after a few cell divisions. These ‘immortal’ cells were shipped to researchers around the world and used for conducting many experiments.
As the book states, these “HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.”
This was a very interesting book. I learned a lot about cancer research in the book but the book is so much more than that. It is impossible not to feel empathy for Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, as you go through this story but my heart really was moved by the devastation that poverty had on her and her family.
In my middle class life I cannot imagine the horrors that her and her family had to endure primarily due to being poor but of course also exacerbated by being black.
The lack of education kept impeding the families understanding of what had happened to Henrietta’s cells and caused misunderstandings on both sides of any conversation.
The strange spiritual beliefs also made me ponder my own beliefs while trying not to be judgmental. Bible verses are used to explain the ‘immortality’ of Henrietta’s cells; promises of eternal life twisted to show that Henrietta is one of God’s chosen but I ‘know’ these verses are for all believers, not special proof-texts to explain anything else. The author said that these verses are the result of taking the Bible literally, I must disagree since for me ‘literal’ also means ‘in-context’. I want to conclude that mine is a ‘rational’ faith but am sure that my beliefs must appear just as ‘strange’ to others.
This is not a book about beliefs or education but about a family. In reality the immortal cells are just the glue that holds the story together and it is a very interesting story and highly recommended.
I listen to quite a few audiobooks and I find that my MP3 players have never been able to play them at sufficient volume.
Sometimes it is the fault of the player but sometimes it is the fault of the original material.
On my old Sansa MP3 player I installed a hack that allowed you to boost the volume of the file above normal.
Now, since I use my Android phone, you would think it would be easier but sadly no.
I have tried a number of programs that purport to boost the output of the phone but none seem to work on my phone.
What to do?
I realized the easy solution is to fix the ‘volume’ of the MP3 file using Audacity.
Audacity is a free audio editor and recorder that works in Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
According to the web site, you can use Audacity to:
Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
I have used Audacity before when I was listening to podcasts during my drive time.
I used it convert each podcast to a single mono channel and speed up the playback 25%.
A 30 minute podcast would only take 20 minutes to listen to and I could wear one earbud and not miss a thing.
Now, I just need to boost the volume and Audacity makes it an easy task.
I created a ‘chain’ (Audacity’s version of a batch file) that converts the file to mono (why not) then amplifies it and finally saves the file..
These ‘chains’ can be applied to a single file or to a whole folder of files, making batch conversion quite easy for each book.
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p>
You can see from the two images on the left that the original sound file’s amplitude was way low. (No wonder I could barely hear it.)
Below it is the same file after it has been amplified using Audacity.
I am sure if I was amplifying music files I would have to be more careful but for voice I have found that I can even amplify the volume more without any noticeable degradation.
Now I can play my audiobooks and not have to strain to hear them.
My 6th book to read for 2012, “The Road by Cormac McCarthy” was on my to-read list because it was the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Set in post-apocalyptic America, the story is about a father’s love for his son.
The father and son are heading south in search of warmer weather.
Along the way they are able to find food even though marauding gangs and other travelers have been scavenging the bleak and barren land.
The father protects his son by avoiding all possible encounters with others yet, in the end, gets wounded by a sniper with a bow and arrow, a wound that would prove fatal.
The ending was a let-down and seemed like a easy-out.
I read a few reviews on-line but nobody addressed the ending, so maybe I missed something.
It seems the father spent the whole book avoiding others only to have his kid hook up with a stranger 5 minutes after the father dies and the kid and his new family live happily-ever-after.
Was the father wrong the whole time or was the kid just lucky or….?
This bookstore owner looks like they had way too much time on their hands, but I love it!
“After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago, my wife and I decided to take it to the next level. We spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto (883 Queen Street West).”
Told much in the fashion of a murder/mystery, O’Reilly provides a good introduction to this tragic saga. The story contains a lot of detail and O’Reilly does not find a conspiracy theory he doesn’t like.
Though a fun read, it appears the authors took some liberties with some facts based on some online reviews by historians.
I am sure the desire to fan the conspiracy portion of the story is part of the reason. I don’t think either author is a historian which probably is another reason for the errors. Hopefully ‘real’ historians will learn to write for the masses so we can get both enjoyable reads and fewer errors, till then….
After my adventures the other night taking some night shots around the Cable Bridge area (guess I need to put more of those photos up) I decided to try some more night shots. My luck with the ugly “Ash Grove Cement Plant” made me think of the old abandoned General Mills grain silo off Clearwater Ave. in Kennewick.
Rather than shoot the picture from Clearwater Ave, I crossed the railroad track to shot it from the other direction, putting the empty railroad cars in the foreground.
I think it turned out pretty well except for some of the bright lights that shined through.
I looked online for info about the grain silo but couldn’t find anything about when it was built, etc.
Anyone know?
Just finished John Grisham’s “The Litigators“, book 1 towards my goal of 100 books in 2012.
I only read 69 books in 2011 but I only read 9 of the 12 months, so, if I can stay on track this year I should be able to read 100.
This book was added to my ‘to read’ list because it had been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 9 weeks and is currently still at #4.
It was a fun read. Although predictable I wanted to keep going to see what would actually happen.
My Summary:
In a highly unlikely scenario, a young Harvard-trained lawyer looses it after 5 years of 100-hour work weeks at a large corporate firm and finds himself passed out in the shady Chicago law offices of two curmudgeonly lawyers who spend most of their time chasing ambulances when not tied up in divorce and DUI cases.
A multi-million dollar liability case falls in their lap and with big dollar signs blinding their judgement they are drug into a case that threatens to not just sink the firm but the three lawyers as well.
By day Ash Grove‘s cement plant in Kennewick is a fairly bleak. A large gray structures surrounded by gray cement dust. But by night it takes a much more ethereal quality.
I was asked to take some photos of this years Cable Bridge Run for the Port of Pasco to use in some publicity pieces.
The day was cold and quite overcast.
I really wish instead of a gray sky as a background I could have had a nice blue sky with some clouds.
I may have to learn how to ‘replace’ the sky with a shot from earlier this year.
Also making it difficult was that not all the runners would be going by my location.
The 1 mile runners never passed the Port of Pasco property since they finished more than a mile earlier.
The 5k runners ran along Ainsworth in front of the Port property and the 10k runners ran along the river on the back side of the Port property.
I went back and forth bewtween the front and back to try to get some shots that would highlight the Port of Pasco.
You can check out all the photos by going to my SmugMug album: 2011 Cable Bridge Run
My last glasses were purchased at a local optician after I won a $200 gift certificate in a drawing.
What amazed me was that after the $200 off, I was still out of pocket about the same amount I would have spent if I had just gone in to Costco.
So, after 2 years I decided to go back to Costco for an eye exam and some new glasses.
My glasses have accumulated enough scratches that it is time.
My optical prescription had not changed too much (always good) but when the doc toggled back and forth between my current prescription and the new one, I will be glad to have the new.
But now the hard part.
Choices.
Status Quo.
Do I pick a pair of glasses based on what I am currently wearing?
Or do I find something new? Something with more pizazz?
Or just continue with something close to what I am wearing now and hope no one even notices the change.
So, Do I go with the top ones that are pretty close to what I have,
or the second pair that are pretty close to the ones I have but a bit darker and wider on the sides,
or pair three that are much wider and a bit more square.
Nike Cross Nationals is the culmination of the 8 Nike Cross National Regional qualifying meets held around the country. The course makes 2 1/2 loops within the infield of the horse track at Portland Meadows in Portland, Oregon. Obstacles on the course include the whoopty-doos, a series of 4 foot berms, the hay bales, and the ever present mud which, some years, can be ankle deep. Spectators have great access to view the race from the infield of the course or can avoid the weather from inside Portland Meadows’ enclosed 3,000-seat grandstand. Video cameras are staged along the course and one camera follows the runners around the complete course. The video can be watched on the jumbo screens both inside and outside as well as the live webcast on nikecrossnationals.com.
Based on the results of the Regional Qualifying meets, 22 seven-person clubs and an additional 45 individuals are invited to both the Boys and the Girls Championship Races and to a fantastic weekend. In addition, individual runners and teams who don’t qualify for the championship race can sign up to run the same course in the Open Race.
Always looking for new ideas, I just got back from a seminar, “How to Stand Out in a Virtual World” sponsored by the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce and taught by Geoff Hoover & Chad Morgan.
Here are some of the ideas I came away with.
Goal? Buzz
The goal in creating your Internet Marketing Program (IMP) is to generate that elusive “buzz” – the third party endorsement when one person spontaneously tells someone else about something that creates emotion.
First Impressions Matter
You have less than 8 seconds to engage a visitor once they click on your site. Engage visitors immediately.
Webpage is a Platform
Needs to have an “offer”
Use real people pictures not stock images
Needs video. Video not only is good but it keeps them on the site longer.
Unique Selling Proposition:
Validates who you are.
How are you different than the next guy?
Why should they do business with you.
Brag sheet
You become the authority and resource in your business segment
Videos!
Offer: “10 things you need to know when buying auto insurance”
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Google Keyword Tool – get suggestions for your industry and devote a post per keyword.
Ideas:
Create posts for each of our commercials and a page to display them all.
Add Facebook links to all outgoing email
Always glad to come out of a seminar with some ideas.
Nothing earth shattering, but it reinforces some stuff I already knew but have not tried out.
As with other seminars of this nature, the real drawback is that they are aimed at people who are just beginning to do stuff on the web.
Probably need to go online to find higher level information.
Guess I haven’t looked cause I haven’t implemented everything I already know I should be doing.
On the 29th of October the varsity runners from the Columbia Basin Big Nine (CBBN) and the Greater Spokane League (GSL) met at Wandermere Golf Course in Spokane to find out who would move on to the State Championships the next week.
The top 3 teams from each race qualify for state along with any individual runner who finishes in the top 15 of their race.
3A Girls
Top Runners
Time
School
1st Katie Knight
17:57
(North Central)
2nd Kendra Weitz
17:19
(Shadle)
3rd Stephanie Rexus
18:40
(Kamiakin)
4th Michelle Fletcher
19:13
(Kamiakin)
5th Molly Cole
19:32
(Mt Spokane)
Top Teams
Points
1st Kamiakin
31
2nd Shadle
63
3rd Mt Spokane
64
4th Sounthridge
65
5th Hanford
139
4A Girls
Top Runners
Time
School
1st Kaitlin Kaluzny
18:31
(Davis)
2nd Mayra Chavez
18:43
(Eisenhower)
3rd Lindsey Bradley
18:44
(Richland)
4th Elise Tello
18:45
(Eisenhower)
5th Cyra Carlson
19:11
(Gonzaga)
Top Teams
Points
1st Eisenhower
68
2nd Lewis and Clark
93
3rd Central Valley
100
4th Richland
122
5th Walla Walla
125
3A Boys
Top Runners
Time
School
1st Nathan Weitz
15:21
(Shadle)
2nd Anthony Armstrong
15:32
(Kamiakin)
3rd Hunter Johnson
15:38
(Mt. Spokane)
4th Kai Wilmot
15:44
(North Central)
5th Jake Hombel
15:52
(University)
Top Teams
Points
1st North Central
36
2nd Kamiakin
38
3rd Mt. Spokane
59
4th West Valley
138
5th South Ridge
149
4A Boys
Top Runners
Time
School
1st Andrew Gardner
15.18
(Mead)
2nd Jacob Smith
15.30
(Wenatchee)
3rd Summer Goodwin
15.32
(Lewis & Clark)
4th JP Wolpert
15.43
(Walla Walla)
5th Jaziel Rodriguez
15.45
(Eisenhower)
Top Teams
Points
1st Eisenhower
65
2nd Wenatchee
101
3rd Central Valley
105
4th Lewis & Clark
113
5th Mead
126
Meet Photos
Links to online photos of the meet.
If you know of other photos online, please let me know.
Hard to believe the cross country season is almost over.
For more than half the runners here, today was their last cross country race of the season since not every team advances to the Regional meet and there will not be any more JV races.
3A Boys Varsity
Following up on the League Meet last week, Kamiakin once again shut out the competition, finishing with the top 6 runners and all seven runners from the team finished in the top 10.
With all 5 scoring runners in front, Kamiakin scored a perfect 15, West Valley second with 99 points, and Sunnyside third with 112.
Other team scores were 4th Southridge 119, 5th Hanford 135, 6th Eastmont 135, 7th Kennewick 147, and 8th Pasco 203.
The first four runners all came in under 16 minutes;
Anthony Armstrong 14:41 (Kamiakin),
Keegan McCormick 15:40 (Kamiakin),
Austin Oser 15:45 (Kamiakin), and
Austin Richards 15:53 (Kamiakin).
The Kamiakin Varsity Girls had a great race, winning with 26 points.
Southridge was 2nd with 43, 3rd Hanford 93, 4th Eastmont 96, 5th West Valley 112, 6th Sunnyside 182, and 7th Kennewick 193.
All 5 of Kamiakin’s scoring runners finished in the top 10 and the remaining two runners finished in the top 15.
Stephanie Rexus (Kamiakin) ran the course in 17:53, her first time to break the 18 minute barrier.
Rachel Dahl (Southridge) came in second at 18:38 and Michelle Fletcher (Kamiakin) took 3rd with 18:54.
The Kamiakin JV Boys once again showed that they are more than just the best JV team in the district.
When the top 20 JV runners were called up for awards, the first 13 were all from Kamiakin and only 4 of the 20 were from other schools.
Based on their times, three of the JV runners would have placed within the top 20 Varsity runners: Phil Snyder, Kyle Paulson, and Kevin Paulson. Amazing!
The top 5 JV runners all finished under 17 minutes for the 3 mile course and a total of 16 Kamiakin runners were under 18 minutes.
As a matter of fact, if the Kamiakin JV Boys had fielded a second 7 man Varsity team at Districts, they would have taken 2nd place:
Kamiakin: 15, Kamiakin JV: 103, West Valley: 115, Sunnyside: 130.
Too bad the Kamiakin JV team cannot run Regionals this next week.
I have never been comfortable wearing a camera around my neck.
I never liked having a camera jutting out in front of me, it was always uncomfortable and made me feel the tourist.
I would, instead, hang the camera over my shoulder but the camera really was not secure.
Bending over, turning fast, etc, meant the grabbing the camera or chance loosing it.
Solution: A sling that would allow me to carry the camera across my body.
This not only secures the camera, but also distributes the weight better and puts the camera at my side when not in use instead of jutting out 6 inches in front of me.
I looked at a number of different slings.
Some, like the Black Rapid, use the tripod mount to connect the camera to the sling.
I wanted to keep my tripod mount free so I could use it for, you guessed it, my tripod without having to disconnect everything.
After much research and reading reviews, I settled on the Op/Tech Utility Strap-Sling
The sling seems to be built well and the padding on the shoulder strap cushions the weight of the camera.
The camera is connected to the sling by way free-floating connectors, which connect to the camera using the regular strap connections and have a quick-release clip which allows you to separate the camera from the sling quickly.
The quick-release clips are made of sturdy plastic and require quite a bit of force to release which is reassuring when you realize the value of the camera hanging from it.
The sling itself is adjustable and can be made long enough that, even at 6’0″, the camera hangs perfectly at my waist, out of the way, but can be slid smoothly to eye-level when needed.
Best of all, is the price.
At only $21.95 on Amazon, it is less than half the price of other systems such as the Black Rapid.
CreativeLive.com has been broadcasting the live taping of their 4-day Photoshop CS5 Intensive Seminar with Lesa Snider since Tuesday.
I have tried to watch the series but since it runs 9am to 4pm (PDT) it does interfere with work :)
Luckily it is also rebroadcast from 5pm to Midnight and I think again after that (can’t vouch for that) so that people in different time zones and work schedules can watch.
For a ‘webinar’ it has been quite good.
Lesa has covered lots of material and has fun doing it.
I might be tempted to buy the 4 day seminar on DVD. It costs $99 but while the seminar is going on they have it marked down to $79.
The only thing that holds me back is that I don’t have time to learn Photoshop right now.
I think I have only popped into it a half dozen times to play with some photos that needed serious help like some of my rodeo shots.
Because they were shot under low light, I had to use a high-ISO setting and so the photos needed some serious noise reduction but the real problem was that what little light they got was coming from a mix of both setting sun and stadium lights, giving the photos a blue cast, but using some some Photoshop tricks, I was able to set the correct white balance.
Maybe when Cross Country season is over I will have some time to get out and take some location and portrait shots again and then play with them in Photoshop.
Right now all my editing is done in Lightroom 3.
Now there is a webinar I am in desperate need of.
There is enough in common between the two programs that I might still be tempted to grab this recorded seminar before the week is out.
I did end up buying her 800+ page e-book, Photoshop CS5 – The Missing Manual directly from 0′Reilly the print book is available for 40% off from Amazon.
Using the coupon code ‘AUTHD’ I was able to buy the $39.99 e-book for just $19.99. I figure I can keep the e-book on both my computer for reference and on my tablet for reading material on those long trips to Cross Country meets.
Here is the blurb about the book:
You’d be hard-pressed to find a published image that hasn’t spent some quality time in Adobe Photoshop. With new features such as Content-Aware Fill and Puppet Warp, Photoshop CS5 is more amazing — and perhaps more bewildering — than ever. That’s where this full-color Missing Manual comes in. It covers Photoshop from a practical standpoint, with tips, tricks, and practical advice you can use every day to edit photos and create beautiful documents.
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced pixel pusher ready to try advanced techniques, author and graphics pro Lesa Snider offers crystal-clear, jargon-free instructions to help you take advantage of these powerful tools — not only how they work, but when you should use them. Describing the CS4 edition, bestselling Photoshop author Scott Kelby wrote, “Lesa did a great job on the book, and in my mind, it is the new Photoshop Bible.”
Learn your way around Photoshop’s revamped workspace
Get up to speed on essential features such as layers and channels
Edit images by cropping, resizing, retouching, working with color, and more
Create paintings and illustrations, work with text, and explore filters
Prepare images for printing or the Web, and learn how to protect your images online
Work smarter and faster by automating tasks and installing plug-ins
Written with the clarity, humor, and objective scrutiny, Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual is the friendly, thorough resource you need.
I will let you know what I learn.
In the meantime, do you use Photoshop?
What have you found helpful?
Some of the best teams in the Northwest competed against each other this weekend at the 6th Annual Tracy Walters Invitational hosted by North Central High School at Audubon Park in Spokane.
Six of the eight boys teams scheduled to compete are ranked in the top 10 in the Northwest.
I don’t quite understand the polling since the WA 3A polls rank North Central as #1, Bellevue as #2 and Kamiakin as #3 yet the national poll has Kamiakin ahead of both Bellevue and North Central.
I am hoping the national polls are correct.
The eight boys’ teams represented were: Coeur D’Alene, Bozeman, Jesuit, Bellevue, Glacier Peak, Kamiakin, North Central, and Joel Ferris.
North Central, once again, won the boys’ varsity race but Kamiakin came in second.
For the first time in the 6 year history of the meet, North Central did not win the JV race, but instead Kamiakin’s depth showed that it will be a force to contend with for years, 9 of the top 15 were from Kamiakin, 4 from North Central, and 2 from Bozeman and amazingly the top 25 JV runners are all underclassmen.
Anthony Armstrong surprised no one by beating the meet record he had set last year, running the 3 mile course at an incredible 15:07, just 6 seconds off the course record set 18 years ago. It would be interesting to be able to come back and see him run this course at the end of the season instead of as the first real meet of the season.
The girls’ teams were from Coeur D’Alene, Bozeman, Jesuit, Glacier Peak, Kamiakin, North Central, Shadle Park, Central Valley, Eastlake, and Lewis and Clark.
Kamiakin’s girls came in third, behind Jesuit and the winner, Bozeman. Kudos to both teams for the long drives and still placing at the top.
Besides scoring the top runners, North Central also gives a team award based on the combined total points of each team member. The Lewis & Clark girls steam rolled into first place with 33 runners and 2165 points. The strength of Bozeman’s girls is evident in that they were only 133 points behind with less than half the number of runners. If they had only 1 more runner who had placed in the top 70 they would have beat out Lewis & Clark.
North Central won the Boys’ team award with 30 runners scoring 2436 points.
Amazingly, Kamiakin was only 15 points behind North Central.
One of Kamiakin’s top JV runners had to miss the race to take the SATs.
He easily would have got those 15 points and more likely would have more than 100 points.
Oh well, if wishes were fishes….
The course loops around the beautifully wooded 26 acre Audubon Park three times, each time going up and down a deceptively arduous incline twice.
Once the gun goes off, most spectators head to the middle of the course where the runners must pass four times to make both passes of the hill.
For photographs I set up at the starting line, head over to the base of the hill to catch the runners coming down the first time, head over to the west side of the park to catch the runners after they come down the hill the second time.
I then head back to the middle of the course to catch the runners as they hit the hill for the second lap.
At this point the runners have begun to string out and so after most of the runners have gone by me I begin to make my way down the east side of the course towards the finish to catch straglers and then the runners as they work on their final lap.
If I have worked it out right, and not dawdled too much, I will be at the finish line when the first runner crosses.
This gave me photos at the start, finish and 4 other positions along the course.
I ended up with about 300 photos of each of the four races which I was able to whittle down to 200 by deleting blurry shots and duplicates.
I actually wish I had taken more because a few of the shots I kept were not as sharply focused as I wish but decided to keep the photo rather than not have a picture of that athlete on the finish line, etc.
Athletic.net: Tracy Walters Invite Results – The little blue camera has photos for each race as well as any of the athletes I have had a chance to tag.
WTF FTW, LOL.
While in Spokane this weekend to watch 3 of my kids run the Tracy Walters Cross Country Meet I stopped into the local Albertson’s to see if they had any interesting craft beers to try out.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of beers I could bring home to sample.
Tonight’s beer is Wilco Tango Foxtrot (WTF) by Lagunitas.
One of Lagunitas Brewing’s five seasonal releases scheduled to be released this year, WTF described itself as a “A Malty, Robust, Jobless Recovery Ale.”
Last year Lagunitas had released the 2009 Correction Ale and were planning to label this years version the ’2010 Recovery Ale’ but since there was no recovery they decided, WFT, and named it the Wilco Tango Foxtrot.
This is one of the new style ‘Black’ IPAs.
As soon as the cap comes off you can smell the hops and know that this is not your dad’s nut brown ale.
It pours a translucent brown that shows hints of red when held up to the light with a nice tan head that holds well.
With eyes closed you would definitely put this in the IPA camp, but open your eyes and the dark color makes you second guess.
It has a great ‘mouth feel’ while drinking.
So many beers have about as much ‘body’ as a Coke or Pepsi, but beer is supposed to be liquid nutrition, and should have some body to it.
This beer does.
I may not be much of an IPA fan, and there are many dark beers that I would prefer, but this is one beer I would buy and enjoy again.
Always looking for new ideas, I just got back from a seminar, “How to Stand Out in a Virtual World” sponsored by the 
Some of the best teams in the Northwest competed against each other this weekend at the 
WTF FTW, LOL.
While in Spokane this weekend to watch 3 of my kids run the Tracy Walters Cross Country Meet I stopped into the local Albertson’s to see if they had any interesting craft beers to try out.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a couple of beers I could bring home to sample.
Tonight’s beer is Wilco Tango Foxtrot (WTF) by 
