Archive for the 'Photography' Category

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Photo Printer

Published on December 17, 2004 in General and Photography. Closed

Well, I finally broke down and bought myself a photo printer.

I’d been surviving until recently with a close to 10 year old, increasingly finicky laser printer. It’s served me well, but I’ve had paper feed issues with it for quite some time (ie years) and have been somewhat limited by its inability to make pretty color prints and its dismal speed (did I mention it was an old parallel port model). Fairly recently, my computer up and stopped talking to it out of the blue. Everything looked ok. Printer powered up, the computer thought the printer was ok and could read its status, but when I tried to print it acted as if the printer wasn’t responding (and the incoming data light on the printer didn’t blink like it should).

Decided that was my opportunity to retire the old beast and look into something new. Hadn’t looked too hard when my Dad told me about a printer deal he was getting for my Mom for XMas. She’d apparently been eyeing the Epson photo printers when they were in CompUSA recently, and the following day he saw a deal for an Epson Stylus Photo RX500 via CompUSA.com. The RX500 is one of those all-in-one dealies that couples a high-res scanner, with a decent 6-color photo printer to meet all your scanning/printing/photocopying needs. Since it came out to $100 after all is said and done, I figured what the heck. Just received mine today and it looks pretty slick. They were kind enough to include a few 4×6 premium glossy photo pages to get you hooked. Printed out a few pics from our honeymoon in Ireland, and have to admit, I’m hooked. :)

Prints on regular paper don’t look too bad (don’t even remotely compare to good photo paper, but not too bad if you get far enough away and don’t examine the details much). I think I’ve still got some “premium inkjet paper” or something similar in one of these boxes, so perhaps I’ll give that a try too. I’m afraid I’ll find myself at the store in search of high quality photo paper now to make some nice big prints from my new Digital Rebel. Should be able to get some nice 8x10s from that bad boy. Will probably have to wait for spring before I can take any really good pictures again with it. Well, at least pictures of things that aren’t all dreary and depressing like good wintery shots of naked trees. I’d like to take some of those, but I suspect Amanda would appreciate some cheerier stuff too. :)

Long overdue

Published on December 1, 2004 in General, Photography and Work. Closed

So this update is long overdue. I’ve been really busy recently with… well, life. First there was the big annual ISCA crunch where I helped Jim get his submission from 0 to paper in less than a week. Part of that was help getting him up and running on NCSA’s Itanium-2 cluster (Teragrid) so that he could have results to write about. The other part was helping him get an actual paper together the day of the deadline since Nick was focused on the other project he wanted to submit for. Whole thing was pretty exhausting, but we got an 18 page paper out somehow. The text was definitely rough, and I didn’t really get a chance to go over Jim’s results section because Nick kept pulling me off to do figures for his other submission, but I’m glad we managed to get something sent off. Figure Jim could do without the disappointment of working his tail off up to the deadline only to be informed that Nick was pulling the plug because he didn’t have enough of a paper to submit. Oh well, what the hell, and he flew his plane into a mountain.

So that was all wrapped up Thursday night (week before Thanksgiving). Amanda had Friday off, so we headed up to the Chicagoland area to look at furniture. She ran across Room and Board somehow, and we really liked what they’re stuff looked like on their website and in their catalog. Since they had a couple of stores in the ‘burbs we decided to go up and have a look-see to determine if the stuff was as nice in person. Looked like really nice furniture for the most part (actual wood as opposed to particle board with wood veneer). I would figure based on price, but it’s nice to know for sure. So I guess we’ll be ordering a bunch of stuff from them (we really like the “Asian-influence” stuff). Conveniently enough, they’ve got a flat shipping price regardless of how much stuff you’re buying and will deliver each piece into the room of your choice (white glove service I think it’s called?). While we were up there we managed to hit some places we don’t have down here in CU on our lunch stop (Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, and Restoration Hardware), with the eventual goal of going to see IKEA. Bizarre store.

So last week was pretty packed with house stuff. Got tile put in the bathrooms and kitchen to replace the yucky vinyl (finally got the last of the toilets reinstalled yesterday and the doors for the upstairs bathrooms trimmed to clear the now higher floors). We’re still waiting on the tile guy to come back and put up fresh black baseboard underneath all the cabinets, but that’s pretty minor (and doesn’t prevent use of the bathrooms or kitchen). We also got the rest of the carpeting replaced including the last of the pink carpet that was on the stairs. So we’ve got nice new snazzy floors just about everywhere now. Gonna be real nice. I’ve got some of the photos up at the usual place, but have been too lazy to put up the most current stuff yet. I should mention that we worked on moving all of last week too, culminating in a big move on Saturday with a 14′ Uhaul to get the big furniture and such that won’t fit in my car. Amanda’s family were a big help getting that all taken care of.

So now we’re actually living in our house which is exciting. We’ve got a bed set up (mostly), and are slowly getting our lives in order again. I’ve been working on trying to get various services killed off at the apartment and set up at the house (ie landline phone, internet, tv, garbage… the essentials). At some point I should figure out what to do with… well, lots of things on the todo list (which only seems to get longer and never shorter). Boy, isn’t life as a home owner grand. :)

Wood Floors

Published on November 10, 2004 in General and Photography. Closed

Mmmm. Wood floors. Got solid oak installed downstairs over the past couple of days. Really looks outstanding. I’ve got a bunch of pics up at the usual place, but they simply don’t do it justice. If you have a chance to come see, do so! :) Got an estimate for putting ceramic tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, and replacing the rest of the carpet (stairs and upstairs hall/bedrooms) with new carpet. Scheduled to go in after all of this ISCA hubbub is over with.

House Updates

Published on November 5, 2004 in General and Photography. Closed

Making progress again on the house (and remembered to bring my camera again too). A bunch of the double-paned windows that had broken seals were replaced on Tuesday (turns out some of the remaining windows were misordered and the sliding glass door is on backorder). Big improvement on the ones that have been replaced though. Will actually be able to look out the windows now. Got the light green paint up on two of the walls in the dining room (but not the overhang near the cathedral ceiling), gold along the north wall with the big picture window in the living room and the sliding glass door in the dining room that leads to the deck. Got a bunch more wallpaper taken down, so hopefully we can get a coat of paint up on the remaining dining room wall that leads into the kitchen soon. The solid oak flooring should be going in on the first floor on Monday and Tuesday, so the place should be looking pretty good soon.

Progress on the House

Published on October 13, 2004 in General and Photography. 1 Comment

Amanda and I have been pretty busy since we closed on the house. We’ve looked at flooring some, and I’ve started the ball rolling on fixing the windows (several of the double panes had broken seals). We’ve also done a fair bit of painting, sanding, staining, sealing, spackling, de-wallpapering, cleaning, landscaping… I’ve been trying to keep a pretty good photo log of our progress over in the gallery. Basically, I’ve got a full tour of the house as it was at closing, and then a separate album tracking our progress in each room. We’ve even managed to get some help from some of Amanda’s sibs, who’ve been very helpful.

New House

Published on October 1, 2004 in General and Photography. 1 Comment

So, Amanda and I closed on the new house yesterday morning. We’re already starting to feel like homeowners. And by that, I mean we’ve already started tearing the place apart. :) For those that are interested, I’ve got some pictures up over in the gallery (taken with the new Digital Rebel).

With a Rebel Yell!

Published on September 16, 2004 in Photography. 1 Comment

Yay! My Digital Rebel just got here!!

To recap, I finally decided to break down and get myself something fun for getting my thesis deposited. Decided last week that I’d get myself a Canon Digital Rebel EOS-300D if I could find it at a price I liked. Ended up getting it at a pretty decent price ($200-250 off what I could get it for locally). Looks like it should be a pretty sweet camera (Review, Another). Comes with an 18 – 55 mm EF-S lens (F3.5 – F5.6) and a battery that should be worth several hundred shots before a recharge.

I’d also been considering the Nikon D70, but it sounds like I’d get shots I was happier with out of the Canon with less tweaking on my part. I think the D70′s a little more powerful and flexible, but it also would appear to run me another $500 (was having trouble finding any respectable shops that discount them), and being the newbie that I am, I doubt I’d get that much more out of it. Since I don’t have an existing lens collection for either manufacturer, it ended up being a toss up, so I went with the cheaper option.

Now I just have to figure out how to make good use of it (and pick up a UV filter, carrying case, etc). Presumably at some point I’ll get some additional lenses (telephoto and macro being the most likely).

Ireland Photos

Published on July 1, 2004 in General and Photography. Closed

I think I’ve got the bulk of the photos from our honeymoon in Ireland cleaned up and uploaded. You should be able to view them now here. I tried setting it up to auto-resize them when I uploaded (since I don’t have the disk space to store them all full res), but I’m not sure if I want them any bigger than it’s currently set to. If you’ve got any feedback in that respect, please let me know.