March 2009 Archives

The sun was way too hot for this pano to work well, but I still wanted to try it out. I just love the front doors on this house! They are astoundingly heavy--solid iron works with windows that unlock and open.

Well, I think I've finally figured out how to get a pretty good panorama stitch in one try. Here are the details:

I'm using my new Canon 5D Mark II with the Sigma 8mm 3.5 fisheye lens. Since the 5D has a full sensor, I'm getting a significant amount of overlapping information in the 6 shots, each 60º from the previous shot. This alone made an enormous difference in stitching ease!

I also purchased a new pano head, the Adjuste, from 360Precision. The older pano head, the Absolute, would not work with my new 5D. Rather than purchasing a new arm for the Absolute, I just bought the new head that will work with any camera/lens combination. I like this pano head far better. It's adjustable and half as heavy as the Absolute--which is really heavy.

The Adjuste posed a new problem I hadn't had before: this pano head has an adjustable arm across the bottom so it can accommodate any camera/lens combination. The base arm is rather obvious in the base shots. Removing it in Photoshop is a total pain!!

To remedy this issue, I am now shooting 12 shots: 2 rows of 6 at 60º distance each. The bottom row is angled down 30º. The top row is angled up 30º. Now I don't need to shoot any base shots at all, and the duplicated information is used by the stitching program so the pano base arm is calculated out of the bottom of the stitched image--wonderful!

So get ready. I've made some quick panos today and am about to post them...

I can't tell you how much I agree with what Jack Cafferty says here in his new book, Now or Never!

He says parenting is in greater decline than our schools.

I would suggest that the complete abdication of parents parenting is one of the more significant contributing reasons to schools functioning more in survival mode than in eduction mode. Communities get the schools they will tolerate, and therefore deserve, in my opinion.

When parents expect their children to behave and learn in school and the teachers to teach, amazing things happen. I've witnessed this first hand!

Some parents still have this attitude that their kids are too special to be burdened by discipline. And the rest of us are supposed to put up with their little mutants. That attitude really pisses me off.

I hate to break it to them, but the kids aren't special, and I don't have to put up with their behavior. If you can't control your obnoxious little brats, leave them home.

They don't belong out in public annoying other people, period. I don't remember a generation of kids ever so indulged and enabled to behave so badly. What's going on?

[Source: Excerpt: Parents, your kids aren't that special - CNN.com]

Well, it finally erupted!

Again, comparing this picture in the NPR article (source) about the eruption with the picture I took of it just over a year and a half ago. (Wish their photographer had a better zoom lens!)

Wow, I wish I had been there shooting it now! The ash plume is over 9 miles high. Well... maybe not! :o)

One year ago yesterday, the movers were unloading the truck here at the house in California, and the adventure was in full swing. I only had one week to unpack everything before I had to start traveling again. I don't know what I was thinking--get it all done in a week?! The unpacking almost killed me. Having no idea where the printer was at the time, I couldn't even print my boarding pass for my next trip. With all of my traveling, my home office wasn't unpacked for another 4 months.

Yesterday I did my taxes on the one year anniversary of the California unpacking adventure. The full week of unpacking was less tortuous than doing the California taxes, let me assure you!

But, to celebrate living in paradise, I thought I would post a pano of the house now. It looks a lot different than it did a year ago! Click on the image to view the pano. Click here to view the pano with the Pangea plugin. (Mac only and absolutely worth the install from this link if you don't already have it. Oh, and it's free.)

When I'm seriously annoyed on a plane, which is all too often as much as I fly, I'm typically annoyed with a badly behaving child and the parent(s) who have abdicated their parenting responsibilities. But today... Well, today was different.

A woman, at least in her 30s, was getting on the plane. Nobody was paying her any attention until she began yelling at the top of her lungs. "In the name of Jesus I demand this demon stop being mean to me." She was yelling at the airline stewardess, accusing her of "attacking" her, of "pushing and shoving" her, and of "hitting" her. She wouldn't stop yelling--loudly. After enduring her bad behavior and responding that she was not doing what she was being accused of doing, the stewardess then calmly and repeatedly ordered the woman to leave the plane. She refused.

The passenger took her seat. The stewardess left the plane. Security came and took the passenger away. As she left, she was intermittently "rebuking the demon within you" and demanding an ambulance because she claimed to be so seriously injured.

Amazing, live entertainment in real life!

And haven't set aside the time to post. I received this email today. The author fascinates me as I have read many of his father's books years ago, even published about them on this blog some time back. I need to come up to speed on his family now. Seems things changed since I read Francis Schaeffer's works in the late 70's.

At any rate, this open letter from his son to the Republican Party is longer than my typical post; so, I am posting much of it below the "read more..." link below.

Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

Dear Republican Leaders:

The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on.

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. ...

When you get emails like this, you know very strange people!

The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.