Our web diary

Happy New Year

I just wanted to put in a quick entry to wish all of our 'readers' a happy new year. 2003 has been a big year for us, with the wedding, the move, job changes and losses :( and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the year ahead.


Resolutions never work for me -- well at least not beyond the first few days of January -- so I won't go there. Perhaps I should just make resolutions for Sean instead :) :) hee hee ha ha. No that won't work either.


Well perhaps I'll get back to you about plans for the year ahead. In the meantime I wish you love, happiness and most importantly good health.


Marlene

Sigma 28-80MM F3.5-5.6 Apherical HF Macro Zoom

I just picked up a Sigma 28-80 F3.5-5.6 Aspherical Macro HF Mini Zoom for the Canon EOS 300D (Digital Rebel). I bought this lens primarily because it had 1:2 macro functionality that I could increase to 1:1 with a diopter kit. Oh, I got one of those as well. It is a Tiffen +1, +2, +4 kit. These are basically magnifying glasses so you can increase the size of the image. There are test pictures located on the website in the camera secion or you can click here

Camera Hardware Review

Today I bought a 75-300 Mark III 4-5.6 AF Canon zoom lens. I have a review of it compared to my other long zoom on the website under the pictures section.

Christmas Presents

Marlene and I opened our presents today!!!

Sports

What a great day in sports. Philadelphia lost all of their professional league games yesterday. They lost by 3 to San Francisco 31 to 28 in the NFL game. They score 1 shot vs. Atlanta's 4 in the NHL game. To finish the 'Turkey' They lost 87-84 against Atlanta. Aww. what a good sports day for a Dallas fan..:)

Make a Wish

NC Wish is the North Carolina Chapter of the Make a Wish foundation. The 'Make a Wish Foundation" is a non-profit organization that helps grant wishes for children who are terminally ill with cancer. I would imagine that quite a few of the wishes are "I want to go to Disneyland" or " I want to ride a Roller Coaster" These are valid wishes for any child.


There was a story in the local paper on Thursday about a 12 year old girl from Weddington, NC who was dying of cancer. She was asked by the 'Make a Wish' foundation, "What do you wish for?" The 12 year old replied with a question "How many other's are waiting for wishes?" The answer was 155. The girl then said, "Then my wish is that those 155 children get their wishes".


It's a pretty non-selfish statement by a 12 year old girl. I almost cried in the car. WBT1110 a local radio station in Charlotte is now trying to reverse-psychology listeners into donating the money needed to fulfill those wishes by Christmas.


Ok, I am not the biggest person for Charitable donations, but Marlene and I have thrown some money at the pot and I am hoping others will too. Since Thursday the group has raised enough to fulfill 17 wishes. That leaves 138 more to go. You can donate by phone 1-877-677-WISH or via their webite.

Camera Information

I purchased a Canon Digital Rebel in October. This was my second foray into the Digital SLR catergory of cameras. I had earlier purchased an Olympus C-2100 UZ. This was a nice TTL (Through The Lens) camera with a fix 10x optical stablized lens. Ok, yes I know it's not a true SLR, but it was thrown in this category by the reviewers. This camera, like my other Olympus cameras, took great pictures.The TTL on the 2100 is an LCD viewfinder instead of a reflection off a pentaprism or pentamirror like a normal 35MM film-body camera. Don't get me wrong, the Olympus had some great features. A 10X stablized optical zoom will pretty much level out any mis-givings you have about a purchase. I liked being able to pick the zit's off an Ant's butt at a 100 feet. However, the LCD viewfinder was just not quite good enough for me. So I sold the 2100 and purchased the Digital Rebel.


The best thing about the Drebel (as the forums call it) is the ability to swap the lenses. All of the Canon EF and EF-S lenses will work the Drebel. This leaves a lot of room for upgrades in teh future. I can see my wife had a good shopping list for upcoming occasions. It also means that I have to learn more about photography. So googling I went. There are quite a number of good Photography resources on the web. Here are some that I visit most often


Good tutorials.


Luminous-Landscape


Good camera reviews in general. The forums are an excellent source of information


DPreview


Good information on the Canon EOS Systems (The Digital Rebel is a Type A Camera body in the EOS group)


Photonotes


I probably could spend the entire month just reading camera stuff, but somehow I don't think my wife would approve. :) Hopefully some of the information in these sites can help me when Ephotocafe gets up and running.

Darwin Awards

Once a year I remember to go visit the Darwin Awards" website. There are awards given to people that have passed away generally because they did something so unbelievably stupid that we, as society, hope they do not pro-create.


I first started hearing about the Darwin awards back in 1996. The first one I read about was Lawn Chair Larry. Larry did not actually win the award that year, but the story is pretty funny. I read through this and other stories on the website. They make me chuckle. I move on after about 30 minutes and go onto whatever I had been doing before.


Once a year, something reminds me to go check on the Darwins. This year was no exception. My friend Steen was mentioning that he had seen a story on the TV show Urban Legend on TLC. The show was making a lawn chair float with helium balloons. It rather reminded me of Ole' Larry.


So today I introduced Darwin Fan.

Christmas Tree

Oh Christmas tree! Oh Christmas Tree! How lovely are your banches.... I bet everyone will be humming that for the next week.


We got out Christmas tree setup yesterday. Ok. I put it in the holder and Marlene did the decorating. The pictures of the tree are on the website.

Christmas tree

Sean and I picked up a live christmas tree yesterday. It's a 6ft tall Fraser Fir. The tree itself is quite broad and full. I think it is beautiful. I didn't manage to get a tree during the last 4 years living in Toronto so this one is all the more special. It's decorated with some of my treasured ornaments and some new ones I bought just this year. Presents are wrapped and under the tree and Mr.Instant-Gratification Rivinus is finding it hard to wait the 10 more days to Christmas Eve to see them opened. It's funny because I think he finds it harder to wait to see me open the gifts he has chosen for me than he is waiting until he is allowed to open his own.


As a kid I could barely wait to open my gift -- I'll admit to having done a little shaking. As an adult I find myself wrapping small gifts for myself -- a new book to read, a new sweater, a small box of chocolates -- just so I can "surprise" myself at Christmas with gifts I really wanted. (I grew up with 3 well-meaning brothers and some years the thought was all that really counted.) Often the best gifts we receive are the ones we give ourselves. This year I think I will sit back and enjoy our first Christmas together and give myself the gift of peaceful enjoyment of our first Christmas together and not allow myself to worry too much about the details.

Cousin's Wedding.

Marlene and I went to see my cousin Clara get married on Friday. The pictures are now up on the website http://www.rivinus.com/clara_and_williamswedding.htm

Christmas cookies

I have just taken another batch of christmas cookies out of the oven. So far I've made some sugar cookies, some 'honig kuchen' (my mom's honey-cookie version of gingerbread), a few plain and some with jam, and some Pffefernusse (i don't think these 'pepper' cookies have an english name). I think I will mix up a batch of jam thumbprints with coconut and call it a day. Oh but I have a really good recipe for chocolate cookies too....hmmm


I love christmas baking but I have been too busy the last few years to do much of it. My apartment-sized oven and galley kitchen in Toronto were not designed for baking anything but frozen pizza.


One of the things we invested in as a wedding gift was two Silpat baking sheets. At $20 each they are quite expensive but if you bake they are well worth every cent. Skip parchment paper and greasing and flouring and buttering cookie sheets, this is the answer. Nothing sticks -- I haven't had a broken one yet.


A few fortunate friends and relatives will be the beneficiary of homemade cookies this christmas, that is if there are any left by then. Here's wishing you a season's good eating.

Christmas in Charlotte

Christmas is in full swing in Charlotte. I saw the following display when I was driving home from work tonight. Marlene was nice enough to walk with me down to snap this shot. It's a very nice display of a wagon on Providence Road just North of Fairview Avenue.

December

November was such a pleasant month in Charlotte. Most of last month was in the 70s. December has not been that bad, but we have had some weather in the 20s. Marlene has been sick most of the last week. Today was the first time this week that we have been able to get out of the house and go walking. We went to McAlpine Creek Park. Some of the pictures are up posted here http://www.rivinus.com/December.html


My cousin Clara is getting Married next Friday in Winston Salem. This should be a great chance for Marlene to meet more of my relatives.

Santa Claus

I am a big fan of talk radio while I am in driving in the car. We have a good station in Charlotte WBT 1110AM. I usually catch the on them drive to and from work and maybe for a little bit at lunch time.


This morning I happened to be in the car at an odd time and caught the Keith Larson show. They had had a caller who had gone shopping with her family at South Park Mall. South Park, like most malls, has a Santa/Christmas area for the holiday season. The parents had wanted to take a picture, with their own camera, of their son on Santa's lap. This is something have been doing with their kids at this particular mall for 17 years. They were immediately told that they could not take a picture with their own camera. The parents would have to purchase one of the "picture packages" sold by Santa. This certainly upset the parents who will probably not be going back to that particular mall anytime soon.


Every year across the country hundred of thousands of kids see Santa at the mall. Usually malls will put a Santa in to draw the kids and their parents in for shopping. A mall can certainly set it's own rules within it's walls, but charging for a picture to use your own camera sure seems a very un-Christmas like thing to do.

Christmas Time is Here

Well it's official, at least for me anyways, the holiday season has begun because I have just watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas". I love that cartoon, have been watching it every year since i was an infant. It's just a classic. When Linus quotes the passage in Luke about the birth of Jesus and says "that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown" I shed a little tear.


Although of course my favourite line belongs to Lucy "You know ho ho ho and mistletoe and presents for pretty girls".


Speaking of pretty girls and presents I have started wrapping ours, and they look very beautiful. My sister Tilly sent me 24 small presents to last the entire advent. Today's surprise was 2 chocolates. I ate both of them before I stopped to think maybe one was for Sean. Oops. Sorry honey.


Well I hope you are starting to get into the spirit of the season. Remember it's the thought that counts, but I always say a little bit of extra ribbon goes a long way.

Web hosting

Today I got everything transferred over to the new web hosting company Canaca. I now have all of my websites www.rivinus.com, www.midland-engineering.com (My dad's business site), and www.ephotocafe.com at one web host. I signed up for bronze accounts on the two smaller sites and the silver account for Ephotocafe.


I had had some real challenges over the last few months with my previous host Ipowerweb which I hope will be solved with this move.


One of my biggest fears in moving was loosing the RSS feed. I like that it helps get my websites indexed with search engines. I also like that I can ramble along and other people can keep up with what we are doing. Jason from Jclark.org got me started with the stuff. I dont always understand the stuff he writes about, but I do enjoy his ramblings.

New Lens

I added another piece to my kit today. I picked up a fixed length 50MM F1.8 lens. The 1.8 is the aperature diameter. The lower number means the lens can let in more light. This means that you can take pictures in lower light settings. It also allows you to limit the depth of field to highlight what you are shooting.


The first picture was shot with the 17-55MM lens that came with the Kit. Notice the shutter speed is .8 seconds. That may not sound like much time, but it is a lifetime in camera turns. You can also see that some of the books behind the glass are somewhat in focus. They move your eye away from the wine glass.

This image was shot with the news lens. The speed is 1/10th of a second. It is much easier to hold your hand still for 1/10 vs. .8 seconds. You can also notice that just the wine glass is in focus. Then lense has reduced the depth of field for this shot.








The lense was a steal for $89.00 at Charlotte Camera. It will also make an excellent portrait lens. This takes me to three lenses in the kit. 17-55MM Zoom, 50 MM prime, and a 28-200 MM zoom. The actual range with these lenses is increased by a factor of 1.6 with a digital SLR. That means with the 200 MM I am actually reaching out to what a normal SLR would shoot with a 320MM unit. The last thing I need is the external flash, and I think I am going to go with the Speedlight 420EX. More about that later.