2022 – Tao and Zen

Monday, September 19th 2022…It’s been a while…

(The Bad) No bike riding or at least its been limited. Never straightened the basement. No Tai-Chi. Got COVID for my birthday. Never put my new rims or cassette on. Have tried to get my power meter to work — to no avail. I did gain a crap load of weight (for me). I never got to use my micro desktop.

(The Good) I have… been painting watercolor. I have been working like a dog. I did go on vacation for a week and got to relax!. I did get to use my camera a bit. I did get rid of my old desktop (gave it to my nephew). I did start working out again after recovering from COVID. I did give my daughter a painting that I had to paint, mat, cut, and frame – and its been over 40 years!) as a going away gift. I have been bike riding once a month – and if you know me, that’s a 90% reduction – but at least I have been going. I am forever the optimist. 30 miles is better than no miles.

I have to get together a list of stuff to complete around the house before the weather turns to shit.

-Rat

Wednesday, June 15th 2022… Photography 101…

So, I am a fledgling photographer and I have tons of questions for the photography guys at Photography & Friends Plus. Since I am invested in Nikon and Adobe, most of my first questions will revolve around those 2 products. My questions are concerning: bracketing, stacking, raw files, and Lightroom.

I have a Nikon D810 full frame camera (yes, it’s heavy as hell with it’s telephoto lenses attached). When we sold our house, we had a professional photographer take the pictures and I was fascinated with the technique he was using – “bracketing”. I had originally purchased a Nikon D5300 with its 3 kit lenses. There were things that the camera had and things had left me wanting. One of those things I wanted was decent bracketing – or shooting pictures in succession from the same POV but just altering the exposure. You capture the lightest lights and the darkest darks and everything in between and really get a HD picture when you re-assemble them using a technique called “stacking”. There are other types of bracketing – depth of field, focus, flash, white balance but I was interested in exposure bracketing. The thing with bracketing is that you need some additional software that allows you to “stack” the images to get the final result. Astro Photography also uses this technique.

This leads me to my second question… How in the hell do I get the RAW files off the camera and onto a Windows PC? I have RAW + Fine JPG selected on my camera – the camera is creating both files. I can see them, look at them, manipulate them on the camera but when I take them off, bam! I am left with 2 jpg files. I can’t seem to get the raw files off the camera. My goal and future project is to shoot glass using these techniques. I collect Czech glass vases and want to photograph my collection. This is in preparation for another project that I have for the future! First things first. My guess is that there is something stupid that I am doing or not doing that is preventing me from getting these file off the camera as both types.

My assumption is that Lightroom Classic can do all this. Maybe not, but I see that there are drivers for raw files from Adobe. There is probably a stacking feature also, but not real sure.

-Rat

Tuesday, June 6th 2022… Damned if you do…

I am thinking of doing something slightly different with my business plan and making it a bit more encompassing and not sticking strictly to an art studio. I don’t know. It’s just a thought I had. I’ve seen galleries in different places that seemed so one dimensional. I think if I ever wanted to transition to something more retail oriented, I’d be stuck. The dream started with painting and branched out into photography. If I stuck to painting, I would need to stick to a specific type and I don’t want to limit myself. I’ve been to a couple of shops that were arts and gifts. That seems much more to my liking. Not necessarily crafts but affordable art. I don’t like to be “pigeon holed”. I want to do art on my terms.

I’ll have to think about it.

-Rat

Tuesday, May 24th 2022… Argh…I just threw my hands up…

Last time, As I was saying… I wanted to try and fix some things and try some new things for my web site as well. Well, I haven’t had the time to try new things. With the work on the job piling up and pressure to work more hours and the weekends disappearing due to responsibilities, plans, and work … at least (as of late) I’ve had some leisure time on weekends. Too bad it doesn’t include riding road biking (bummer) though. I’ve also had to take a couple of weeks off due to podiatrist fun and crappy weather.

I did see Garth Brooks in concert at Notre Dame though. Very fun. It least the concert was fun and most of the weekend was relaxing. I will refrain upon saying anything else though. Imagine that, I saw Garth in concert and new most of his songs. Funny how that works. How the hell can you hate Country music and know his catalog? I am at a loss.

-Rat

Sunday, March 20th 2022… A beautiful day…

And i didn’t get the bike out! Instead I made soup, went and washed the car, washed the mats and shampooed some spots, and took Anne to Walmart. Came home, had soup and played Rummikub. It was gorgeous out today – a balmy 61 degrees, clear sky and lots of sun.

Which got me thinking about “Daylight Savings Time” that occurred last weekend. Would I rather have it CDT year round, or CST year round? I hate the yearly time changes, but would I want to change? Probably not. I’ve been railing on this for a while now. But now that it’s a possibility, i really hope it doesn’t go. Lets look at the extremes, what would sunrise look on the Winter Solstice day? Currently with things the way they are, sunrise would be at 7:15am CST. If it was CDT, it would be 8:15am. That would kind of suck if I got up early – its cold and dark. On the plus side, that day (the shortest day of the year), the sun sets at 4:24pm CST, would now set at 5:24pm . Not a huge bonus, but id rather have sunrise earlier. Looking at the summer solstice (the longest day of the year) with the same optics, sunrise which is currently at 5:17am CDT, but CST would put it at 4:17am. Sunset which is 8:29pm CDT would now be 7:29pm. The day seems really long if you get up early. Hmm, the jury is out on this…

At least I didn’t have to work today – it’s a good day.

-Rat

Saturday, March 5th 2022…Bikin’ it…

We got bikes out today. I rode my hybrid and Vikash rode his road bike. I had put 2 new sensors on. One broke (cadence) in the first 10min forcing me to go back to find it on the street. We carried on though and finished the standard trail (Tinley Creek North) in about an hour and a half. Our normal time is around an hour. There was still a bit of snow in places – not on the trail. Although it hit 72, the water in the ponds and lakes was still frozen over. It was awesome to get out today.

-Rat

Wednesday, January 19th 2022… Happy New Year…

Ok, so I’m a bit late. I have been busy. Been working like a “dog” lately. I’m taking a watercolor class with John at McCord. I’m reading 2 books [Karma by Sadguru, Yiquan 360 by Ling Seto] and and listening to 3 audio books [The Cyclist’s Training Bible by Joe Friel, Breathing for Warriors by Dr. Belisa Vranich, and The Healthy Mind Toolkit by Alice Boyles]. I’m working out when I can squeeze in a 1.5hr time slot – which is almost never.

This is interesting because I wrote most of this on Jan 19th but only saved it as a draft. I’m posting it now.

-Rat