Images by John 'K'
Life as seen through my lens…
Category Archives: Hobbies
Aperture what? Exposure.. huh.. eh..? I’m confused
Posted by on October 21, 2007
Having been handed a Saturday afternoon without the kids (one at work, one watching her boyfriend perform in a high school band competition [they came 2nd BTW so good job Amador!]), my wife and I decided to head out and explore one of the nearby regional parks that we’d kept saying "we must go there and have a walk around" but in nearly 2 and a half years never did until yesterday.
So on a lovely sunny October afternoon, we headed off on the short drive to Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreational Area. Because of the time of year and the time of day, there weren’t many people there – a family finishing up from an earlier bbq, a couple of cyclists, some folks fishing, a dog walker, and us. The park is on the site of an old quarry, but has been converted into lakes, woodland, some nice (and not too long) trails, and has become a haven for many types of birds.
We took the new ‘toy’ (Nikon D40x) with us to give it a decent try out. I’m still trying to get to grips with its capabilities, and a lot of the options are still not clear to me (must be old age), but as we walked around, I selected different settings, swapped lenses, and snapped away like there was no tomorrow (thank heavens this is digital!). In the end I took 183 pictures during our 2 hour visit, but I’ve selected some of the nicer ones and put them in the albums. We only threw away 2 (where because of the type of shot and lighting conditions we should really have used a tripod), but were really pleased with the rest. Considering this was later October afternoon, with the sun going (or gone) down, the results really did amaze me. Hopefully you’ll like some of them too. I’m still not too sure I understand all the options on this new toy yet, but even so I can manage to get some nice snaps with it. 🙂
As to the park, we’ll be back. 
Photos are here.
New toy time…
Posted by on October 16, 2007
After years of taking pictures with some relatively simple (and cheap) digital cameras, I was finally convinced to move to the world of digital SLR photography at the weekend. Since moving to America and having my youngest get involved in high school basketball I’ve experienced first hand the inadequacies of point and click digital photography; it really can’t cope with low light action shots. A trip into Costco this past weekend had me faced with 2 package deals that might help address this issue – one from Canon and one from Nikon, and after some thought (as these things while at a good price still aren’t cheap), I took the plunge and went for the Nikon deal as an ‘early Christmas present’.
I used to be all for SLR photography when I was younger, but clearly the passing of time has seen a lot of my old photography knowledge purged from my head, as faced with all the options on the camera, my first thought was "HELP", but I’m determined to get the best out of this thing. The manual and on-line tutorial show so many possibilities – options and controls for taking some really cool pictures – that I’m gonna sit down, read and re-read the thing until I get it lodged in my head.
Anyway – we popped up to Mount Diablo and took it for a trial run on Sunday – it was hazy after the recent rain, so we weren’t able to see too far into the distance (so no views of San Francisco), but I had a play anyway and have posted some of the results. I’m particularly impressed with the performance of the telephoto lens that came as part of the package – the shot of the bird in the distance was with me holding the camera (no tripod) and tracking the bird on full zoom (to the naked eye the bird was a tiny dot in the distance).
Watch for more pics form me as I get used to using this new ‘toy’.
Building a PC from scratch……
Posted by on May 11, 2006
I can understand why PC manufacturers charge what they do for packaged PCs….. If you’ve ever built a PC from scratch and worked to configure it into a usable system, you’ll know how painful it can be……
First there’s the hardware. If you’re building from scratch chances are you’ve sourced components from all over the place, and probably done it with the cheapest available that fit your needs. Of course, this means that the components rarely come with all the screws, cables, and connectors that you need to link everything together, so you’ll need IDE cables, floppy cables (if putting a floppy disk in), CD audio cables (if you’ve chosen a CD/DVD drive that doesn’t supply them as standard, a plentiful supply of screws (your case supplier might have given you these if you’re lucky), and most importantly a connection to the Internet from another computer (as the disks supplied with the components you have will rarely have the latest available drivers on them). So, best advice, check you have EVERYTHING you need before you start the job of piecing the thing together!
Don’t rush things – if you do you can end up missing vital connections, plugging things in the wrong place, hurting yourself (the metal insides of most computer cases are dangerous places), or damaging the stuff you’ve just purchased. USE ANTI-STATIC PRECAUTIONS – last thing you want is a static shock taking out something vital! Read all the instructions (even if you think you know it all) as chances are something on at least one of the pieces you’re trying to piece together is non-standard!
With everything pieced together, and before you put the sides on, connect a keyboard and monitor and do a basic power-up test to 1) see that the system recognises everything that you’ve just added at a basic hardware level, and 2) set the BIOS settings appropriately before you start to install an operating system. Refer to the motherboard manual for what the various settings are. You might also want to check the web for a BIOS update for the motherboard and put this on before you go much further.
Assuming you have all the hardware up and running OK, you next need to install an operating system if you want to do anything useful with this hunk of bits you’ve just put together. I won’t recommend one over another as there are many and varied reasons people choose different O/S’s, but I was installing Windows XP Professional.
So be prepared after the base install to apply service packs and other updates, and there are likely to be a number of reboots required as you go. Something I learned fairly early on when installing/building computers is as soon as you have access to the gard disk and removable media, copy all the install files and driver files and service pack update files to the hard disk, as it makes the whole install/patch/upgrade process so much quicker and easier. Remember to install using the updated drivers you downloaded from that other Internet enabled computer you have handy!
Once you have the basic O/S installed and updated, make sure that you put on antivirus, antispyware and firewall software, even if some of this comes free with the O/S. Commercially available options work way better than the free stuff supplied with the O/S. Again I won’t recommend which ones – there’s plenty of advice out there already, but I will say that a combination of Norton AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm Pro, Windows Defender, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ad-Aware have helped keep the PCs I have at home pretty free of troublesome software. A tip though – if building this computer for another family member, lock down the settings of all such software such that they can’t turn it off when it becomes a little inconvenient!
Then there’s the set of ‘useful utilities’ that you can’t live without. Software to cope with compressed archives, software to enhance the capabilities of the basic user interface shell (Windows PowerToys for XP for example), the various "can’t live without" applications (Microsoft Office for example) that you will use on a regular basis.
With all of this done, you have the basis of a working and usable computer. There’ll still be other stuff to go on, such as printer drivers and setup, CD/DVD writer software, DVD player software, games, enhanced disk defragmentation software, and so on.
Most importantly, install some form of backup software that’ll allow you to back up a full image of what you’ve just done such that you can boot from a recovery CD and restore all of that hard work if something really gets screwed up. I use Acronis True Image for this, but there are many other options. Starting from scratch, it can take many hours to get to the state where you’re ready to create this basic recovery image, and actually maing that image can save you repeating the whole thing over again when something goes bad. Also, you can use this software to take regular backups once you start using the PC so that you’re never exposed to significant data loss in the event of some catastrophy!
If you like playing with this stuff, even with all of the work involved, building your own PC is a rewarding experience, as you end up with a PC that works how YOU want it, and not how some PC manufacturer THINKS you want it. If you’re a computer novice however, don’t go this route without really making sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for, as you’ll most likely end up with something that doesn’t work as expected, and you’ll spend so much time trying to get it working right that any potential savings will be wasted.
Images by John 'K' 