Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Photography

Camera tricks

I did manage to get some fairly decent photos today. Using the speedlight white balance helped, though I wish I could figure out what is causing that odd blinking symbol to show in my camera’s preview – it’s not mentioned in any Nikon 995 article or manual. Whatever is happening, plays havoc with the focus. If you have any guesses, please drop me a note.

Thanks to Sheila Lennon who helped me identify that odd tiny little oval symbol as the ‘date not set’ indicator. Yeah, I know: Shelley! Duh!

I set the date when I bought the camera, and haven’t touched it since. However, I must have unset it somehow in all my tinkering around. It was one thing I just didn’t think to check.

Nice to eliminate the blinking, and thanks much to Sheila. Unfortunately, focus is still screwy and white balance is off (now, these menu options I am familiar with) but it does okay for photos here to the weblog. Good! More bandwidth sucking pages, just for you all!

Anyway, with patience and a lot of missed shots, some water lily photos – thanks to Rev Matt, who turned me on to them.

True, a rose and not a water lily – but you have to embrace the roses when you can; before they’re gone and all you’re left is a stick in the mud, the ghost of a scent on the breeze, and a pansy at hand…if you’re lucky.

Categories
Weblogging

Disclaimer: I can be bought

Both David Weinberger and Frank Paynter reference a bizarre posting about issuing disclaimers on who pays for the blog.

Mr. Weinberger took it seriously, but I prefer Mr. Paynter’s response:

You people have got to be kidding. Conflict of interest? Disinterest is more like it. Who cares who pays for my blog anyway?

Hmmm, I am begging for a new camera–does that count? As for hosting, through the kindness of friends my weblog hosting was paid for last year, though I did share space with a group of really interesting people (it is true what they say about poets, the poetic at heart, and other strange people).

Currently I’m now covering all my hosting expenses. However, I can be bought; you can buy me for a very reasonable price.

update

I think perhaps I should put a caveat on the word “bought”.

Categories
Photography

Water lilies

I am off to take photos of water lilies at the Gardens and Tower. I’ll take film camera, as well as digital, and if any of the digital work out, will post later.

I grabbed the photo below, last week. Sunset over St. Louis. Best viewed with Route 66 or Walker Evans stylesheets.

Sunset

The water lilies at Busch Conservation Area should be exploding with color by the end of the week.

Categories
Diversity Technology

Differences of humor

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Sam Ruby has posted a note about the upcoming Applied XML Conference put on by Chris Sells.

When I looked at the agenda and realized that the conference managed to put together two days worth of presentations without one woman speaker, I was moved to note in comments at Sam’s:

For entertainment, is the conference going to bring in strippers and see if they validate?

Personally, I thought it was funny. Sam didn’t and pulled the comment. Isn’t this environment a tough one when it comes to figuring out what each sex considers objectionable?

update

Sam left a comment saying he didn’t delete my comment. My mistake, Sam, sorry for saying you did.

So does this mean you think this comment is funny after all?

Categories
Burningbird

Some tinkering

Depending on which stylesheet you favor at this site, you most likely noticed that I’ve been tweaking the site design, doing some cleanup, a little polishing here, and little polishing there.

I eliminated the emotive stylesheet, primarily because I kept forgetting to attach an ‘emotion’ to each writing. Besides – aren’t we women always supposed to keep people guessing?

Some of the styles don’t work that well with Internet Explorer, especially if I embed photos in the page. I am about ready to bag IE, as I was ready to bag Netscape 4.x long ago. Still, I know that it’s still being used by poor souls everywhere. Walker Evans should always work with IE, and Fire & Ice most of the time. I put WE as the default stylesheet now, and we’ll leave it at that.

I changed the background color for Lemon Shake-Ups to a nice buttercup yellow. That and some of the sidebar image changes make it a most cheerful stylesheet. Not a soft pastel or hip 2004 color in the page.

I now use it as my default.

I’m in the process of creating an about page, and doing a major re-design on my front burningbird.net page. I hope to increase my web development business, and to do that, I need a more traditional, professional looking front page. No ‘floating clouds’. No buttercup yellow, with bright red accents.

However, note that I will refrain from using this year’s Big Color, pseudo-avocado green.