A day in the Life.

Yesterday,
Wanted to get my bike up to the shop in Tacoma where I bought it 4 years ago. Figured I'd leave early enough in the afternoon that I could take my time. And I decided to ride to downtown Oly and then take the bus to Tacoma - which is silly since it's in the opposite direction and I could catch the Express Bus in Lacey.

Long story short, I had a good time taking photos in Oly and didn't make it to the bike shop before 6. But I did find a nice Thai place down the street from it. So the whole trip wasn't entirely a complete waste of time.

Here's the one photo I shot in Tacoma:


Oly was awesome. The sun was out, the air was fresh, gulls played for my camera, it was like a mini-summer. By the time I got off the Bus in Tacoma, downtown was in mostly in shadow and it was bitterly cold. I thought I saw snow flying during the bus ride down I-5. The ride home from Lacey was extremely cold.

This morning, when I woke up, there was snow on the ground. No bike riding today.

Full moon ride with Pink Floyd and Freezing Conditions (with Droid track)

So I got my bike tuned up today just in time for a ride under the Full moon. By the time it was out of the shop, it was already dark and I had a few miles to ride to get home... and I hadn't anticipated riding in the dark, so I had no light. Fortunately the ride requires little sharing of pavement with motorized vehicles and the full moon provides more than adequate illumination.

I got home with little incident on a relatively smooth riding bike (though it does need a bit more work and I have to go easy on torque and prepare for loss of power train functionality. so far it has presented little more than annoyance.)

Next I had to take Molly for a walk because she saw that I was preparing for a serious ride and looked so sad at the prospect of being stuck indoors. So we had a nice walk which provided a relaxing leg stretch as intermission between cycling forays.

So after midnight I departed on a journey of undetermined duration and distance (my favorite kind). I ended up riding over 30 miles... probably closer to 35 in freezing conditions, but with clear pavement (♥ winter weather in the coastal Pacific Northwest) and nearly adequate insulation (I have stiff clipless shoes with zero insulation).

I recorded a partial track as permitted by my Droid's battery use while constantly fetching and recording GPS data... but I got a nice stretch of the first half of the ride.

and here it is...

and some stats since they can be hard to see in the embedded window...
Total Distance: 24.40 km (15.2 mi)
Total Time: 1:30:40
Moving Time: 1:30:38
Average Speed: 16.14 km/h (10.0 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 16.15 km/h (10.0 mi/h)
Max Speed: 25.37 km/h (15.8 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 20 m (64 ft)
Max Elevation: 133 m (438 ft)
Elevation Gain: 226 m (741 ft)
Max Grade: 9 %
Min Grade: -8 %
Recorded: Thu Feb 17 23:24:12 PST 2011
Activity type: - cycling

Now I'm extremely fatigued and desiring what I anticipate will be a very restful sleep.

4 years with a D40

I've had my Nikon D40 for nearly 4 years. I consider this to be my first real camera. And I've made many pictures with it. To show off a few of these, I've created a new album in Picasa. here are a few of them. click the link below any one to go to the album.

From 4 years with a D40

From 4 years with a D40

From 4 years with a D40

digital SLR sensor dust check.

you may not know that your favorite browser comes with a great took to check for dust on your sensor...

in the address bar, type "about:blank" and hit enter. now you should get a blank white browser page... just full screen that baby, put your favorite lens on the camera and take an out of focus shot of the screen with just enough exposure to get a nice white blur... now load the image in an editor with a curves adjustment.... look at the histogram and adjust the curve to maximize the contrast on the image.... now you should be able to easily see the dark spots where you have dust on the sensor.

depending on your camera firmware and editing software, you may be able to convert this image into a dust mask to automatically correct for this dust... if you can do this in the SLR's internal software, you should be able to have it applied to every shot by default.