pierces

Life keeps happening. We just have to do our best to keep up as it throws things at us. Glad to see you back. Dave

Snow fairies were busy last night.... Dave

We've gotten about 7" since Sunday. Our normal here is about twice that for a year. The winds didn't hit us where we are but got up to 60mph or so in the local mountains and passes. The water is much worse than the wind for damage potential. We often get 70-100mph winds coming down through the passes from the high desert, so houses and fences are built with that in mind. Drainage for a half-year of water in two days...not so much. We have discovered a couple of small leaks which will accelerate our decision about a new roof but we're in no danger of flooding here. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 5 and Sunday, February 11. February is well underway. I have verified that there will be an extra day this month. With a whole extra day available, there is no excuse not to post a photo or two! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

...and more rain. I miss the drought. Dave

Another vote for the RX 10 IV. One of the best bridge cameras available. Dave

Memory is supposed to be in short supply starting soon with prices rising accordingly. The Gen4 SSD drive from Corsair that I had on the list appeared in a bundle with a 48GB DDR5 6000 (2x24GB) memory package at a worthwhile discount. Trigger pulled. The 2024 build has officially begun. Dave

We have granddogs for now and enjoy the cat network. (Our name for the endless visitations by the neighborhood cats on our security cameras.) Dane

We now think the universe is trying to tell us something. While in Key West on the birthday cruise, we came across a group of locals celebrating Wienerpalooza with their doxies all dressed up and showing off. I think we are doomed to get another dog though after our Cookie passed a couple of years ago, I just worry my heart couldn't take losing another one. Dogs are magical. Dave

The day after returning from Kim's birthday cruise, our daughters insisted on coming over to watch the 49er's game. Needless to say, having a gaggle of folks over for a gathering the day after a 14-hour travel marathon was the last thing on our list of activities for a post-cruise Sunday afternoon. As it turns out, it was all an excuse to present Kim’s with the birthday gift they had gone together on and were too excited about to wait another week to deliver. Our Chloe has been gone for a decade, but they know we still have a serious soft spot for wiener dogs. Somehow, they figured that affection for the breed would extend to a five-foot long bench in the shape of one. Turns out it does. We now have a wiener dog bench named Longfellow. Longfellow Dave

I have used Blurb since I started my Picture-A-Week project in 2012. I haven't really shopped around much because I have been extremely pleased with the quality of their books and I wanted year-over-year consistency. I didn't find a template that I liked but Blurb has full-page and two-page spreads that you can load with a photo. I made my own template to fit the two-page spread in Photoshop and have used it for all 12 years of the books (just ordered #12 for 2023). There is one more shelf on this bookcase, so I'll have to figure something out in the next six years. 🙂 I have also used Blurb for the albums when I do family weddings. The large format books with the printed hardcover are very nice. Again, I used the full-page with my own template. We even did a cookbook with all of our family favorite recipes to document them before they faded from memory, or the 70-year-old index card disintegrated. Whatever service you end up choosing, making a book is a very satisfying project and beats the heck out of a shoebox full of prints! Dave

That's pretty much it. We really liked it because we are not fans of heat and humidity. The ability to just sit on the balcony with the Infinity window closed and watch the ocean was great. If you want to open it up, the top rolls down and ends up very much like a regular balcony. Something that is not clear in the images is that there's a folding glass door between the balcony and the main room that you can close so you can sit on the open balcony isolated from the room behind you. There is no curtain to close but there is a motorized blind that rolls down from the top to the bottom that can be stopped at any point to limit the amount of light in the room. When closed is a full blackout. We read about all the controversy before going and are glad that we went ahead and got one anyway. Besides, even if the balcony turned out to be a total loss, the trip still would have been worth it. The ship is just beautiful. Dave

Week four found us still enjoying the Birthday cruise on the fantastic Celebrity Apex. After an enjoyable tour in Key West on Sunday, skipping Belize on Tuesday (after checking the State Dept. site to confirm that the note we got about being alert due to “issues” was a good reason to skip), we decided that the heat and humidity that poured into our room when we opened the infinity balcony to see how it worked was enough of a reason to skip Cozumel as well. Instead, we wandered the ship, caught up on news and such on our tablets and generally spent the day doing not a darned thing. Before starting our Wednesday of Rest tour, I snapped this photo of hot, muggy, Cozumel with its strikingly blue waters and three million or so tourist-filled bars. Close Enough Dave

For Kim's birthday this year, we booked a cruise on the Celebrity Apex. The itinerary was a typical Caribbean tour visiting places we've seen before, but that was ok as the ship was our actual destination. We have never sailed on the Edge-class ships and we were intrigued by all the talk of them being marvels of technology and elegance. Long story short, the talk wasn’t hype. The Apex impressed from the moment we walked up the gangway until we were forced to leave a week later. The layout, decor, artwork, and all the other aspects of the ship were simply classy. We liked the ship so much that we skipped getting off her in three of the four ports. The Apex is beautiful, and we would say that even if we hadn’t had the drink package. We Were Impressed Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, January 29 and Sunday, February 4. February is here. I have it on good authority that there will be an extra day this month that will extend the time available to take photos and post them here. I will continue to research this and will let you know what I find. Meanwhile, shoot, post, repeat. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Pictures taken between Monday, January 22 and Sunday, January 28. It's the last week of January 2024. Do yourself a favor. Take some pictures. Look at them and share the ones that make you smile. Maybe they'll make someone here smile as well. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

This is Paige's fifth year on her scholarship (bonus courtesy of the pandemic), so reality will be setting in soon. I don't really follow, but I hear she's quite good. Small world in many ways, eh? Dave

Aren't we all? Ol' Miss. I have a niece that plays softball there. Good team from what I hear. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, January 15 and Sunday, January 21. Have you ever taken a photo and when you review it, just said "wow"? Try for a "wow" this week! Failing that, try for an "oh, that's nice". Regardless of the reaction, share it with us! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Patience is a virtue, or so I am told. Patience didn't really play into this little drama since we weren't exactly sitting around wringing our hands in anticipation. Our casual patience paid off Sunday morning with our late-blooming Amaryllis finally letting loose with a half-dozen magnificent blossoms. When it was just a bulb, it was planted in a tiny six-inch pot with a little potting mix in the bottom. It is still sitting precariously in the same pot even though it is now 2½ feet tall and over a foot across the six blooms. We are still hoping that it is a metaphor for the new year. If it is, 2024 will have a slow start but finish up in a spectacular fashion. I should clarify that as spectacular in a good way. Armageddon could also be described as spectacular. Worth the Wait Dave

I have used Topaz software for years as plugins for Lightroom and when Photo AI came out, I tried it out. I immediately replaced Photo, Gigapixel and Adjust with it. I still do color and other adjustments in Lightroom/Photoshop, but for noise and the AI corrections, it is magical. I recently photographed my Grandson's wedding. The Bride-to-be wanted her professional photographer friend to take the girls get ready pictures. The friend had a nice pro rig with a Sony A7IV and a 35mm f/1.4 GM. She ended up taking wedding party photos as well as the bride and groom poses while I did family groups. She was obviously trained in posing and did a nice job except her training was heavy on the "pros only" mythology. Pros only shoot RAW. Always shoot wide open for the best bokeh. Etcetera. The problem with mythology vs. physics is that no matter how cool your pose is set up, depth of field is a law that can't be ignored. Nice pose (except the Maid of Honor sort of looks like she needs a restroom). Unfortunately, the Sony's excellent autofocus decided that the Maid of honor was the prime subject (autofocus is made to be used, not depended on) leaving everybody else somewhat blurry. Topaz PhotoAI was able to fix the issue with surprising results. I may not have my flying car yet but having tool like this make me miss it a little less. Dave

Well, here we are. Nearly a quarter-century since the millennium and I don’t own a flying car. 2023 is over and won’t be missed. Optimism for the new year is sparse with a lot of it simply made up to distract us from food prices and other painful reminders that the fundamental transformation we were promised without any real details wasn’t quite what we were expecting. For the last week in 2023, I featured this Christmas Amaryllis still completely closed more than a week after it was expected to bloom. This week saw it peeking out and starting to spread into what I hope will be a beautiful metaphor for renewal in 2024. I just hope the metaphorical bloom doesn’t look around and suck back into the bud. That would be a bad sign. A Fresh Start Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, January 8 and Sunday, January 14. Week two already! Where does the time go? Take time to stop and smell the roses...then photograph them! If it is winter where you are, you can take that metaphorically. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Capacities are getting ridiculous! I think they are folding space-time or something. I'll be going with the 12TB spinner for internal archive and a 24TB RAID5 NAS on a 2.5gb Ethernet backbone to backup everything. Dave

I still use a command line window for certain functions. Part of my job entails scanning through 17k or 18k image file names for anomalies. Very easy to do with the DOS search or DIR to text file. Part of my quarterly function requires I document which database records have identifying photos associated with them. DIR to text and load into a Postgres table does the job. I never gave up on DOS and never will. Dave