Lately there has been a good storm at least every other day, last night it was pleasant to go from +30c to a mild 15c. When i saw the lighting and no rain i ran to the hill and started shooting. i got about 15 photos of some good lightning. They will end up in the gallery when i have some time to go through them all. I have about 900 images to sort through.

I need a better management system and thus has sparked a new project that i will talk about at a later date.

The song that really grabbed me is “Same Old Drag“, i at first thought this was a friends spoof video. after some Googleing i found it to be the actual band.

This first release off Elijah Wood’s record label, that’s rite he has his own label. Since age 13 he has been obsessed with music.

There’s a wealth of amazing bands out there who have nowhere to go. I want to have the chance to release things that might not necessarily get released otherwise.

My taste is pretty eclectic, so my label won’t have a specific sound. Though if Radiohead are ever looking for a deal, I’d sign them any time.

Q Magazine

Apples in Stereo is from Denver and has been around for 12 years with eight albums to its name. There style is from the 60s and like i said some of it can be a little Flower Power, but its certainly going to cheer you up.

http://www.applesinstereo.com/

Our last tent was about 3.5 pounds and it was a comfy single person tent or cozy 2 person tent, the new tent weights in at around 6 pounds, and packs up nice and small. Impressive. The Mutha Hubba is a perfect car camping tent but it doesn’t have to be shon to the trunk, its small enough to go backpacking with.

The mother of all Hubbas. Our lightest, most livable 3-person tent, the Mutha Hubba provides maximum interior space along with two stay-dry entrances and two large vestibules. Use it as a double-wall tent for full protection or as a freestanding tarp shelter with optional footprint to save weight.

In total we spent 3 nights in the heat and rain and had no issues. Kristi and I both had plenty of room to dress, sit up, feed Aiden and even play with him

I would strongly recommended one to any body who’s got lots of stuff, or some one who wants a hight quality tent for 3.

If you go to there site under Videos you can watch the music video for my favorite song Let’s Dance to Joy Division. There are many more great videos there as well.

Check them out.

Julian was a good friend to me throughout high school and was sad to hear about his departure. He was a father of 2 children and one on the way.

If any one is planning on making any donations for any of my scripts or just because please send the here to the trust fund.

EDIT:

CTV News
CTV News 2
Edmonton Sun

Enjoy!

General Hospital

Federal Building

Army Base

One of the coolest things besides the G3 speeds and the GPS is its enterprise ready so your exchange server account will work perfectly. You also have the delima of choosing black or white. What one will you choose?

Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.

Source: http://www.apple.com/ca/iphone/features/

Be apart of the internet revolution. Viva le Firefox!

that is except for an Apple store. Until now! Apple will open its first Alberta store on July 1. selling
Macintosh computers, iPod’s and iPhone’s.

I’m not to sure about the iPhone sales unless Apple now supports the unlocking of there iPhone.

More on the iPhone in Canada.

Chris King Gold with Heavy Duty Axe on Mavic 721 with DT Swiss Alpine 3 spokes, SRAM DH 11-26 Cassette and SRAM X.O 20th anniversary Carbon Fiber Black Box Medium Derailleur with X.0 Shifters.

I hope to get a Rockshox Pike from a friend by trading some bike parts. Nothing beats the barter system.

thewonderingphotographer.com

I was reading a blog post from Jeremy Brooks
about a man who threaten legal action because his photo was taken. I have had some issues doing video work a few years back of a lady who said she was in witness protection and that she wanted the tape back.

Its important to know your rights, there is a good article at Photojojo on The Ten Legal Commandments of Photography. Read thought it, and make sure you are abiding by the Law.

This guy was on the corner of Stockton and Columbus in San Francisco yelling at a homeless man. Anger, conflict, drama — sounds like a great shot to me. I crossed the street but was unable to get anything interesting, since I only had my 50mm lens on the camera and I was just too far away.

However, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man decided that he now had a problem with me. He confronted me, demanding my camera. Of course, I refused. He got in my face and started threatening me, telling me that I cannot take his photo without his permission. I told him that yes, in fact, I can. He then walked up and bumped into me, trying to act tough. I told him that one more touch and I would call the police.

Of course, he didn’t like that very much, and at that point told me that if I put his picture on the internet, he would call his laywer. I assured him that his photo would be on the internet, and he then walked up and grabbed my camera lens. Well, that’s just not something that I will put up with, so I pulled the camera away from him and reached for my phone and started dialing. Once he saw that he turned away, still yelling threats, and continued on his way.

I felt bad for his daughter, who was with him, because she was obviously embarrassed by his antics and kept pleading with him to stop. I have a great shot showing her looking up as if saying “Oh boy, here he goes again”. But I’m not going to post that one, as she was not acting like an idiot and I don’t want to embarrass her. Mr. Angry Overreaction Man seems to do enough of that.

So, Mr. Angry Overreaction Man, your photo is now on the internet. Call your lawyer. Tell him somebody on a public sidewalk took your photo while you were on a public sidewalk. Then tell him you physically assaulted the photographer. See what he says.

http://www.whirljack.net/jeremybrooks/2008/05/06/if-you-put-that-picture-on-the-internet-ill-call-my-lawyer/

Keeping that in mind I started to come up with an estimate of how much it would cost the city to simple move the vehicle vs. the time and money wasted by the people affected by the delay.

Gas costing what it does and lets not forget that time is money. So I came up with this little calculator that takes the fuel cost, the time it took to get though the traffic jam, as well as the length, and how many lanes of traffic were effected. Take that figure out how many sets (time to get thought divided by total time of the traffic jam) get thought and that should give you a total average cost of the traffic Jam.

I did make some speculations such as the average car being about 14 feet long and being about 3 feet from the next car in front of it.

The average wage numbers came in my case from Stats Canada.

The information collected on this site will possibly go towards a national average or total cost of all traffic jams entered in the site.

Traffic Jam Calculator

So the time has come.

whats new?

Improved Code.
I added the ability to add rims and hubs to groups in bulk, so no more one at a time! i got tired my self of grouping 1000s of pieces of information.
Refreshed the design.
Accordion sorting in the Get info section for calculations.
Refined the search field to be more intelligent.
Improved the manage page and how you can sort information.

Demo Spoke Calculator Pro

If you like this script, please help support it by making a donation.

One issue i was thinking about is what would happen if the gas that has been captured, mainly CO2 were to leak out of the. If it were to find its way into water it could turn it acidic and begin to eat away at the bed rock or any other material around it. A Co-Worker commented and said turning it into pop.

That made me wonder how much CO2 comes from pop and is it possible that it could be leading to global warming?

well i did a bit of looking and some calculations and found out that its entirely possible that it could be harmful

Based on the numbers i found the US consumed 15 Billion Gallons of Soda Pop in 2000, another site told me that per 454 Milliliters of Pop there is approximately 2.2. grams of CO2.

Let me brake it down.
1 gallon = 3785.412 milliliter
3785.412 milliliter x 15000000000 gallon = 56781180000000 milliliter
2.2 grams per 454 milliliter
56781180000000 milliliter / 454 milliliters = 125068678414.1
125068678414.1 X 2.2 grams = 275151092511.02 Grams

1 ton = 907184.7 Grams
907184.7 Grams / 275151092511.02 Grams = 303302.1748614367063289316938436 Ton

In 2000 the US produced 5.9 Billion Ton of CO2 so if we take our total Pop CO2 Gas in Ton’s and divide it by the total US production of CO2 we get close to 5% of all CO2 coming from Soda Pop.

Is this entirely accurate? I’m not entirely sure. Based on the numbers i got, and feel free to comment if you find anything obviously wrong but it all seams to add up.

I would like to know on a global scale how much impact this would have.

http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/soda-pop.htm
http://www.science-house.org/CO2/activities/co2/soda.html
http://premier.alberta.ca/speeches/speeches-2008-Jan-25-Cdn_Club.cfm
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/

Have a look at the Trading Cards.

This is the current photo for today on The Wondering Photographer, I bounced the flash and used a macro shot of some 4H lead from my drafting pencil. I like the texture of the paper as well as the lead.

I increased the resolution on my photoblog so they are larger now, and as well learned that Camera Raws export messes up the Colour Profiles, so any new photos (in a month or so) will have more saturation and the correct colour profile, so if you lucky and using Safari on a Mac and maybe a PC you wont have any issues at the moment. I also did some cleanup on the design and added some more meta data to the images.

Check it out here.

Step 1:

First thing is first, we will need a RAW photo to work with, i have included a shot of a tomato here. This image can be used to the perpous of this tutorial, if you have any other RAW photos you wish to use feel free.

Now when you open your RAW photo in Camera Raw and we will see the default screen.

Step 2:

This photo was taken using a desk lamp as lighting and will need to be White Balanced. This image is about 2700Kalvin or using the White Balance Toll (I) this will remove the orange cast.

Step 3:

The next step is just as simple, Click the Auto button in the adjustment panel, and Boost the Clarity to a point were you are happy, we can also tweak the Contrast at this point as well.

Step 4:

Now for the real fun. Click the HLS/Greyscale tab and then click Convert to Greyscale.

Step 5:

Now as i said before there are other methods of creating Black and White images and some involve getting into the Colour Chanel’s in Photoshop. Since editing a Raw file is nondestructive meaning we can never hurt the file and can always go back to the originally shot file. We can now start to play with the colour sliders to bring in detail as well as changing the look of the image completely.

This tomato was made to be almost completely black with some specks that were hard to see before. This process of playing with the different colour sliders also helped bring in detail in the stem.

Conclusion

All i did after this step was click open image and then set my white point using the levels (Ctrl + L) to give it the pure white back ground.

We are now left with a stunning Black and White version of what i like to call a Fine Art Tomato. Try this method on all sorts of images, i find that the images that fail to be acceptable as colour will often be usable in Black and White.