Video and Photography

As some of you know, I've been shooting some video for Randall J Hodges. He has a photo gallery in Edmonds, and also teaches photography classes. I've taken five photo classes from him, and he was looking for someone to shoot and edit some video to show how he does his "all-in-camera" photography. He and I decided to give it a whirl last spring, and as of this week, I've done three videos for him, all on his YouTube channel, "Out in the Field w/ Randall J Hodges."

Stop by, take a look, and Subscribe to his channel. Don't worry, there won't be more than about 5 or 6 videos a year. You won't be inundated.

The last three, "Sauk Mountain", "Park Butte", and "Winchester Mountain" are the ones I've done with him so far. We might do one winter video this year.

I enjoy getting out, and Randall is a fun person to be around. On a normal trip, we hike a few miles and have between one and two thousand feet of elevation gain. Two of the three trips we've car camped, so I'm not carrying camping gear on my back. Even so, on this latest trip, with clothing, 10 (or so) essentials, video gear, and photo gear (of course I get to take a few photos, too), my pack came in at around 40 pounds. For Park Butte, where we camped overnight, my pack was something around 54 pounds to start with.

When we went to Winchester Mountain and Twin Lakes this past Monday, the fall colors were at their peak. We had beautiful reds, yellows, oranges and greens. And a bit of new snow to top it all off.

Here's a bit of the trail on the way up to the top of Winchester Mountain.

We were at the top for sunset (just barely - it was hard to stop taking photos on the way up the trail!).

And as sunset progressed into Alpenglow, the view only got better. You can see the moon, and Twin Lakes below (where our camp was, and where we had to get back to after dark).

And the colors were even brilliant by moonlight after we got back to camp. Here's Winchester Mountain over the lower Twin Lake.

The next day, with such brilliant colors, we decided to hike part way back up Winchester Mountain. Once we got past half way, it only seemed sensible (some might say I lost my sensibility) to hike the rest of the way. And, I had to prove I was there. This is my style of selfie - shot with my Canon 5D Mark III. Since I'd lugged that camera up there, I wasn't going to settle for a shot with my cell phone.

The photos above are as they came out of the camera. Photoshop, Lightroom, etc., have not seen these photos. If you want to know how these photos are shot, take a class from Randall!

Image File Naming

In my last post (Scan, Scan, Scan), I wrote about how I got so far into scanning my photos. With (now) over 135,000 photos in my Lightroom catalog, and more than 20,000 of them scanned from film (I just did a more accurate count - I'm close to 27,000 scanned photos), I had to come up with a naming strategy that works long term.

Early in my photography days, I wrote descriptions on the frames of my 2x2-mounted 35mm slides. Something like "Playing Baseball in Front Yard". When I first started scanning, that was my scanned image name. It didn't take long to figure out that this wouldn't work. What if I had two photos with the same subject? So I started adding "-1" or "-2" to the names. It was clear this wouldn't work for long, either.

I tried a number of different schemes, but didn't hit on anything I really liked. That is, until I ran across a book, The DAM Book, Digital Asset Management for Photographers, that gave me the insight I needed. The Second Edition of this book is worth having on your bookshelf if you take a lot of photos. (There is way more than file naming information in this book.)

My filenames now look like this: gbs_20170304_5156.dng. Let me expand on this for you:

• gbs - my initials. If I scan photos belonging to someone else, I use their initials. 
• 20170304 - The date. That should be obvious. YYYYMMDD - 4 digits for the year, 2 digits for the month, and two digits for the day. Month and day are always 2 digits. For example February 15, 1995 would be 19950215. This way you can sort chronologically just by ordering the files by filename. 
• 5156 - the sequence number from my digital camera. If the camera uses a different numbering scheme, then I use that. For instance, files from my Panasonic Point-and-Shoot camera end up looking like this: gbs_20170219_1040995.jpg. And from my Android phone, like this: gbs_2017-02-17 14.32.55.jpg (OK, that sort of breaks the sorting rules, but that's the way it is).
• And, obviously, the file type - .dng (Digital Negative), .jpg (JPEG), etc. 

The good thing is that Lightroom lets me import my photos from my camera into this (these) format(s) very easily, so there is no manual renaming needed. 

What about scanned photos? They don't have an embedded sequence number. Again, I've done lots of experimenting through the years. The bottom line is that I only need to 1) uniquely name the files, and 2) be able to sort them into some semblance of order. 

I started out naming files like this (before I had completely formed my naming standard): gbs_19950721(05). The number in parentheses at the end was the frame number from the roll of film. That worked... until I shot two rolls of film in a day. Then I added 100 to the frame number for the next roll, becoming gbs_19950721(105). But that felt clumsy. And did I reset the number for the next date, or did I keep the 100 until I finished the roll?

Since ancient times (1960s or 1970s), I had kept my rolls of film numbered through the year, so a roll of film would be Roll (for example) 1988-12. Duh! Simple! I don't think I ever shot more than 100 rolls of film in a year, so I started numbering my images like this: gbs_19880325_1206. The 1206 is frame 6 of roll 12. And if you shot more than I did, just make the roll number 3 digits long. 

That leaves only one set of images with which that I don't follow this standard. I have a few boxes of loose black and white negatives. One of those boxes appears to be photos my grandfather shot starting around 1920 and continuing at least into the 1940s. There are no dates. There are no frame numbers. The rules are completely broken. At this time I'm just trying to preserve them. I'm placing them in folders that indicate who I think shot them, and they are simply named Image001.jpg, Image002.jpg, etc. As I find out more about them, I rename and catalog them. For instance, I found a photo of my Mother's first birthday - I can come pretty close to when that photo was shot , so I've renamed it accordingly. Of course, the sequence number is fiction.

Stay tuned. My on-disk organization might be next (or not). 

Of course, I must include a photo. This is photo gbs_19740317_0012.tif. Clearly it was shot March 17, 1974. It is the 12th frame on the roll of film, and I scanned this photo before I fully developed my naming standard. The photo shows Kettle Falls on the Columbia River near the town of Kettle Falls, Washington. It was taken the last time Kettle Falls was visible when the level of Lake Roosevelt was lowered during construction of the Third Powerhouse of Grand Coulee Dam. 

Scan, Scan, Scan

It all started simply enough. I had an HP flatbed scanner (I don't recall the model) that came with this little mirror device that would redirect light from the scanner back down through a 2"x2" mounted 35mm slide so that you could scan the slide. Resolution? Oh, probably 400 or 600 dpi. It worked OK (just OK) for well-exposed or slightly over-exposed slides. Not so well for underexposed slides. I may have scanned a few dozen slides, but the quality wasn't adequate for me.

Some time later, I purchased a dedicated film scanner (Nikon Coolscan 3000).

The Nikon Coolscan 3000 could scan up to 2,700 dpi. At first, I thought this was more resolution than I needed, so scanned many slides and negatives at 1,350 dpi. About enough for a decent 4"x6" print.

It wasn't long before I wanted better. So I purchased a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 ED film scanner, capable of 4,000 dpi resolution. And I upped my default scanning resolution to a whopping 2,000 dpi, scanning some specific negatives and slides at 3,000 or even 4,000 dpi if I thought I wanted larger prints from them. Eventually, disk space got really cheap and I realized that I should just scan everything at the maximum resolution. So all 35mm film I've scanned for the last 4 years or so is at 4,000 dpi. Eventually I purchased a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED film scanner, which also scans at 4,000 dpi, but had a few more features that hopefully would improve my scan quality.

For image viewing and printing software, I used ACDSee, and later, ACDSee Pro. Not sure when I purchased this, but know I owned it in 2001. I still use it for specific purposes, which I will describe in a future blog.

When my friend/neighbor Jenne was about 7th grade (around 2008), I got this idea to create a photo book for her for her senior graduation (plan ahead...). I had been shooting all digital since 2003 or 2004, but had known Jenne since her arrival and adoption in the United States in 1998, so had around 6 years of photos on film. Before this time I had occasionally scanned some of my photos, but hadn't gotten really serious about it. I had probably scanned a thousand images.

So I started scanning photos of her. But, where to stop? What if the roll of film I was scanning had some other interesting photos? Should I not scan those? Or scan those? I opted to scan all. My scanner/software could scan a strip of negatives at a time, so it was easy to insert a strip and let it automatically do a preview of all negatives in the strip (usually 4), then select which to scan. But I also wanted to keep track of which rolls of film and which negatives had been scanned. The scanner software could accept a filename pattern, and automatically increment a number within that pattern. So I decided to make the filenames include the negative number.

To start with (I think - this was years ago, and I've been refining my scheme through the years, and don't recall all details, or the exact order of the evolution), I put the images from each roll of film in its own folder, and labeled them something like IMAGE00l.JPG, IMAGE002.JPG, etc. More about the evolution of my file naming conventions in a future blog.

Now that I had a goal, and a deadline (Jenne's graduation), I started scanning everything I had shot since 1998 up until I was shooting all digital (around 2005). I had tried multiple tools for cataloging through the years, but they each had its own proprietary database. At one point, an upgrade to a new version of a tool lost all of the data from the previous version. I knew what I wanted, and it wasn't available. I looked at a professional digital asset management tool that was, in my mind, too complex (and quite expensive). I knew the only way this could work was to store the cataloging information in the image file.

And I continued scanning.

To go back a few years... Cataloging my photos was something I have thought about since early in my photography days. I started shooting when I was around 10 or 11 when my dad gave me his old Kodak 620 folding camera (I still have it). I then upgraded (?) to a Kodak Instamatic with a little pop-up flash that used 126 film. When I graduated high school, I could still look at any photo I had shot, and recall the circumstances of the photograph. By the time I got through college, I could still remember pretty much any photo, but storage was becoming an issue. I was shooting all 35mm slides at that point, and was filing them by subject matter in slide storage boxes. Being able to remember any shot allowed this to work. If I wanted a particular photo, I could remember where I had filed it.

I had subjects such as Family, Friends, Church, Scenery... I knew this wasn't going to work much longer. How should I file a slide that had pictures of, for example, Family at Church? So I switched to filing slides chronologically. Sometime in the mid-'70s I learned about Key Word In Context (KWIC) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_Word_in_Context). I wrote a computer program to implement this. Here's a simple example of how it worked.

Say I had a photo (labeled Photo 045) that I described as "Dad and Randy at Mt. Rainier." The KWIC program would ignore a list of connector and filler words (such as "at" and "Mt."), and generate one line of output for each significant work in the sentence. Thus this description would generate 3 lines of output:

1. Dad and Randy at Mt. Rainier - (Photo 045)
2. Randy at Mt. Rainier - Dad and (Photo 045)
3. Rainier - Dad and Randy at Mt. (Photo 045)

Let's say I also had Photo 060 with a description of "Mom and Dad at Christmas." This description also generates three lines:

1. Mom and Dad at Christmas - (Photo 060)
2. Dad at Christmas - Mom and (Photo 060)
3. Christmas - Mom and Dad at (Photo 060)

Now I would have an output file that could have thousands of lines of output for maybe 1,000 photo descriptions. It would then be sorted alphabetically, yielding:

1. Christmas - Mom and Dad at (Photo 060)
2. Dad and Randy at Mt. Rainier - (Photo 045)
3. Dad at Christmas - Mom and (Photo 060)
4. Mom and Dad at Christmas - (Photo 060)
5. Rainier - Dad and Randy at Mt. (Photo 045)
6. Randy at Mt. Rainier - Dad and (Photo 045)

and I could now scan down the list for the subjects of interest and locate the photos. In reality, after I had entered about 100 photos, I realized this was quickly going to become too cumbersome, so I abandoned it.

In 2006, Adobe announced the beta of Lightroom. It could catalog. It could edit photos. And it stored the data in the image file! I immediately downloaded it, and started learning how to use it. (I'm still learning.) I started tagging images with keywords, and those are all stored in a database and in the image file. My dream had become reality.

By then I had thousands of images on disk, as I had started shooting digital in 2002, plus I had scanned a "few" slides and negatives. I tried to go back and catalog everything, but I missed many hundreds of photos, and my cataloging was incomplete. But at least I could quickly and easily locate all images I had cataloged.

Now I could continue scanning. And cataloging both the scanned images and the ones shot on digital cameras. And continue scanning I am doing. I've scanned photos for friends. I've scanned negatives my dad shot in the Army, and of me when I was a year or two old. And negatives my Grandpa shot when my Mom was 1 year old, and through her high school years, and of me. I have 100-200 rolls of negatives that I got from my Mom that she has shot before switching to digital that I am scanning. And cataloging. She also has several (at least) file boxes of slides, of which I have only scanned one or two.

All told, I now have, at this moment, 134,620 photos in Lightroom. I have scanned somewhere over 20,000 of those, and the rest are from digital cameras, mine, family and friends.

And, yes, I completed the photo book for Jenne. It consisted of about 800 photos, beginning with her arrival in the United States of America through her high school graduation. I was a little late to give it as a graduation present, but it did make a good Christmas present that year. In case you are wondering, I have 10,247 photos cataloged of Jenne. I'm sure I've missed a few. And, over the years, Jenne helped me pick the photos she liked. She didn't know the goal, but I would occasionally show here several hundred photos that I had selected, and have her mark (with a special key word) the ones she liked. Thank you for your help, Jenne!

And her younger sister is now only four years from graduation. I have another task ahead of me. The good news is the film photos of her are already scanned.

Scanning these photos allows me to share these old photos with friends and family. And it brings back good memories. Here is a photo of the sails on the ship Fantome on a cruise in the Caribbean in 1991.

Docking

Another sailing story. Written in 2002. Jenne, mentioned here, was age 5. Lynn is her mother.

Today (Saturday) it wasn't nearly as warm. It was cloudy all morning and into the afternoon - just like the weatherman said it would be. That's our air conditioning kicking in. Whenever Seattle gets hot weather for a few days, the flow reverses and we get the cool moist air off the ocean, which cuts the sun's intensity in the morning so we won't get so hot. As we're near the summer solstice and the sun is high in the sky for many hours, it almost always burns through in the afternoon so we get a sunny day that's just comfortable. And, so it was today. We (Lynn, Jenne, and I) got on the boat at about 2:15 this afternoon. The sun was moderately filtered - you know what I mean, perfect picture taking lighting. Not bright sun, but bright enough that there are definite shadows. In fact, I was thinking I should have a tripod there and take some pictures of the marina. It was a very low tide, so standing at the top of the ramp down to the docks you seemed to be about mid-height on many of the sailboat masts. It would have been perfect angles and lighting for a panoramic shot of the whole marina. I'll keep that lighting and tide in mind for the future. But, on to the boat. Headed out, and had full sun by the time we were 5 minutes out of the marina. Light breeze at about 8 knots. Just perfect for a relaxing sail with a 5-year-old on board. Especially one that wants to steer part of the time.

Got the main sail up. Got the jib deployed. Doing fine, moving about 4-5 knots. But, the wind is tapering off as we head further out. At 3-4 knots of wind we're moving along at 2 knots (not bad!). Finally, the wind is just kind of whispering at us from various directions. We're almost dead in the water. So, drop the jib and start the engine. Plan B is in effect. We'll motor over to Blake Island (about 5 or 6 miles), and check out the mooring buoy situation on the back side. We're planning a trip in late July with some of Jenne's "China friends" to Blake Island, and just in case the dock and mooring buoys on the front are filled up, we want to know what our options are. My, but the island is busy today. All of the mooring buoys on the NW end are taken, as are the ones on the east side. On the south side, just across the point from the dock, there is an available mooring buoy. Wish we'd come prepared to spend the night. It would be a perfect night to sleep on the boat.

Head back to the marina. Jenne steers the last 15 minutes toward the marina.She's really getting the hang of this. Last year, she understood about turning the wheel in the direction she wanted to go, but didn't understand about straightening the wheel (OK, that word picture isn't right) once you were pointed in the right direction. But, she understood the important things. Once, when Lynn was below decks and Jenne was steering  (assisted), she asked if she could turn the boat in a circle so she could see Mama's reaction. Of course I said yes... And we hadn't made more than a third of a circle when Lynn's head popped up asking what was going on, much to Jenne's delight. This year Jenne understands how to steer. Her concentration often lapses and she needs to be reminded where she's heading, but hey, I know adults that need that!

Again, perfect weather. With the light breezes and sunshine, it's another T-shirt, shorts, and Tevas day. I did put a sweatshirt on after 6:00 PM out on the water. Took it off when we got in the marina.

Back into the marina, where the tensions normally mount. Gee, I must be getting the hang of this - and I haven't even been a boat owner for 4 years yet! No stress. Of course, the winds are light at about 6 knots, and they're coming from the right direction. We'll be heading almost straight into the wind coming into the slip. Lynn agrees to handle the lines and get the fenders out, and I'll just stay on the helm. Turn at the right channel (I've almost screwed that up in the past - quite embarrassing). Head up the channel and spot our boat's slip (it used to be hard for me to pick that slip out - there are a lot of slips in this marina - we're slip 63, and just over half way out). Swing the bow toward the slip - hey, it's looking like I turned at the right time. Ease it around, pop it in reverse. Rev the engine, and the boat slows nicely. Serenity "walks" left when in reverse (normal for single-engine boats - the physics of the prop and all), and we have a bow-in port-tie slip. Wonderful - the stern sucks nicely up against the pier, and I step over the lifeline, hop off the boat (almost tripping over the dock line that's wrapped around my foot, but no one notices), and secure the stern line while Lynn is handling the bow line. Jenne now gets to shut down the engine (it's a diesel - you don't shut off the key until you've starved the engine of fuel so the engine dies), which she thinks is a cool job. We're back. Just pick up all the stuff we brought on board, close up the boat, hose off the salt spray (we didn't do that after our ride Thursday night), and go for Chicken Teriyaki.

An Evening Sail

It has been much too long since I posted. This is a (true) story I wrote back in 2002. First of three stories.

Thursday I went out after work (temperature on land was above 90 degrees) with the one and only lessee, Joe, on Serenity (my sailboat). Had stiff winds when we left - highest I saw was 19 knots. Had full mainsail and jib up, and we were hauling ass out there. Got her up above 6 knots. We headed N, tacking upwind. Got across the little bay (you know - to the other side of the water over by the north end of Bainbridge Island), and the wind dropped off to a measly 8 knots.

So, just to see how it would work, we put up the asymmetrical spinnaker (sometimes known as a geniker, or a drifter). That's a lot of sail! Headed mostly downwind - straight for downtown Seattle, aimed right at the Smith Tower, and she performed beautifully. We were doing 5+ knots. As we got closer to Seattle - sort of back where we came from - the wind started picking up. Once the winds got around 12 knots, Serenity got real squirrelly. If I let her bow come up at all, she'd catch the wind and try to turn into the wind. Normally, you'd think that would be good - into the wind spills the wind out of the sails and lets the boat come more upright. However, when you're heading downwind to begin with... into the wind puts you more broadside to the wind. With that much sail out there, she really heeled under those conditions. I was afraid at one point I was going to lose control - the helm didn't respond and I was just about standing on the side of the cockpit. (Who needs drugs when you've got that much adrenalin?) Hit 6.5 knots at one point. That may be the fastest I've ever had Serenity moving.

I wore a short sleeved T-shirt, shorts, and boating Tevas the whole evening. In the middle of the sound with a 15+ knot breeze, I considered adding a sweatshirt. Then we'd get close to the shore and the wind felt like a blowtorch coming off the land. It was great!

As we got close to Seattle, the wind tapered a bit (and so did I). We were almost dead square in front of the incoming Bremerton Ferry, so we moved north a bit so as to not block the dock. We were going to drop the Geniker, but decided to leave it up until the ferry passed us - it is a beautiful rainbow-colored sail - for the enjoyment of the ferry passengers. Then we headed north again back to the Marina. A very successful evening.

Seattle signage not very clear!

While waiting for the bus in Seattle on Third near Pine yesterday, I noticed this sign, and wondered what the hell it means!

The top part seem clear - from 6 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 6 in the afternoon buses come here. I'm trying to catch a bus here, so that's a good thing. 

But what's this "EVERYDAY" stuff? I think of the word "everyday" as an adjective, although dictionary.com says it can be a noun (it has three definitions for use as an adjective and one for use as a noun). Synonyms include "workday" and "common". To me, "everyday" means "common". As in, "Today I'm wearing my everyday shoes." 

So is this where the Common bus stops? (The Fancy bus must stop somewhere else.)

Then there's the bottom portion of the sign. Wow. Seattle, are you sure? It's clear that your car will be towed. But when? Apparently, just "all other times". So does that mean you won't be towed from 6 to 9 in the morning and 3 to 6 in the afternoon? (And, is that Every Day? or just the Everyday Days?)

At least they have a phone number you can call if this is confusing. 206-684-5444. (But don't bother - it wasn't helpful.)

A few fixes for the Kawasaki Versys

I bought my Kawasaki Versys new in 2009. It's been a great motorcycle, but it didn't take long to discover a few things that needed improving or a few problems to be solved. Here are three of the fixes I've done.

• The mirrors were terrible. First, they're too short (or not set far enough out). When you look in the mirrors, all you see is your shoulders. And they vibrate like crazy, making it impossible to see details of what's going on behind you! Early on I bought a couple of mirror extenders from http://www.motowerk.com/. That fixed it so I could see traffic behind me and not just my shoulders, but the vibration problem still was there. The solution for the vibration was to replace the mirrors. I picked up a pair of Aprilia mirrors locally for about $24 each (a real deal - way less than Kawasaki wanted for mirrors for any model motorcycle). 
• After the first season of riding my Versys it developed a terrible buzz/vibration coming from somewhere up front. Reading the forums, it was apparent this was "normal" for this bike. I found that pressing on the cowling around the headlight reduced it (which was one of the commonly mentioned buzz points). Again, at the recommendation of several riders on the forums, I took all the cowling off and put a thin self-sticking foam insulation (picked up from the local hardware store) everywhere the cowling touched or almost touched the frame or another piece of cowling. Buzz fixed!
• The reset button in the instrument cluster is another failure point. Very frustrating to not be able to reset my trip odometer or set the clock! Again, the forums identified the problem (or multiple problems) - and had a solution. Take the instrument cluster off the bike, dismantle it enough to get to the bottom of the circuit board, and then use contact cleaner on the switches. It looks like they're enclosed and the contact cleaner won't get into the switch, but apparently it does get into the right area and doing this solved my problem. A year later, and the switches still work reliably. 

There are more things on my list I'd like to do, but these were the frustrating little design flaws that were easy to resolve. (I hope Kawasaki is listening.)

Gary

You're kidding, right?

Auto tabs in Washington used to all expire on December 31 every year. I remember my dad getting the new tabs in December and thinking the DOL was completely crazy when he read the instructions, which were similar to these on the back of my recent tabs:

Especially “DO NOT APPLY IN FREEZING WEATHER!”. We lived in Colville. In December in the 1960’s it rarely was above freezing. There was snow on the ground. We had an unheated garage. I recall watching him use a blowtorch to warm the license plate up to get it warm enough so the tabs would stick!

Five days, 1364 miles

Over the Memorial Day weekend I went on a little trip...

Map of my 5-day Memorial Weekend trip

If the map looks like I wandered a bit, you might be right. I had a few goals in mind, but I mostly looked at the map each night and decided on a direction for the next day.

I had planned to take a few extra days after Memorial Day and ride down the Oregon Coast. However, as the time to go got closer it became clear the weather was going to be cool and rainy. So I looked at the weather maps, and saw that eastern Washington looked more promising. Slight chance of showers, and temperatures up to mid-80s, depending on where... I was also concerned about the heavy traffic on the roads and availability of camping sites. But that didn't stop me.

I had Friday off, so got everything packed up and loaded onto the motorcycle (a 650cc Kawasaki Versys). Yes, this was a ride, not a drive. At a friend's suggestion, I left town early (before 6am) to beat the traffic across the pass. There are no alternate ways across the pass - just major highways, like I-90 or Stevens Pass. Before Cle Elum I exited I-90 and took side roads, aiming for Ellensburg. However, Highway 10 was closed for construction, and the detour took me on 970 and 97. About 10 miles north of Ellensburg on Highway 97, I saw this:

Scene from Highway 97 about 10 miles north of Ellensburg

Highway 97 is the Blewett Pass highway, and I decided to ride over Blewett Pass. But I needed gas, so dropped down into Ellensburg to fill up. Then headed north over Blewett Pass. Went on up to Highway 2, then U-turned and came south, going over Old Blewett Pass. Nice twisty road! I'll post some video when I get time. Once again into Ellensburg, I took the Canyon Road south to Naches. That was another nice road, and I don't believe I've ever been on it before. From Naches I headed west up 410, hoping for camping. I figured if I didn't find a campground, since this was National Forest Service land, I could head up a road and camp anywhere I could find a flat spot. I got lucky at Little Naches campground. This small campground has about 20 sites, and 4 were empty. Grabbed one before someone else could... (and two sites never filled up that night). When I got up the next morning about 7:30, the thermometer on my bike said 39°. No wonder I was a bit chilly. I didn't leave camp until it warmed up to 50°, which was around 10:00. 

My campsite at Little Naches campground

The next morning (Sunday) I headed further west on 410 just to see the road, then turned around and headed SE. Went through tri-cities, Walla Walla, and into Oregon. When I rode to Crater Lake a couple years ago I found some nice camping east of Weston on the Weston-Elgin road. Air temperature dropped quickly as I went over the 5100'+ pass, and there was lots of snow along the road. I didn't want to camp near there. I continued riding until I dropped down into the lower elevation at Elgin, OR, and the temperatures were back up around 70. I camped at the Elgin Hunaha RV Park, and had the large lawn tent-area and adjacent bathrooms all to myself. For only $1 more than the NFS campground I had running hot water and a hot shower. Temperature the next morning was again in the 30s. I've ordered a warmer sleeping bag...

Monday morning, at the suggestion of the camp host, I headed to Enterprise, OR, then north to Clarkston, WA. That road is one great twisty road with great views along the way. Thoroughly enjoyed the ride (rode parts of it three times to go back and get some photos). My tires' chicken strips got narrower on this road! And it ends up in this great twisty grade down into Asotin, WA. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun riding it that I didn't take any photos. I think that is a reason for another trip there. 

Oregon highway 3 north of Enterprise

Monday night I ended up at the Lyons Ferry Marina KOA near Palouse Falls. Another place where I had the tent area to myself, and a hot shower once again, for a few more bucks ($19.15).


Tuesday I went up the road a short distance to Palouse Falls. I visited here two years ago on a trip to Crater Lake. This photo is taken from the visitor area with a super-wide-angle lens. Everything is so big and close it's hard to get it all in with a regular lens.

Palouse Falls

The Palouse river below Palouse Falls is  also very spectacular-looking. This time of year the green really adds to it. I took a little dirt road just outside the park entrance a half mile or so to get the next couple photos. 

Palouse River below Palouse Falls

Any trip is really just an excuse to take photos of your motorcycle...

After Palouse Falls, I headed toward Grand Coulee Dam to see the Laser Show. I was close to Grand Coulee Dam earlier in the trip, but wanted to avoid the Memorial Day crowds so didn't stop at that time. I went on the Dam tour and watched the laser show. I was unable to get a good photo of the laser show. They weren't spilling water over the dam yet - maybe in another couple weeks. I may go back to see that.

Grand Coulee Dam

After spending the night in the National Parks' Canyon Springs campground, I headed home, stopping only for a few dozen more photos along the way. 



And one other stop on the way. Went to the motorcycle shop to order new tires. The ones on the bike now had over 9,000 miles, and were completely worn out. Need new tires so I can plan a new trip.


Gary

Bloomsday 2012

One more Bloomsday completed. That makes 34 for me, but who's counting?

A perfect day for it. And a perfect weekend visiting friends in Spokane and enjoying the weather and viewing the Spokane River, which is close to the highest I can recall seeing.

I did better than I had a right to expect - 1:10:12 official time. That's 9:24 per mile. I'll take it!

Gary

Hurray for Backups

On Sunday I went for a motorcycle ride. Not that this has anything to do with the subject...

When I returned home and tried to open a file using Excel on my computer, I got a "File not found" error. I know the file is there - I had just edited it a few days before. The file is on a network drive on a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device. I checked, and sure enough, that drive showed as not connected...

My NAS is a smart piece of hardware, specifically a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+, that runs a flavor of Unix and contains up to four hard disk drives (mine has three 1.5 Terabyte disk drives) in a RAID array for redundancy. Failure of any one disk drive will result in no loss of data. Additionally, I have a couple of USB drives connected to the NAS, and every night while I sleep, it backs up all new and changed data to these drives. I periodically swap one of the drives out and store it "offsite" in case of disaster, like fire or theft, so I have a copy of my data that's not in my computer room.

I crawled under the computer table, and found the NAS completely dark. And it didn't want to power up. Unplugging it and plugging it back in got it to where it would power up. Whew - must have been a power hit that knocked it out, I thought (although it's plugged into a UPS, so that doesn't really seem likely). A few minutes later I came back, and found it working its way through the file system check. However, there was this faint unmistakable smell of hot electronics in the air. I touched the NAS, and it was very warm to the touch - unusual, as this unit normally runs cool. And the hot electronics odor was very strong around it. Figuring I was watching a catastrophic failure getting ready to occur, I pulled the plug. Then got down and used my nose to isolate the failure area.

The smell was clearly coming from the NAS, around the power supply. I pulled the disk drives out of it, checked the fans and vacuumed the dust out. It was dusty, but not bad enough to stop the airflow. To cut to the chase about the NAS, I found out I had a five-year warranty on it, and I purchased it just a bit over four years ago. 45 minutes on the phone with Netgear on Monday arranged a replacement, which is on its way to me.

But, back to editing my file. I now have around 2 Terabytes of data that is inaccessible. :-( That's "2" with 12 zeroes after it. 2,000,000,000,000 bytes. That's a lot of missing data. But remember I said that the NAS automatically backed up to a couple of USB drives every night? And I haven't touched this file for a couple of days. The backup should be current. I plugged one of the backup drives (they're formatted as Windows disks) into my computer, and copied that file from the backup drive to my C drive, and was able to edit it with no hassle. Hurray for backups. Now I only need to remember to put that file back where it's supposed to be when I get my NAS back up and running...

Hurray for backups! Did I already say that? Double Hurray for backups that actually work!!

R-Ides of March Charity Motorcycle Ride

Several weeks ago I went on a motorcycle ride with Team Ride West. This wasn't the typical motorcycle ride, though. I would describe it more as a "Scavenger Hunt." It was a mixed-weather day. A little sun, a little rain, a lot of gray. Temperatures were in the low- to mid-40s. If you are dressed for it, pretty good riding weather (love my Goretex-lined waterproof motorcycle boots!). 

The ride was organized by my friend David Preston (http://www.davidpreston.biz/). This was his tenth "R-Ides of March", a charity ride for Riders for Health. David also organizes the Chilly Turkey charity ride each November - definitely on my list of something to do when the time comes. 

Rather than riding as one group, each rider's goal is to accurately follow the directions that you are given when you register and then answer a question at intervals throughout the ride. The directions are simple, sort of. Like, go 2.3 miles and then turn left at 132nd Avenue, then turn right at 84th Street. Proceed through the stop sign and answer question 3. Question 3 might be something like "What comes before boom?" (an actual question from this ride). IF you have properly followed the directions, you will find yourself in Log Boom Park. And IF you are in Log Boom Park, answering the question is a piece of cake.

Many riders hook up with another rider or two and do the ride together. I thought I was late getting started so took off on my own, thinking if I was lucky I might catch up with someone to follow. Apparently I was the first one out the door, so there was no one to catch up with. And, no one caught up with me. No points are awarded for completing first, however. I had an absolute blast following the directions, discovering roads I'd never been on before, and listening to my own drummer. 

The ride ended at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park where we all had lunch together, told stories, and got to know each other a little better. Door prizes had been donated, and every rider (over a dozen participated) "won". And Riders for Health won, also with about $1200 in donations. 

I didn't take many photos this day (somewhat unusual  for me), but above is one I took of most of the motorcycles and riders in the Third Place Books parking lot. A few people had already departed, but for those that were left the conversations continued as we geared up and prepared to leave. My photo and more information about Riders for Health can also be found at http://www.riders.org/us/n_details.aspx?nwId=286 . 

What to do with old photos?

I've shot photos for over 40 years. Only the last 10 years or so have been digital, so as you can imagine, I have thousands (actually 10s of thousands) of images on slides and negatives. The good news is that I actually have and can find most of those slides and negatives.

All of my digital photos are on my computer, and "cataloged" (at least imported, not all are well cataloged) in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. I found that once the photos were on the computer and cataloged, it was rather easy to locate them, tweak them (improve cropping, exposure, or fix the many where the camera just wouldn't stay level), and print, upload or email them so they could be shared. My first joy of photography is seeing again the pictures I have taken through the years. And the second joy is sharing these with others.

But what to do with the thousands of analog images? What else? Scan them and put them on the computer! So I've been doing that, a few rolls at a time, for the last 5 years or more. My first attempt was with a flatbed scanner that didn't have sufficient resolution or dynamic range (difference from darkest to lightest areas that can be recognized). Then I bought a dedicated film scanner and that opened up a whole new world. I found that the prints that had been made from the negatives were lacking range and color. And I could crop photos to improve them, or adjust under- or over-exposed photos. Many photos that I had thought to be only so-so turned out to be much more.

There are a number of scanners now available that will do an adequate job of scanning your negatives and slides. I scan my negatives and slides at around 2000 dpi. That's about all the detail that is in most of them. And with that I can easily make 8" x 10" prints even after a little cropping. If you were shooting on fine-grain film with very good lenses, and you want to get all the possible detail, you might try scanning at higher resolutions, but for me at higher resolution I just saw more film grain!

So far I've scanned about 10,000 negatives and slides. It's been fun to look back through the years and bring back photos from the past. I have many to go, but limited time. I usually scan a full roll at a time. It's just easier that way. I catalog the photos as I go - I have marked most photos with the date they were taken, and so set the "create" time of the digital image on the computer to match. I have also scanned old family photos going back into the 19th century.

So now I can look at these old photos any time I wish. And I can easily share these with family and friends. Now all I need to do is scan those other 10 or 20 thousand photos. :-)

If you want a little different slant on this, and more detail, take a look at this article from Shutterbug magazine: http://www.shutterbug.com/content/it-may-not-be-cull-after-all-some-notes-my-scanning-experiences.

Test entry from cell phone

Yuck! Snow, hail and rain blowing sideways in downtown Seattle when I left work today. I'm ready for motorcycle weather (that's warm dry weather, in case anyone had any doubt about it).

Gary has a Blog

I've never tried to blog before. At times I seem to have a lot to say, but when it comes time to write it down I wonder if it is of interest to anyone besides me. 


I trust something will appear in this space. Probably not regularly, more likely when the mood strikes, when I have something to say, when I'm peeved, when I'm in inspired. I hope that is often.

So, to kick it off... 

Last weekend I was cross-country skiing at Mazama. Despite my concerns there wouldn't be enough snow (and hence my backpack full of books to read), the conditions were good, as always. 


I was there with a group of people I go to Mazama with every January. I guess I don't really go with them - it's more like I meet them there. The members of the group vary a bit from year to year, but it's always a good group of people. I only see most of them on this annual trip, but it's always good to see them again. 


Weather was decent - gray on Saturday, a bit of sun on Sunday, and blue skies on Monday (the day we left for home). Temperatures were in the 20's. A little snow still on the trees in most places. Trails were well-groomed with excellent snow, and not many people on them. 


Kind of perfect. 




Gary