I’ve been looking for an app that allows me to capture the essence of wines that I’ve tasted, display the results of others for wines I haven’t tasted, view the label, the price and the wine maker’s description in a clean interface. Data input must be easy and, because of the nature of wine, must have access to an extensive database. I would also insist on the ability to back up the data.

In the journey to find such an application, I’ve come across a good number of wine apps. Indeed, there are over 100 free wine apps in the app store, though I haven’t tested nearly half of them. I thought it might be of interest to others, as well as a brief documentation for myself, to post the brief findings of wine apps that I’ve toyed with. This post is a work in progress and has incomplete data. It will be updated as time allows. One of the most disturbing lack of features is the ability to back up your database. Without that ability it’s impossible to reach a 5 star rating. Nobody wants to spend hours scanning labels, entering their taste experiences and typing in their inventory to get it erased.

They also poorly engineered a deck and built it without a permit and mounted it to the foundation of the house. What I mean is the numskulls took the protective siding off the house and without flashing or caulking just bolted the deck beams into the sill plate and stem wall. It’s now rotted and needs to be replaced. We knew the yard needed work when we bought the house, but the expense is insane! For removing rocks (that were put down directly in the dirt… that means without any tarp or weed guard), tearing down a rotting deck, removing several of the ill-placed deck posts, regrading the lawn for drainage and installing a new sprinkler system (the old one died) the cost went over $9k.

Word to the wise out there… clearing out a yard can be as expensive as putting in a new one. This holds particularly true if the previous owners didn’t think ahead, didn’t pull any permits, and didn’t do the yard right.

So since we have to invest so much money into the yard, I’ve thought of doing some magic on it. If Disney could make a castle look bigger than it really is, why can’t I make a yard look bigger, too?

The August 15th 2010 post on Ray Kleim’s Haunted Dimensions about Fred Joerger made me think about how this could be done. Objects at the back of the yard need to be slightly smaller and slightly up hill compared to items closer to the door and windows of the back yard. To avoid flooding issues, I refuse to grade the yard to slope uphill from the house, but placing items such as bird baths on a brick to raise it an inch is doable. Here’s the “formula” I discovered. Whether it’s the correct math or not, I don’t know. It’s just from observation.

The size of the distant item can be mimicked by a smaller yet closer item of size X when the percent difference of the two objects are reflected by the distance between them (Distance B) and the distance of the smaller item to the eyes of the beholder (Distance A).

Viewer …[distance A]… Small Item …[distance B]… Large Distant Item
Viewer …………………[Total Distance]……………… Large Distant Item

If the small item is 50% the size of the large item, distance A and B are the same. If the small item is 25% the size of the large item, distance A is 25% of the Total Distance. To create a perceived distance that extends my back yard another 5 feet, the fence plank dimensions along the back need to be reduced by a percent of B/T given that B = perceived additional distance and T = total actual + perceived distance.

Since my yard from the back door to the back fence is approximately 45 feet, the formula would be 5/(45+5) or 5/50 or 10%. So if the planks are 6′x6″, I would shave 10% off of all sides, making them actually 90% their actual size. This would require shaving roughly 7″ from it’s height and 1/4″ from each side of the plank. To make it look near perfect, I’d need to raise the ground along the back fence by 3″ to 4″. As mentioned before, I don’t plan on regrading the yard, but I could add a couple of inches more rock along the bottom of the fence.

What would all this achieve? The perception, from looking out the back windows of the house, of a yard that’s 225 sq feet larger than it actually is. The trade-off is that from the back of the yard looking towards the house, the yard would “feel” smaller.

Learn about forced perspective from the following videos:
LOTR Forced Perspective Moving Camera (and platform)

Ames Room Illusion – Temple Grandin

For learning photography there isn’t one “perfect” site to stick with. Each decent site has its strengths, but each of these sites also miss some important topics. There are several sites for learning great general photography techniques, digital photography techniques and post-processing techniques. Many times the general photography and digital photography techniques overlap.

The most important concept, and sometimes the most difficult, for a beginner to grasp is that of exposure. Painters, like most artists, are trained to notice light and shadow. Most paintings compress the dynamic range to allow the viewer to enjoy all aspects of the painting in a similar way that our eyes and brain process images. Photographers, however, need to look at light differently because of the constraints of their primary tool. Cameras see light differently, so when taking a photograph think about lighting like a camera. The most important thing you could learn is how aperture, shutter speed and ISO Sensitivity work together in creating all exposure.

Books:
Scott Kelby’s   Digital Photography
Bryan Peterson’s   Understanding Exposure
National Geographic’s   Photography Field Guide
Bryan Patterson’s   Learning To See Creatively
Bryan Peterson’s   Beyond Portraiture
Brenda Tharp’s   Creative Nature Outdoor Photography

Websites:
Digital Photography School was founded by Darren Rowse. While not much more than a photography hobbyist, he has done an excellent job of collecting ideas and getting guest writers to produce great articles on photography.

Popular photography magazine has a more professional team that still covers the basics. I particularly enjoy their “how-to” section for ideas that range the entire gamut of the digital photography experience.

a href=”http://photo.net”>Photo.net is an interactive learning site with many fantastic articles on learning general photography. This site was founded before digital photography became mainstream so most of its content is geared around general photography. You’ll notice the “Post-Exposure” section is only a small part of their list of tutorials. Here are the main articles I would recommend from this site:

1. Then there are a few online books and articles at Photo.Net. This is the place I got started on since there were no other resources on the internet at that time, but it has some really key articles that every photographer should read.
   1. http://photo.net/learn/making-photographs/
      1. http://photo.net/learn/making-photographs/light
      2. http://photo.net/learn/making-photographs/lens
      3. http://photo.net/learn/making-photographs/exposure
   2. http://photo.net/equipment/tripods/philg
   3. http://photo.net/equipment/tripods/

Those last two links from the photo.net site about tripods are pretty important. It turns out that if you want to do really good professional photography, even in fast lighting, a tripod can greatly improve the results. This is especially true for landscape photography. Of course, with wedding and on-site portrait photography you’re usually very limited to when you can use a tripod, which is when that first article on flash photography techniques (below) becomes excruciatingly important.

Podcasts:
Do you have iTunes? There are some amazing video podcasts for photographers!
Scott Kelby’s Photoshop User TV
Scott Kelby’s D-Town TV (Usually Nikon gear specific)
Ted Forbe’s The Art of Photography

There are other photography podcasts that are really good, but don’t have video – just search for “Learn Photography” or “Photography” in the iTunes search bar then click on the Podcast Section’s “See All” link.

Blogs:
There are blogs that are written by professionals that have amazing information. Below are some of my favorites articles:

1. Flash Photography Techniques from Niel Van Niekerk – http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/ – Absolutely the best article on flash photography, period. He now sells a book, but still provides the material free on his site.
2. When buying new equipment I check two sites: Digital Photography Review (http://dpreview.com) and Ken Rockwell (http://www.kenrockwell.com/). Ken Rockwell is very upfront and honest about equipment and talks about certain aspects that others miss. He has a good primer and reminder called “Your Equipment Doesn’t Matter” (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm) and an overview (http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/aboutrvw.htm) that reminds us that spending big dollars on equipment does not make us any better than well trained eye. Apparently some of the best pictures have been made with really bad equipment (including the really poor camera on the original iPhone).

Personal Experience:
about photography:
Take pictures often. Keep a digital camera at hand always, even if it’s just a cheap point and shoot that you picked up at the Target clearance shelf for $25. After you take pictures, look at them critically and if you have time and it’s possible (some photographic moments are fleeting) return to the site with your nice DSLR for an actual shoot. Look at your EXIF information. This is a photographer journalist’s dream come true! I used to record the f-stop (aperture), shutter speed and ISO along with the subject and shot # on a sheet of paper. That was a pain and took some joy out of the moment, but it’s still just as important. The difference is that nearly all digital cameras record that information for you – even the point and shoots. Now you can look at dozens of technical aspects of the photo from free software to learn from it. I think iPhoto has that ability, but it has been a while since I’ve played around with it. I use EXIF Viewer from opanda software for the PC and as a FireFox extension. Simple EXIF viewer for the Macintosh should be identical to the PC version just mentioned.

about flashes:
I read somewhere that it was better to have multiple SB-600s for the same price as one SB-900. The reasoning behind this is that with the right camera, the SB-600’s become multiple slave sources of light allowing for more control than the single SB-900. What I’ve learned is the type of lighting system you use is really dependent on the type of photography you’ll be doing – e.g. studio photography has more controlled lighting so less featured lights work well while on-site photography has less controlled lighting so flashes with more features and power become desirable and in landscape photography the flash is rarely ever used. Before investing in an expensive lighting system look at renaissance lighting techniques that utilize natural light with a great wow factor: Google “Chairoscuro lighting technique”. You should also use the natural window light technique. My most favorited photo by visitors on Flickr was done through natural window lighting (from a north-facing window).

about tripods:
In a couple of words: Garage Sales. When garage sale season comes up, I look for two things: photo props (e.g. chairs, hats, etc) and tripods. Stick with the following names: Gitzo, Manfrotto, Slik, Sunpak in that order. Gitzo will be the most expensive while Sunpak the least. Also, ball-heads are better than tilt-heads. Finally, you’ll want a tripod with a quick camera release of some sort. Usually it’s in the form of a foot that you screw to the bottom of the camera. Before I knew much about tripods, I was able to get a Gitzo tripod at a garage sale for around $20. I thought it was expensive at the time, but it was very sturdy so I bought it. Turns out to be an $400 tripod. It’s as heavy as a sack of bricks but in the windy mountains it sits very solid, which is critical. My other tripod is a light-weight “cheap” Sunpak. It’s okay for quick indoor shoots, but wobbles when anyone walks past it.

about purchasing camera accessories:
Since I like to trek off the beaten path, and got tired of having hard knobs and metal banging against my back spine, I got an inexpensive tennis racket bag from Salvation Army to carry the tripod in. In other words, since good tripods and tripod accessories are so expensive and cheap tripods and accessories are so plentiful, keep an eye open for the good ones at garage sales, flea markets and pawn shops and compromise when it makes sense. A benefit of getting beaten up, tattered and torn camera bags from these places is thieves overlook them for the snazzy new $100 looking bags that other tourists carry. If you noticed, the camera bag I looked at in the store didn’t look like a typical camera bag. The only accessories that most photographers don’t skimp on, and are very picky with are the lenses. Lenses range from $100 to $2000+. I have purchased some good used lenses, but only after really scrutinizing them through my camera body and taking a few test shots with them first.

about post-processing (sometimes called post-exposure):
Post-processing usually involves Photoshop, but can often be done with an equal quality with Gimp, a free open-source version. A new license of Photoshop usually runs around $600, though it can be had for as low as $200 on special occasions (as an upgrade path). Be very wary of eBay. I bought a copy of Photoshop from someone there and it ended up being pirated. Pirated versions have TEMPORARY license keys. After a couple of days your “bargain” $200 purchase of the $600 license will be rendered useless. I knew enough about Adobe products to pin the guy down the hour I received it. He quickly refunded my money in fear of being reported to the authorities. So caveat emptor. Gimp is free and, though the menus and hot-keys are different, the main functionality that you need for photo touch-ups are there. The most powerful are your layers, masks, Hue-Saturation-Brightness, Levels and Curves. 90% of all my post-ops involve only the last three while 9% of the rest only involve the full five. That last 1% is for special filter, convergence, and alignment functions. Another growing-popular choice for photographers is a workflow processing program called “Light Room”. This one normally runs $200, but could go as low as $100 on special occasions. Again, eBay can be a great place to get this, but “buyer beware” still applies. Light Room is also from Adobe and utilizes the same temporary license key technique that disables your software if its server discovers it to be pirated. For the past few years companies have been writing software that not only automatically updates the program when new bugfixes come out, but also reports to the server the license keys to determine if its legit or not.

Get Plugged-In:
Once you know the rules you’ll know when to break them and have the power of knowledge to deliberately do so. Even so, you need to be around others who are also familiar with these rules to give good direction and advice. Also there will be times when you get the equivalent of “writers block” and will need a push or an inspired idea to get rolling again.

You should get plugged into a social network photography site such as Flickr. From there you can join groups that will inspire, broaden and even critique your photography. At the very least, it allows a quick way for you to share your photos with friends and family. My wife likes to use the i heart faces social photography site.

And if you use someone else’s idea, or if a picture you see posted on the internet inspired you to take a few shots be sure to mention it. It’s okay to pull someone else’s hat trick as long as they get credit for the idea.

Finally – have fun. Enjoy it. If it becomes laborious you’ll resent it.
Catch me on Flickr

What a shame, they might say.
Something in me demands;
it makes demands for
reconcealiation.

There’s passion and hope,
rage and remorse,
then grief when it’s lost
but the feelings will expire.

I hold onto things
old coupons that have no worth
a few cards from a misplaced deck
wishing for the time I lost.

Where’s the meaning without the worth?
Time will whittle me away anyway.
Why not give myself, even in pieces.
Each of us – meaningless unless given away.

But life is an offer,
a limited time
a time that will expire.

Cave photography is tricky for several reasons. This is especially true if you’re trying to use the “natural” lighting that cave tours provide.

I tend to like the orange red glow of incandescent lighting, and taking pictures without a flash emphasizes my personal memory of the experience. While using a flash yields better sharpness, it also changes the lighting to something other than what you remembered seeing. However, it does show the true nature of the rock which tends to be browns and tans. Flash is nice if you’re wanting to study the geological formations, but not as nice if you’re wanting the feel of that memory.

1. Come Prepared

2. Expect Grain

3. Set To Burst

Camera shake isn’t as severely noticed in long exposures, but hand-holding a camera means it’s shots will be based on your overall stability on those slippery floors. The general rule is anything longer than 1/60 of a second should be on a tripod. Of the four different caves I’ve gone to, you couldn’t bring those in unless you have special permission. Somehow the flow of shots or burst shooting helps improve these odds.

4. Be Polite And Trail Behind

In fact, I was so far back that the tour group behind us was just a few feet away – these tours were in 15 minute intervals. I wouldn’t suggest this if you were in the last tour of the day. Zoiks! Getting locked in one of these caves with all the lights out would be terrifying!

5. Seek Sensible Stability

We emit oils and acids that create a water barrier on these stones. That means the water won’t settle on these spots anymore to deposit the minerals that keep these formations “alive”. I think the fine here was around $15,000!

6. Protect Your Assets

7. Remember Variety

8. Be Liberal With Your Photography

9. Last words of wisdom? Hmmm…

If I were to do this again, it would be by myself instead of with a family of kids and relatives. It’s an inconvenience to them. I’d warn the tour guide that I’m a shutterbug so I lag behind, then offer a small tip – like $5 or $10 in advance. In American Indian tours, they usually take a $20 – but a good Indian guide is easily worth that … some of the great shots in my Antelope Canyon trip were a direct result of advice from the guide! I would also ask the manager what types of accommodations could be made or if there were any special photography tours.

10. Final Words and Thanks

When I was young I just wanted to make stuff for the pleasure of it. When I got older I was told that wasn’t a way to make a living.

I disagree. God made things for a living so I guess those people’s attempts to civilize me into a common worker bee never quite stuck because of my higher childlike “ideals”.

My parents were pretty good with supporting me through it. Mom is an excellent painter and Dad is a great musician. They weren’t like the other grown ups who usually attended school board council meetings. That is, they weren’t looking for a way to build a society – just looking for a way to raise great kids.

If more people took up their personal responsibility to raise their kids instead of handing their kids off to the village (idiots) to raise them, I think they would discover that children are important… they’re a joy… they bring back those squishy playdough, colored in fingerpaint, bruised knees from playing in the rocks moments. That imagination is never really lost – not completely, anyway – it’s just suppressed. And like a good expectorant, when you have kids that creativity just spits right back up!

Enjoy the free cave and art textures:
Cave Textures
Art Textures

They weren’t doodles of any teachers, but rather of myself. More often than not the images resembled Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Why it’s considered art on a canvas and a psychological concern on notepaper is beyond me, but there you have it.

A few years later, at the university, these drawings started popping up again. This time I would cut them out of my notes and paste them or tape them in my diaries, which I kept for nearly ten years, and labeled them “The Looking Glass Zoo”.

Ignore the words in those years of entries. There might be a tidbit of wisdom here and there, but most of the words in the diaries aren’t really worth repeating. That’s a part of my past better left buried, only to be exhumed after my death when people can then discover how much of a jerk I was before I matured.

Since I’ve been getting back into art and drawing, I’ve gained an interest in looking back through these drawings and sketches – particularly for some raw ideas that never developed back then. I hope to document these images over time and improve upon them. The journaling is more reserved and in this digital form (the blog), which helps to keep me from writing some of the more libel thoughts and gives me a chance to edit the few I do post. I miss the handwriting, though. That’s something lacking on the web – too much type and too little personal handwriting.

I love it when people blog and use the photography I post up on flickr. This has got to be one of the best uses of flickr around, and as long as people aren’t posting my silly mug up on posterboards or commercials without my consent I have practically no concern on the matter. Some of my photos have even been on pages supporting political groups that I don’t, but it was clear from the article that the photo was used to set a visual tone rather than to say that the photographer promoted the material.

The latest blog to use one of my photos is Alan Morantz’s Leading Thoughts. In this article he discusses how art can be used to develop leadership skills! Cool! That’s actually one of the reasons for the many photographs up on flickr and blogposts lately. I’m trying hard to learn a certain level of diligence that will hopefully lead to better leadership and organizational skills. I’m also trying to put something creative out there that can be used to enrich the world and bring happiness to others. I’m not good enough to make blogging or photography a full-time business, but someday I might learn some great hidden nugget of wisdom and become a world-renown motivational speaker to twelve-year-olds that will allow me to indulge in supplimenting the task with photography and blogs. Then again, reality tells me I should get back to work – lunch break is over!

Every “cute” couple has their set of nicknames, even if it’s just “dear”. Somehow I got stuck with snugglebunny … sometimes it visits under the slight variation of snugglehubby, but they’re pretty much the same.

Have you ever noticed how most nicknames are tied to food and taste? Honey, sweetheart, sugar, sugarlips, sweetpea, sugar plum, stud muffin, cupcake, baby cakes, coco puff, sugar pie, honeybun, cookie, cheesecake, lollipop … the list goes on. (Though popular food items you won’t see as lover nicknames: quarter-pounder, KFC, dinner roll, ho-ho, ding dong, twinkie … ok, maybe twinkie.)

No wonder it’s a common notion that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates

Some days are good days – others aren’t. When I look at my good days it’s when many accomplishments take place. Most of the time it doesn’t matter if they are big or small, and most big accomplishments are accompanied by smaller challenges and supporting accomplishments. On the bad days, it’s when more failures and set backs occur than accomplishments.

For example, when I’m trying to code and the development environment crashes. That’s a disappointment. If the computer is continually behaving slowly so that what should only take an hour to do now draws out into three hours … well, that’s the makings of a bad day – trudging through the mud of life (in my case that mud is mostly composed of silicon chips) just trying to accomplish what you set out to do.

So the examination part, after the arduous summit of the thick muddy mountain has been reached, is when we look to see what could have made life better? Better hardware? Cleaner system? Maybe a particular coding style, or adding music to drown out the murmuring fans that normally fill the room.

On a broader scale … if today was good, find out why. Did someone say something great about your work? Did you finish what you set out to do? Did that impossible task actually turn out to be fun and easy? Did you surprise yourself with something you didn’t know you could do?

… and if today was bad examine it for gold. Was the noise driving you crazy? Did you get interrupted each time you started to do something? Did the results of your work turn out sloppy and unexpectedly bad compared to what you expected out of yourself?

After examining your day, look for a way to emphasize the good points and judo-turn those bad points for tomorrow. Yeah, the noise was driving me nuts, but I can get the dog to stop barking if I tire him out on a fast walk… that compliment made me feel great, I should ask my neighbor over for tea tomorrow… etc.

Examining our days help us improve ourselves in steps so small we don’t realize it, just keep your main goal in mind. I’m working on being more cheerful and to stop grumbling entirely. What’s your goal?