My Mountain Trail

Travel Tales

Friday, October 16th, 2009

My Kindle DX really let me down this evening. Here’s the story:

I have been in Philadelphia this week and am traveling home now (this was posted after arriving home). The weather wasn’t good in Pennsylvania so we were delayed a couple of hours by our late-arriving inbound airplane. Not fun, but understandable. Since I have been on a PHP/Javascript/Wordpress learning adventure for the last few months, I decided to download a new book on my Kindle for the ride home. Something about moving from coding to software development. Yeah, pretty geeky stuff.

Anyway, I bought the book, it downloaded to my Kindle, and I headed onto the airplane. Once in my seat I decided to log onto the internet using the Kindle’s browser. I figured I would do a quick search on google and then settle in for the plane-ride and read home. About 5 minutes into the very slow surf on Google, the kindle reset itself. And deleted all my books. Not good. But I have a few minutes to try to re-download the new book and a couple of others.

Long story short, I could not download any archived books. I could shop on the Amazon store, and even buy a book (now I own a book I don’t need and can’t read), but nothing would download. I am not happy.

All is not lost of course. Now I have the opportunity to complain about Kindle and upload it to my blog. I have a javascript book I can read. I can play around w/ some programming ideas. I have some photos to look at that I need to upload to Flickr. But my Kindle is in the doghouse, and Amazon is in the doghouse.

But wait! I just turned the Kindle on again to look at it’s blank face in dismay. Now everything is back! Great! But, I’m still annoyed at the scare, and now I have a book I don’t need. Oh well, just the cost of a programming/development problem on Amazon’s end I guess. Better start reading the developer book… And Kindle is still in my doghouse for a while. Bye bye!

Leica M9

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

For the last few days I have been working on a new website about the new Leica M9. The website tracks the most interesting pictures posted to Flickr in the last 7 days. Here’s a look at the search results page:

It is easy to see the lineage of this new website as a descendant of “My Mountain Trail”. I am using the same basic theme, though the Leica site has evolved some. The Flickr search functions have also evolved, slowly getting better and more versatile.

Oh, one more thing: I found a new tool on Flickr that is helpful w/ the Project 365 concept. I am creating a new page under that tab. When I am done, I’ll post the link here too.

What you see is not always what you get.

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

I just picked up a Canon Demi ee17 half-frame camera on ebay. No guarantees that it worked. Well, it does. Sort of.

I had some trouble getting the film into the pickup spool. I guess I failed because it looks like right now I have a quarter-frame camera.

Anyway, two of my favorite girls in this triple exposure.

Here’s another picture from the camera. This is Jim at work. Sort of (again!). Work and play a little pool or play a little w/ your dog work…

Laser Cutter

Saturday, October 3rd, 2009

Today was a yard-work day. Well, actually, I started the day by listing a camera lens that I don’t use very often on ebay. I wanted to offer some pictures from the lens to prospective bidders, so I walked out the front door and shot the above pic. Nice to have some pretty flowers in the garden…

From there, I grabbed some tools and headed for the back 40′. Hey, some folks have a back 40 acres, we have a back 40 feet. Anyway, Dave Carr, the Senior Captain at the Throckmorton Fire Station has arranged for our neighborhood to have free branch chipping of up to 4 cubic yards of branches in mid-October. This is very good because that’s worth about $100 at the dump for us, and it saves a whole bunch of time. Our local firefighters are the best.

So, today’s task was to add to the pile of branches I started last weekend. I was going to just use my cheapy home-grade McCulloch chainsaw, but at the last moment I decided to pull out the Stihl 460. Oh, that Stihl feels like lead if you have to go over you head, but it cuts like a star-wars laser beam. My saw only has a 20″ bar, so there is just no way to bog that baby down. Put it on the log, pull the trigger, and a few seconds later you are feathering the throttle to finish the cut. Makes you want to smile!

Of course the 17# weight is a challenge if you are trying to cut over your head or in a poor leverage position; but when that happens you just grit your teeth, put the saw up there and squeeze hard for about 3 seconds until the branch is gone (6″ branch that is). Best tool I’ve used in a while.

I managed to create a nice pile of branches for chipping. I might go for just a few more; but if I don’t have the time, this opportunity has not been wasted!