The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Category: General

  • Halloween Hippo

    Ana made David’s costume, and did a great job.  I present to you the Halloween Hippo!  We’re hoping to get the most out of the costume, so don’t be alarmed if you hear about a Hippo being found out on the town.

    No candy for this little guy, but we did take him on the grandparent tour this evening.  More photos in the gallery.

  • Oh the Colors!

    Today after work we went out to a lake park to enjoy the weather, the colors, and to take some photos (of course!). It’s very hard to believe that it’s already the end of October, isn’t it?

    Anyway, today was the first time I’ve made use of the Neutral Density filter I purchased over a year ago for my camera.  I originally ordered it to help take shots of waterfalls on our vacation, but it was delivered long after we departed.  If you’re wondering what a Neutral Density filter is, it’s a filter for the lens that darkens the image without any color tinting (that’s the neutral part).  This allows you to slow down the shutter speed to durations that would normally produce dramatically overexposed pictures.  We had some fun with it:

    Later we learned that David has been taking lessons from the great Obi-Wan.  Seriously, he was doing some serious re-enactment with this stick.

     

    The rest of the series are in the gallery, yell at me for access.

  • Favorite Software?

    Leaving development tools aside (ahem, Visual Studio, ahem), what are your favorite software titles?  You know, the ones you use daily, are truly useful, you couldn’t live without, and are just plain fun.  Here are mine, in no particular order:

    1. Microsoft OneNote 2007 – This is such a little known piece of software, but one that organizes almost everything I do throughout the day.  I’ve taken a few recommendations from some sites here and there and implemented my own Getting Things Done (great book too) system using OneNote.  If you find yourself scribbling down things on paper or typing things up in random text files that are strewn all over the place, you should give OneNote a try.

      I’ve got two notebooks setup, one for work and one for everything else.  They both have pretty much the same structure/sections: Today; Current Month; Active Projects; and Archive.  Each of those contains pages with information tagged with customized OneNote tags (Processing, Project, Follow-up, etc).

    2. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 – I’ve mentioned it here before, I know, but it’s great software that takes care of all things photos.
    3. Trillian – I’ve been using this multi-service chat client for many years now.  It works and is always running on my machine.
    4. TrueCrypt – Transparent and on-the-fly encryption.  What’s not to love.  I use it in conjunction with the next entry.
    5. KeePass – A couple months ago I got sick and tired of resetting my passwords on a slew of online sites.  So I found this great utility.  I’ve always avoided using password keepers in the past, but finally gave in.  It takes security serious, and I store its data file in a TrueCrypt volume.
    6. Snaptune One – They appear to be out of business now, but I use it to record AM/FM radio with my RadioShark on Vista, since the original software doesn’t work on Vista.
    7. Windows Media Encoder – I don’t use this nearly as much as I used to, but recently got it back up and running.  I use it in combination with Windows Media Server to stream XM Radio and the RadioShark, so on the rare occasions I’m not here at my desk, I can still have audio choices.
    8. ISO Recorder – I make images of the mini-dvds from my camcorder.

    Anyone care to share their favorites?

  • Lightroom 2.1

    Adobe releaed the much awaited 2.1 update to Lightroom this evening.  I’ve been using version 2 for a couple months now, and found it to be head and shoulders above version 1.x.  There were definitely performance problems, but once I made a few performance tweaks, it was usable and worth the headache for the new features.

    I just installed 2.1 and gave it a very quick walk through.  So far, it appears they have done a great job on the performance issues.  The general UI is back to being as snappy as I remember 1.x being, and the local adjustments brush introduced in 2.0 is now nearly instant even without the tweaks mentioned above.  Way to go Adobe, and thank you!

    I haven’t even looked at the feature list for 2.1 yet, I wonder what else was added…

  • Park

    Springfield had fantastic weather today, so we decided to head to a park.  The leaves are turning and the air is nice and crisp.  Gotta love it.

    After a while here, we headed to the zoo where David got to ride on a Hippo.  More photos available.

  • 10 Months

    Yesterday David turned a whopping 10 months old, so we had our montly photo shoot.

    As I’m transitioning to my new photo gallery, I’m password protecting some areas.  So, if you’d like to see the full collection – shoot me an email at ej@ejinnovations.com and I’ll grant you access.

  • He’s All Over

    David is mastering his walker (or whatever you call these things) and is all over the place now in it.  Here are a few clips of him gliding through the kitchen.  You’ll notice this thing has a predisposition for turning left – I took a look at it and the front wheels are designed that way!  Quite stupid in my opinion, I might look around and see if I can find some replacements.

    http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=hd,video_uid=a790d3b71e1ee12e

    And finally, some photos.

  • October, already?

    And before we knew it, it was October!

    David was outside for a while this evening enjoying the cool weather and the great sunset light (ok, that last part was me).

    Look, he sees his shadow!  Does that extend summer?

  • Busy, Busy Saturday

    Ever since we moved into our house I’ve driven right by a nice spot that has begging me to just get out of bed early with a camera to see  what I could capture.  The past couple weeks have brought these calls even louder, with the great sunrises and rolling fog.

    This morning I met up with Jay at sunrise and we wandered around near Route 29 at Hilltop Road, and got some pretty good shots.  I’m very happy with the results and think I’ll be getting a couple of them framed and put up in the house.

    Here are a couple of previews.  View the collection on my new, SmugMug hosted site ejiphotos.com.  Here’s a direct link to the slideshow.  Enjoy!

    We then made a trip to Carlinville, IL to Bloom’s Orchard for some apple picking. David had a blast and slept the entire way back, woo!

    Pumpkin Suicide is sad, and preventable 😦

    We finished up the day with Jay and Katherine stopping by for dinner and some TV. Happy weekend, everyone!

  • Just playin’ around

    David likes to play “catch” and LOVES his Hippo book:

    http://www.motionbox.com/external/hd_player/type=hd,video_uid=a79ed5bb1d1be32e