Allanimal's blog ^pro

I'm in the process of uploading all of my old Flickr stuff (stuff that is no longer there). It is taking a while, and for some reason PictureSync doesn't upload the metadata when exporting from Aperture. Hell, it may work, but the interface for PictureSync is so funked up that I have no idea how to enable the option to do something so basic as include the frackin' EXIF metadata with my photos. Why is the PictureSync interface so horrible? Oh I wish that the excellent Flickr Export for Aperture plugin would work with Ipernity. From what I can tell, the APIs of Flickr and Ipernity are similar, but not enough that the plugin maker will deal with it. It is very frustrating to have my entire history of photography show up as being taken in the last couple days. I've talked to both Ipernity guys and the plugin maker guy and never managed to get it going. Which is a shame, because the plugin is awesome. Between the way Flickr treats its users, and the inadequate upload tools for Ipernity, it almost makes me want to just forget about uploading photos to the web anymore. Or maybe I should just write my own Aperture export plugin for Ipernity. But that would take a while. And it would probably suck. But it looks like my only option. That or just give up altogether.

 I have been in Iowa for the last few days visiting my and my wife's families & the few friends we still have in state. I have only had a few chances to take the camera out, and yesterday was cut short because I forgot to bring a fresh battery. Oh well. I'll try to get that great shot of the bridge in Waverly again today, and some pictures of the Quad Cities later in the week. Maybe even Mason City, where I am going with another high school & Ipernity friend to meet yet another old friend who is driving down from Minnesota. Should be fun times.

After nearly 3 months and a lot of money*, I finally have my camera back! Woo Hoo! If someone can give me pointers to a giant rubber protective coating for my camera, I think I need one. The weather forecast for tomorrow is supposed to be good. I hope to have some new pictures here soon! *but still significantly less money than buying a new one. which means the D300 will have to wait...

So Jeannette and I have been having a wonderful time in Ireland the last week or so, despite the fact that so many things are closed in the Christmas & New Year's season. Today, after a few days of pouring rain, the weather was actually pretty decent, and we were out driving along the remote(ish) Dingle Penninsula. We stopped at a site of a Stone Age fort, and decided this would be a great place to set up the tripod, turn on the timer and get a photo of both of us together for once, in front of the ancient "bee hive" stone hut. After a couple pictures of me looking goofy, I set it up one more time, and ran over to Jeannette's side. The shutter clicked and the flash, um, flashed and then a gust of wind blew the tripod & camera over onto a pile of stone age rocks.

The good news: The picture looks GREAT! The camera mostly* still works.

The bad news: The lens is completely funked up. This, of course, is the lens I just got back from repairs a month or so ago after dropping my camera bag in the San Jose Airport in August.

* What's up with the camera? Why 'mostly'? Well, there are some scratches and scrapes, and the frame is bent slightly (but, thank bejeezus, not the lens mount). The weird thing is that the power switch no longer works. It is always on, unless I take the battery out. Better than always off, for sure. The other bad thing is that the button that switches between manual, aperture priority, shutter priority and auto isn't working anymore, which means the camera is stuck in Aperture prio for now on. (It could be worse). Everything else seems to be OK.

We found a camera shop in town and picked up a cheap lens to fill in for the broken one, so I should still be able to get photos for the rest of the trip (I do have a focal length gap between 55mm and 80mm, but that's better than between 20mm and 80mm).

 

Anyway, I can't believe how much bad luck I have had with my gear this year. I try to be good and careful, but somehow it just hasn't been good enough.

 

Back in the days before that other photo site many of us used started arbitrarily censoring, there was a group of us in Heilbronn that got together approximately monthly for a photo rodeo. Since the shakeup over there, we haven't had another Heilbronn photo meetup. I'd like to do it again sometime. Lars? Marco? Ingo? Ralf? What do you think? The invitation goes to anyone else in or around Heilbronn too. We just need to figure out where and when. I think when will have to be september. Where? Who knows....

At the end of September, I will have been living in Germany for 3 years. I have mostly acclimated to living here (though I wish I was better with the language...), but every once in a while there is something that I just haven't gotten used to. After my recent business trip to Dresden, I realized that the bedding in German hotels, and presumably on most German beds in general, does not suit me at all.

In the US, you always get a fitted sheet over the mattress, a flat sheet to sleep under and however many blankets you need to pile on to maintain the warmth required for your personal comfort. I need to have SOMETHING on me when I sleep, so the thin sheet works great on hot summer nights. It's less of an issue in the winter, since blankets go on top. However, in Germany, the nice thin sheet is nonexistent. No matter what the season, there is a blankety thing that is way to heavy for the summer and usually too light for the winter. Again, winter is not a big deal, because additional blankets are easy to pile on. But in the summer, I try to sleep with it, and usually wake up in a pool of sweat a few hours later.

What's up with that? Why isn't there any sort of lightweight sleeping-under-thingy available in German hotels?

Jeannette has posted on her blog about the new ISU Alumni Online Directory called CySpace. It's available to all ISU alumni, whether or not they are members of the Alumni Association, until Homecoming this year. Jeannette wrote a lot about it already that I don't want to duplicate, but I think it would be nice if all ISU Alumni could check it out, and make sure their stuff is up to date. And get in touch with us if you knew one of us. Read Jeannette's post for more info about it if you didn't get an email from the Alumni Association already.

I got a request for more tigers on my blogger blog. I hope I didn't overdo it.

After much frustration paying with Paypal (as usual), I managed to buy a Pro account, so I can start uploading more pictures again.

Which is good, because I just got back from the Wilhelmina Zoo, with way too many pictures of tiger babies...

(Another milestone: As I was at the Zoo today, I hit over 10,000 pictures on my D200! That means I have averaged 666 images per month since I got it...)

Still trying to figure out where everything is at. And why embedded GPS data is not used automatically to geotag my photos on upload. And is there any way to use the FlickrExportForAperture plugin with Ipernity? And... well, there are tons of questions. Hopefully some day soon I can figure out the answers.