UnSpace

Simple: the laptop was loaded with Windows Vista.

I'm not joking, folks! I thought the laptop was a bargain. I'm not so sure any more. I wonder how hard it would be to downgrade (upgrade?) to XP?

Well, I got a new keyboard. I'm addicted to the ergonomic keyboards that permit your hands to rotate outward slightly and spread the keyboard out a bit. The only one I could find was the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

It's cool, with a Web/Home, Search, Mail, Mute, Volume-, Volume+, Play/Pause, Calculator, Zoom, Back and Forward buttons as well as all the typical keys and five programmables.

Unfortunately, to use it, you have to install the software that takes over the mouse as well. Darn you, Microsoft! Darn you to heck!

Actually, it's not all that bad. The only button I can't program I never used, so it's no big deal. The wheel button now shows every running program, which makes switching between programs easy. I may change that behavior later, but for right now, it's fine.

I have the programmable buttons set to open Thunderbird, Starry Night, WS_FTP Pro, the My Pictures folder, and Paint Shop Pro XI. That may change.

What doesn't work is the Zoom button. It acts as a scroll inside programs. I don't know why it doesn't work, although I should check my screen resolution. I may have to write Microsoft and ask.

The keyboard is different. At first, I started typing nonsense touch-type words. I still have trouble with some letters, but I'm improving rapidly.

MSNBC has a review of the new Saturn Aura. I have to agree based on personal experience.

Back in December, I went out to our 1999 Saturn SL2 to find the battery dead. I jumped it and drove to my Saturn dealer. Repairs would cost more than the car was worth, but I authorized it anyway. Knowing when to give up, whether in running a cardiac arrest protocol or in owning a vehicle, has never been my forte. The red Saturn had been a reliable, beautiful car that took me through the two weeks of trips to Somerset after 9/11, had been Nancy and my "home" on a number of road trips, and kept me alive through a number of bizarre car accidents. I loved my Saturn SL2, and hoped to be one of those owners with 150,000 miles. Alas, there was only 81,000 on the odometer. Somehow, I knew I wasn't going to make it even another 19,000 miles.

To calm myself over the coming $3,000 repair bill, I walked around the Saturn lot. I didn't get far. There was this stunning vehicle sitting there, a soft gold finish and styling that amazed me. I pulled aside one of the Saturn sales agents and asked about the car. She suggested I get the garage to hold off on the repair of my old vehicle. I went for a drive. The car handled beautifully and was loaded with gizmos designed to appeal to those of us whose theme song is "White and Nerdy."

I bought the car. I think it was the little touches that really caught my eye: there were hooks and velcro to hold the floor mats in place. The trunk latch was now protected so that you wouldn't rip bags of bird seed open as you removed them from the trunk. The headrests were perfectly placed. Only later did I find the driver's seat, if leaned back all the way, was so comfortable I would instantly fall into a 15 minute nap, sleeping better than I did in my own bed!

Of course, the OnStar system is wonderful. You know I'd want something like that, although I've only had to call 911 once in the two months I've had the car.

The styling really is impressive. People on the road have motioned for me to roll down my window so they could tell me how nice the car looked.

I went with the XE, which isn't the full featured model. I wish I could have waited for their hybrid version, rumored to come out later this spring. But in the tradition of the SL2 it replaced, I'm thrilled with my new car.

Years ago, the joke was you never wanted to invite an Amway salesperson, a Jehovah's Witness, or a Saturn owner to your party. For a while, Saturn dropped off the list.

The enthusiasm is back!

Blue and White LED Christmas Tree

The tree is quite bright, yet it uses only 1/10th the power because it uses Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) instead of lightbulbs.

Still, the tree looked more like an attempt to contact the mothership than something to celebrate Christmas. So I went out and bought some outdoor blue ornaments. You can see the result! In the daytime, it's just as pretty.

I'll see if I can get a good daylight picture of it.

A man, going to Turkey with his mother, was having his carry-on searched by TSA. The guards found part of a penis pump, and asked the man what it was. The man didn't want to have his mother find out that he had a sexual device with him, so he lied.

Hilarity ensued, including a possible 3-year prison sentence for the man.

There are some things I wonder about (regular readers know I wonder about a lot of strange things):

• By saying it was a bomb, did he expect his mother wouldn't find out about the penis pump?
• Why didn't the man pack the device in his checked luggage?
• You mean TSA hasn't seen enough of these sorts of things that they didn't know what it was?
• Anyone else reminded by this of Aunt May covering for Peter by claiming his web shooters were devices to facilitate a gyne exam?
• What should the man have told TSA that would have been better than what he said? Ok, just about anything would have been better than saying it was a bomb, but I'm hoping for some unique, face-saving, and maybe even truthful answers.

Late last night, while the computer was still on, we lost power for a few seconds four or five times in a row. When it came back up, the Internet connection was dead.

I turned everything off and said the heck with it. In the morning, I did a cold-restart on everything, with no results. Nothing I tried worked. I wound up calling my DSL provider, and the wonderful tech person suggested I log onto my router. I couldn't. My password didn't work.

He told me to try "admin."

I was offended. I always change the router password. "Admin" is never a password on anything I own. Leaving a default password is asking for trouble and a mistake even newbies shouldn't make. For completeness' sake, I tried it. I've learned to not argue with Tech Support.

It worked.

During the power outages, somehow the router did a partial reset, wiping some settings but not others! After putting in the DSL login and password, the Internet worked again. Then I carefully went through and checked to make sure there were no security problems on my router. I'm funny that way.

I thought I'd mention this as a possible failure mode, for those of you with home networks.

Original IR Photo of
Butterfly With Scenery.

IR Image Converted to Black and White.
Click on the photograph for a larger image.

Sepia Used On IR Image, Followed By 1-Step.

One-Step Used on IR Photo Directly.

IR Photo Taken on Full Automatic Setting.

Having had some time to play with the camera and my new InfraRed filter, I've learned a few things since yesterday's mistaken post. Here are some tricks I've found while working with my Hoya R72 InfraRed Filter and my Nikon D50 digital camera.

Cheap

I got my Hoya R72 filter on eBay for a "Buy It Now" of $60 plus shipping. I got it from the Video Camera Center. The package came immediately and was everything advertised. I highly recommend them.

An IR filter might well be the cheapest accessory you can get for your camera. You do need to know how many mm. your lense is and get the appropriately sized one. My lense is 62 mm., so I got the 62 mm. filter.

Block the Viewfinder Window

Light can get in the back of the camera through the viewfinder, especially if you're doing "point and hope" aiming. Your camera came with a cute little plastic dohicky that will block the viewfinder for you. For IR photography, you need it. The thing's designed to clip to the camera strap, so you'll never lose it.

If you need to see the lightmeter, remove the dohicky, look, and then put it back.

Use the Autofocus

You've all seen a prism refract light — or at least the Pink Floyd album cover. A prism works because different frequencies of light are bent differently by glass. This is a complete pain for lense manufacturers. The lenses in your camera are marvels of chemistry, physics, and engineering that reduce "chromatic abberation" to a minimum.

Since you can't see in the infrared, the manufacturers said "Fugeddaboutit!" Thus, the lense focuses the infrared in a different place. Back in the bad old days of manual photography, focusing for IR required either special markings on the lense or incremental focusing.

That's what I tried to do last night. Dumb. Most digital cameras focus through the lense. The Nikon D50 certainly does. In other words, you screw the IR filter on the camera, turn on the autofocus, and the camera focuses correctly.

The filter blocks almost all visible light, so there's no way to focus manually with the filter on. My lense doesn't have an IR marking on it. Chances are, it will be a long, long time before I ever attempt to manually focus an IR shot ever again.

I suppose I could create my own IR mark by focusing on an object, putting the filter on, and then noting how much the autofocus changes things. I'm not too keen on marking up my equipment, so I doubt I will. Still, I thought I would mention the possibility.

Shutter Speed, F-Stop, and Automatic Settings

Having just written how wonderful using the automatic focus is, I'm wondered about using the automatic f-stop and shutter speeds. So far, I've used the manual settings. I ran outside, took a few pictures using the automatic setting, and got decent results. The last photo was taken using the Nikon D50's fully automatic settings. If I have time to compose a photograph, I'll probably still set things manually. I think I can generate more artistic shots that way. But if I'm shooting butterflies again, I'll set it on full automatic. When chasing objects around, they can change areas of brightness: if you don't remember to change the manual settings, the shot can be lost.

The smaller the f-stop number, the more light. The higher the f-stop number, the thicker the plane of focus is. The plane of focus is the distance away from you that the image will be in focus. The thicker the plane of focus, the more of what you are photographing will be in focus.

Because the IR filter restricts so much light, the tendency is to use a smaller f-stop — and thus have a thinner plane of focus. Alternatively, the slower the shutter speed, the more light, but the slower the shutter speed, the more motion becomes a problem. If you have a tripod, that's less of a concern. Still, there is a limit to how slow the shutter speed can be. Most IR photography is outdoors, and wind will make objects move and blur: the slower the shutter speed, the more they blur!

Bracketing is where you take photos at a particular setting, and then change the f-stop and/or speed, take another photo, and then change them again. I'll take a couple photographs with a +/- of 2 on the f-stop and a +/- of 2 on the speed to learn what seems to work best. That could result in 25 photos (5×5) but I catch on pretty quickly to what's working. I seem to home in on a setting in about 10 photos for an outdoor setting. Once I've done that, I will change the shutter speed a bit to make sure I get the photo I want, as long as I'm not in danger of going below a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second — my slowest steady speed.

I find that I like the image to be a little hard to see on the preview window. That seems to give me the best photographs. The automatic settings give an easier-to-see image than I prefer. Your preferences will determine what you do. Remember, you will be correcting these photographs in an image editor. An amazing number of mistakes can be corrected for by tweaking the image.

Lighting

Bright sunlight is wonderful for IR photography. Folliage is a common subject in the infrared. The brighter the sunlight, the larger the f-stop can be — and the faster the shutter speed can be. Most information about IR photography mentions that you need a tripod. To take the butterfly photo, I was holding the camera in my hand on a sunny day. The shutter speed was 1/80th of a second, and the f-number 6.3. Using breathing control, I can get steady shots down to 1/30th of a second; I might not have the steadiest hands available!

IR photography indoors can be fun, but either requires a tripod or a willingness to accept a dark or blurry picture, both of which will degrade the image.

Aiming

You can't see through the Nikon D50 viewfinder with the Hoya R72 filter on. If you're using a tripod, you can compose the shot with the filter off, carefully screw the filter on, refocus by pushing the button down halfway, and then take the shot.

If you're outside and it's bright, back off the zoom a bit and "point and hope." After a while, you'll develop a feel for where the camera is aiming. I can even get some shots correct at full zoom. By backing off the zoom a bit, you wind up with room to make mistakes in. Still, so what if you take a bunch of extra shots zeroing in on what you really want to get? It's digital! Ok, so at some point, you're either going to need to trash the bad shots or buy a terabyte hard drive, but for right now, chances are your computer's hard drive is nowhere near full.

If it is, you might just want to consider getting a new drive.

That reminds me. I need to back up. Desperately. If everything crashes, I'm not going to be happy, am I?

Take Lots of Photographs

I might well be broke if I had to pay for development and printing of the thousands of digital photographs I've taken. Digital photography is cheap. Take lots of photos. Try things. Feel free to experiment and learn. For every good photo I take, there might be a couple dozen that are terrible!

With IR photography, the ratio might even be worse. So what? Who is going to look through your raw photos but you?

Image Enhancement

The first photo is how the image appears untouched (except for resizing, of course). The strong red tone makes the photo hard for the human eye to interpret. I use Corel Paint Shop Pro to adjust my images. By using the Adjust> Color> Channel Mixer tool, jamming blue and green over to the far right and tweaking the red until I get the image I like, I was able to generate the second image.

A different trick was to use the Effects> Photo Effects> Sepia Toning and then run it through the Adjust> Quick Fix tool. That produced the third picture.

The fourth picture was obtained by using the Adjust> Quick Fix tool directly. The result is psychedelic. I like the effect, although I don't know if there is any "scientific value" to the image. While photography might be science to me, it's also a form of art. Looking "cool" is sufficient purpose, as far as I am concerned.

Summary

If you get an IR filter to use on your Nikon D50, go play! I just got my new toy, so there's going to be a lot of IR photos for a while (although I do have some butterfly photos on backlog I need to post, too). Have fun!

Image Subjects

The butterfly in the top photos is a Spicebush Swallowtail on a butterfly bush, with a maple tree in the background. The bottom photo is of a sunflower.

Have you ever made tacos at home? When you go to fill them up, the tacos tip over, and a lot of filling (meat, lettuce, cheese, sauce, olives, sour cream, chilies, jalapeno pepper slices, bananas, whatever) falls out. They do make flat bottomed tacos, but they're more expensive. Instead, I bought a wonderful little gadget that solves the problem!

I think it's cool, but I can't help but wonder if this post is in competition for the "Most Useless Post Ever" award.

Taco Holder in the 2 taco configuration

Most technological gadgets come either with an incomprehensible manual or no manual at all. The taco holders were the latter; there were no instructions. After much debate, Nancy and I (both with engineering background) decided that the taco holders were designed to hold two tacos. The little "feet" on the ends were what caused us to decide the taco holders are designed for three.

Taco Holder in the 3 taco configuration.

Turned upside down, the taco holder can clearly hold 3 tacos. Of course, in this conformation, the feet no longer provide stability. We decided that the taco holder might just be usable instead of plates, if you center the tacos and you're not eating outside on a windy day. But Nancy and I eat our tacos in the house, and ingredients dripping out the ends of the taco would create even more work tha we already have to do because of the parrots. Although, as I think about it, the parrots would eliminate a bit of that problem. Parrots can function like dogs on occasion if you give them floor-roaming privilieges.

But we use plates, and if the taco holder in the 3 taco configuration tips, the tacos will stop it from falling further. Hence, we generally use the taco holder in the 3 taco position.

Taco Holder holding 3 daco shells.

We had tacos for dinner last night. To help with our diets, we use ultra-lean meat, limit the cheese, use a lot of lettuce, and that sort of thing. Here you can see the tacos ready to be filled. If you notice, the taco holder is, in fact, in the 3 taco position, holding 3 tacos.

The holders came in a pack of four, with 4 different colors: red, green, yellow, and purple. I like garish colors, and so pickd the red. Nancy chose the yellow.

Taco Holder holding 3 filled tacos.

Here we have the filled tacos on my plate. You'll notice the tacos are quite stable, even using the taco holder in the less-stable configuration. The tacos were delicious, even if I didn't add sour cream, chilies, olives, jalapeno peppers, or bananas.

I'm kidding about the bananas, by the way. The other items might actually get added to a taco.

If, by any chance, you see a competition for the "Most Useless Post Ever," I would appreciate a nomination.