I dug out my Leopard disk and wiped the internal drive and began to install… it failed.  Problem with the DVD.  Fortunately I had a backup copy of the DVD which installed just fine.  One thing I neglected to do before wiping the internal drive was to make a list of what I wanted to install.  This wasn’t really a problem, but I usually like to get installers and disks together before I start on this path.  It’s been so long since I’ve had to deal with my nearly monthly reinstalls of Windows, I just wasn’t prepared.

All-in-all installing hasn’t been much of an issue.  But as a web developer here are the “gotchas” I ran into:

1) I had been using Parallels to run my Windows environment for testing web pages with IE6 and IE7.  Well Parallels just came out with a new version.  This one says that it fixes all of the problems I had been complaining about for the past year.  But since it’s version 4.0 I have to pay for an upgrade.  So as a dissatisfied customer, I’m giving VMWare Fusion a shot and I like it a lot better.  VMWare will most likely be getting my money when my trial runs out.

2) Adobe DreamWeaver CS4.  A clean install is a good time to install the upgrade from CS3.  Make sure you have all the information about the sites you manage written down.  There’s no clean way to import sites you work on, so it’s best to set them up from scratch.  I know it’s annoying if you manage a lot of sites, but there seems to be major hiccups if you try to transfer your old data over.

3) VisualHub.  This is my all-time favorite video conversion program.  It’s simple and just works.  However, the author decided to stop supporting it and moved it over to the open source realm.  Not entirely a bad thing, but now I had to do some manual setup and copy of old files in order to get it working as before.  Glad I did a carbon copy.

4) Time Machine. I have one annoyance.  It appears that when you do a clean install, you can attach your previous backup to perform restores, but the new install is considered a new machine, so you will basically lose your “history” of incremental changes.  I’m pretty certain that I don’t need anything from more than a couple of weeks ago, but having that history has been great when a client changes their mind and want to go back to a previous version.  I think I’m going to setup a subversion server in my house to protect me in the future tho.  Time machine is nice and all, but still a little unpredictable.

5) Backups are king.  I have had so many other little problems, I’m glad to have lots of backups.  I do have one DVD that I don’t have a backup for that keeps failing on one of the installs.  It’s annoying, but I’ll survive.

Hopefully, I’ll be performing a clean install of my Linux machine in the next couple of days.

As some of you may know I love astronomy.  I wish I had a really nice tracking telescope.  But the other night the moon was full and I decided to take some shots.  A month ago I tried some moon shots but had a difficult time dialing in the settings required.  So I looked up how to photgraph the moon on the Internet and got lots of possibilities, but none of them were exact for my camera.  But they were a great starting point.

The Moon is actually an extremely bright object in the night sky.  Especially the full moon.  So you don’t have to take really long exposures like one would think.  Here’s my best photo (actual size coming out of my 10.1MP camera) from my last shoot.  Even tho the exposure was 1/640 I still used a tripod and the timer so I didn’t introduce any extra shake into the image.  I’ll try again at other times to refine my technique.

The Moon

It’s not as sharp as I would have hoped for but it’s a pretty decent start.  F/5.6 1/640 ISO 100

While I was outside I played around with some low light shots.  This is my neighbor’s house.  I left the settings the same for my moon shot, but I just took it to 30 second exposure.  It’s really neat how the one light creates enough light over time and the bouned light from the grass and trees casts a eerie green glow in the picture.

House at Night

As an aside, I do have the ability for you to subscribe to my blog.  Just click the register link on the right sidebar.  Happy shooting.

The photos we took for the contest can be seen on our Flickr Page.

First here’s the CSS:

.thumbnail
{
position: relative;
z-index: 0;
}
.thumbnail:hover
{
background-color: transparent;
z-index: 50;
}
.thumbnail span
{ /*CSS for enlarged image*/
position: absolute;
background-color: #cbb2f2;
padding: 5px;
left: -1000px;
border: 1px dashed #666;
visibility: hidden;
color: #000;
text-decoration: none;
}
.thumbnail span img
{ /*CSS for enlarged image*/
border-width: 0;
padding: 2px;
}
.thumbnail:hover span
{ /*CSS for enlarged image on hover*/
visibility: visible;
top: 0;
left: 60px; /*position where enlarged image should offset horizontally */
}


And now for an example of the html that uses the above CSS:

<a href="#thumb" class="thumbnail"><img src="images/NCMBRP_thumb.jpg" border="0" height="50" width="75" /><span><img src="images/NCMBRP.jpg" /></span></a>


Having lived in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for many years I started my photowalking there and quickly learned that the Military Police don’t know what to think of a bunch of people walking around a military base taking pictures.  Fortunately some quick talking and the offer of full disclosure of all images taken made them relax their stance.

So I really wanted to participate in this photowalk and I wasn’t about to wait for someone else to pick a city too far away from me, so I signed up as a leader.  I was chosen as leader even though I clearly stated that I consider myself an amateur photographer, I just know how to walk and talk and pick a path.  Winston Salem isn’t too far away and  I knew of 2 really good choices for the walk: Wake Forest University and Old Salem.  I’ve only briefly seen both of these areas and wanted to take pictures, but not from a moving vehicle with singing/screaming kids in the backseat.

In the end I chose Old Salem for several reasons:  Adequate parking.   Easy route choices.  A very disparate choice in architecture.  The presence of both a park and a cemetery.  And most important, what I would consider the perfect cafe as an end point.

So here are the details of the walk.  The current site for the walk is: http://www.photoshopuser.com/photowalk/city/winston-salem.html But I don’t know how long this site will stay up after the walk so here is a google map of the path we intend to take:

Google Map

One thing I have learned in the past is you don’t want to try to spend most of your time walking. This isn’t a marathon, so I try to keep the walk to 1.0 – 1.3 miles per hour.  This gives you plenty of time to socialize as well as setup close-up shots.  I also have a list of must bring items:

• Camera (it’s amazing how many people actually have to go back to get their camera)
• 2 lenses (One wide and one telephoto)
• Hat
• Ultra compact umbrella (Great for cutting out lens flare as well as protection from rain)
• Water
• Map
• Name Tags
• Leave tripod at home (flash is optional)
• Memory cards/extra film
• Fully charged Batteries
• Sunscreen
• Business cards
• Good shoes and socks (no sandals, you may be going off road a bit)

That’s about it.  Sign up and I’ll see you there.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.