Re-opening the Mind's Eye

As far back as my high school and college days, I was always an avid photographer. I discovered and leaned to use single lens reflex (SLR) cameras in high school and started accumulating an assortment of manual focus Minolta gear while I was in college and for several years thereafter. Through most of the '80s and early '90s, I used it on an almost daily basis, especially when I worked for a community newspaper. I was hired as a reporter, but when they found out I had a camera and knew my way around a darkroom, I was suddenly pulling double duty, creating both words and images. Not only was it fun, it was job security.

I left the paper in the summer of 1991 to start graduate school and began using my cameras less and less, especially as I developed an interest in computers. There just wasn't time for everything. By the end of the decade, my interest in photography eventually had all but died along with the medium of film in the face of digital photography. A big part of it was that I never could afford the kind of digital camera equipment I really wanted.

Even going back to the film days, I never really warmed to auto-focus, point-n-shoot cameras. I always over-thought their capabilities and was usually frustrated with the results. When it comes to photography, I'm a bona fide control freak. You see, I really like twiddling knobs, adjusting focus, f-stops and shutter speeds and screwing on filters to make the final image match what's in my mind's eye

On several occasions over the years, I borrowed digital SLR cameras from others and quickly realized that was the type of hardware I needed if I wanted to get back into photography. Unfortunately, they commanded prices comparable to a monthly house payment and thus far above my comfort level. One of the nice things about 35mm SLR camera equipment back in the day was the technology had been around for a long time and there was a wealth of excellent second hand equipment available at affordable prices, enabling one to afford the good stuff without making a sacrificial outlay of funds. Fortunately, digital photography has finally matured to the level that the same is beginning to be true for it.

I was recently re-bitten by the digital camera bug when my dad showed me a Nikon D50 DSLR camera he'd gotten on the cheap. I found the the controls of the camera to be a little too fussy--and sometimes just plain counter-intuitive--for my taste, but it planted the idea in my mind that maybe the time had come to re-examine the notion of finding one for myself. After some investigation online, I discovered there is indeed a lively market for used DSLR hardware and some nice bargains to be had.

Eventually, I lucked up on a Samsung GX-1L camera kit that included a nice 18-55mm zoom lens for about the price of a mid-range point-n-shoot. The camera and lens are re-branded Pentax hardware, despite the fact that the lens carries the venerable Schneider-Kreutznach name, which Samsung licensed for the occasion. I rounded the kit out with a nice, used Sigma 70-210mm zoom lens for about the cost of a movie ticket and popcorn, and a dedicated flash module for my Quantaray flash that allows it to be fully compatible with this camera.

What really amazes me about this camera is not its ease of use or the fantastic photos it takes, although both statements are true, but the way it has unlocked a part of my brain--or maybe my soul--that has lain dormant far too long. I'm seeing the world with a photographer's eye again. Even when the camera isn't in my hands, I find myself framing things up as though in a viewfinder and observing the fine details I would want to capture on film, or rather, pixels. For the first time in a good 15 years or so, I find myself wanting to just go out with my camera and see what I can find to shoot.

In short, my mind's eye has been re-opened and it's good to be back in the viewfinder again!

Below are a few of my favorite shots so far:

Two Weekends, Two Operating Systems

I didn't really plan it this way, but I've experienced a whirlwind of technology upgrades in the past couple of weeks. Two Saturdays ago, I upgraded my HP laptop to the just released Xubuntu 12.04 and last week, I acquired a second hand MacBook Pro running the latest Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".

Two weeks ago, I had no idea either upgrade was in my near future, but I do tend to take things as they come. My aging G5 iMac and G4 Powerbook are both running outdated versions of Mac OS X and aren't capable of upgrading past version 10.5, I'd pretty much written off the idea of moving up until I had enough spare change to invest in one of the newer (well, not that new since they've been around since 2005 or so) Intel-based Macs.

Upgrades for Linux distributions come so frequently and are usually such a pain to install, that I had decided to wait until support for the version I was running (11.10) had ended. Besides, I had just installed Xubuntu 11.10 when it came out last fall and had just gotten everything where I was happy with it. In my previous experience, upgrading a Linux distribution meant erasing the hard drive and starting over from scratch. This is something I was in no hurry to do.

One thing I've grown quite accustomed to with any Linux distro I've used is the frequent software update notifications. When I was checking my e-mail before going to bed one recent Friday night, I was not at all surprised when one popped up on the menu bar. What I wasn't prepared for was the large button waiting for me when I opened the dialog box, inviting me to click it and upgrade my OS. I was reluctant at first, but eventually, like Alice with the cake that said "eat me" and the bottle that said "drink me," I let curiosity get the better of me and I clicked it.

After clicking through a seemingly endless dialog boxes designed to make absotively, posilutely sure I wanted to go through with the upgrade, the download began and I went to bed. I figured when I woke up in the morning the whole process would be done or I would have to click a couple more 'okay' buttons to make the installation happen.

As it turned out, the latter scenario was more nearly correct, but I had to wait a little longer for the download to finish since it had stopped when the computer went into sleep mode shortly after I did the night before. It took about two hours for the download and the subsequent installation to finish, but once the computer restarted itself, booting into Xutbuntu 10.4, it was almost like nothing had changed. All my settings and accounts were intact, just like I'd left them, but the operating system and most of the software applications had been upgraded to the newest versions available. It was, by far, the smoothest OS upgrade I had experienced on any platform.


The second of my back-to-back upgrades came just a week later when I sold a pair of old military sunglasses on eBay for almost enough to cover the cost of a newer Mac. Although I have always kept a desktop Mac as my primary computer ever since graduate school more than 20 years ago, I have in recent years begun using my laptops almost exclusively with the iMac acting mainly as a print server and disc burning station.

After reading a news report speculating that Apple was on the verge of discontinuing the 17-inch MacBook Pro because of low demand, I decided to price them on eBay and compare them with the 15-inch models. I was amazed to discover that the price difference on used models in the two screen sizes was almost negligible. That was good news for me because while I find my PowerBook's 15-inch screen adequate, I prefer the more spacious 17-inch screen on my iMac. It didn't take me long to find a good deal on a 17-inch model, which could effectively replace both the iMac and the PowerBook as my primary computer. 

But getting used to Lion, as the latest version of Mac OS X is nicknamed, took a little effort. There are a lot of subtle differences that made navigation--at least at first--a little difficult, not the least of which is the lack of arrows on the scroll bars!

Really! No arrows? It seems that Apple, in its infinite wisdom, decided we didn't need them anymore. This seems like the same mindset that for years kept Mac users stuck with a single mouse button and a ctrl-click to mimic a right click. Instead, they've given us a two-fingered mouse gesture on the track pad that will achieve the precise scrolling formerly offered by the arrows. As with single-button mice, there is also the option of a third-party mouse with a scroll wheel.

If that weren't enough, the very act of scrolling was made more difficult by reversing its direction, meaning you have to scroll 'down' in order to go 'up' to the top of the screen and vice versa. Okay, I know Apple's marketing slogan a few years ago was "Think Different" but that doesn't mean you have to think stupid. Fortunately, this little feature, along with the elimination of desktop icons to represented mounted hard drives, flash drives, optical discs, and network drives, were easily remedied by making a few clicks in the System Preferences.

Either way, it's nice having new toys.

I'm a Toolaholic!

So the past few weeks I've been doing a fair amount of work on my car, and last weekend as I was finishing up a project, I managed to break a ratchet from a cheap socket set. It was a $4.00 socket set from Harbor Freight, so no big deal, right?

Now, a rational person would have simply replaced the ratchet and maybe even upgraded from the cheapest Chinese crap Harbor Freight had to offer, but not me, not by a long shot. This was an excuse for an all-out shopping spree!

It started innocently enough with a quick check of eBay to see what a used Craftsman 3/8-inch drive ratchet could be had for. I ended up getting one for $6 plus shipping. Not bad and definitely better than what it was replacing. Mission accomplished? Nah, my watch list was filled with too many other good deals like that 37-piece socket set with two ratchets in different sizes for a mere $5 plus shipping. Had to have it. You can never have too many sockets, right?

With that in mind, I turned around and bought a 1/4-inch drive Craftsman ratchet and a set of 10 deep wall sockets to go with the 3/8 ratchet I'd already gotten. And then there was that little trip to Lowe's that turned up a 42-piece Kobalt socket set on sale for $24.98. That was too good to pass up when the whole set was the same price as the ratchet alone. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I think it comes down to high markup on the ratchet.

A note on Kobalt tools: Lowe's introduced the Kobalt brand in 1998 to compete with Craftsman. Initially produced by J.H. Williams, maker of Snap-On tools, Production was shifted to Danaher, which also produced Craftsman, in 2005. Today's Kobalt tools, while still of good quality, are sourced from a Taiwanese manufacturer.

So by the end of the week, my eBay tool purchases started rolling in. The 37-piece socket set was great. It was an older, no-name set that would be name-brand quality by today's standards. Quite serviceable and a good value for what I had paid. If this was the only thing I had gotten, my needs would have been satisfied.

That Craftsman ratchet that started this whole buying spree off was another story. The mechanism was frozen up. Useless. Fortunately, Sears guarantees their hand tools for life, so a quick exchange netted me a rebuilt ratchet that was better than brand new. I say better because Craftsman has recently begun sourcing most of their hand tools from China and the quality is visibly less than the older models. The handles are thinner, the steel is likely weaker, and the little directional switch is made of plastic. My refurbished ratchet was made in the USA and had a metal directional switch. Better than new. The other Craftsman tools I bought, being 'new old stock' were also made in USA.

So all told, the loss of a ratchet from a $4.00 socket set prompted me to spend about $90.00 on five ratchets, three nut driver handles, more than 100 sockets and accessories, and a tool box to put it all in. Is it overkill or an overdue upgrade? Do you think I may need a 12-step program or a project on which to put these tools to use?