pierces

I picked up a new-build installation USB stick for Windows 11 Pro today. I briefly considered trying the free Linux operating system but laid down until the feeling passed. I also finished my go/no-go research on an i9 CPU vs an i7. The i9 is definitely faster, but just not $150 faster. The i7 is at least twice as fast as the one in my current machine and the 3%-5% bump in benchmarks for the i9 wouldn't give me much more than bragging rights. I'll use the difference to augment my graphics card budget. 😉 I have also been working to decide which NAS (Network Attached Storage) system to put together. I want something that will allow easy and secure remote access since I plan on sunsetting my PPTPhoto.com site next year. The 24GB configuration mentioned above seems to be a good compromise between size and cost. Now I have to decide which offering has the best remote access support. I'm hesitating on the Gen5 boot disk since Crucial is releasing their new T705 drive in a couple of weeks, and it shows a lot of promise if the price premium isn't too steep. I found that the Asus Z790-e motherboard on the list has four Gen4 drive slots in addition to the single Gen5 slot. I'm now thinking of adding another Gen4 drive just for the catalogs and miscellaneous support files. So many choices. Dave

Saturday was Hockey Day. We drove 50 miles to the venue and sat in the cold for an hour watching Matthew's team dissect their opponents. They played well and deserved the impromptu pizza party afterwards. It was just the kids and their Mom at the party since their Dad had to head off to work right after the game. The ride home was typical for any weekend afternoon in LA with the freeways moving at a blistering 10-30 MPH. This gave the kids plenty of time to engage in those popular sibling games of “She’s/He’s Bothering Me” and “Shut Up (fill in the name)” as well as a heated dispute over the use of Jackie’s Corgi-shaped pillow. This went on for about thirty minutes until bellies full of pizza brought a peaceful solution to the pillow dispute. Peace at Last Dave

Oops...wrong week.

Pictures taken between Monday, February 19 and Sunday, February 25. This is the third of four weeks in February. That is so inspirational! Be inspired and get out and shoot some photos. This forum is widely known as the perfect place to share them! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

It is enabled only when the camera app is active (still controls volume if the camera app is open but in the background). It also allows you to start/stop video recording. Dave

I looked at a bunch of these things and ended up programming the camera to use the volume button to trigger the shutter. That way I can hold it with both hands or tap to focus and still take the picture. The camera strap issue was solved with a BlackRapid Wander leash. Dave

Last year I documented both sides of the San Gabriel range after a record snowfall and while we haven’t set any records so far, a recent atmospheric river has left its mark. On the way to a Super Sunday party with family and friends, I pulled off the road to take in the view. This part of the High Desert has had a 10% increase in population just since 2020 but the Mojave Desert isn’t in any danger of filling up soon and views like this can still be easily found. This photo was taken from an elevation of around 3,200 ft. and the horizon cuts off the view of the mountains at almost exactly the current snow line. Stopping to “smell the roses” (Joshua Trees?) and appreciate nature’s beauty on the way to a very human-centric event was surprisingly refreshing. High Desert Dave

Old joke about the tourist asking the New Yorker how to get to Carnegie Hall has more insight than one would think at first glance. Of course, the answer was practice, practice, practice. That's your answer. Take your camera out. Set it to whatever settings you decide to use and take pictures. Take a lot of pictures and compare them to pictures you see and like on the internet. Is a composition right? Should you zoom more? Less? There's no real textbook answer for that. If you like it, it's right. This isn't meant to be a generic "just shut up and practice" answer. I have spent over 50 years practicing and it seems to have paid off. (To be honest and a little encouraging, I got pretty good after about a year...) Don't get discouraged. At least it's it's not $5.99 a roll and $7 to get it processed to find out you need more "practice". I did that for the first 25 years or so. Enjoy your trip. Where's the link to my cruising gallery. Maybe browsing through them will give you some ideas. There's quite a bit of Caribbean and a whole lot of Alaska. https://pptphoto.com/galleries/Travel/Cruising/index.html Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 12 and Sunday, February 18. 💘 Does 💘 anyone 💘 have 💘 anything 💘 special 💘 planned 💘 for 💘 this 💘 week 💘 ? Maybe 💘 on 💘 Wednesday 💘 ? Take a photo and share it. We would ❤️‍🔥 to see it. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Life keeps happening. We just have to do our best to keep up as it throws things at us. Glad to see you back. Dave

Snow fairies were busy last night.... Dave

We've gotten about 7" since Sunday. Our normal here is about twice that for a year. The winds didn't hit us where we are but got up to 60mph or so in the local mountains and passes. The water is much worse than the wind for damage potential. We often get 70-100mph winds coming down through the passes from the high desert, so houses and fences are built with that in mind. Drainage for a half-year of water in two days...not so much. We have discovered a couple of small leaks which will accelerate our decision about a new roof but we're in no danger of flooding here. Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, February 5 and Sunday, February 11. February is well underway. I have verified that there will be an extra day this month. With a whole extra day available, there is no excuse not to post a photo or two! Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

...and more rain. I miss the drought. Dave

Another vote for the RX 10 IV. One of the best bridge cameras available. Dave

Memory is supposed to be in short supply starting soon with prices rising accordingly. The Gen4 SSD drive from Corsair that I had on the list appeared in a bundle with a 48GB DDR5 6000 (2x24GB) memory package at a worthwhile discount. Trigger pulled. The 2024 build has officially begun. Dave

We have granddogs for now and enjoy the cat network. (Our name for the endless visitations by the neighborhood cats on our security cameras.) Dane

We now think the universe is trying to tell us something. While in Key West on the birthday cruise, we came across a group of locals celebrating Wienerpalooza with their doxies all dressed up and showing off. I think we are doomed to get another dog though after our Cookie passed a couple of years ago, I just worry my heart couldn't take losing another one. Dogs are magical. Dave

The day after returning from Kim's birthday cruise, our daughters insisted on coming over to watch the 49er's game. Needless to say, having a gaggle of folks over for a gathering the day after a 14-hour travel marathon was the last thing on our list of activities for a post-cruise Sunday afternoon. As it turns out, it was all an excuse to present Kim’s with the birthday gift they had gone together on and were too excited about to wait another week to deliver. Our Chloe has been gone for a decade, but they know we still have a serious soft spot for wiener dogs. Somehow, they figured that affection for the breed would extend to a five-foot long bench in the shape of one. Turns out it does. We now have a wiener dog bench named Longfellow. Longfellow Dave

I have used Blurb since I started my Picture-A-Week project in 2012. I haven't really shopped around much because I have been extremely pleased with the quality of their books and I wanted year-over-year consistency. I didn't find a template that I liked but Blurb has full-page and two-page spreads that you can load with a photo. I made my own template to fit the two-page spread in Photoshop and have used it for all 12 years of the books (just ordered #12 for 2023). There is one more shelf on this bookcase, so I'll have to figure something out in the next six years. 🙂 I have also used Blurb for the albums when I do family weddings. The large format books with the printed hardcover are very nice. Again, I used the full-page with my own template. We even did a cookbook with all of our family favorite recipes to document them before they faded from memory, or the 70-year-old index card disintegrated. Whatever service you end up choosing, making a book is a very satisfying project and beats the heck out of a shoebox full of prints! Dave

That's pretty much it. We really liked it because we are not fans of heat and humidity. The ability to just sit on the balcony with the Infinity window closed and watch the ocean was great. If you want to open it up, the top rolls down and ends up very much like a regular balcony. Something that is not clear in the images is that there's a folding glass door between the balcony and the main room that you can close so you can sit on the open balcony isolated from the room behind you. There is no curtain to close but there is a motorized blind that rolls down from the top to the bottom that can be stopped at any point to limit the amount of light in the room. When closed is a full blackout. We read about all the controversy before going and are glad that we went ahead and got one anyway. Besides, even if the balcony turned out to be a total loss, the trip still would have been worth it. The ship is just beautiful. Dave

Week four found us still enjoying the Birthday cruise on the fantastic Celebrity Apex. After an enjoyable tour in Key West on Sunday, skipping Belize on Tuesday (after checking the State Dept. site to confirm that the note we got about being alert due to “issues” was a good reason to skip), we decided that the heat and humidity that poured into our room when we opened the infinity balcony to see how it worked was enough of a reason to skip Cozumel as well. Instead, we wandered the ship, caught up on news and such on our tablets and generally spent the day doing not a darned thing. Before starting our Wednesday of Rest tour, I snapped this photo of hot, muggy, Cozumel with its strikingly blue waters and three million or so tourist-filled bars. Close Enough Dave

For Kim's birthday this year, we booked a cruise on the Celebrity Apex. The itinerary was a typical Caribbean tour visiting places we've seen before, but that was ok as the ship was our actual destination. We have never sailed on the Edge-class ships and we were intrigued by all the talk of them being marvels of technology and elegance. Long story short, the talk wasn’t hype. The Apex impressed from the moment we walked up the gangway until we were forced to leave a week later. The layout, decor, artwork, and all the other aspects of the ship were simply classy. We liked the ship so much that we skipped getting off her in three of the four ports. The Apex is beautiful, and we would say that even if we hadn’t had the drink package. We Were Impressed Dave

Pictures taken between Monday, January 29 and Sunday, February 4. February is here. I have it on good authority that there will be an extra day this month that will extend the time available to take photos and post them here. I will continue to research this and will let you know what I find. Meanwhile, shoot, post, repeat. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!

Pictures taken between Monday, January 22 and Sunday, January 28. It's the last week of January 2024. Do yourself a favor. Take some pictures. Look at them and share the ones that make you smile. Maybe they'll make someone here smile as well. Rules: See above That's it. This isn't a contest. All photos taken this week are welcome (not just cruising). Prizes will not be awarded. Discovering the joy of photography is the prize. The idea is to get folks out using their cameras for more than vacations and toddler birthdays. Post one. Post many. Up to you. Have fun with your camera and share your fun with others!