I’m going to tackle all of these, although not necessarily in order… Nothing too new with photography. I did attend the Cleveland Photographic Society club meeting and it was quite interesting. I plan to attend more meetings when I’m feeling better (I missed the last meeting due to sinuses). Olessia and I headed over to Lake View Cemetery to check out the James Garfield monument. The balcony has a nice view of Cleveland and we grabbed some shots. I wasn’t feeling too good so I didn’t shoot much. Calculus 2 is chugging along. So far, it appears I am minus … Continue reading Photography, Software, School
Like a print of any of the pictures in the portfolio? Order prints online! Here’s how: First visit my portfolio and pick a picture you like. Click on that picture. At the bottom, there will be a drop down box. From the drop down box, select “Print on Digibug.com” (you could also print at Shutterfly, although you have less options and it is a bit more expensive). I tested this out with Digibug and it is a really nice service. They had the prints in the mail the next day! I had them print poster sized pictures, which were 30″x40″ … Continue reading Printing Photos
There’s plans in the air for returning back to Moscow in 2009. It looks like the current plan is to try to catch the 2009 MAKC airshow and at the same time, try to not miss any school classes. The trip specifics are a bit unknown at the moment. Olessia has some paperwork she needs to catch up on while back in Dubna. We are thinking to aim for taking 3 weeks this time, if my work will let me swing it. If so, we might try stopping in Western Europe, such as Paris. I’m looking forward to returning and … Continue reading Russia 2009
Olessia hadn’t been to DC yet. We took advantage of the labor day weekend and headed out on Friday and arrived in downtown Washington DC in the afternoon. We did a quick walk to the White House and returned back to the hotel for food.
It is that time of the year. Fall semester has started. What am I taking? Wait for it… Calculus II! Ugh. This one is Tri-C flavored. I have spent this year at Tri-C. I took Trig in the spring (aced it). I took calculus I in the summer (did ok and landed a C, not bad for working full time and sitting in a calc class for 3+ hours twice a week). Now it is calculus II, at the Metro campus. The commute isn’t as bad as Parma, but not as nice as the five minutes it took to get … Continue reading School
I haven’t been able to figure out how to summarize the trip. In one word, I think “awesome” would summarize it pretty nicely. Russia is an amazing country. The United States goes back 300 years, while the city of Moscow alone goes back 860 years! The country is HUGE too.
It is easy to write about it, or look at pictures of Russia. But to actually go there, smell the air, and experience life, it is something else. I think for everything that is good about Russia, you can find the negative. It is still a tough place to live, in my opinion, although it does appear to be getting better. The trip allowed me to meet Masha, Olessia’s sister, as well as see where Masha and Olessia grew up and lived. I also saw where Olessia went to school, where she used to work, as well as where her mom and dad used to work and where her mom works currently. I experienced travel by road, boat, train, and metro (the subway).
Olessia’s mom cooked for us often. I tasted Russian ice cream and can say it is really good, so good in fact, I could see it being worth while eating outside in the cold of winter (which Russians do). It was a real treat to be able to go to Saint Petersburg as well as make it to the air show (the air show runs only once every two years). We ran out of time before we could see or do everything we wanted. This just means we’ll have to go back some time.
Pictures are available. I’ll try to narrate them here. Each album in the gallery is one day. So the first album is day one, the next album is day two, and so on. Continue reading “Russia 2007”
The end of March, Olessia and I made a trip out to Las Cruces, New Mexico to visit my grandparents. It was a just a weekend trip, although we wish we had more time. It had been probably ten years since I was in Las Cruces the last time. The temperatures in Cleveland were just starting to warm up from 40F. I remember scraping frost off the car before leaving for the airport. We arrived and it was in the low 70F. The weather was absolutely awesome. My grandparents took us out for lunch and we got some authentic southwestern … Continue reading Las Cruces, New Mexico
It has been a while since I posted. Life has been pretty busy. I had switched to Joomla and I’m not sure that helped my posting. So, I’m giving WordPress a shot. The install was easy. And so far the learning curve has been pretty nice. I haven’t had to do much referencing of the documentation to get this bugger setup. It will be a little bit before I get completely moved in. The photo albums are getting moved to pathfinder.rsbauer.com. The bandwidth is slower over there, but I can abuse it so much more. The “look and feel” is … Continue reading Site Refresh
If you haven’t checked already, I’ve added a new album in the gallery for Nikon D80 test shots.
After much work, saving, and research, I settled on purchasing the Nikon D80. It was tough to pick a digital SLR. Canon puts together a great camera and I love the PowerShot we have (A630 flavor – most of the recent digital pics have been made with this camera). I already have a Nikon N80 film SLR camera with lenses and other gear. So I scoped out the local camera shop and checked out the Nikon’s D-series and found my existing gear would definitely work with the D80, although not so with the D40x.
The D80 is awesome. Being able to swap lenses around, getting close to the action or going for a wide-angle shot is very handy. The speed of the camera has also been beneficial. There’s no shutter lag. There’s a lot more control over the flash, and if the onboard flash doesn’t cut it, I can attach the flash unit I have for my Nikon film camera to the D80 and use that. As far as I can see, the D80 has all the features my N80 has, plus a bit more (in terms of photo control).
Its a bit too cold to be romping around outside with the camera just yet. When it warms up, I look forward to getting some shots of the Cleveland skyline and the night sky itself. In the meantime, I have been shooting indoors, with the cats, Olessia, and the plants as my subjects.
The critters are all doing fine. Mozi the lizard is asleep for the winter. Murzik is either playing or sleeping. Powder, well, he's still been itchy, although we've seen a bit of improvement. He's been getting into some trouble. There's some pictures of him getting his face dirty. The other day he chewed on my brand new spider plants. He still opens cabinet doors. He's being his usual self. Continue reading “Critter Update”
Whoa! I was checking the ‘net to see if there’s been any updates to the CHDK firmware for Canon cameras. I was poking around trying to figure out what was new, and low-and-behold, remote cable-release is available! There also is motion sensing, and that had been around when I had last visited (haven’t tried it). I downloaded Fingalo’s port of CHDK. It is the one that supports motion detection, remote cable-release, and a lot more. So I got the firmware loaded, how do I get the remote-release to work? Simple! Plug it into the computer and it will fire the camera! It worked. Now the trick was to build a remote cable-release button. I found a link with instructions in Russian. Looking at the pictures you can get a pretty good idea what is involved. I went to Radio Shack and bought some parts. I wanted a radio controlled cable release, but at the moment that is a little more complex than I need right now. Instead, I went with a small project box, a push button, and a 2 AAA battery holder. Laying around the house I had a USB extension cable and a lot of phone line cable.
I chopped the USB extension cable (chopped the male end off leaving several feet available to the female end). I didn’t want to hack at the camera’s USB cable as that one is a bit harder to get a hold off. So I want to be able to plug the camera’s USB cable in, then plug the other end into my doctored extension cable. The split end of the USB extension cable then got spliced to the phone line cable I had. During all of this, you have to take care which end is positive and negative. Luckily for me, the USB cable and phone line had black and red wires which went nicely with the rest of the project as negative and positive. After splicing the cables together, I ran the phone line to the box. I ran the line in, then tied a knot on the inside to ensure the phone line can’t be pulled out. Then I soldered the red (positive) wire to the button. Then soldered the battery pack’s red wire to the button. I did a continuity check (using a multi-meter) to make sure all solder joints were ok. I then soldered the phone line’s black wire to the battery pack’s black wire. Again, I did another continuity check. Looked good. I then had to get Olessia involved as I ran out of hands to do a voltage test. Olessia pressed the trigger button while I held the multi-meter leads up to the USB cable. We got 3 volts coming out in the right direction. I plugged the camera’s USB cable in to the camera and my USB cable and loaded the remote trigger program, pressed the button, and rejoiced! It worked.
I hope to prop the camera up in the tree and capture some blue jays and squirrels. It would be fun to place the camera some where where the cats weren’t expecting. It will be nice to have this remote cable-release for those tough times when I don’t have a tripod with me and I need to prop the camera up, yet not bump it due to a long exposure time.
I’m working on getting some pictures of this up in the gallery. Look for the photography experiments gallery.
Update: The video posted is a highlight of the stars of the 2007 MAKC air show. It is not actual footage of the air show itself. Still, very entertaining to watch…
Triangle solver. This appears to be a somewhat recent app and I can't remember how to work it (the last I remember, it did work). Its menu driven (but not by the TI-85s built in menu – just standard text menus).
It appears to be a useless program at first. Actually, this is handy if you have a Radio Shack thermister and a multimeter. Use the multimeter in Ohm reading mode and attach it to the thermister. Then plug the reading in to this app to determine the temperature. The only problem with this is most thermisters are not exactly alike so your mileage might vary a little.
Here's another incomplete game. It might work, but then I forgot how to play it. There's a box. You must figure out the angle to hit the box (press Enter to input the angle). After that, its not clear what happens. Good luck!
Here's another one of my favorite apps. Its gotten a lot of mileage and originally started out on a TI-81. It asks for X1, Y1, X2, Y2 which is typically in a text book as (X1, Y1), (X2, Y2). Plop the 2 coordinates in and it tells you the slope (M), distance between the two points, and the X and Y intercepts (if available).
