This Old Blog

While waiting to be seated for dinner at a local Olive Garden on International Drive (the home of the former King Henry's Feast), I strolled across the parking lot and onto the site of the old Race Rock, now being rebuilt into a new venue. It's interesting to be seeing this kind of construction going on, and when we finished our meal and drove home, it was interesting to see all the crowded venues and restaurants on that end of International Drive. Business was good this evening, and I suppose it's picking up on the south end of International Drive, especially around the Orange County Convention Center, which is where the construction is occurring. I managed to walk about a bit and take a few snaps before a security guard warned me I couldn't do that. They guy was nice enough, and the reason given was I was on private property and it's still a construction zone. Stumbling around at twilight, I was at risk for hurting myself, and in these highly litigious ti...

Hot Stop Hang around the web long enough and you'll see plenty of photographs taken with the outward-facing camera built into current versions of the iPhone. You'll also see plenty of heated arguments about the 'seriousness' of photographs taken with an iPhone. Whatever. A camera is a camera. While I don't own an iPhone, my myTouch 4G comes with a 5MP camera, which I felt somewhat compelled to see what kinds of photographs I could take with it. I've been using Olympus DSLRs since 2006. I've learned their strengths and quirks, and I've grown comfortable using each one. The myTouch 4G camera is quite different from any Olympus camera, both in operation as well as how to configure the camera to produce acceptable (to me) photographs. After working a bit with the camera, I've managed to find a range of settings that produce a reasonable base photograph with enough exposure and detail to work with. Camera exposure settings There's not that...

Carts and Bricks Light and Shadow at Target I've come back full circle with my Olympus cameras. I'm back to photographing heavily with the Olympus E-3 and the Zuiko Digital 12-60mm. And to make things interesting, I'm learning how to use the built-in 5MP camera on my myTouch 4G. I'm finally getting output I actually like; the top photo was taken with the smart phone, accented on the smart phone, and uploaded to my Flickr account via the smart phone. This is in contrast to the lower photo which required post processing on a notebook with Lightroom before it could be uploaded. Both were taken at the same location. I like the top photo because of the dramatic tone enhancing the greens and the brickwork, as well as helping to pick out the reflected silhouette of the buildings in back of me. I like the lower because of the shadowing and the dramatic saturated reds I was able to obtain in post processing. I'm really beginning to enjoy using the smartphone'...

What you're looking at is the Samba Room on the east-bound side of Sandlake Road, a block past where Dr. Phillips Blvd dead ends into Sandlake. We've known about it ever since it was built but we've never stopped there for a meal until my beloved got us a Groupon deal at The Samba Room to buy $30 work of meal for a mere $15. That was back in January. We had until 31 May to exercise the Groupon, and as luck would have it time passed by pretty quickly before we could get around to using it. The Groupon was for lunch and dinner meals. So last week (before the end of May) we started to call to make reservations as well as drive by during lunch to eat there. Every time we called no-one would answer. Every time we stopped by the place was closed. Furthermore the sign on the outside said that the hours of operation were from 4pm to midnight, dinner only. Our collective eyebrows went up over that. Finally, on Monday, the 31 st , we went down around 7pm to see if we could take ...

I'll be packing up the M.Zuiko 9-18mm this weekend to send back to B&H, and writing a full review of the lens. It's going to be tough, as the M.Zuiko 9-18mm has been out now for some time and there are a good selection of reviews already on the web. I need to come at this from a different angle. The µ4/3rds version of the Zuiko Digital 9-18mm has been a solid performer on the E-P2, and shows what a good quality lens designed to work with the E-P2 is capable of. I deliberately shot into the sun to check out the flair qualities of the lens. My original 9-18mm star flared magnificently; when it broke, it was replaced with another copy that had rounded aperture blades and didn't flare nearly as nicely. The M.Zuiko seems to fall between the two regular 4/3rd copies. 9mm doesn't always work. Sometimes you have to go to the other end (18mm) to get the point of view you're looking for. Besides, I didn't realize the Nissan Z was up to 370. The last time I dro...

One week ago today I was complaining about the inconsistency between virtual keyboards on the T-Mobile myTouch 4G running Android 2.2.1. I have since been shown additional inconsistencies in the user interface by my sainted wife, who uses hers to text our children as well as many of her friends. To illustrate the problem we start with the standard touch input keypad in the texting application. I call your attention to the second right button in the middle text area with the paper clip icon. I've touched it to have it extend out to the left. It has a five features that allow you to insert non-textual information into the text message; photo, video, emotion (emoticons), GPS (position) and contact information. The one item my wife is keen on is the emoticon insertion. Texting in portrait orientation I don't know why my wife finds the emoticon insert vital, but she does. She uses it extensively. What got her talking to me was her annoyance in not being able to use the emot...

May has been quite the month. It opened May 2nd with the death of Osama bin Laden and ends with the crew of space shuttle Endeavour readying a final return from orbit for themselves and their space craft. In between I've watched Japan slowly recovering from the April earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent nuclear breach at Fukushima, major flooding up and down the Mississippi, tornadoes and their aftermath in Joplin, the continuing Arab Spring, the rise and collapse of the price of oil and the continuing rise of gas prices, Newt Gingrich announce his presidential run for 2012, only to implode over comments where he labeled Rep. Paul Ryan's proposed budget as "radical" and "right-wing social engineering." Unfortunately he's correct. Other news that caught my ear and my eye that was released over the last 48 hours concerns the record amount of CO 2 we dumped into the atmosphere and the accelerating economic chaos in Europe, issues that will have an ...