Photo of the week - July 16, 2013

The beach at Seal Rock, Oregon. Fuji X-Pro1 with 14mm lens @ f/11 and 1/320 seconds, using the sweep panorama feature, processed with Snapseed on a Mac. Click on the image above to see it fullsize.

Photo of the week - July 9, 2013

Fireworks over the Newport, Oregon, harbor, shot from the Yaquina Bay Bridge with a Nikon D3100 and 18-105mm kit lens (f/22, 5 second exposures on each). See these photos individually in this album (and see here for some other fireworks from a few years ago) 

Slip-ups

1. & 2. Described here.

3. & 4. Described here.

5. Clam chowder; clams don't have faces so it's probably okay...

6. Was unaware of the bacon bits in the broccolli salad until it was too late.

7. Sauteed some chicken breast for my parents, and then made a wine, pear, and butter sauce in the pan. Sampled it just to make sure it tasted okay, which I thought was prudent given that I was making the recipe up as I went along...

(in case you're keeping track, that's 7 slip-ups in 11 weeks, which isn't too bad in my book!)

8. Mole sauce...pretty sure it had chicken stock in it.

(Update: September 13, 2013...8 slip-ups in 5 months...I'm getting better at this.)

9. Fish stock in the rice. (October 18, 2013)

Migrating email with YippieMove

A few months ago I posted about wanting to move my email to a self-administered Google Apps account after deciding that I shouldn't have everything under the thumb of my employer. This is not because I'm worried that my employer will suddenly cut off my email, but a more general sense of wanting consolidate and control my data and online presence. My work email is also hosted by Google Apps (for education), and you'd figure that there should be a good way to move everything over to another Google Apps account without much fuss. There are tools to do this, but I couldn't get any straight answers on whether (a) my email labels would also be migrated over and (b) if a copy of my mail would be retained in my work email account or if everything would be deleted upon migrating. You'd think that copies of the mail would be retained, but the tool suggested by my work is really intended for graduating seniors to get their mail off of their college accounts, so I was concerned that I'd lose all my archived mail if something when wrong in the migration process. So I basically had not made much headway on using new account since I didn't have all my old mail on the new account, until today when I stumbled upon YippieMove.

YippieMove.com is a service that allows migrating of mail between many common email platforms. Importantly, it very specifically stated (the their FAQs) that it would do the two things I mentioned above. The downside is that it costs a one-time fee of $15 to do the migration, but that seems very worthwhile if the process is reliable and fast. So now I'm in the midst of moving the 74,811 107,876 messages that represent my entire email correspondence (at least since I started grad school in 1996) over to my own Google Apps email. 5,392 messages down and sixty-nine thousand and change to go (one hundred and two thousand to go)! So far, things look good; the migrated messages are showing up with their proper labels in my new account. At this pace, things should be done by tomorrow morning.

By the way, the cost involved in this process (in case you want to host your own email):

• $10 a year for the domain name (although this is something I was already paying for to secure the domain for my "professional" website).
• $50 a year for the Google Apps account, which comes with (if I'm recalling correctly) 30GB of storage across the various apps.
• a one-time cost of $15 for the YippieMove migration.*

*Another option I considered was moving all of those messages over to the new account via a mail client on my computer. In theory, I could have both the old and new accounts piped into Apple Mail (or Thunderbird or your client of choice), and manually copy/drag all of the mail from my work account to the new account. Not sure if this would have left a copy on my work email though...But this seemed like a pain in the ass compared to the relatively cheap $15 for YippieMail.

UPDATE (7/8/13): I ran into a few snags with some messages that had "weird" labels (I had created some labels that started with odd symbols) not transfering. YippieMove support was very helpful and we quickly got things squared away and now everything is fully transfered. Thumbs up for YippieMove.com!

Photo of the week - July 2, 2013

Yaquina Bay Bridge, Newport, Oregon. Fuji X-Pro1 with a 14mm lens @ f/22, 13 seconds, processed with Silver Efex on a Mac.

Photo of the week - June 25, 2013

This is a rather unusual shot for me in that it's in color and out of focus, but I like the colors in this one. Fuji X-Pro1 with a 35mm lens @ f/1.4, processed with Snapseed on a Mac.

"These are a few of my favorite things" #5 - Prometheus Springs

A thrist-quenching beverage infused with capsaicin (i.e., hot peppers). What could be better?

Photo of the week - June 18, 2013

The Hillbenders at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, May 17, 2013. Nikon D90 with 135mm lens @ f/2. More pictures (in color) from this album here.

Spruce, according to Collings

"These are a few of my favorite things" #4 - Apple's iMessage app

This is an odd one to have on the list since I don't text very much and because I just upgraded to Mountain Lion a couple of months ago, but this is one of my new favorites. I love how when someone with an iPhone/iPad sends me a message, it pops up on my computer as well (and that I can send "text messages" to iPhones/iPads from my computer). More than half of the people I'd want to text with are on Apple mobile devices, so this is really convenient as a way for me to avoid texting from my phone!

Two months, meat-free*

A couple of weeks ago I reported on my first 50 days of vegetarianism, including the two slip-ups to date (a shrimp burrito and grilled trout sandwich). Now that I'm officially at two months, here are the subsequent questionable meals:*

• We made a really tasty carrot soup that called for chicken stock; we didn't have any veggie stock and were in the middle of cooking, so we went with the chicken stock.
• I tried really hard at Cracker Barrel (why we were at Cracker Barrel is a whole other story) and got a veggie plate. The green beans, however, were noted as not vegetarian. I assume there was some sort of bacon residue in there, because they were tasty!

Photo of the week - June 11, 2013

Chad Graves and Mark Cassidy of the Hillbenders at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, May 17, 2013. Nikon D90 with 135mm lens @ f/2. More pictures (in color) from this album here.

Travel photography gear, 2013 edition

With the end of the school year, it's time to think about summer vacation. We'll be spending some time in the pacific northwest and also going through some of the parks in the northern Rockies (possibly Glacier, but haven't fully decided yet). There should be great opportunities for shooting, although packing relatively light would be prudent, so I can't take the photographic kitchen sink. Here's the plan:

• No brainer: Fuji X-Pro1 with a kit of prime lenses. Small, unobtrusive, awesome image quailty. I have the the 55-200mm zoom coming too, so in terms of focal length, this hits about everything.
• D3100 w/ 18-105mm lensDebate: Nikon D90. I recently fell back in love with my D90, shooting at a bluegrass festival and bike race. But the X-Pro1 should cover most of my needs, especially with the telephoto zoom on the long end and 14mm prime on the wide side. It would be nice to have the ability to go even longer and there might be some excellent opportunities to shoot flowers/macro, so my 70-300mm zoom and 105mm micro would be the lenses I'd want in a Nikon kit for this trip. But rather than taking both my D90 and Jen's D3100 (with 18-105mm kit lens that originally came with my D90), to save space I think we'll just take her Nikon and I'll liberally borrow it to use with the 70-300mm and 105mm lenses. Although the controls and general performance (i.e., speed) of the D3100 doesn't quite match the D90, in terms of the image quality, it's probably as good, if not better. So we'll share her D3100.
• A luxury: My tripod isn't small, but I could see it being really useful for landscapes.
• Didn't make the cut: Although it's one of my favorite lenses, I'm going to leave the Tokina 11-16mm behind and have my wide shooting be covered by the Fuji 14mm prime. We'll see if I miss it! But since the Tokina won't focus with the D3100 (I have the older version of the lens), a commitment to bringing this lens sends me down to the path of also lugging the D90.

Update: Upon returning, here's a report on what my minimal kit will be in the future, based on my experiences on this trip. I continue to love the X-Pro1, and over the last month I shot almost exclusively with my two newest lenses for it (14mm and 55-200mm....see some pictures here and here); those two, along with the 35mm prime, would make an excellent lightweight kit for a trip to Europe :-)

Fuji 55-200mm arrived, but not here!

I pre-ordered the Fuji 55-200mm telephoto zoom lens for my X-Pro1 when it was first announced, knowing that it might not arrive before we left for vacation. Yesterday I got an update, saying that it would be delivered on June 10th (after our departure date), so I changed the shipping on it be delivered to my friends' in Saint Paul so that I could pick it up when we're visiting with them next week. And then before I knew it, the lens shipped with today (June 6th) as the delivery date. Damn; I could have had it sent here. Looking forward to having it next week!

But I'm glad it arrived and that I'll have it for vacation. Thanks to my awesome friends (in case you're reading, Abs) for helping me out!

Update: The first four pictures in this gallery are with the 55-200, as are all of the shots posted here.

F-Stop Loka: What's in there?

I previously wrote about receiving my F-Stop Loka unexpectedly, just in time for a trip to the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival. Here's a shot of what fits in the small pro ICU. Note that it's just deep enough that a small lens in a case (here a 10.5mm fisheye) can fit on top of the 70-300mm lens attached to the camera body.

Photo of the week - June 4, 2013

Nora Jane Struthers and the Party Line at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, May 16, 2013. Nikon D90 with 70-300mm VR @ f/5.3. More pictures (in color) from this album here.

Philadelphia Cycling Classic - June 2, 2013

These are all shot with my Nikon D90 and 70-300mm VR lens, and processed in Snapseed on a Mac. See images from past races here: 2010 | 2011

50 days, meat-free

April 12th is the last day I ate meat, so today makes it 50 days meat-free. Of course, the definition of "meat" is a bit flexible here, with the following liberties taken:

1. April 24th-- A burrito with shrimp in it: I ordered my usual burrito at one of the local places, forgetting that it has a handful of little shrimp in there. Do shrimp count?
2. May 15th-- A grilled fish sandwich: We took some friends to our favorite BBQ place and I got a grilled trout sandwich. In the context of the rest of the menu (the beef brisket that I usually get there; rotisserie chicken, pulled pork), trout doesn't count as meat :-)

Number of beef burgers consumed in the last 50 days = 0; number of veggie burgers consumed in the last 50 days = 6. No steak, no bacon, no chicken.

F-Stop GateKeepers: Alternatives

An interesting feature of the F-Stop backpack system is that GateKeeper straps can be added at various positions on their bags to enhance the functionality. I ordered a few of these to go with my Kenti and Loka packs, however they are chronically backordered and I'm not sure when they will arrive (see update at the end of this post).

I ran across this strap from Tom Bihn (below) that looks to have very similar clips as the GateKeeper straps; it likely would work, although the webbing seems significantly longer than necessary and would probably require some modifications to get the length right (i.e., so that there's not too much excess strap).

Update (June 26, 2013): here's another alternative from MindShift:

Then recently I was at my local REI and found these Gear Aid Quick-Attach Tri-Glide Buckles (also available at EMS), which looked like they would fit nicely into the GateKeeper attachment points on F-Stop packs.

Paired with some 1" webbing straps, I figured they would work as an alternative to F-Stop's own GateKeepers straps. The webbing straps at REI were by Redpoint and come in different lengths (24", 40", and 60") and colors.

Here's a shot of the clips attached to the Kenti...Not sure that green was the best color choice, but it illustrates this alternative system pretty well. The total cost was about $15 for these two straps (two 2-packs of clips and one 2-pack of straps). 

Update #1 (July 29, 2013): The F-Stop website has shown Gatekeepers as "in stock" for a while now. I was on vacation and assumed that my backorder would ship and be waiting for me when I returned. However, they weren't, and an email on July 22 from F-Stop support confirmed that they handn't shipped. Somehow my backorder got lost in the shuffle and didn't ship; I wouldn't have known this if I wasn't periodically checking their page to know that they were in stock. The nice person at customer service said they would ship ASAP...But they didn't. A week later and still no Gatekeepers. With a follow-up email I learned that they bungled the shipping again. Hopefully they shipped today; I'll update if/when they arrive.

The interwebs are filled with similar comments, but I'll restate what others have observed: F-Stop makes an awesome product, but their availability, (back-)ordering, and shipping reliability leaves much to be desired...

Update #2 (August 2, 2013): Although the person I emailed with on Monday (in Update 1) said "they will ship today," just now (Friday) I got an email with shipping details. According to UPS a "shipping label has been created" and (maybe?) the are actually shipping today...five days after F-Stop said they had shipped. Well at least hopefully this is out of F-Stops hands and I only need to rely on UPS now...

Update #3 (August 7, 2013): The Gatekeepers have finally arrived, and they are slick. I seem to have ordered two more sets than I need (my guess is that when ordering, I didn't realize they came in pairs), so I have an extra set of both the long and short straps. Next time they go out of stock at F-Stop, they'll be like gold.

Photo(s) of the week - May 28, 2013

Tim O'Brien and Bryan Sutton of Hot Rize at the Gettysburg Bluegrass Festival, May 18, 2013. Nikon D90 with 135mm DC @ f/2, ISO 2000. More pictures (in color) from this album here.