Midway Blur

Last night I finally did something I have wanted to do for a very long time. I went out for a night shoot to a fair. Buccaneer Days has a Midway complete with twirly rides, cotton candy, games of chance, and lights. Lots and lots lights. Fun.

I had to wait until it was pretty dark before I headed out shooting, but it was worth it. It was too light when I first left, so I headed down to a lookout and shot some pics of the harbour, and the cruise ships docked at Ogden Point.

Digital is the way to go for night photography though. Easy to see and correct for exposure mistakes.

The key is to try and imagine what you are trying to accomplish, and develop a plan to make that image. Some of the pictures I took were up to 10 second exposures. With time like this, you can easily miss out on chances to reshoot.

Do you want to stop the motion? Get a slight blur of the lights? Create arcs of light? Can you even achieve what you want with the equipment you have on hand?

The prize at the end of the shoot is the images you have created. Definitely a good investiment of time and effort.

Pics are here.

Pancake Buccaneer

Ahh Buccaneer days. Strange little phenomena in Esquimalt. The Saturday morning of Buccaneer Days a firetruck goes around the neighborhood waking people up at 7:30 for the pancake breakfast. The first year we were in Esquimalt Sox and I wondered what the hell was going on (for the longest time while laying in bed all we heard was a siren, and a muffled voice. As it got close we heard: “Wakey wakey wakey. It’s time to get up. Pancake breakfast time”).

We skipped the breakfast again this year, but decided to catch the parade. Yes the parade. Not sure if they have one every year, but they did this year. Excellent parade too. Not too long, lots of great floats and things to look at. A bit of candy thrown in our direction. Fun fun. The sirens scared Sprout though. Bit of a screaming fit when that happened. Poor guy.

Part of the fun of the parade was watching the cars that were trying to cross the parade route. Police were out to stop this, but there weren’t any signs anywhere that warned people that a parade would be closing Equimalt Ave. Bit of an over sight I would say. Esquimalt Ave is a pretty busy route.

The stupidest individual came whipping out of their driveway as the lead firetrucks approached, and sped up quite quickly. A police officer made the chickie stop and lectured her in front of the crowd before making her pull over (and presumably receive a ticket). Fun times in the Esquampton. 🙂

Back to the parade. JennV and baby L were on hand with us to take it in. After the parade wrapped up the 5 of us headed to the fair for “lunch”. Mmm, Mr Tube Steak, coke, and mini donuts. It was fair day. That’s all there is to say about that, other than Sox and I felt a little ill by the time we got home. 🙂

Lots of fun in a short period of time. Looking for a fun parade, I would suggest taking in the Buccaneer Days parade next year.

Pics are here.

DHCP Correctly

The past couple weeks we have had a spotty internet connection. Everything would work fine for a while, then nothing. I logged into the router admin interface and noticed that the router was having problems getting an IP address using DHCP. Figuring it was a Shaw problem I gave them a call yesterday.

I didn’t have to wait too long to talk to a rep, but then it was the usual crap to deal with. Unplug the power for the modem. No fix. Unplug the power to the router. No fix. Unplug power to both. No fix. Reboot the computer. No fix. Plug computer directly into modem. No fix.

FInally the tech pulled out some bizarre command line instructions:

netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt
and
netsh winsock reset catalog

I asked him what these were for, and he said that sometimes windows can get confused on bootup and not correctly configure itself. Bullshit. I called him on that. I asked: “How would that fix the problem when the computer had no problems getting an IP address from the router, and it was the router (not running windows) that couldn’t get an IP address. ” His reply: “Hmm good question”.

Turned out that these instructions did something. I got limited connectivity. He had me run a speed test and it was sloooow. My upload speed was faster than my download speed (both right around 340 KBits/sec). He asked me to wiggle the cables in the back of the modem, and as soon as I did that, the speed test completed. Interesting. Loose connections inside the modem?

The answer was to swap out for a new modem. Did that yesterday before closing time, and voila, blazing fast internet connection again. Stable too.

Wind Fill

This past Wednesday I got out to shoot some pictures with the photo club. Sox and I had been in Saxe Point Park recently and had noticed the flowers, so that was where I decided the club should meet. The sun was out, but so was the breeze. Taking pictures of flowers in the breeze is always a difficult taks. You set up your shot, wait for the right conditions, then just as you squeeze the shutter release, the wind kicks up again. This can be incredibly frustrating.

Sometimes it is better to work with the conditions rather than fight them. Keep the shutter open a little longer, and aim for a blurry flower while the background is still. This can be an interesting effect.

I was quite happy with my shots. I even used my flash for a few of them to lighten up the shadows and to fill in the details.

Pics are here.

LOTD – Camping Fido

The ultimate tent for car camping. Sleeps 10, has multiple rooms, and vestibules. The best part? It has a pet den. Yep, pet den. I suppose you could also use it for coolers, chairs, other stuff, but why deprive fido of camping with the family? Kinda give new meaning to pup tent huh?

From the Product Specifications:
Sleep Capacity: Sleeps up to 10 people and one large dog

That is awesome.

Steamed Ordering

Little story to tell about why I sometimes detest shopping online.

I am in the market for some new leg armour for mountain biking. I went to the Troy Lee Designs website saw they had some you could buy, so proceeded through the checkout. I gave my billing address, and the mailing address (both in Canada, and Canada was in a drop down), and submitted my order. I was thinking great, these should be here in a week or so, and I will be happy.

I got an email today that my order has been cancelled and that I was to contact some distributor in Canada and was provided with a 780 area code phone number. I was also directed to consult their “ordering policy regarding International Orders”.

I was getting steamed, so I went back to the main site, hunted around a bit, and eventually found what the customer service rep was referring to.

INTERNATIONAL ORDERS:

You can place an order with a Troy Lee Designs distributor in your country. To locate a distributor in your country, go to the www.troyleedesigns.com and click on the dealer link.

In a follow up email I was told

We refer you to a distributor in your area to save you a lot of money
in shipping charges.

This is complete bullshit.

First off, if I want to order from them and pay a little more for shipping, then why do they care? The armour was priced at $18 USD, and shipping was $6USD. Tack on some kind of brokerage fee for the border, and it is still cheaper than what I can buy locally.

Second, 780 is the Edmonton area. Not what I would call local. Why would I call some stranger and order something over the phone and give my credit card. That just screams for identity theft.

Third, why did their shopping cart checkout software let me complete the transaction if there was no way they were willing to honour it? They knew I wanted it shipped to Canada (I chose that from a drop down remember), and apparently they don’t want to ship to their Canadian customers, so why not put up a screen saying that, and provide a link to the policy on International Ordering?

If they can’t do this simple customer courtesy, then what will they do if I have a problem with a product? “Oh, you’re in Canada, we don’t want to deal with you.”

I’m pissed because I am missing out on a good deal for leg armour, and they wasted my time by using a crappy, misleading piece of checkout software. I really like my current set of TLD leg armour, but with service like this, why should I buy from them again?